Better performance and lower costs are driving factors in the hardware you choose for your data center. In choosing a newer server and storage solution, you can acquire enough processing power to virtualize older servers and consolidate them onto the new solution, which can increase performance dramatically while keeping costs down.
In our tests, the Dell PowerEdge R720 server with Compellent storage was able to take the place of four older HP ProLiant DL380 G6 servers by supporting the same 2,000-user Exchange Server 2010 workload as the older four combined. In addition to supporting four workloads, the Dell PowerEdge R720 was also more power efficient, supporting 116.0 percent more users per watt than the HP ProLiant DL380 G6. With such increases in performance and decreases in power consumption, the Dell PowerEdge R720 can deliver payback in as little as 18 months, providing an affordable consolidation platform for your business.
Better performance and lower costs are driving factors in the hardware you choose for your data center. In choosing a newer server and storage solution, you can acquire enough power to virtualize older servers and consolidate them onto the new solution, which can increase performance dramatically while keeping costs down.
In our tests, the Dell PowerEdge M620 server with Compellent storage was able to take the place of four older HP ProLiant BL460c G6 servers by supporting the same 2,000-user workload as the older four combined, while also upgrading to the newest version of Exchange Server 2010. In addition to supporting four workloads, the Dell PowerEdge M620 was also more power efficient, supporting 59.5 percent more users per watt than the HP ProLiant BL460c G6. With such increases in performance and decreases in power consumption, the Dell PowerEdge M620 can deliver payback in as little as 19 months, providing an affordable consolidation platform for your business.
Power efficiency and cost: AMD Opteron 6300 series processor-based Dell Power...Principled Technologies
With advances in processing power, it’s now possible to upgrade your older 4U, four-socket servers to newer and more powerful 2U, four-socket servers and achieve powerful performance. Additionally, the servers you select should provide the high performance levels you expect while simultaneously providing great purchase cost value and maximizing performance per watt, in an effort to keep your data center costs low.
In our tests, we found that the AMD Opteron processor Model 6380-powered Dell PowerEdge R815 provided similar performance to its competitor, the HP ProLiant DL560 Gen8, while providing benefits in the realms of power-efficiency and value. The Dell PowerEdge R815 delivered a 47.4 percent lower per-VM cost than the HP ProLiant DL560 Gen8, while delivering 15.8 percent more OPM per watt than the HP server did.
Due to these possible savings with the Dell solution, we found that the AMD Opteron processor Model 6380-powered Dell PowerEdge R815 could deliver up to an 28.8 percent lower three-year TCO than the HP ProLiant DL560 Gen8.
Consolidate and upgrade to save up to $172K: Dell PowerEdge R620 and Microso...Principled Technologies
Your growing business needs upgraded infrastructure to keep up with increased users and demand on your hardware. Adding memory and upgrading processors does not provide the same benefits to your infrastructure as a consolidation and upgrade can. Upgrading and consolidating your IT infrastructure to the Dell PowerEdge R620 running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2014 can improve performance while saving money and rack space.
Based on our findings, a single Dell PowerEdge R620 can replace four four-year-old dual-socket servers with VMs running heavy SQL Server database workloads. We found that consolidating four older servers onto a Dell PowerEdge R620 and upgrading to Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and SQL Server 2014 could save up to $172,573 over three years, compared to keeping the four-year-old dual-socket servers. The Dell PowerEdge R620 can also consolidate 8U worth of legacy servers into 1U of space. If your business runs older versions of Microsoft SQL Server on end-of-life dual-socket servers, the Dell PowerEdge R620 with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and SQL Server 2014 could save your company these costs while delivering better performance than the aging hardware and software.
The new Dell PowerEdge R720 comes with more than just the power to handle your heavy mixed workloads – it offers many storage solutions to deliver the level of performance you need. In our tests, we found that that a configuration of all HDDs could support a total of 1,164 users accessing database, mail, and collaboration applications. The Dell PowerEdge R720 solution with CacheCade enabled increased the supported number of users to 2,929, an increase of 151.6 percent. Finally, the Hybrid solution increased the number of users to 7,574, or an increase of 550.7 percent over the HDD solution, providing you with numerous options and scalability to get the performance you need.
Performance per dollar comparison: Dell PowerEdge R715 vs. HP ProLiant DL380p...Principled Technologies
Servers that deliver high performance at lower costs are a smart choice for any IT department building or refreshing a data center. In our tests, we found that the AMD Opteron 6200 Series processor -powered Dell PowerEdge R715 increased performance per dollar by as much as 23.27 percent in our real-world 70 percent processor utilization scenario, and as much as 26.84 percent at maximum processor utilization.
Consolidate and upgrade: Dell PowerEdge VRTX and Microsoft SQL Server 2014Principled Technologies
Your growing business shouldn’t run on aging hardware and software until it fails. Adding memory and upgrading processors will not provide the same benefits to your infrastructure as a consolidation and upgrade can. Upgrading and consolidating your IT infrastructure to the Dell PowerEdge VRTX running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2014 can improve performance while adding features such as high availability.
Based on our findings, a single Dell PowerEdge VRTX can replace four four-year-old dual-socket servers with VMs running heavy SQL database workloads. We found that consolidating four older servers onto a Dell PowerEdge VRTX and upgrading to Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and SQL Server 2014 could save up to $16,390 over three years, compared to keeping the four-year-old dual-socket servers and upgrading existing storage infrastructure. If your business runs older versions of Microsoft SQL Server on end-of-life dual-socket servers, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and SQL Server 2014 could save your company these costs while delivering better performance than the aging hardware and software.
Remote office server performance: Dell PowerEdge R720 server with Samsung SSD...Principled Technologies
When you invest in a server solution for your remote office, it’s important to select one that can meet your current needs well and continue to meet your needs as your company grows. In our testing, the Dell PowerEdge R720 server with Samsung SM825 200GB SATA solid-state drives running Windows Server 2012 comfortably handled 250 and 500 users, delivering solid database, collaboration, and email performance with hardware resources to spare. This makes the Dell-Samsung SSD-Windows Server 2012 solution an excellent choice now and for the future.
Dell PowerEdge M420: A Microsoft SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Re...Principled Technologies
By utilizing the Dell PowerEdge M420 blade server with SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances, you can create a self-contained, highly available database solution while using minimal rack space. The ability to cluster SQL Server instances for high availability and redundancy in such a small and dense form factor with the Dell PowerEdge M420 is a powerful combination for your enterprise database needs.
Better performance and lower costs are driving factors in the hardware you choose for your data center. In choosing a newer server and storage solution, you can acquire enough power to virtualize older servers and consolidate them onto the new solution, which can increase performance dramatically while keeping costs down.
In our tests, the Dell PowerEdge M620 server with Compellent storage was able to take the place of four older HP ProLiant BL460c G6 servers by supporting the same 2,000-user workload as the older four combined, while also upgrading to the newest version of Exchange Server 2010. In addition to supporting four workloads, the Dell PowerEdge M620 was also more power efficient, supporting 59.5 percent more users per watt than the HP ProLiant BL460c G6. With such increases in performance and decreases in power consumption, the Dell PowerEdge M620 can deliver payback in as little as 19 months, providing an affordable consolidation platform for your business.
Power efficiency and cost: AMD Opteron 6300 series processor-based Dell Power...Principled Technologies
With advances in processing power, it’s now possible to upgrade your older 4U, four-socket servers to newer and more powerful 2U, four-socket servers and achieve powerful performance. Additionally, the servers you select should provide the high performance levels you expect while simultaneously providing great purchase cost value and maximizing performance per watt, in an effort to keep your data center costs low.
In our tests, we found that the AMD Opteron processor Model 6380-powered Dell PowerEdge R815 provided similar performance to its competitor, the HP ProLiant DL560 Gen8, while providing benefits in the realms of power-efficiency and value. The Dell PowerEdge R815 delivered a 47.4 percent lower per-VM cost than the HP ProLiant DL560 Gen8, while delivering 15.8 percent more OPM per watt than the HP server did.
Due to these possible savings with the Dell solution, we found that the AMD Opteron processor Model 6380-powered Dell PowerEdge R815 could deliver up to an 28.8 percent lower three-year TCO than the HP ProLiant DL560 Gen8.
Consolidate and upgrade to save up to $172K: Dell PowerEdge R620 and Microso...Principled Technologies
Your growing business needs upgraded infrastructure to keep up with increased users and demand on your hardware. Adding memory and upgrading processors does not provide the same benefits to your infrastructure as a consolidation and upgrade can. Upgrading and consolidating your IT infrastructure to the Dell PowerEdge R620 running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2014 can improve performance while saving money and rack space.
Based on our findings, a single Dell PowerEdge R620 can replace four four-year-old dual-socket servers with VMs running heavy SQL Server database workloads. We found that consolidating four older servers onto a Dell PowerEdge R620 and upgrading to Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and SQL Server 2014 could save up to $172,573 over three years, compared to keeping the four-year-old dual-socket servers. The Dell PowerEdge R620 can also consolidate 8U worth of legacy servers into 1U of space. If your business runs older versions of Microsoft SQL Server on end-of-life dual-socket servers, the Dell PowerEdge R620 with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and SQL Server 2014 could save your company these costs while delivering better performance than the aging hardware and software.
The new Dell PowerEdge R720 comes with more than just the power to handle your heavy mixed workloads – it offers many storage solutions to deliver the level of performance you need. In our tests, we found that that a configuration of all HDDs could support a total of 1,164 users accessing database, mail, and collaboration applications. The Dell PowerEdge R720 solution with CacheCade enabled increased the supported number of users to 2,929, an increase of 151.6 percent. Finally, the Hybrid solution increased the number of users to 7,574, or an increase of 550.7 percent over the HDD solution, providing you with numerous options and scalability to get the performance you need.
Performance per dollar comparison: Dell PowerEdge R715 vs. HP ProLiant DL380p...Principled Technologies
Servers that deliver high performance at lower costs are a smart choice for any IT department building or refreshing a data center. In our tests, we found that the AMD Opteron 6200 Series processor -powered Dell PowerEdge R715 increased performance per dollar by as much as 23.27 percent in our real-world 70 percent processor utilization scenario, and as much as 26.84 percent at maximum processor utilization.
Consolidate and upgrade: Dell PowerEdge VRTX and Microsoft SQL Server 2014Principled Technologies
Your growing business shouldn’t run on aging hardware and software until it fails. Adding memory and upgrading processors will not provide the same benefits to your infrastructure as a consolidation and upgrade can. Upgrading and consolidating your IT infrastructure to the Dell PowerEdge VRTX running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2014 can improve performance while adding features such as high availability.
Based on our findings, a single Dell PowerEdge VRTX can replace four four-year-old dual-socket servers with VMs running heavy SQL database workloads. We found that consolidating four older servers onto a Dell PowerEdge VRTX and upgrading to Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and SQL Server 2014 could save up to $16,390 over three years, compared to keeping the four-year-old dual-socket servers and upgrading existing storage infrastructure. If your business runs older versions of Microsoft SQL Server on end-of-life dual-socket servers, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and SQL Server 2014 could save your company these costs while delivering better performance than the aging hardware and software.
Remote office server performance: Dell PowerEdge R720 server with Samsung SSD...Principled Technologies
When you invest in a server solution for your remote office, it’s important to select one that can meet your current needs well and continue to meet your needs as your company grows. In our testing, the Dell PowerEdge R720 server with Samsung SM825 200GB SATA solid-state drives running Windows Server 2012 comfortably handled 250 and 500 users, delivering solid database, collaboration, and email performance with hardware resources to spare. This makes the Dell-Samsung SSD-Windows Server 2012 solution an excellent choice now and for the future.
Dell PowerEdge M420: A Microsoft SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Re...Principled Technologies
By utilizing the Dell PowerEdge M420 blade server with SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances, you can create a self-contained, highly available database solution while using minimal rack space. The ability to cluster SQL Server instances for high availability and redundancy in such a small and dense form factor with the Dell PowerEdge M420 is a powerful combination for your enterprise database needs.
Dell PowerEdge R920 and Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Migration and Benefits GuidePrincipled Technologies
The latest Dell PowerEdge R920 server is designed to provide highly scalable performance for large enterprises, with greater memory capacity, improved and expanded attached storage options, and processor architectures designed for high availability. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is the perfect companion software to take advantage of the Dell PowerEdge R920’s impressive specifications. Upgrading has never looked more attractive, and with hardware/software upgrades must come data migration.
Migrating legacy database applications to the latest database technologies on newer Dell server platforms is a common task for businesses upgrading their hardware/software stack. As this guide shows, the process is straightforward and the cost benefits can be enormous. We calculated the savings attainable from multiple consolidation ratios, as well as how long it would take to pay off the replacement server. We found that a consolidation ratio of 13 to 1 could yield $531,725 in software savings, many times the cost of the replacement hardware itself. So not only will the business benefit from the massively-scalable current-generation Dell server technology paired with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 running SQL Server 2014, but you can save money in the process.
Comparing performance and cost: Dell PowerEdge VRTX with one Dell PowerEdge M...Principled Technologies
Keeping a legacy disparate hardware solution composed of nine older servers instead of choosing the new Dell PowerEdge VRTX powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-4650 v3 family may cost more than one would expect. We found that the Dell PowerEdge VRTX with an Intel Xeon processor E5-4650 v3-powered Dell PowerEdge M830 server could do the work of nine legacy servers running email, database, and file/print server workloads. The VRTX ran all nine workloads in VMs, achieving a slight performance boost on the database and file/print workloads while using much less datacenter space and reducing power consumption by 38.4 percent.
The VRTX achieved these savings using 88.6 percent less rack-equivalent space than the legacy disparate hardware solution and with one-third as many cables, to reduce complexity and reduce the burden of space in small offices.
Despite a larger initial investment, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX with an Intel Xeon processor E5-4650 v3-powered Dell PowerEdge M830 server could actually lower the total cost of ownership over five years by as much as 48.5 percent, delivering a solid return on investment in less than two years.
As our test results show, investing in the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-4600 v3 family could provide a compact solution to optimize application performance and reduce complexity at a lower lifetime cost than a legacy solution composed of nine older servers.
Managing clients with Dell Client Integration Pack 3.0 and Microsoft System C...Principled Technologies
Client management is an important part of any enterprise. Employees have workstations in their offices or notebooks that travel with them around the globe, and efficient updates and remote management capabilities keep an organization’s IT assets ordered and secure. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 can provide a robust, efficient, management system for your IT infrastructure. Selecting clients that not only operate within your IT framework, but that have built-in software to integrate with it seamlessly to make client management tasks even easier is an intelligent strategy for your IT department.
In our tests, we found that Dell client management tools (Dell Client Integration Pack, Dell Client Configuration Toolkit, and Dell OpenManage Client Instrumentation) integrated in a typical SCCM 2012 environment reduced the steps it took to complete client management tasks by as much as 77 percent, and included a number of features that weren’t available with clients from HP and Lenovo.
Dell PowerEdge M420 and Oracle Database 11g R2: A Reference ArchitecturePrincipled Technologies
The document provides details about configuring an Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) environment with Oracle Database 11g R2 running on two Dell PowerEdge M420 blade servers. It discusses:
1) The hardware used, including the Dell PowerEdge M420 blade servers, Dell Force10 MXL 10/40GbE switches, and Dell EqualLogic PS6110XS storage array.
2) How to configure the storage, servers, and networking hardware, including installing Oracle Linux 6 on the servers and configuring the necessary clustering prerequisites.
3) The steps to install and configure Oracle RAC 11g and get the Oracle Database up and running in the clustered environment.
Migrating middleware applications using Red Hat Enterprise VirtualizationPrincipled Technologies
Consolidating to a virtualized environment that supports VMs running the original operating systems can help you save on datacenter costs and eliminate retuning and testing costs that can be necessary when porting applications. You can reinstall the operating systems--such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8--on VMs and copy the application software and configuration to them. Selecting a virtual environment that optimizes performance and improves price/performance can lead to significant savings in the datacenter. You can get better performance and greater efficiency by replacing several older servers with newer ones running Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, reducing the number of servers you need to run and maintain.
In our tests, we easily and successfully migrated a middleware application running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a two- to three-year-old bare-metal server to virtual machines on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3 Hypervisor on a Dell PowerEdge R720 server.
Not only was there minimal disruption of the workload, but performance increased dramatically—by 95.7 percent when we ran one VM and by 117.0 percent when we ran two VMs.
These findings demonstrate that moving older servers to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization VMs on a new Dell PowerEdge R720 can provide all of the benefits of virtualization while significantly improving application performance.
Minimizing licensing costs for enterprise applications is vital to organizations looking to keep costs down. When your applications use per-core licensing, choosing higher-performance servers with fewer cores dramatically reduces your software-related spending. The Dell PowerEdge M820 blade solution with Compellent storage could deliver up to $315,400 in savings as compared to a single HP ProLiant BL680c G7 solution, and if consolidating multiple workloads, could deliver even more savings in licensing costs when running Oracle Database 11g Release 2 – all while maintaining or exceeding previous performance levels.
Meet database performance needs while reducing TCO with the Dell PowerEdge VR...Principled Technologies
Cloud WAN services can seem convenient for small businesses and remote offices, but they remove local control and can be more expensive over time. In our tests, the all-in-one Dell PowerEdge VRTX provided the necessary transactional database performance while saving up to 63.9 percent in costs over five years. When you’re looking for a reliable solution to run workloads in remote offices, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX has the potential to cost less than running databases from the cloud.
Dell Active System 800 converged infrastructure solution: VDI and collaborati...Principled Technologies
When searching for a converged infrastructure solution to deploy to your data center, choosing a complete solution that can run a variety of simultaneous workloads is a must for your organization. An easy-to-deploy, predictable, highly scalable solution that has the ability to meet your workload requirements and provides administrators with flexibility is vital to running an efficient data center.
In our tests, the Dell Active System 800 provided ample performance to drive the needs of a 1,800-person organization using multiple collaboration applications, order-processing applications, and virtual desktop infrastructure. Adding more server and storage capacity to the system allows for reliable and predictable scalability that can be tailored to your organization’s specific needs. Expand your infrastructure only as much as you need; the Dell Active System 800 is able to perform well for all end-users while providing flexibility for administrators.
Dell PowerEdge R720 rack server solutions for virtual desktop infrastructures Principled Technologies
Getting more value out of your servers is a smart way to reduce datacenter and VDI costs. In our tests, the Dell PowerEdge R720 server not only cost up to 5.4 percent less per user than the HP server, it also consumed 3.8 percent less power per virtual desktop user than the HP server when running workloads. When extrapolated over an entire rack of servers and with datacenters full of these racks, the potential savings both in hardware costs and in power costs could be dramatic.
Comparing performance and cost: Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs. legacy hardware solutionPrincipled Technologies
Keeping a legacy, disparate hardware solution instead of choosing the new Dell PowerEdge VRTX may cost you more than you realize. We found that the Dell PowerEdge VRTX increased application performance over a legacy, disparate hardware solution across email, database, and file/print server simultaneous workloads while reducing power consumption by 19.8 percent. The VRTX did so in 70.6 percent less rack-equivalent space than the legacy, disparate hardware solution and with one-third as many cables, to reduce complexity and reduce the burden of space in small offices. Finally, despite a larger initial investment, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX could actually lower your total cost of ownership over years as much as 26.0 percent, delivering a solid return on your investment in less than three years.
As our test results show, investing in the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution could provide you with a compact solution to optimize application performance, reduce complexity, and even lower the total cost of your solution over its lifetime.
Setting up a failover cluster on the Dell PowerEdge VRTX is a straightforward process. In very little time, you can deploy Dell PowerEdge VRTX with up to four M-series servers, switches, and storage in a redundant configuration using Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. By setting up a failover cluster on your compact Dell PowerEdge VRTX, you can maximize server uptime to keep your business moving.
The switching method you choose for your SBC environment can help determine performance and the experience that end-users have. We found that unifying switching with Cisco VM-FEX resulted in up to 29 percent lower latency than a solution using a traditional vSwitch when running a Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop farm. Furthermore, the Cisco VM-FEX solution used up to 53 percent less CPU than the vSwitch solution did under extreme network conditions. In addition to these performance advantages, Cisco UCS Manager provides a central point of management and a simplified method to add vSphere hosts to the VM-FEX-enabled vSwitch, which can reduce management time and costs.
As our results show, switching to Cisco VM-FEX can provide your users with a more responsive environment.
VDI performance comparison: Dell PowerEdge FX2 and FC430 servers with VMware ...Principled Technologies
Replacing your legacy VDI servers with a new Intel Xeon processor E5-2670 v3-powered Dell PowerEdge FX2 solution using VMware Virtual SAN can be a great boon for your enterprise.
In the Principled Technologies (PT) labs, this space-efficient, affordable solution outperformed a five-year-old legacy server and traditional SAN by offering twice as many VDI users. Additionally, it achieved greater performance while using 91 percent less space and at a cost of only $167.89 per user in hardware costs.
By supporting more users, saving space, and its affordability, an upgrade to the Intel-powered Dell PowerEdge FX2 solution using VMware Virtual SAN can be a wise move when replacing your aging, older infrastructure.
Migrating server workloads to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization on Intel Xeon...Principled Technologies
Consolidating to a virtualized environment that supports VMs running the original operating systems can help you save on data center costs and eliminate retuning and testing costs that can be necessary when porting applications. You can reinstall the operating systems, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8, on VMs and copy the application software and configuration to them. Selecting a virtual environment that optimizes performance and improves price/performance can lead to significant savings in the data center. You can get better performance and greater efficiency by replacing several older servers with newer ones powered by Intel® Xeon® processors running Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, reducing the number of servers you need to run and maintain.
In our tests, we easily and successfully migrated a middleware application running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a two- to three-year-old bare-metal server to virtual machines on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3 Hypervisor using Intel® Xeon® processors E5-2690.
Not only was there minimal disruption of the workload, but performance increased dramatically—by 90.3 percent when we ran one VM and by 143.8 percent when we ran two VMs.
These findings demonstrate that moving older servers to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization VMs with newer Intel® Xeon® processors can provide all of the benefits of virtualization while significantly improving application performance.
Component upgrades from Intel and Dell can increase VM density and boost perf...Principled Technologies
The document summarizes an experiment conducted by Principled Technologies that tested the performance improvements from upgrading server components. They found that upgrading from a Dell PowerEdge R720 to a Dell PowerEdge R730 server, along with upgrading the processor, operating system, storage drives and network cards, increased the number of supported VMs by 67% and database performance by 60%. Upgrading all components maximized performance benefits.
The document describes testing of two Dell PowerEdge servers' ability to support graphics-accelerated virtual desktops. A Dell PowerEdge R740xd server with 3 NVIDIA Tesla GPUs supported 96 virtual desktops, 50% more than a Dell PowerEdge R730 server with 2 GPUs which supported 64 desktops. Both servers maintained below 80% CPU utilization. The R740xd's ability to support more desktops in the same rack space allows more efficient use of datacenter resources.
With Dell PCIe Express Flash SSDs, you can get powerful performance for your databases from using internal storage. In our tests, the Dell PowerEdge R820 with four Dell PCIe Express Flash SSDs was able to support a maximum of 2,592 TPS, equal to that of a database cached in memory, which performed 2,555 TPS with the same system load.
For critical database applications, the Dell PowerEdge R820 with Dell PCIe Express Flash SSDs can provide you the performance you need without the hassles of external storage with a large number of disks.
Consolidating Web servers with the Dell PowerEdge FX2 enclosure and PowerEdge...Principled Technologies
Consolidating Web servers to a new environment can save you a great deal on operating costs such as power and cooling, and the shared nature of converged infrastructure solutions can maximize these savings. In our tests, we found that the Dell PowerEdge FX2 enclosure with Intel Atom processor C2750-powered FM120 nodes provided better consolidation ratios and power efficiency than both the HP Moonshot 1500 shared infrastructure solution and the current-generation HP ProLiant DL320e Gen8 v2 rack server. The Dell PowerEdge FX2 could consolidate 12 legacy Web servers and deliver up to 6.7 times the power efficiency that legacy servers would use. It also delivered up to 110.1 percent more performance/watt compared to the current-generation Web server solutions we tested from HP.
As these results show, the Dell PowerEdge FX2 with FM120x4 microserver blocks could provide your organization with dramatic power savings through consolidation, all while providing the Web server performance you require.
Converged architecture advantages: Dell PowerEdge FX2s and FC830 servers vs. ...Principled Technologies
Based on our testing with heavy SQL Server 2014 database workloads, the converged architecture solution of a Dell PowerEdge FX2s chassis and FC830 servers delivered 3.8 times the performance of our legacy HP solution. We also found the Dell PowerEdge FX2s and FC830 solution offered 72 lower cost per new order compared to the legacy HP ProLiant DL580 G7 solution. In addition, the PowerEdge FX2s and FC830 solution does not sacrifice traditional hardware redundancy while providing the same highly available database solution in a smaller rack space. If your business runs Microsoft SQL Server 2014, the converged architecture approach with Dell PowerEdge FX2s chassis and FC830 servers powered by Intel could bring a harmonious balance of performance, reliability, and cost efficiency to your data center.
"Cloudian’s new solution, Cloudian 2.4, maximizes data protection, availability and security, which are critical for enterprises looking to deploy their own private cloud or move their data to the public cloud. For multi-datacenter deployments, Cloudian now provides Dynamic Consistency Levels, offering unprecedented data protection and ensuring continuous, uninterrupted operations in the case of network or site failures. "
See more detail at Cloudian Press Release.
http://www.cloudian.com/news/press-releases/press-release-25.html
Whether you’re looking for the highest possible performance per rack unit or the strongest RAS-enabled server to run your mission-critical databases, Dell has a server to meet your needs. Factors such as performance per rack, expansion capabilities, and flash storage options will also drive your server decision.
In our hands-on tests, we found that the Dell PowerEdge R820 server could handle up to 382,397 database orders per minute and had 73.6 percent greater performance per U of rack space than the R910.
The Dell PowerEdge R910 processed 440,475 OPM. Its high number of logical processors, maximum expansion capabilities, and support for RAS technologies make the Dell PowerEdge R910 an excellent choice for your mission-critical data center applications.
Dell PowerEdge R920 and Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Migration and Benefits GuidePrincipled Technologies
The latest Dell PowerEdge R920 server is designed to provide highly scalable performance for large enterprises, with greater memory capacity, improved and expanded attached storage options, and processor architectures designed for high availability. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is the perfect companion software to take advantage of the Dell PowerEdge R920’s impressive specifications. Upgrading has never looked more attractive, and with hardware/software upgrades must come data migration.
Migrating legacy database applications to the latest database technologies on newer Dell server platforms is a common task for businesses upgrading their hardware/software stack. As this guide shows, the process is straightforward and the cost benefits can be enormous. We calculated the savings attainable from multiple consolidation ratios, as well as how long it would take to pay off the replacement server. We found that a consolidation ratio of 13 to 1 could yield $531,725 in software savings, many times the cost of the replacement hardware itself. So not only will the business benefit from the massively-scalable current-generation Dell server technology paired with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 running SQL Server 2014, but you can save money in the process.
Comparing performance and cost: Dell PowerEdge VRTX with one Dell PowerEdge M...Principled Technologies
Keeping a legacy disparate hardware solution composed of nine older servers instead of choosing the new Dell PowerEdge VRTX powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-4650 v3 family may cost more than one would expect. We found that the Dell PowerEdge VRTX with an Intel Xeon processor E5-4650 v3-powered Dell PowerEdge M830 server could do the work of nine legacy servers running email, database, and file/print server workloads. The VRTX ran all nine workloads in VMs, achieving a slight performance boost on the database and file/print workloads while using much less datacenter space and reducing power consumption by 38.4 percent.
The VRTX achieved these savings using 88.6 percent less rack-equivalent space than the legacy disparate hardware solution and with one-third as many cables, to reduce complexity and reduce the burden of space in small offices.
Despite a larger initial investment, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX with an Intel Xeon processor E5-4650 v3-powered Dell PowerEdge M830 server could actually lower the total cost of ownership over five years by as much as 48.5 percent, delivering a solid return on investment in less than two years.
As our test results show, investing in the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution powered by the Intel Xeon processor E5-4600 v3 family could provide a compact solution to optimize application performance and reduce complexity at a lower lifetime cost than a legacy solution composed of nine older servers.
Managing clients with Dell Client Integration Pack 3.0 and Microsoft System C...Principled Technologies
Client management is an important part of any enterprise. Employees have workstations in their offices or notebooks that travel with them around the globe, and efficient updates and remote management capabilities keep an organization’s IT assets ordered and secure. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 can provide a robust, efficient, management system for your IT infrastructure. Selecting clients that not only operate within your IT framework, but that have built-in software to integrate with it seamlessly to make client management tasks even easier is an intelligent strategy for your IT department.
In our tests, we found that Dell client management tools (Dell Client Integration Pack, Dell Client Configuration Toolkit, and Dell OpenManage Client Instrumentation) integrated in a typical SCCM 2012 environment reduced the steps it took to complete client management tasks by as much as 77 percent, and included a number of features that weren’t available with clients from HP and Lenovo.
Dell PowerEdge M420 and Oracle Database 11g R2: A Reference ArchitecturePrincipled Technologies
The document provides details about configuring an Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) environment with Oracle Database 11g R2 running on two Dell PowerEdge M420 blade servers. It discusses:
1) The hardware used, including the Dell PowerEdge M420 blade servers, Dell Force10 MXL 10/40GbE switches, and Dell EqualLogic PS6110XS storage array.
2) How to configure the storage, servers, and networking hardware, including installing Oracle Linux 6 on the servers and configuring the necessary clustering prerequisites.
3) The steps to install and configure Oracle RAC 11g and get the Oracle Database up and running in the clustered environment.
Migrating middleware applications using Red Hat Enterprise VirtualizationPrincipled Technologies
Consolidating to a virtualized environment that supports VMs running the original operating systems can help you save on datacenter costs and eliminate retuning and testing costs that can be necessary when porting applications. You can reinstall the operating systems--such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8--on VMs and copy the application software and configuration to them. Selecting a virtual environment that optimizes performance and improves price/performance can lead to significant savings in the datacenter. You can get better performance and greater efficiency by replacing several older servers with newer ones running Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, reducing the number of servers you need to run and maintain.
In our tests, we easily and successfully migrated a middleware application running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a two- to three-year-old bare-metal server to virtual machines on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3 Hypervisor on a Dell PowerEdge R720 server.
Not only was there minimal disruption of the workload, but performance increased dramatically—by 95.7 percent when we ran one VM and by 117.0 percent when we ran two VMs.
These findings demonstrate that moving older servers to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization VMs on a new Dell PowerEdge R720 can provide all of the benefits of virtualization while significantly improving application performance.
Minimizing licensing costs for enterprise applications is vital to organizations looking to keep costs down. When your applications use per-core licensing, choosing higher-performance servers with fewer cores dramatically reduces your software-related spending. The Dell PowerEdge M820 blade solution with Compellent storage could deliver up to $315,400 in savings as compared to a single HP ProLiant BL680c G7 solution, and if consolidating multiple workloads, could deliver even more savings in licensing costs when running Oracle Database 11g Release 2 – all while maintaining or exceeding previous performance levels.
Meet database performance needs while reducing TCO with the Dell PowerEdge VR...Principled Technologies
Cloud WAN services can seem convenient for small businesses and remote offices, but they remove local control and can be more expensive over time. In our tests, the all-in-one Dell PowerEdge VRTX provided the necessary transactional database performance while saving up to 63.9 percent in costs over five years. When you’re looking for a reliable solution to run workloads in remote offices, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX has the potential to cost less than running databases from the cloud.
Dell Active System 800 converged infrastructure solution: VDI and collaborati...Principled Technologies
When searching for a converged infrastructure solution to deploy to your data center, choosing a complete solution that can run a variety of simultaneous workloads is a must for your organization. An easy-to-deploy, predictable, highly scalable solution that has the ability to meet your workload requirements and provides administrators with flexibility is vital to running an efficient data center.
In our tests, the Dell Active System 800 provided ample performance to drive the needs of a 1,800-person organization using multiple collaboration applications, order-processing applications, and virtual desktop infrastructure. Adding more server and storage capacity to the system allows for reliable and predictable scalability that can be tailored to your organization’s specific needs. Expand your infrastructure only as much as you need; the Dell Active System 800 is able to perform well for all end-users while providing flexibility for administrators.
Dell PowerEdge R720 rack server solutions for virtual desktop infrastructures Principled Technologies
Getting more value out of your servers is a smart way to reduce datacenter and VDI costs. In our tests, the Dell PowerEdge R720 server not only cost up to 5.4 percent less per user than the HP server, it also consumed 3.8 percent less power per virtual desktop user than the HP server when running workloads. When extrapolated over an entire rack of servers and with datacenters full of these racks, the potential savings both in hardware costs and in power costs could be dramatic.
Comparing performance and cost: Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs. legacy hardware solutionPrincipled Technologies
Keeping a legacy, disparate hardware solution instead of choosing the new Dell PowerEdge VRTX may cost you more than you realize. We found that the Dell PowerEdge VRTX increased application performance over a legacy, disparate hardware solution across email, database, and file/print server simultaneous workloads while reducing power consumption by 19.8 percent. The VRTX did so in 70.6 percent less rack-equivalent space than the legacy, disparate hardware solution and with one-third as many cables, to reduce complexity and reduce the burden of space in small offices. Finally, despite a larger initial investment, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX could actually lower your total cost of ownership over years as much as 26.0 percent, delivering a solid return on your investment in less than three years.
As our test results show, investing in the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution could provide you with a compact solution to optimize application performance, reduce complexity, and even lower the total cost of your solution over its lifetime.
Setting up a failover cluster on the Dell PowerEdge VRTX is a straightforward process. In very little time, you can deploy Dell PowerEdge VRTX with up to four M-series servers, switches, and storage in a redundant configuration using Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. By setting up a failover cluster on your compact Dell PowerEdge VRTX, you can maximize server uptime to keep your business moving.
The switching method you choose for your SBC environment can help determine performance and the experience that end-users have. We found that unifying switching with Cisco VM-FEX resulted in up to 29 percent lower latency than a solution using a traditional vSwitch when running a Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop farm. Furthermore, the Cisco VM-FEX solution used up to 53 percent less CPU than the vSwitch solution did under extreme network conditions. In addition to these performance advantages, Cisco UCS Manager provides a central point of management and a simplified method to add vSphere hosts to the VM-FEX-enabled vSwitch, which can reduce management time and costs.
As our results show, switching to Cisco VM-FEX can provide your users with a more responsive environment.
VDI performance comparison: Dell PowerEdge FX2 and FC430 servers with VMware ...Principled Technologies
Replacing your legacy VDI servers with a new Intel Xeon processor E5-2670 v3-powered Dell PowerEdge FX2 solution using VMware Virtual SAN can be a great boon for your enterprise.
In the Principled Technologies (PT) labs, this space-efficient, affordable solution outperformed a five-year-old legacy server and traditional SAN by offering twice as many VDI users. Additionally, it achieved greater performance while using 91 percent less space and at a cost of only $167.89 per user in hardware costs.
By supporting more users, saving space, and its affordability, an upgrade to the Intel-powered Dell PowerEdge FX2 solution using VMware Virtual SAN can be a wise move when replacing your aging, older infrastructure.
Migrating server workloads to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization on Intel Xeon...Principled Technologies
Consolidating to a virtualized environment that supports VMs running the original operating systems can help you save on data center costs and eliminate retuning and testing costs that can be necessary when porting applications. You can reinstall the operating systems, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8, on VMs and copy the application software and configuration to them. Selecting a virtual environment that optimizes performance and improves price/performance can lead to significant savings in the data center. You can get better performance and greater efficiency by replacing several older servers with newer ones powered by Intel® Xeon® processors running Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, reducing the number of servers you need to run and maintain.
In our tests, we easily and successfully migrated a middleware application running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a two- to three-year-old bare-metal server to virtual machines on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3 Hypervisor using Intel® Xeon® processors E5-2690.
Not only was there minimal disruption of the workload, but performance increased dramatically—by 90.3 percent when we ran one VM and by 143.8 percent when we ran two VMs.
These findings demonstrate that moving older servers to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization VMs with newer Intel® Xeon® processors can provide all of the benefits of virtualization while significantly improving application performance.
Component upgrades from Intel and Dell can increase VM density and boost perf...Principled Technologies
The document summarizes an experiment conducted by Principled Technologies that tested the performance improvements from upgrading server components. They found that upgrading from a Dell PowerEdge R720 to a Dell PowerEdge R730 server, along with upgrading the processor, operating system, storage drives and network cards, increased the number of supported VMs by 67% and database performance by 60%. Upgrading all components maximized performance benefits.
The document describes testing of two Dell PowerEdge servers' ability to support graphics-accelerated virtual desktops. A Dell PowerEdge R740xd server with 3 NVIDIA Tesla GPUs supported 96 virtual desktops, 50% more than a Dell PowerEdge R730 server with 2 GPUs which supported 64 desktops. Both servers maintained below 80% CPU utilization. The R740xd's ability to support more desktops in the same rack space allows more efficient use of datacenter resources.
With Dell PCIe Express Flash SSDs, you can get powerful performance for your databases from using internal storage. In our tests, the Dell PowerEdge R820 with four Dell PCIe Express Flash SSDs was able to support a maximum of 2,592 TPS, equal to that of a database cached in memory, which performed 2,555 TPS with the same system load.
For critical database applications, the Dell PowerEdge R820 with Dell PCIe Express Flash SSDs can provide you the performance you need without the hassles of external storage with a large number of disks.
Consolidating Web servers with the Dell PowerEdge FX2 enclosure and PowerEdge...Principled Technologies
Consolidating Web servers to a new environment can save you a great deal on operating costs such as power and cooling, and the shared nature of converged infrastructure solutions can maximize these savings. In our tests, we found that the Dell PowerEdge FX2 enclosure with Intel Atom processor C2750-powered FM120 nodes provided better consolidation ratios and power efficiency than both the HP Moonshot 1500 shared infrastructure solution and the current-generation HP ProLiant DL320e Gen8 v2 rack server. The Dell PowerEdge FX2 could consolidate 12 legacy Web servers and deliver up to 6.7 times the power efficiency that legacy servers would use. It also delivered up to 110.1 percent more performance/watt compared to the current-generation Web server solutions we tested from HP.
As these results show, the Dell PowerEdge FX2 with FM120x4 microserver blocks could provide your organization with dramatic power savings through consolidation, all while providing the Web server performance you require.
Converged architecture advantages: Dell PowerEdge FX2s and FC830 servers vs. ...Principled Technologies
Based on our testing with heavy SQL Server 2014 database workloads, the converged architecture solution of a Dell PowerEdge FX2s chassis and FC830 servers delivered 3.8 times the performance of our legacy HP solution. We also found the Dell PowerEdge FX2s and FC830 solution offered 72 lower cost per new order compared to the legacy HP ProLiant DL580 G7 solution. In addition, the PowerEdge FX2s and FC830 solution does not sacrifice traditional hardware redundancy while providing the same highly available database solution in a smaller rack space. If your business runs Microsoft SQL Server 2014, the converged architecture approach with Dell PowerEdge FX2s chassis and FC830 servers powered by Intel could bring a harmonious balance of performance, reliability, and cost efficiency to your data center.
"Cloudian’s new solution, Cloudian 2.4, maximizes data protection, availability and security, which are critical for enterprises looking to deploy their own private cloud or move their data to the public cloud. For multi-datacenter deployments, Cloudian now provides Dynamic Consistency Levels, offering unprecedented data protection and ensuring continuous, uninterrupted operations in the case of network or site failures. "
See more detail at Cloudian Press Release.
http://www.cloudian.com/news/press-releases/press-release-25.html
Whether you’re looking for the highest possible performance per rack unit or the strongest RAS-enabled server to run your mission-critical databases, Dell has a server to meet your needs. Factors such as performance per rack, expansion capabilities, and flash storage options will also drive your server decision.
In our hands-on tests, we found that the Dell PowerEdge R820 server could handle up to 382,397 database orders per minute and had 73.6 percent greater performance per U of rack space than the R910.
The Dell PowerEdge R910 processed 440,475 OPM. Its high number of logical processors, maximum expansion capabilities, and support for RAS technologies make the Dell PowerEdge R910 an excellent choice for your mission-critical data center applications.
As our tests show, investing in the powerful new Dell PowerEdge R920 running Oracle VM Server 3.2.8 with Oracle Database 12c VMs achieves cost savings without compromising performance. In our testing, a single Dell PowerEdge R920 could perform five times the work of a single HP ProLiant DL385 G6 server; the costs to power and cool the Dell PowerEdge would be 43 percent less than the five servers it could replace. The three-year software licensing costs of the Dell PowerEdge R920 server would be 22 percent lower than the licensing costs for the five-server solution. These dramatic savings—which come out to $212,091 for our single test environment — could grow to millions of dollars in a larger consolidation effort.
Blade solution comparison: AMD-based Dell PowerEdge M915 with Microsoft Windo...Principled Technologies
Saving money on your blade infrastructure is easy if you know what to look for. First, make sure the solution can meet your performance needs. Then, look at the upfront costs for implementing the solution as well as power efficiencies that can mean reduced operating costs throughout the life of your datacenter.
In our tests, we found that both solutions supported 16VMs and delivered an average of over 30,000 OPM per VM, while the Dell/AMD/Microsoft solution used 26.1 percent less power. The Dell/AMD/Microsoft solution was not only more power-efficient – it was also 27.5 percent less expensive per VM than the HP/Intel/VMware solution. When planning your blade infrastructure, choose wisely. As our test results and cost analysis have shown, selecting a power-efficient AMD Opteron 6300 Series processor-powered Dell PowerEdge M915 has the potential to save you in both capital and operating expenses.
Compact, high-performing servers and streamlined software are a necessity for any data center that provides multi-tier hosted Web solutions, cloud services, or other scale-out implementations. Customers need quick access to Web applications that power their business, and the databases that power those Web applications. In our tests, we found that the Dell PowerEdge C6220 server with an open-source LAMP software stack was able to complete up to 38,793 orders per minute for one Web site, 79,759 orders per minute for two Web sites, and 119,758 orders per minute for four Web sites – all while providing the flexibility, efficiency, and maintenance features that large-scale deployments require.
Database server comparison: Dell PowerEdge R630 vs. Lenovo ThinkServer RD550Principled Technologies
We tested the OLTP performance of a 1U Dell PowerEdge R630, powered by Intel Xeon processors E5-2660 v3, running Microsoft Hyper-V and virtual machines running SQL Server 2014, and compared it to that of the Lenovo ThinkServer RD550 running the same software. For each server, we selected the maximum SATA SSD count that was configurable for each model. The Dell PowerEdge R630 outperformed the Lenovo ThinkServer RD550 by 14.9 percent and offered more than one and a half times the storage space for data in our configuration.
By selecting a server that handles more orders per minute and offers significantly more storage capacity potential than the competition, you get a not only faster, efficient experience for your database users, but also have the scaling potential for your storage needs ahead of your business growing.
Windows Server 2012 on Dell - Great performance and value for the next genera...Principled Technologies
The server and storage solution you choose for your SharePoint workloads can greatly affect the collaborative experience in the workplace. Not only should the servers be powerful enough to deliver a solid experience for the large number of end-users that need to collaborate on documents, the hardware solution should minimize the cost per user to help keep data center costs low. In our tests, we found that we could virtualize SharePoint on two Dell PowerEdge M620 servers and a Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV array and support the same 3,000 users as on the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8, but at a significantly lower cost. The Dell PowerEdge M620 solution cost only $28.40 per user; 26.0 percent less than the $38.35 per user that the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 solution would cost to purchase.
Choosing a server and storage solution that delivers the strong performance your data center requires while providing a lower cost per user can have a positive impact on your IT budget.
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations: High available and scalable performance ...Principled Technologies
Dell 3-2-1 Reference Configurations consisting of Dell PowerEdge R720 servers, Dell Force10 S4810P switches, and Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV storage provide a range of configuration options so that you can select the one that is right for your business needs. Additionally, each configuration is easily scalable to accommodate for business growth.
The 3-2-1 base configuration provides a robust solution for any business needing to support up to 500 users on multiple business applications. Our tests demonstrate this solution supporting 500 users per VM for four VMs including two database VMs, one email VM, and one collaboration application VM.
If the number of users you need to support exceeds the user count the base configuration provides, adding another Dell PowerEdge R720 server to make a 4-2-1 configuration can support up to 1,000 users on multiple business applications while maintaining high availability. Our tests demonstrate this solution supporting 1,000 users per VM in the same four VMs as the 3-2-1 solution. Additionally, these configurations are so easy to scale upward that you can complete the process of adding a server in a matter of two hours or less from start to finish.
If you require support for an even higher number of users, adding a server and storage array to the base configuration, to make a 4-2-2 configuration allows for up to 1,500 users on multiple business applications. Our tests demonstrated this when we ran 1,500 users against each of the four VMs. Better yet, adding a Dell EqualLogic PS6110XV storage array to an existing 4-2-1 configuration is a cinch, taking under 30 minutes start to finish.
All of these Dell Reference Configurations give your business the reliability of highly available hardware configurations, greatly reducing downtime resulting from any hardware malfunctions.
By choosing proven Dell architecture, you avoid the hassles of putting your infrastructure together piece by piece, reducing the potential for error and providing you with a sturdy solution that is easily scalable to fit your present and future needs.
Populating your data center with new, more powerful and energy efficient servers can deliver numerous benefits to your organization. By consolidating multiple older servers onto a new platform, you can save in the areas of data center space and port costs, management costs, and power and cooling costs.
In our tests, we found that the Lenovo ThinkServer RD630 could consolidate the workloads of three HP ProLiant DL385 G5 servers, while increasing overall performance by 82.6 percent and reducing power consumption by 58.8 percent, making the ThinkServer RD630 an excellent choice to reduce the costs associated with running your data center.
The Dell PowerEdge R920 could replace nine older Oracle database servers and provide nine times the performance while reducing power consumption by 64% and lowering software licensing costs by 17%. Testing showed the R920 running Oracle Database 12c with pluggable databases provided significant savings over three years in power, cooling, and licensing costs compared to running the databases on nine older servers.
Minimizing licensing costs for enterprise applications is vital to organizations looking to keep costs down. When your applications use per-core licensing, choosing higher-performance servers with fewer cores dramatically reduces your software-related spending. The Dell PowerEdge M820 blade solution with Compellent storage could deliver up to $96,236 in savings as compared to a single HP ProLiant BL680c G7 solution, and if consolidating multiple workloads, could deliver even more savings in licensing costs when running Microsoft SQL Server in a virtualized scenario – all while maintaining or exceeding previous performance levels.
Moving your legacy database workloads to the Dell PowerEdge R930 can help you realize the benefits of consolidation, which can include savings in management costs, power usage, and cable management costs. More importantly, the licensing costs of the database application itself may be reduced by the consolidation effort. In addition to these benefits, greater database transactions per minute can keep your orders flowing smoothly.
We found that the Dell PowerEdge R930, powered by the Intel Xeon processor E7 v3 series, could consolidate three legacy servers running four Oracle Database 12c VMs each. The Dell PowerEdge R930 outperformed the legacy server with 4.4 times the overall database performance, delivering an average of 47.1 percent more performance per VM. By consolidating that many legacy servers, you can save up to 67 percent in rack space, 25 percent in database licenses, and even reduce other operating costs to improve your bottom line.
Dell PowerEdge M520 server solution: Energy efficiency and database performancePrincipled Technologies
As energy prices continue to rise, building a power-efficient data center that does not sacrifice performance is vital to organizations looking to keep costs down while keeping application performance high. Choosing servers that pair high performance with new power-efficient technologies helps you do so. In our tests, the Dell PowerEdge M520 with Dell EqualLogic PS-M4110 arrays outperformed the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 server with HP StorageWorks D2200sb arrays by 113.5 percent in OPM. Not only did the Dell PowerEdge M520 blade server solution deliver higher overall performance, it also did so more efficiently, delivering 79.9 percent better database performance/watt than the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 solution.
Elevate your e-commerce business by upgrading to the Dell EMC PowerEdge R740x...Principled Technologies
Upgrading from legacy Dell PowerEdge R720 servers with a SAN storage array to a VMware vSAN cluster of Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd servers with 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors provided a dramatic performance boost. The new cluster handled 11.4 times as many orders per minute as the legacy environment and 1.3 times as many orders per minute as a previous generation solution with 1st Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors. The document recommends upgrading hardware to improve efficiency, support new technologies, and help businesses grow by handling more customers.
Dell PowerEdge M820 blades: Balancing performance, density, and high availabi...Principled Technologies
Finding a server that can deliver the right balance of high workload performance, density, and RAS features can help you meet both infrastructure and business goals at the same time.
In our tests, the single-width Dell PowerEdge M820 blade delivered 19.3 percent better Oracle Database 12c performance than the HP ProLiant BL680c G7 in half the space, meaning it could deliver 2.38 times more transactions per U. The value of the denser Dell PowerEdge M820 was clear in our cost analysis of the two systems. Because the Dell PowerEdge M820 takes up less space, you need fewer enclosures, less rack space, and can save on port costs. In our sample comparison of two performance-equivalent solutions, we found that the Dell PowerEdge M820 solution could save up to 42.1 percent compared to an HP ProLiant BL680c G7 solution. That’s money that you can use to buy even more servers for greater performance or to innovate elsewhere. We also found that the Dell PowerEdge M820 took high availability into account by utilizing key RAS features to help increase your workload uptime.
If you’re looking for a dense blade solution to lower costs with the power to handle your important workloads and keep them running, our study shows that the Dell PowerEdge M820 blade addresses all those concerns.
A single-socket Dell EMC PowerEdge R7515 solution delivered better value on a...Principled Technologies
If your company is running important business applications in VMware vSAN clusters of servers that are several years old, chances are good that you’re considering upgrading to newer hardware. Our testing demonstrated that our clusters of single-socket Dell EMC PowerEdge R7515 servers and clusters of dual-socket HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 servers could both improve upon the database performance of a legacy cluster with five-year-old servers by more than 50 percent, with the Dell EMC cluster achieving 93.4 percent of the performance of the HPE cluster.
The 16th Generation Dell PowerEdge R760 server with Broadcom NICs: Save money...Principled Technologies
Principled Technologies testing showed that a 16th Generation Dell PowerEdge R760 server featuring a Broadcom BCM57508-P2100G NIC delivered all three vs. previous‑generation PowerEdge servers
Conclusion
Organizations don’t have to choose between saving money, doing more work, and using less energy; the new 16th Generation Dell PowerEdge R760 servers with Broadcom NICs do all three. In our hands-on testing, the new 16th Generation Dell PowerEdge R760 server featuring a Broadcom NIC offered 166.1 percent more Ops/s per US dollar, 129.5 percent more Ops/s, and 24.2 percent better performance per watt than the 14th Generation Dell PowerEdge R740 server. This means the PowerEdge R760 with a Broadcom NIC did over twice as much work at a lower cost with nearly 25 percent better power efficiency than the PowerEdge R740. When compared to the 15th Generation Dell PowerEdge R750, the PowerEdge R760 processed 29.8 percent more Ops/s at a lower cost in terms of Ops/s per US dollar and offered 3.8 percent better performance per watt.
In addition to lowering cooling costs and carbon emissions, choosing the latest-generation servers can help businesses lower other operating costs, such as maintenance and security compliance. Because the latest-generation Dell PowerEdge R760 servers offer more compute capacity, fewer servers can do more work, potentially reducing licensing costs and the physical footprint of a data center. Newer servers often feature the most recent manageability and security features, which can make it easier for businesses to manage their servers and protect their data. By choosing servers with better performance, businesses can reduce the response time of their systems and provide a better user experience.
Increasingly, businesses are under pressure to reduce the energy consumption and cost of their data centers while maintaining or increasing performance. Key web technologies such as Redis can offer businesses a competitive edge, but they also require a large amount of data processing. Businesses can meet these challenges with Dell PowerEdge R760 servers with Broadcom NICs that offer better costefficiency, performance, and power-efficiency.
Upgrading key components in servers can significantly improve performance and capacity. The report tested upgrading components in Dell PowerEdge servers. It found that upgrading to newer Dell PowerEdge R720 servers with Intel Xeon and SSD components, Windows Server 2012, and 10GbE networking supported 4.5 times as many VMs as the older Dell PowerEdge R710 servers. Each individual component upgrade, such as the processor, storage, or network card, increased performance. But upgrading all components together maximized the number of supported VMs, database transactions, and email users.
Boost transactional database performance of VMware vSAN clusters by replacing...Principled Technologies
Replacing older servers in a VMware vSAN cluster with new Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 servers powered by 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors can significantly improve transactional database performance. Testing showed the new servers delivered over 7 times the orders per minute of legacy servers and over 2 times the orders per minute of previous-generation servers. Additionally, the new servers were able to handle more transactions in the same amount of rack space, helping to reduce data center costs and sprawl.
Similar to Dell PowerEdge R720 server with VMware vSphere 5 - Exchange server consolidation (20)
Help skilled workers succeed with Dell Latitude 7030 and 7230 Rugged Extreme ...Principled Technologies
Instead of equipping consumer-grade tablets with rugged cases
Conclusion
In our hands-on testing, the Dell Latitude 7030 and 7230 Rugged Extreme Tablets showed that they are better equipped to help skilled workers than consumer-grade Apple iPad Pro and Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 tablets in multiple ways. They provide more built-in capabilities and features than the consumer-grade tablets we tested. And, while they were more expensive than the rugged-case fortified consumer-grade options we tested, their rugged claims were more than skin deep.
In our performance and durability tests, the Dell Latitude 7030 and 7230 Rugged Extreme Tablets performed better in demanding manufacturing, logistics, and field service environments than consumer-grade tablets with rugged cases. Both Rugged Extreme Tablets, with their greater thermal range, suffered less performance degradation in extreme temperatures, never failed and were merely scuffed after 26 hard drops, survived a 10 minute drenching with no ill effects, and were easier to view in direct sunlight than Apple iPad Pro and Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 tablets.
Bring ideas to life with the HP Z2 G9 Tower Workstation - InfographicPrincipled Technologies
We compared CPU performance and noise output of an HP Z2 G9 Tower Workstation in High Performance Mode to a similarly configured Dell Precision 3660 Tower Workstation in its out-of-box performance mode
Investing in GenAI: Cost‑benefit analysis of Dell on‑premises deployments vs....Principled Technologies
Conclusion
Diving into the world of GenAI has the potential to yield a great many benefits for your organization, but it first requires consideration for how best to implement those GenAI workloads. Whether your AI goals are to create a chatbot for online visitors, generate marketing materials, aid troubleshooting, or something else, implementing an AI solution requires careful planning and decision-making. A major decision is whether to host GenAI in the cloud or keep your data on premises. Traditional on-premises solutions can provide superior security and control, a substantial concern when dealing with large amounts of potentially sensitive data. But will supporting a GenAI solution on site be a drain on an organization’s IT budget?
In our research, we found that the value proposition is just the opposite: Hosting GenAI workloads on premises, either in a traditional Dell solution or using a managed Dell APEX pay-per-use solution, could significantly lower your GenAI costs over 3 years compared to hosting these workloads in the cloud. In fact, we found that a comparable AWS SageMaker solution would cost up to 3.8 times as much and an Azure ML solution would cost up to 3.6 times as much as GenAI on a Dell APEX pay-per-use solution. These results show that organizations looking to implement GenAI and reap the business benefits to come can find many advantages in an on-premises Dell solution, whether they opt to purchase and manage it themselves or choose a subscription-based Dell APEX pay-per-use solution. Choosing an on-premises Dell solution could save your organization significantly over hosting GenAI in the cloud, while giving you control over the security and privacy of your data as well as any updates and changes to the environment, and while ensuring your environment is managed consistently.
Workstations powered by Intel can play a vital role in CPU-intensive AI devel...Principled Technologies
In three AI development workflows, Intel processor-powered workstations delivered strong performance, without using their GPUs, making them a good choice for this part of the AI process
Conclusion
We executed three AI development workflows on tower workstations and mobile workstations from three vendors, with each workflow utilizing only the Intel CPU cores, and found that these platforms were suitable for carrying out various AI tasks. For two of the workflows, we learned that completing the tasks on the tower workstations took roughly half as much time as on the mobile workstations. This supports the idea that the tower workstations would be appropriate for a development environment for more complex models with a greater volume of data and that the mobile workstations would be well-suited for data scientists fine-tuning simpler models. In the third workflow, we explored tower workstation performance with different precision levels and learned that using 16-bit floating point precision allowed the workstations to execute the workflow in less time and also reduced memory usage dramatically. For all three AI workflows we executed, we consider the time the workstations needed to complete the tasks to be acceptable, and believe that these workstations can be appropriate, cost-effective choices for these kinds of activities.
Enable security features with no impact to OLTP performance with Dell PowerEd...Principled Technologies
Get comparable online transaction processing (OLTP) performance with or without enabling AMD Secure Memory Encryption and AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization - Encrypted State
Conclusion
You’ve likely already implemented many security measures for your servers, which may include physical security for the data center, hardware-level security, and software-level security. With the cost of data breaches high and still growing, however, wise IT teams will consider what additional security measures they may be able to implement.
AMD SME and SEV-ES are technologies that are already available within your AMD processor-powered 16th Generation Dell PowerEdge servers—and in our testing, we saw that they can offer extra layers of security without affecting performance. We compared the online transaction processing performance of a Dell PowerEdge R7625 server, powered by AMD EPYC 9274F processors, with and without these two security features enabled. We found that enabling AMD Secure Memory Encryption and Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Encrypted State did not impact performance at all.
If your team is assessing areas where you might be able to enhance security—without paying a large performance cost—consider enabling AME SME and AMD SEV-ES in your Dell PowerEdge servers.
Improving energy efficiency in the data center: Endure higher temperatures wi...Principled Technologies
In high-temperature test scenarios, a Dell PowerEdge HS5620 server continued running an intensive workload without component warnings or failures, while a Supermicro SYS‑621C-TN12R server failed
Conclusion: Remain resilient in high temperatures with the Dell PowerEdge HS5620 to help increase efficiency
Increasing your data center’s temperature can help your organization make strides in energy efficiency and cooling cost savings. With servers that can hold up to these higher everyday temperatures—as well as high temperatures due to unforeseen circumstances—your business can continue to deliver the performance your apps and clients require.
When we ran an intensive floating-point workload on a Dell PowerEdge HS5620 and a Supermicro SYS-621CTN12R in three scenario types simulating typical operations at 25°C, a fan failure, and an HVAC malfunction, the Dell server experienced no component warnings or failures. In contrast, the Supermicro server experienced warnings in all three scenario types and experienced component failures in the latter two tests, rendering the system unusable. When we inspected and analyzed each system, we found that the Dell PowerEdge HS5620 server’s motherboard layout, fans, and chassis offered cooling design advantages.
For businesses aiming to meet sustainability goals by running hotter data centers, as well as those concerned with server cooling design, the Dell PowerEdge HS5620 is a strong contender to take on higher temperatures during day-to-day operations and unexpected malfunctions.
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift: An easily deployable and powe...Principled Technologies
The 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor‑powered solution deployed in less than two hours and ran a Kubernetes container-based generative AI workload effectively
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift: An easily deployable and powe...Principled Technologies
The 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor‑powered solution deployed in less than two hours and ran a generative AI workload effectively
Conclusion
The appeal of incorporating GenAI into your organization’s operations is likely great. Getting started with an efficient solution for your next LLM workload or application can seem daunting because of the changing hardware and software landscape, but Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift powered by 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors could provide the solution you need. We started with a Dell Validated Design as a reference, and then went on to modify the deployment as necessary for our Llama 2 workload. The Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift solution worked well for our LLM, and by using this deployment guide in conjunction with numerous Dell documents and some flexibility, you could be well on your way to innovating your next GenAI breakthrough.
Upgrade your cloud infrastructure with Dell PowerEdge R760 servers and VMware...Principled Technologies
Compared to a cluster of PowerEdge R750 servers running VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)
For organizations running clusters of moderately configured, older Dell PowerEdge servers with a previous version of VCF, upgrading to better-configured modern servers can provide a significant performance boost and more.
Upgrade your cloud infrastructure with Dell PowerEdge R760 servers and VMware...Principled Technologies
Compared to a cluster of PowerEdge R750 servers running VMware Cloud Foundation 4.5
If your company is struggling with underperforming infrastructure, upgrading to 16th Generation Dell PowerEdge servers running VCF 5.1 could be just what you need to handle more database throughput and reduce vSAN latencies. As an additional benefit to IT admins, we also found that the embedded VMware Aria Operation adapter provided useful infrastructure insights.
Realize 2.1X the performance with 20% less power with AMD EPYC processor-back...Principled Technologies
Three AMD EPYC processor-based two-processor solutions outshined comparable Intel Xeon Scalable processor-based solutions by handling more Redis workload transactions and requests while consuming less power
Conclusion
Performance and energy efficiency are significant factors in processor selection for servers running data-intensive workloads, such as Redis. We compared the Redis performance and energy consumption of a server cluster in three AMD EPYC two-processor configurations against that of a server cluster in two Intel Xeon Scalable two-processor configurations. In each of our three test scenarios, the server cluster backed by AMD EPYC processors outperformed the server cluster backed by Intel Xeon Scalable processors. In addition, one of the AMD EPYC processor-based clusters consumed 20 percent less power than its Intel Xeon Scalable processor-based counterpart. Combining these measurements gave us power efficiency metrics that demonstrate how valuable AMD EPYC processor-based servers could be—you could see better performance per watt with these AMD EPYC processor-based server clusters and potentially get more from your Redis or other data intensive applications and workloads while reducing data center power costs.
Improve performance and gain room to grow by easily migrating to a modern Ope...Principled Technologies
We deployed this modern environment, then migrated database VMs from legacy servers and saw performance improvements that support consolidation
Conclusion
If your organization’s transactional databases are running on gear that is several years old, you have much to gain by upgrading to modern servers with new processors and networking components and an OpenShift environment. In our testing, a modern OpenShift environment with a cluster of three Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers with 4th Generation AMD EPYC processors and high-speed 100Gb Broadcom NICs outperformed a legacy environment with MySQL VMs running on a cluster of three Dell PowerEdge R7515 servers with 3rd Generation AMD EPYC processors and 25Gb Broadcom NICs. We also easily migrated a VM from the legacy environment to the modern environment, with only a few steps required to set up and less than ten minutes of hands-on time. The performance advantage of the modern servers would allow a company to reduce the number of servers necessary to perform a given amount of database work, thus lowering operational expenditures such as power and cooling and IT staff time for maintenance. The high-speed 100Gb Broadcom NICs in this solution also give companies better network performance and networking capacity to grow as they embrace emerging technologies such as AI that put great demands on networks.
Boost PC performance: How more available memory can improve productivityPrincipled Technologies
With more memory available, system performance of three Dell devices increased, which can translate to a better user experience
Conclusion
When your system has plenty of RAM to meet your needs, you can efficiently access the applications and data you need to finish projects and to-do lists without sacrificing time and focus. Our test results show that with more memory available, three Dell PCs delivered better performance and took less time to complete the Procyon Office Productivity benchmark. These advantages translate to users being able to complete workflows more quickly and multitask more easily. Whether you need the mobility of the Latitude 5440, the creative capabilities of the Precision 3470, or the high performance of the OptiPlex Tower Plus 7010, configuring your system with more RAM can help keep processes running smoothly, enabling you to do more without compromising performance.
Deploy with confidence: VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 on next gen Dell PowerEdg...Principled Technologies
A Principled Technologies deployment guide
Conclusion
Deploying VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 on next gen Dell PowerEdge servers brings together critical virtualization capabilities and high-performing hardware infrastructure. Relying on our hands-on experience, this deployment guide offers a comprehensive roadmap that can guide your organization through the seamless integration of advanced VMware cloud solutions with the performance and reliability of Dell PowerEdge servers. In addition to the deployment efficiency, the Cloud Foundation 5.1 and PowerEdge solution delivered strong performance while running a MySQL database workload. By leveraging VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 and PowerEdge servers, you could help your organization embrace cloud computing with confidence, potentially unlocking a new level of agility, scalability, and efficiency in your data center operations.
Upgrade your cloud infrastructure with Dell PowerEdge R760 servers and VMware...Principled Technologies
Compared to a cluster of PowerEdge R750 servers running VMware Cloud Foundation 4.5
Conclusion
If your company is struggling with underperforming infrastructure, upgrading to 16th Generation Dell PowerEdge servers running VCF 5.1 could be just what you need to handle more database throughput and reduce vSAN latencies. We found that a Dell PowerEdge R760 server cluster running VCF 5.1 processed over 78 percent more TPM and 79 percent more NOPM than a Dell PowerEdge R750 server cluster running VCF 4.5. It’s also worth noting that the PowerEdge R750 cluster bottlenecked on vSAN storage, with max write latency at 8.9ms. For reference, the PowerEdge R760 cluster clocked in at 3.8ms max write latency. This higher latency is due in part to the single disk group per host on the moderately configured PowerEdge R750 cluster, while the better-configured PowerEdge R760 cluster supported four disk groups per host. As an additional benefit to IT admins, we also found that the embedded VMware Aria Operation adapter provided useful infrastructure insights.
Based on our research using publicly available materials, it appears that Dell supports nine of the ten PC security features we investigated, HP supports six of them, and Lenovo supports three features.
Increase security, sustainability, and efficiency with robust Dell server man...Principled Technologies
Compared to the Supermicro management portfolio
Conclusion
Choosing a vendor for server purchases is about more than just the hardware platform. Decision-makers must also consider more long-term concerns, including system/data security, energy efficiency, and ease of management. These concerns make the systems management tools a vendor offers as important as the hardware.
We investigated the features and capabilities of server management tools from Dell and Supermicro, comparing Dell iDRAC9 against Supermicro IPMI for embedded server management and Dell OpenManage Enterprise and CloudIQ against Supermicro Server Manager for one-to-many device and console management and monitoring. We found that the Dell management tools provided more comprehensive security, sustainability, and management/monitoring features and capabilities than Supermicro servers did. In addition, Dell tools automated more tasks to ease server management, resulting in significant time savings for administrators versus having to do the same tasks manually with Supermicro tools.
When making a server purchase, a vendor’s associated management products are critical to protect data, support a more sustainable environment, and to ease the maintenance of systems. Our tests and research showed that the Dell management portfolio for PowerEdge servers offered more features to help organizations meet these goals than the comparable Supermicro management products.
Increase security, sustainability, and efficiency with robust Dell server man...Principled Technologies
Compared to the Supermicro management portfolio
Conclusion
Choosing a vendor for server purchases is about more than just the hardware platform. Decision-makers must also consider more long-term concerns, including system/data security, energy efficiency, and ease of management. These concerns make the systems management tools a vendor offers as important as the hardware.
We investigated the features and capabilities of server management tools from Dell and Supermicro, comparing Dell iDRAC9 against Supermicro IPMI for embedded server management and Dell OpenManage Enterprise and CloudIQ against Supermicro Server Manager for one-to-many device and console management and monitoring. We found that the Dell management tools provided more comprehensive security, sustainability, and management/monitoring features and capabilities than Supermicro servers did. In addition, Dell tools automated more tasks to ease server management, resulting in significant time savings for administrators versus having to do the same tasks manually with Supermicro tools.
When making a server purchase, a vendor’s associated management products are critical to protect data, support a more sustainable environment, and to ease the maintenance of systems. Our tests and research showed that the Dell management portfolio for PowerEdge servers offered more features to help organizations meet these goals than the comparable Supermicro management products.
Scale up your storage with higher-performing Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS ...Principled Technologies
In our tests, Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS outperformed similarly configured solutions from Vendor A, achieving more IOPS, better throughput, and more consistent performance on both NVMe-supported configurations and configurations backed by Elastic Block Store (EBS) alone.
Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS supports a full NVMe backed configuration, but Vendor A doesn’t—its solution uses EBS for storage capacity and NVMe as an extended read cache—which means APEX Block Storage for AWS can deliver faster storage performance.
Scale up your storage with higher-performing Dell APEX Block Storage for AWSPrincipled Technologies
Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS offered stronger and more consistent storage performance for better business agility than a Vendor A solution
Conclusion
Enterprises desiring the flexibility and convenience of the cloud for their block storage workloads can find fast-performing solutions with the enterprise storage features they’re used to in on-premises infrastructure by selecting Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS.
Our hands-on tests showed that compared to the Vendor A solution, Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS offered stronger, more consistent storage performance in both NVMe-supported and EBS-backed configurations. Using NVMe-supported configurations, Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS achieved 4.7x the random read IOPS and 5.1x the throughput on sequential read operations per node vs. Vendor A. In our EBS-backed comparison, Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS offered 2.2x the throughput per node on sequential read operations vs. Vendor A.
Plus, the ability to scale beyond three nodes—up to 512 storage nodes with capacity of up to 8 PBs—enables Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS to help ensure performance and capacity as your team plans for the future.
Scale up your storage with higher-performing Dell APEX Block Storage for AWS
Dell PowerEdge R720 server with VMware vSphere 5 - Exchange server consolidation
1. EXCHANGE SERVER CONSOLIDATION
While your Exchange server infrastructure can handle your current load, what will happen
when you need to add users? Adding more users as your business grows could degrade
performance.
Upgrading to a more powerful, virtualized solution, such as the new Dell PowerEdge R720
server coupled with Dell Compellent storage and VMware® vSphere® 5, has the potential to benefit
your business in a number of ways: by consolidating hardware, which means less to store,
maintain, and power; by increasing the number of users you can support; and by using less energy
to power and cool your hardware.
We looked at an older HP ProLiant DL380 G6 server with HP StorageWorks EVA4400
storage by running a mid-range example workload of 2,000 mail users, and found that the new Dell
PowerEdge R720 with Compellent storage was able to support four of the same workloads, for a
total of 8,000 users. We found that consolidating four of the older servers into virtual machines
(VMs) on the PowerEdge R720 using the VMware vSphere 5 hypervisor saved on power and cooling
costs by powering only one new server instead of four of the older servers. The savings in
hardware, maintenance, and power and cooling costs make the Dell PowerEdge R720 a smart
solution for any business, as it can pay back its investment in a little as 18 months.
A PRINCIPLED TECHNOLOGIES TEST REPORT
Commissioned by Dell Inc., April 2012
2. CONSOLIDATE AND SAVE
Upgrading your current servers that run only one application instance to a new
server and storage solution with multiple application instances in virtual machines has
the potential not only to increase your performance and server utilization, but also to
save you money. Furthermore, selecting the latest mail server software, Microsoft
Exchange Server 2010, also lets you benefit from the latest features available for your
mail server.
Four times the mailboxes, more users per watt
As Figure 1 shows, one Dell PowerEdge R720 running Microsoft Exchange Server
2010 can run four of the same 2,000-user workloads of the existing HP ProLiant DL380
G6 servers running Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.
Exchange users supported
9,000
Figure 1: The superior 8,000
performance that the Dell 7,000 2,000
PowerEdge R720 delivers 6,000
means that you can 5,000
Users
2,000
consolidate four 2,000-user 4,000
workloads into just one server
3,000 2,000
and support the same number
of users. 2,000
1,000 2,000 2,000
0
Dell PowerEdge R720 HP ProLiant DL380 G6
Supporting a large number of users is important, but so is the response time the
server provides for those users. Not only was the Dell PowerEdge R720 able to support
the additional users, it also provided as good or better response times than the HP
ProLiant DL380 G6. Figure 2 shows the average response time (MSExchangeISRPC
Average Latency counter), in milliseconds for the two servers. (It is worth noting that
Microsoft recommends that for best performance the MSExchangeISRPC Average
Latency counter stay below 10 milliseconds on Exchange 2010.)
Dell PowerEdge R720 server
HP ProLiant DL380 G6 server
VM 1 VM 2 VM 3 VM 4
Response time (ms) 2.33 3.88 2.17 3.61 3.20
Figure 2: Response times, in milliseconds, for the two servers. Lower times are better.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 2
3. Figure 3 shows the calculated power consumption for each server, both idle
(though the Dell PowerEdge R720 was supporting VMs) at peak workload. The Dell
PowerEdge R720 server supported 116.0 percent more users per watt than the HP
ProLiant DL380 G6.
Power (W)
Users/watt
Instances running no All instances running Users/watt
percentage win
workloads workloads
Dell PowerEdge R720 141.01 243.27 32.89 116.0%
HP ProLiant DL380 G6 109.67 131.30 15.23
Figure 3: Power statistics for the two servers.
Our premise for testing is that a customer has a set of existing older Exchange
servers and plans to replace them with a new Dell server running a virtualized solution.
We look at the 2,000-user workload that the older server supported and examine how
many of these workloads the new server can run. The point is to show the consolidation
possibilities in your environment that the newer solution offers.
In the real world, your individual VMs and individual servers will host one or
several of the many different Exchange roles. Because we are using LoadGen to emulate
all Exchange-like work, we configured the HP ProLiant DL380 G6 and each VM on Dell
PowerEdge R720 as a standalone Exchange server. This representative test is only an
approximation of what you might expect to see in your environment. Your actual
configuration will differ greatly from this implementation and will include role
separation, high-availability considerations, and other choices.
ACHIEVE PAYBACK IN AS LITTLE AS 18 MONTHS BY CONSOLIDATING
WITH THE DELL POWEREDGE R720
Tests in our labs using the LoadGen benchmark show that one Dell PowerEdge
R720 running Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 can run four of the same 2,000-user
workloads of four existing HP ProLiant DL380 G6 servers running Microsoft Exchange
Server 2010 and still maintain room for growth.
To illustrate the cost savings this consolidation can provide, we calculated the
costs for a hypothetical enterprise planning this migration and compared those costs to
those of retaining the existing servers. We found that, thanks to savings in software and
hardware support, server administration, and data center costs for energy, ports, and
space, the Dell PowerEdge R720 can pay back the investment in hardware and the
migration effort in as little as 18 months. Please note that we do not include the costs
associated with the new or older external storage arrays in our analysis, as we assume
the organization has or will use existing storage. Figure 4 summarizes the three-year
total cost of ownership (TCO) for the two solutions.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 3
4. Three-year TCO
$60,000
$54,711 Year 3
$50,000 operational
costs
$40,000 $36,276
Figure 4: Despite the initial
US dollars
Year 2
acquisition cost, the Dell $30,000 operational
PowerEdge R720 saves on costs
annual operational costs. $20,000
Year 1
$10,000 operational
costs
$0
Acquisition
Dell PowerEdge HP ProLiant costs
R720 solution DL380 G6 solution
Figure 5 shows that the Dell PowerEdge R720 solution breaks even in as little as
18 months.
The Dell PowerEdge R720 solution can deliver
payback in 18 months
$60,000
$50,000
Dell PowerEdge
Figure 5: The Dell PowerEdge $40,000 Acquisition R720 solution
US dollars
R720 can deliver payback on cost of
your investment in just 18 $30,000 $18,104.00
months.
$20,000 Break even in HP ProLiant
18 months DL380 G6
$10,000 solution
$0
0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30 33 36
Months
WHAT WE TESTED
To test the configuration’s mail server performance, we used the Microsoft Load
Generator 2010 (LoadGen) benchmark, which performs tasks to simulate a standard
user generating mail activity. We simulated 2,000 users for each bare-metal instance or
VM, and used the following settings:
Mailbox Profile: 100MB mailboxes
Action Profile: Average
Client Type: Outlook 2007 Cached
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 4
5. LoadGen simulates the mail activity for the 2,000 users and then reports a PASS/FAIL
rating, which is based on acceptable response times.
For more details about LoadGen, see
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DDEC1642-F6E3-4D66-
A82F-8D3062C6FA98&displaylang=en.
Our premise for testing is that a customer has an existing older Exchange sever
and plans to replace it with a new Dell server running a virtualized solution. We looked
at the 2,000-user workloads that the older server supported and examined how many of
these workloads the new server could run. The goal is to show the consolidation
possibilities that the new Dell PowerEdge R720 offers for your environment.
In the real world, your individual VMs and individual servers will host one or
several of the many different Exchange roles. Because we are using LoadGen to emulate
all Exchange work, we configured the HP ProLiant DL380 G6 and each VM on the Dell
PowerEdge R720 as standalone Exchange servers. This representative test is only an
approximation of what you might expect to see in your environment. Your actual
configuration will differ greatly from this implementation and will include role
separation, high-availability considerations, and other choices.
The configuration details of our test servers are in Appendix A, the details of our
test procedure are in Appendix B and the details of our TCO analysis are in Appendix C.
About the Dell PowerEdge R720
The new Intel Xeon processor E5-2680-powered Dell PowerEdge R720 2U rack
server incorporates many improvements and features designed to improve
performance, lower power consumption, and make maintenance easier. The PowerEdge
R720 is engineered to handle complex workloads, with I/O and internal data
management technologies (i.e., NSC, NPAR, CacheCade) to allow faster access to
information and GPU accelerators to solve challenges faster than ever.
With power-efficient technology designed to optimize performance while
maintaining low power consumption, the Dell PowerEdge R720 comes with the Dell
Lifecycle Controller, which simplifies server management by providing a single interface
for management functions and by storing critical system information in the system
itself. The Dell PowerEdge R720 has an impressive storage capacity and can hold up to
768 GB of RAM to allow flexibility with virtualized solutions .For more information about
the Dell PowerEdge R720, visit http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-
r720/pd.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 5
6. About Dell Compellent storage
The Dell Compellent is an enterprise-class storage system providing a mix of
SSD, Fibre Channel (FC), and SAS drives. Dell Compellent Fluid Data storage technology
dynamically moves enterprise data to the optimal storage tier based on actual use. The
most active data blocks reside on higher-performance drives, while the system
automatically moves less frequently accessed data is to lower-cost, high-capacity drives.
Our test configuration consisted of a dual controller with 10 GbE iSCSI connections with
two shelves of storage, one with 24 146GB SAS drives and one with a combination of
600 GB SAS and 1 TB near-line SAS drives. Dell Compellent storage is available in various
configuration options. For more information about Dell Compellent storage, visit
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/dell-compellent.
IN CONCLUSION
Better performance and lower costs are driving factors in the hardware you
choose for your data center. In choosing a newer server and storage solution, you can
acquire enough processing power to virtualize older servers and consolidate them onto
the new solution, which can increase performance dramatically while keeping costs
down.
In our tests, the Dell PowerEdge R720 server with Compellent storage was able
to take the place of four older HP ProLiant DL380 G6 servers by supporting the same
2,000-user Exchange Server 2010 workload as the older four combined. In addition to
supporting four workloads, the Dell PowerEdge R720 was also more power efficient,
supporting 116.0 percent more users per watt than the HP ProLiant DL380 G6. With
such increases in performance and decreases in power consumption, the Dell
PowerEdge R720 can deliver payback in as little as 18 months, providing an affordable
consolidation platform for your business.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 6
7. APPENDIX A – SERVER CONFIGURATION INFORMATION
Figure 6 provides detailed configuration information for the test servers, and Figure 7 provides configuration
information for the storage arrays.
System Dell PowerEdge R720 HP ProLiant DL380 G6
Power supplies
Total number 2 2
Vendor and model number Dell D750E-S1 HP HSTNS-PL14
Wattage of each (W) 750 460
Cooling fans
Total number 6 6
Vendor and model number AVC DBTC0638B2V Nidec® UltraFlo™
Dimensions (h x w) of each 2.5” x 2.5” 2-3/8” x 2-5/8”
Volts 12 12
Amps 1.2 2.45
General
Number of processor packages 2 2
Number of cores per processor 8 4
Number of hardware threads per core 2 2
System power management policy Balanced Power Balanced Power
CPU
Vendor Intel Intel
Name Xeon Xeon
Model number E5-2680 X5540
Stepping 6 D0
Socket type LGA2011 LGA1366
Core frequency (GHz) 2.70 2.53
Bus frequency 8.0 GT/s 6.4 GT/s
L1 cache 32 KB + 32 KB (per core) 32 KB + 32 KB (per core)
L2 cache 256 KB (per core) 256 KB (per core)
L3 cache (MB) 20 8
Platform
Vendor and model number Dell PowerEdge R720 HP ProLiant DL380 G6
Motherboard model number 00W9X3 HP PADAB0G9VXC1CQ
BIOS name and version Dell 0.3.37 HP P62
BIOS settings Maximum Performance Maximum Performance
Memory module(s)
Total RAM in system (GB) 64 12
Vendor and model number Hynix HMT31GR7BFR4A-H9 Kingston KVR1333D3D8R9S/2G
Type PC3L-10600R PC3-10600R
Speed (MHz) 1,333 1,333
Speed running in the system (MHz) 1,333 1,333
Timing/Latency (tCL-tRCD-tRP-
9-9-9-36 7-7-7-20
tRASmin)
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 7
8. System Dell PowerEdge R720 HP ProLiant DL380 G6
Size (GB) 8 2
Number of RAM module(s) 8 6
Chip organization Double-sided Double-sided
Rank Dual Dual
Operating system
Name VMware ESXi 5.0.0 Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
Build number 515841 7601
File system EXT3 NTFS
Kernel 5.0.0 ACPI x64-based PC
Language English English
Graphics
Vendor and model number Matrox® G200e ATI ES1000
Graphics memory (MB) 8 64
RAID controller
Vendor and model number PERC H710P Mini HP Smart Array P410i
Firmware version 3.130.05-1311 5.14
Cache size 1 GB 256 MB
Hard drive
Vendor and model number No hard drives installed1 HP MBC2073RC
Number of disks in system N/A 2
Size (GB) N/A 73
Buffer size (MB) N/A 16
RPM N/A 15K
Type N/A SAS
Ethernet adapters
First network adapter
Vendor and model number Intel I350 Gigabit Controller Broadcom® NetXtreme™ II BCM5709
Type Integrated Integrated
Second network adapter
Vendor and model number Intel X450-AT2 10 Gigabit Controller N/A
Type Integrated N/A
Optical drive(s)
Vendor and model number TEAC DV-28SW GDR-D20N
Type DVD-ROM SATA DVD-ROM
USB ports
Number 4 external, 1 internal 4 external, 1 internal
Type 2.0 2.0
Figure 6: Configuration information for the servers we tested.
1
In our tests, we booted VMware ESXi from an internal SD card, and did not require internal hard drives.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 8
9. Storage array Dell Compellent HP StorageWorks EVA4400
Number of active storage controllers 1 2
Number of active storage ports 4 4
Firmware revision 05.05.03.114.03 10001000
Model/firmware/type PowerConnect 8024F/ 3.1.4.5 /10GbE PowerConnect 8024F/ 3.1.4.5 /10GbE
Tray 1
Number of disks 24 12
Disk vendor and model number Seagate ST9146852SS HP BF146DA47AA
Disk size (GB) 146 146
Disk buffer size (MB) 16 16
Disk RPM 15,000 15,000
Disk type SAS SCSI
Firmware revision XRB4 HP01
Tray 2
Disk type 1
Number of disks 6 12
Disk vendor and model number Seagate ST3600057SS HP BF146DA47AA
Disk size (GB) 600 146
Disk buffer size (MB) 16 16
Disk RPM 15,000 15,000
Disk type SAS SCSI
Firmware revision XREC HP01
Disk type 2
Number of disks 6 N/A
Disk vendor and model number Seagate ST31000424SS N/A
Disk size (TB) 1 N/A
Disk buffer size (MB) 16 N/A
Disk RPM 7,200 N/A
Disk type SAS N/A
Firmware revision XRMA N/A
Figure 7: Detailed configuration information for the storage arrays.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 9
10. APPENDIX B - HOW WE TESTED
Configuring the Dell PowerEdge R720
Figure 8 illustrates our Dell test bed setup. For comparison purposes, we configured each VM as a standalone
Exchange server environment with all roles included on each. This approach allowed us a modular method to determine
an exact increase in identical virtual machines. Results in your specific environment will vary. We used a separate server
for Active Directory on each VM configuration. In Figure 8, VM1 connects to AD1 and uses client 1, VM2 connects to AD2
and uses client 2, and so forth.
We connected the R720 to the 10 GbE through iSCSI using a PowerConnect M8024F switch. We configured the
Dell Compellent storage with one RAID 10 disk group with 30 disks. We created four 10GB volumes for Exchange logs,
which we connected using iSCSI connection assigned in ESX. We created four 500GB volumes in the same disk group,
which we connected to the ESX server and assigned to each VM in ESX.
Figure 8: The Dell PowerEdge R720 test bed we used.
Adjusting BIOS settings
We used the latest released BIOS updates on all systems, and adjusted the default BIOS settings. We changed
the power profile to OS Control on the Dell system, and Balanced Power and Performance with OS Control for Power
Regulation on the HP system. This ensured that the systems used the same power settings.
Installing VMware vSphere 5 (ESXi)
1. Insert the disk, and select Boot from disk.
2. On the Welcome screen, press Enter.
3. On the End User License Agreement (EULA) screen, press F11.
4. On the Select a Disk to Install or Upgrade Screen, select the relevant volume to install ESXi on, and press Enter.
5. On the Please Select a Keyboard Layout screen, press Enter.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 10
11. 6. On the Enter a Root Password Screen, assign a root password and confirm it by entering it again. Press Enter to
continue.
7. On the Confirm Install Screen, press F11 to install.
8. On the Installation complete screen, press Enter to reboot.
Configuring ESXi after Installation
1. On the 5.0.0 ESXi screen, press F2, enter the root password, and press Enter.
2. On the System Customization screen, select troubleshooting options, and press Enter.
3. On the Troubleshooting Mode Options screen:
a. Select Enable ESXi Shell, and press Enter.
b. Select Enable SSH, press Enter, and press ESC.
4. On the System Customization screen, select Configure Management Network.
5. On the Configure Management Network screen, select IP Configuration.
6. On the IP Configuration screen, select set static IP, enter an IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway, and
press Enter.
7. On the Configure Management Network screen, press Esc. When asked if you want to apply the changes, press
Y.
Updating ESXi to the latest build
1. Download the latest ESXi build from VMware.
2. Using the vSphere client from another machine, connect to the ESXi server.
3. Select the Configuration tab, and select Storage under the Hardware heading.
4. Right-click the OS datastore, and select Browse Datastore.
5. Click the upload button, and select the build update ZIP file.
6. Using a telnet/ssh client from another machine, connect to the ESXi server using root credentials.
7. Run the following command using the path and name of the ESXi update:
esxcli software vib update –d /vmfs/volumes/OS/ ESXi500-201112001.zip
8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 for any subsequent systems.
Configuring iSCSI networking
We followed the steps from VMware’s document, iSCSI SAN Configuration Guide version 4.1, as a guide for our
configuration of iSCSI on VMware vSphere 5. However, we performed most steps in the VMware vSphere 5 client UI as
opposed to the command line, as VMware has added the relevant features to the UI in vSphere 5.
1. Using the vSphere client from another machine, connect to the ESXi server.
2. Add the necessary vSwitches:
a. Click the host, click the Configuration tab, and click Networking.
b. Click Add Networking.
c. Choose VMkernel, and click Next.
d. Choose create a vSphere standard switch.
e. Choose the first NIC associated with iSCSI traffic.
f. Assign the network label, and assign IP settings.
g. Click Finish.
h. Repeat steps b through g for the second NIC assigned to iSCSI traffic.
3. Add the iSCSI software storage adapter:
a. Click the host, click the Configuration tab, and click Storage adapters.
b. Click Add.
c. Click Add software iSCSI adapter.
d. Click OK.
4. Configure the iSCSI software storage adapter:
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 11
12. a. Right-click the iSCSI adapter that was just added to the system, choose Properties, and ensure it is enabled.
b. Inside the iSCSI adapter Properties window, click the Network Configuration tab.
c. Under VMkernel port bindings, click Add and add both VMkernel adapters to the VMkernel port bindings
list.
5. Enable jumbo frames in ESXi:
a. Click the host, click the Configuration tab, and click Networking.
b. On the first vSwitch used for iSCSI, click Properties.
c. Select the vSwitch.
d. Click Edit.
e. Modify the MTU to 9,000.
f. Click OK.
g. In the vSwitch Properties window, choose the VMkernel port.
h. Click Edit.
i. Modify the MTU to 9,000.
j. Click OK.
k. Click Yes if warned about datastore access.
l. Click Close.
m. Repeat steps b through l for each of the remaining three NICs dedicated to iSCSI traffic.
6. Access provisioned Dell Compellent storage:
a. In the vSphere client, click the host, click the Configuration tab, and click Storage adapters.
b. Right-click the iSCSI software storage adapter.
c. Click Dynamic discovery.
d. Click Add.
e. Enter the Dell EqualLogic group IP address.
f. Click Close.
g. Click Yes when prompted to rescan the HBA.
Configuring VM networking
1. Using the vSphere client from another machine, connect to the ESXi server.
2. Add the necessary vSwitch for the network that LoadGen traffic will use:
a. Click the host, click the Configuration tab, and click Networking.
b. Click Add Networking.
c. Choose Virtual Machine, and click Next.
d. Choose create a vSphere standard switch.
e. Choose the NIC associated with VM traffic.
f. Assign the network label and assign IP settings.
g. Click Finish.
Configuring the external volumes
1. In the vSphere client, select the host.
2. Click the Configuration tab.
3. Click Storage, and click Add Storage…
4. Choose Disk/LUN.
5. Select the disk, and click Next.
6. Accept the default of VMFS-5 for the file system.
7. Review the disk layout, and click Next.
8. Enter the datastore name, and click Next.
9. Accept the default of using maximum capacity, and click Next.
10. Click Finish.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 12
13. 11. Repeat steps 3 through 10 for the remaining LUNs.
Creating the first VM
1. In the vSphere client, connect to the ESXi host.
2. Click the Virtual Machines tab.
3. Right-click, and choose New Virtual Machine.
4. Choose Custom, and click Next.
5. Assign a name to the virtual machine, and click Next.
6. Select the first assigned OS Datastore on the external storage, and click Next.
7. Choose Virtual Machine Version 8, and click Next.
8. Choose Windows, and choose Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit), and click Next.
9. Choose 1 virtual socket, and 8 virtual processors per core, and click Next.
10. Choose 12GB RAM, and click Next.
11. Click 1 for the number of NICs, select vmxnet3, and click Next.
12. Leave the default virtual storage controller, and click Next.
13. Choose to create a new virtual disk, and click Next.
14. Make the OS virtual disk size 30 GB, choose thick-provisioned lazy zeroed, specify the OS datastore on the
external storage, and click Next.
15. Keep the default virtual device node (0:0), and click Next.
16. Click Finish.
17. Right-click the VM, and choose Edit Settings.
18. On the Hardware tab, click Add…
19. Click Hard Disk, and click Next.
20. Click Create a new virtual disk, and click Next.
21. Specify 30GB for the virtual disk size, choose thick-provisioned lazy zeroed, and specify the DB datastore.
22. Choose SCSI(1:0) for the device node, and click Next.
23. On the Hardware tab, click Add…
24. Click Hard Disk, and click Next.
25. Click Create a new virtual disk, and click Next.
26. Specify 30GB for the virtual disk size, choose thick-provisioned lazy zeroed, and specify the Logs datastore.
27. Choose SCSI(1:1) for the device node, and click Next.
28. Click SCSI Controller 1, and choose Change Type.
29. Choose VMware Paravirtual, and click OK.
30. Click Finish, and click OK.
31. Start the VM.
32. Attach the Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 ISO image to the VM and install Windows Server 2008 R2 on your VM.
Installing the operating system on the VM
1. Insert the installation DVD for Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Enterprise into the DVD drive, and attach the
physical DVD drive to the VM. Alternatively, use an ISO image and connect to the ISO image from the VM
console.
2. Open the VM console on vSphere.
3. At the Language Selection Screen, click Next.
4. Click Install Now.
5. Select Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise (Full Installation), and click Next.
6. Click the I accept the license terms check box, and click Next.
7. Click Custom.
8. Click Next.
9. At the User’s password must be changed before logging on warning screen, click OK.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 13
14. 10. Enter the desired password for the administrator in both fields, and click the arrow to continue.
11. At the Your password has been changed screen, click OK.
12. Install the latest VMware Tools package on the VM. Restart as necessary.
13. Connect the machine to the Internet, and install all available Windows updates. Restart as necessary.
14. Enable remote desktop access.
15. Change the hostname and reboot when the installation prompts you.
16. Create a shared folder to store test script files. Set permissions as needed.
17. Set up networking:
a. Click StartControl Panel, right-click Network Connections, and choose Open.
b. Right-click the VM traffic NIC, and choose Properties.
c. Select TCP/IP (v4), and choose Properties.
d. Set the IP address, subnet, gateway, and DNS server for the virtual NIC, which will handle outgoing server
traffic. Click OK, and click Close.
18. Repeat steps 1 through 17 to install the operating system on the other VMs.
Adding the external volumes to the VMs in VMware vSphere 5
1. In the vSphere client, right-click the first VM.
2. Click Edit Settings.
3. Select the Hardware tab and click Add…
4. Choose Hard Disk from the Device Type list, and click Next.
5. Choose Raw Device Mapping, and click Next.
6. Select the LUN and click Next.
7. At the Select a datastore screen select Store with Virtual Machine radio and click Next.
8. Select the compatibly to Physical and click Next.
9. At the advanced options select SCSI (1:0) from the Virtual Device Node drop-down box, and click Next.
10. Review the Ready to Complete summary, and click Finish.
11. Repeat steps 1 through 10 for the remaining volumes.
12. In the VM, add the iSCSI storage:
a. Start the VM, and click the Server Manager icon in the taskbar.
b. In the left pane, expand Storage, and click Disk Management.
c. Right-click the first volume, and choose Online.
d. Right-click the first volume, and choose Initialize Disk.
e. Select GPT (GUID Partition Table) for the partition style, and click OK.
f. In the right pane, right-click the volume and choose New Simple VoIume…
g. At the Welcome screen, click Next.
h. At the Specify Volume Size screen, leave the default selection, and click Next.
i. At the Assign Drive Letter or Path screen, choose a drive letter, and click Next.
j. At the Format Partition screen, leave the default selection, and click Next.
k. At the Completing the New Simple Volume Wizard screen, click Finish.
l. Repeat steps c through k for the remaining VM volumes.
13. Repeat steps 1-12 for the remaining VMs and attach the appropriate volumes.
Installing Exchange 2010 SP2 prerequisites on VM1
After completing the following steps for VM1, repeat them for VM2, VM3, and VM4.
1. Select StartAdministrative ToolsServer Manager.
2. Click Add Roles.
3. At the Before You Begin screen, click Next.
4. At the Select Server Roles screen, click Web Server (IIS).
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 14
15. 5. If prompted by an Add features required for Web Server (IIS) pop-up window, click Add Required Features.
1. Click Next.
2. At the Web Server (IIS) screen, click Next.
3. At the Select Role Services screen, select the IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility, IIS WMI Compatibility, HTTP Errors,
HTTP Redirection, IIS 6 Management Console, Basic Authentication, Windows Authentication, Tracing, Digest
Authentication, and Dynamic and Static content Compression checkboxes, and click Next.
4. At the Confirm Installation Selections screen, click Install.
5. At the Installation Results screen, click Close.
6. Select StartAdministrative ToolsServer Manager.
7. Click Features.
8. Click Add Features.
9. Select .NET Framework 3.5.1 Features.
10. When the Add Features Wizard pop-up window prompts you, click Add Required Role Services.
11. Click Next.
12. At the Introduction to Web Server (IIS) screen, click Next.
13. At the Select Role Services screen, click Next.
14. Click Install.
15. At the Installation Results screen, click Close.
16. Download the Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0.
(http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=5cd4dcd7-d3e6-4970-875e-aba93459fbee )
17. Run FilterPackx64.EXE.
18. Click Next.
19. Click I accept the terms in the License Agreement, and click Next.
20. Click OK once installation is complete.
21. Click StartAdministrative ToolsServices.
22. Right-click the Net.Tcp Port Sharing service, and click Properties.
23. Change the Net.Tcp Port Sharing startup type to Automatic, and click OK.
24. Open command prompt, type ServerManagerCmd –i RSAT-ADDS, and press Enter.
25. Reboot the server.
Installing Exchange Server 2010 SP2
After completing the following steps for VM1, repeat them for the other VMs.
1. Insert the Exchange Server 2010 installation DVD, and capture the DVD drive in the VM session. When the
Autoplay window appears, click Run Setup.EXE.
2. The installer should consider steps 1 and 2 to be complete (they appear grayed out). Click the link to Step 3:
Choose Exchange Language Option.
3. Click Install only languages from the DVD.
4. Click the link to Step 4: Install Microsoft Exchange Server.
5. To go past the introduction screen, click Next.
6. Accept the license agreement, and click Next.
7. Select No for error reporting, and click Next.
8. Select Typical Exchange Server Installation, and click Next.
9. Leave the organization name at default (First Organization), and click Next.
10. At the question about client computers running Outlook 2003 or Entourage, select No, and click Next.
11. To accept defaults for Configure Client Access server external domain, click Next.
12. At the Customer Experience Improvement Program screen, select I don’t wish to join the program at this time,
and click Next.
13. Click Install to start the installation process.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 15
16. 14. Once the installation has completed, click Finish. Exchange should automatically open the Exchange
Management Console.
Enabling circular logging
1. Click StartAll ProgramsMicrosoft Exchange Server 2010Exchange Management Console.
2. Expand Organization Configuration, and click Mailbox.
3. Right-click DB1, and click Properties.
4. Click the Maintenance tab, and check the box next to Enable circular logging, and click OK.
Disabling Maintenance Schedule
5. Click StartAll ProgramsMicrosoft Exchange Server 2010Exchange Management Console.
6. Expand Organization Configuration, and click Mailbox.
7. Right-click Mailbox Database, and click Properties.
8. Click Maintenance.
9. Click Customize and Double-click the empty gray box above Sunday.
10. Ensure that all cells on the graph turn white, and click OK.
11. Click OK.
Disabling Microsoft Search Indexer Service
1. Click StartAdministrator ToolsServices.
2. Select Microsoft Exchange Search Indexer, and right-click Properties.
3. On the properties screen Startup Type change to Disabled, and click Stop.
4. Click OK, and close the Services screen.
Changing the default Mailbox Database drive location
1. Click Start, and click Exchange Management Console.
2. Right-click Mailbox Database.
3. Select Move Database Path.
4. Click Browse, navigate to E:Database, and click Save.
5. Click Move.
6. When the application prompts you to dismount the mailbox database, click Yes.
7. Click Finish.
Configuring LoadGen 2010 clients
We installed Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 on all clients. We installed the latest updates on as of 1/17/2012.
Configuring client 1
1. Change the Computer name to Client 1
2. Set NIC to the following:
IP address: 192.168.10.120
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.10.110
3. Join the domain Dell.troilus.com.
4. Reboot when necessary.
Installing .Net 3.5.1
A prerequisite for LoadGen is that you have .NET 3.5.1 Installed on the client. Repeat these steps for each client
after joining the domain.
1. On Client1, click Server Manager.
2. On Server Manager, expand Features.
3. At Features, click Add.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 16
17. 4. At the Features screen, check .Net Framework 3.5.1.
5. At the Add Features Wizard, click Add Required Role Services.
6. At the Select Features screen, click Next.
7. At the Web Server (ISS), screen click Next.
8. At the Select Role Services screen, click Next.
9. At the Confirm Installation Selections screen, click Install.
Installing LoadGen 2010
Repeat this for each client after joining the domain.
1. Double click loadgen2010.exe.
2. At the Welcome screen, click Next.
3. At the EULA screen, accept, and click Next.
4. At the Select Installation Folder screen, click Next.
5. At the Confirm Installation screen, click Next
6. At the Installation Complete screen, click Close.
7. At the Restart Your System prompt, click Yes.
Configuring client 2
1. Change the Computer name to Client 2.
2. Set a NIC to the following:
IP address: 192.168.20.120
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.20.110
3. Join the domain Dell2.troilus2.com.
Configuring client 3
1. Change the Computer name to Client 3.
2. Set a NIC to the following:
IP address: 192.168.30.120
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.30.110
3. Join the domain Dell3.troilus.com.
Configuring client 4
1. Change the Computer name to Client 4.
2. Set a NIC to the following:
IP address: 192.168.40.120
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.40.110
3. Join the domain Dell4.troilus.com.
Preparing LoadGen on the clients
1. Select StartAll ProgramsMicrosoft ExchangeExchange Load Generator.
2. When the Load Generator window appears, select Start a new test.
3. Select Create a new test configuration, and click Continue.
4. In the Specify test settings window, type Password1 as the Directory Access Password and Mailbox Account
Master Password, and click Continue with recipient management.
5. Make 2,000 users in the Mailbox Database, and click Continue.
6. To accept defaults for Advanced recipient settings, click Continue.
7. In the Specify test user groups window, select the plus sign (+) to add a user group.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 17
18. 8. Change the Client Type to Outlook 2007 Cached and the Action Profile to Average, 100MB and click Continue.
9. Leave defaults in Remote configurations, and click Continue.
10.Click Save the configuration file as, and name it 100x2000.cfg
11.Click Start the initialization phase (recommended before running the test) to start initialization. The initialization
process might take a few hours.
Backing up the mail database on clients
On the test server, once you have set up LoadGen and created its initial mail database, you need to back up that
database and logs so you can have clean copies for each test. Use this process to back up that database:
1. Select StartAll ProgramsMicrosoft Exchange Server 2010Exchange Management Console in the mail
server.
2. In the left pane, under Server Configuration, click Mailbox.
3. In the right pane, right-click Mailbox Database, and select Dismount Database from the menu.
4. At the Do you want to continue? pop-up message, click Yes.
5. Right-click Public Folder Database, and select Dismount Database from the menu.
6. At the Do you want to continue? pop-up message, click Yes. The red arrow appears when you have dismounted
the Public Folder Store.
7. Using Windows Explorer, create two new folders: C:backupmailstore and C:backuppublicstore.
8. With Windows Explorer, copy all files from D:DBMailboxFirst Storage Group to D:backup. This process may
take several minutes.
9. Close Windows Explorer.
10. In Exchange Management Console, right-click Mailbox Database, and select Mount Database from the menu.
11. Right-click the Public Folder Database, and select Mount Database from the menu.
12. Close Exchange System Manager.
Configuring the HP ProLiant DL380 G6
Figure 8 illustrates our HP test bed setup. We configured the HP ProLiant DL380 G6 as a standalone Exchange
server environment with all roles included. We used separate virtualized servers for Active Directory and LoadGen client.
We connected the HP server to the HP StorageWorks Storage via two 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel cables. We
configured the storage with one RAID 10 disk group with 24 disks. We created one 10GB volume for the Exchange logs,
which we connected to the HP and assigned to one FC port. We created one 1TB volume in the same disk group, which
we connected to the HP server and assigned to another FC port.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 18
19. Figure 9: The HP ProLiant DL380 G6 test bed we used.
We used the BIOS RAID configuration utility to create one two-disk RAID 1 for the operating system and external
storage for the LoadGen databases. We installed Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with the latest updates as of 1/9/2012.
Setting the computer name
1. Click StartAdministrative ToolsServer Manager.
2. In the right pane, click Change System Properties.
3. Under the Computer Name tab, click Change…
4. Change the Computer name to DL380 G6
5. Reboot the system.
Adding DB drives to Windows
1. Click Start right-click My Computer, and select Manage.
2. Expand Storage, and select disk management.
3. Select the Offline Drive, and right-click and select Online
4. Right-click the volume, and select New Simple Volume.
5. Name the new volume DB and click OK.
Setting up the network configuration on the server
1. Click StartNetwork.
2. Click Network and Sharing Center.
3. Click Manage Network Connections.
4. Right-click Local Area Connection.
5. Click Properties.
6. Click Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4), and click Properties.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 19
20. 7. Select Use the following IP Address, and input the following numbers:
IP address: 192.168.5.105
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
8. Click OK to close the window.
9. At the Local Area Connection Properties window, click Close.
10. Close the Network Connection window.
Joining the domain
1. Click Startright-click My ComputerProperties.
2. Click Change settings.
3. On the System Properties screen, click Change.
4. On the Computer Name/domain changes screen, click Domain radio, and type HP.troilus
5. Enter in the credentials to the AD machine.
6. At the welcome prompt, click OK.
7. Close the computer Name/Domain Changes screen.
8. At the reboot prompt, click Yes.
Installing Exchange Server 2010 SP2 prerequisites
1. Select StartAdministrative ToolsServer Manager.
2. Click Add Roles.
3. At the Before You Begin screen, click Next.
4. At the Select Server Roles screen, click Web Server (IIS).
5. If prompted by an Add features required for Web Server (IIS) pop-up window, click Add Required Features.
6. Click Next.
7. At the Web Server (IIS) screen, click Next.
8. At the Select Role Services screen, select the IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility, IIS WMI Compatibility, HTTP Errors,
HTTP Redirection, IIS 6 Management Console, Basic Authentication, Windows Authentication, Tracing, Digest
Authentication, and Dynamic and Static content Compression checkboxes, and click Next.
9. At the Confirm Installation Selections screen, click Install.
10. At the Installation Results screen, click Close.
11. Select StartAdministrative ToolsServer Manager.
12. Click Features.
13. Click Add Features.
14. Select .NET Framework 3.5.1 Features.
15. When the Add Features Wizard pop-up window prompts you, click Add Required Role Services.
16. Click Next.
17. At the Introduction to Web Server (IIS) screen, click Next.
18. At the Select Role Services screen, click Next.
19. Click Install.
20. At the Installation Results screen, click Close.
21. Download the Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0.
(http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=5cd4dcd7-d3e6-4970-875e-aba93459fbee)
22. Run FilterPackx64.EXE.
23. Click Next.
24. Click I accept the terms in the License Agreement, and click Next.
25. Click OK once installation is complete.
26. Click StartAdministrative ToolsServices.
27. Right-click the Net.Tcp Port Sharing service, and click Properties.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 20
21. 28. Change the Net.Tcp Port Sharing startup type to Automatic, and click OK.
29. Open command prompt, type ServerManagerCmd –i RSAT-ADDS, and press Enter.
30. Reboot the server.
Installing Exchange Server 2010 SP2
1. Insert the Exchange Server 2010 installation DVD, and capture the DVD drive in the VM session. When the
Autoplay window appears, click Run Setup.EXE.
2. The installer should consider steps 1 and 2 to be complete (they appear grayed out). Click the link to Step 3:
Choose Exchange Language Option.
3. Click Install only languages from the DVD.
4. Click the link to Step 4: Install Microsoft Exchange Server.
5. To go past the introduction screen, click Next.
6. Accept the license agreement, and click Next.
7. Select No for error reporting, and click Next.
8. Select Typical Exchange Server Installation, and click Next.
9. Leave the organization name at default (First Organization), and click Next.
10. At the question about client computers running Outlook 2003 or Entourage, select No, and click Next.
11. To accept defaults for Configure Client Access server external domain, click Next.
12. At the Customer Experience Improvement Program screen, select I don’t wish to join the program at this time,
and click Next.
13. Click Install to start the installation process.
14. Once the installation has completed, click Finish. Exchange should automatically open the Exchange
Management Console.
Enabling circular logging
1. Click StartAll ProgramsMicrosoft Exchange Server 2010Exchange Management Console.
2. Expand Organization Configuration, and click Mailbox.
3. Right-click DB1, and click Properties.
4. Click the Maintenance tab, and check the box next to Enable circular logging, and click OK.
Disabling Maintenance Schedule
1. Click StartAll ProgramsMicrosoft Exchange Server 2010Exchange Management Console.
2. Expand Organization Configuration, and click Mailbox.
3. Right-click Mailbox Database, and click Properties.
4. Click Maintenance.
5. Click Customize and Double-click the empty gray box above Sunday.
6. Ensure that all cells on the graph turn white, and click OK.
7. Click OK.
Disabling Microsoft Search Indexer Service
1. Click StartAdministrator ToolsServices.
2. Select Microsoft Exchange Search Indexer, and right-click Properties.
3. On the properties screen Startup Type change to Disabled, and click Stop.
4. Click OK, and close the Services screen.
Changing the default Mailbox Database drive location
1. Click Start, and click Exchange Management Console.
2. Right-click Mailbox Database.
3. Select Move Database Path.
4. Click Browse, navigate to E:Database, and click Save.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 21
22. 5. Click Move.
6. When the application prompts you to dismount the mailbox database, click Yes.
7. Click Finish.
Installing LoadGen 2010 on HP client
On a client with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 that is already part of the domain, perform the following steps:
1. Select StartAdministrative ToolServer Manager.
2. Click Features.
3. Click Add Features.
4. Select .NET Framework 3.5.1 Features.
5. When the Add Features Wizard pop-up window prompts you, click Add Required Role Services.
6. Click Next.
7. At the Introduction to Web Server (IIS) screen, click Next.
8. At the Select Role Services screen, click Next.
9. Click Install.
10. At the Installation Results screen, click Close.
11. Select the Loadgen2010 .EXE
12. At the welcome screen, click Next.
13. Accept the EULA, and click Next.
14. On the Select Installation Folder, click Next.
15. At the installation confirmation, click Next.
16. At the Installation complete screen, click Next.
17. On the Restart your systems prompt, click Yes.
Preparing LoadGen
1. Select StartAll ProgramsMicrosoft ExchangeExchange Load Generator 2010.
2. When the Load Generator window appears, select Start a new test.
3. Select Create a new test configuration, and click Continue.
4. In the Specify test settings window, type Password1 as the Directory Access Password and Mailbox Account
Master Password, and click Continue with recipient management.
5. Make 2,000 users in the Mailbox Database, and click Continue.
6. To accept defaults for Advanced recipient settings, click Continue.
7. In the Specify test user groups window, select the plus sign (+) to add a user group.
8. Change the Client Type to Outlook 2007 Cached and the Action Profile to Average, 100MB and click Continue.
9. Leave defaults in Remote configurations, and click Continue.
10. Click Save the configuration file as, and name it 100x2000.cfg
11. Click Start the initialization phase (recommended before running the test) to start initialization. The initialization
process might take a few hours.
Backing up the mail database on the HP ProLiant DL360G6
On the test server, once you have set up LoadGen and created its initial mail database, you need to back up that
database and log files so you can have clean copies for each test. Use this process to back up that database:
1. Select StartAll ProgramsMicrosoft Exchange Server 2010Exchange Management Console in the mail
server.
2. In the left pane, expand Organization Configuration, and click Mailbox.
3. In the right pane, right-click Mailbox Database, and select Dismount Database from the menu.
4. At the Do you want to continue? pop-up message, click Yes.
5. Right-click Public Folder Database, and select Dismount Database from the menu.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 22
23. 6. At the Do you want to continue? pop-up message, click Yes. The red arrow appears when you have dismounted
the Public Folder Store.
7. Using Windows Explorer, create two new folders: C:backupmailstore and C:backuppublicstore.
8. With Windows Explorer, copy all files from D:DBMailboxFirst Storage Group to D:backup. This process may
take several minutes.
9. Close Windows Explorer.
10. In Exchange Management Console, under Organization Configuration, right-click Mailbox Database, and select
Mount Database from the menu.
11. Right-click the Public Folder Database, and select Mount Database from the menu.
12. Close Exchange System Manager.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 23
24. APPENDIX C - TCO DETAILS
In this section, we detail the assumptions we used to calculate TCO for the two solutions. Figure 10 presents a
breakdown of the costs for the two solutions.
Dell PowerEdge R720 HP ProLiant DL380 G6
solution solution
Acquisition costs
Hardware purchase $11,197.00
Software cost - VMware vSphere5 Standard $1,990.00
Migration (planning and setup) $4,917.00
Total acquisition costs $18,104.00
Annual operational costs
OS Software support Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
Edition (licensed per server) $589.50 $2,358.00
VMware vSphere 5 Standard with Basic Support and
Subscription (licensed per processor) $646.00 N/A
Windows Exchange Server 2010 Standard Edition (licensed
per instance) $708.00 $708.00
Hardware support $833.00 $2,358.68
Administration costs $2,324.18 $10,226.40
Energy costs $259.51 $796.80
Port costs (2 ports per server) $500.00 $1,000.00
Data center space costs $197.28 $789.12
Total annual operational costs $6,057.47 $18,237.00
Total 3-year operational costs $18,172.41 $54,711.00
Total costs $36,276.41 $54,711.00
Figure 10: Three-year acquisition and operating costs for each solution. Lower costs are better.
Hardware costs
Dell provided us with hardware costs for the Dell PowerEdge R720, which had not been released at the time of
our testing, which we completed on a pre-release model. Costs do not include discounts, shipping, or taxes. Dell quoted
a price of $11,197.00 for the server configuration we tested (see Appendix A). The cost includes basic 3-year hardware
support. We include the additional cost of Mission Critical ProSupport with the hardware support costs. We do not
include storage array costs in this analysis. Please note that we do not include the cost or power usage of external
storage arrays in our analysis, as we assume the organization has or will use existing storage.
Migration costs
We assume that the migration from the existing servers to the Dell PowerEdge R720 will take 100 hours.
Migration includes the staff costs of planning the migration, ordering the hardware, setting up the server, and migrating
software and databases. We estimate this cost at $4,917.00 based on 100 hours of a server administrator with an hourly
cost of $49.17. To calculate the hourly rate, we used the mean annual wage of $72,200 for a network and computer
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 24
25. systems administrator as reported in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wages for May 2010.2
We added an additional 41.64 percent to cover benefits for total annual salary cost of $102,264.08, which would have
an equivalent hourly full time wage equivalent of $49.17. We estimated the benefits rate using data in another Bureau
of Labor Statistics report: Employer Costs for Employee Compensation – September 2011.3
Software licenses
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition
We assume the both solutions run Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise using per-server licensing. This license
model requires CAL licenses. We do not include CAL costs in this analysis because the number of users or devices and
therefore Windows CALs would be the same for both solutions.
For each solution, we assume the enterprise maintains current Microsoft Software Assurance on the Windows
Server software and that their licensing allows them to migrate the software between servers. We also assume they can
renew the Software Assurance agreements for the three years in this analysis.
The Dell PowerEdge R720 solution saves the Software Assurance costs of existing licenses that the solution
doesn’t need. We assume our hypothetical enterprise paid for the original license upfront and makes annual Microsoft
Software Assurance payments. We also assume they can either cancel the Software Assurance agreements for licenses
that the Dell PowerEdge R720 solution does not need or can use the licenses elsewhere.
The Dell PowerEdge R720 solution requires only one of the four Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition
licenses of the existing solution. The existing environment needed one license per server, for a total of four. The Dell
PowerEdgeR720 solution needs only one of these licenses. One license supports an instance of the server software in
one physical and four virtual operating system environments, the exact configuration of the Dell PowerEdge R720
solution in this model.
We used software pricing from the Microsoft License Advisor tool4 and used the Quick Quote option there to
find the single license price for a Microsoft Open License for corporate organizations with No Level pricing. The price
quoted there is $2,358 per Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition. Annual Software Assurance is one-fourth the
license cost.
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Standard Edition
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Standard Edition supports up to five mail stores and the Enterprise edition
supports more. The Standard edition is the choice for the single mail store used by the hypothetical enterprise.
Microsoft Exchange Server is priced on a per-instance basis. We assume the enterprise supports the software
under a Microsoft Software Assurance agreement and would migrate the Microsoft Exchange licenses from the existing
servers to the Dell PowerEdge R720 server. The four physical instances on the existing solution and the four virtual
2
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151142.htm
3
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.t05.htm, Bureau of Labor Statistics report: Employer Costs –September 2011, Table 5.
Private industry, by major occupational group and bargaining status, Management, Professional and Related column. That report
estimates that salary is 70.6 percent and benefits are 29.4 percent of total compensation for Management, Professional and
Related employees in private industry. Using those numbers we calculate benefits as 41.64% of salary.
4
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/mla/default.aspx
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 25
26. machine instances on the Dell PowerEdge R720 solution both have the same license count and same ongoing Software
Assurance cost.
We used software pricing from the Microsoft License Advisor tool5 and used the Quick Quote option there to
find the single license price for a Microsoft Open License for corporate organizations with No Level pricing. The price
quoted there is $708 per Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Standard Edition. Annual Software Assurance is one-fourth the
license cost.
VMware vSphere 5 Standard Edition
The Dell PowerEdge R720 solution requires VMware vSphere 5 Standard Edition licensing for virtualization,
which costs $995 per processor, for a total of $1,990 for the two-socket PowerEdge R720. Production Support and
Subscription is $323 per year. Each VMware vSphere 5 Standard edition license supports one processor and includes a
32GB vRAM entitlement. Our tested configuration did not exceed the combined 64GB vRAM entitlement of the two
processor licenses.
Hardware support
Dell provided a quote of $2,499 for three-year support for the Dell PowerEdge R720 server. We base the HP
support estimate on the support for the HP ProLiant DL380 G6 on the three-year support cost listed on the HP Store for
the HP ProLiant DL380 G6 models. Figure 11 shows the hardware support costs for each solution.
3-year 1-year Annual cost per solution
HP Care Pack, 3 Years, 6-hour 24x7 CTR, Defective Media
$1,769 $589.67 $2,358.68
Retention Hardware Support, ProLiant DL380
Dell Support: 3 Year ProSupport and Mission Critical 4HR
$2,499.00 $833.00 $833.00
7x24 Onsite Pack
Figure 11: Hardware support for the two solutions.
Energy costs
Figure 12 shows the calculations for the annual energy cost estimates. We calculate typical watts as 25 percent
watts-active and 75 percent watts-idle. We use a cost per KWH of $ 0.0988 based on the average commercial price for
electricity reported by the US Energy Information Administration as of January 2012.6
Annual costs - Energy costs Dell PowerEdge R720 HP ProLiant DL380 G6
Power usage per server (watts-active) 243.27 131.30
Power usage per server (watts-idle) 141.01 109.67
Typical watts 166.58 115.08
Annual kWh per server 1,459.24 1,008.10
Multiplier for cooling 1.8 2.0
5
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/mla/default.aspx
6
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/index.cfm (report epmxlfile5_6_b.xls)
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 26
27. Annual costs - Energy costs Dell PowerEdge R720 HP ProLiant DL380 G6
Total kWh for power and cooling one server 2,626.6 2,016.2
Annual energy cost per server $260 $199
Annual energy cost for solution $260 $797
Figure 12: Energy cost calculations for the two solutions.
Rack and space costs
We assume each server has two ports out and that the data center charges an annual per port cost of $250. For
data center space, each server uses 2u. Because one u of space costs $98.64, the data center space for each server costs
approximately $197.28, or $789.12 for the four servers in the existing configuration.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 27
28. ABOUT PRINCIPLED TECHNOLOGIES
We provide industry-leading technology assessment and fact-based marketing
services. We bring to every assignment extensive experience with and expertise
in all aspects of technology testing and analysis, from researching new
technologies, to developing new methodologies, to testing with existing and new
tools.
Principled Technologies, Inc.
1007 Slater Road, Suite 300 When the assessment is complete, we know how to present the results to a
Durham, NC, 27703
www.principledtechnologies.com broad range of target audiences. We provide our clients with the materials they
need, from market-focused data to use in their own collateral to custom sales
aids, such as test reports, performance assessments, and white papers. Every
document reflects the results of our trusted independent analysis.
We provide customized services that focus on our clients’ individual
requirements. Whether the technology involves hardware, software, Web sites,
or services, we offer the experience, expertise, and tools to help our clients
assess how it will fare against its competition, its performance, its market
readiness, and its quality and reliability.
Our founders, Mark L. Van Name and Bill Catchings, have worked together in
technology assessment for over 20 years. As journalists, they published over a
thousand articles on a wide array of technology subjects. They created and led
the Ziff-Davis Benchmark Operation, which developed such industry-standard
benchmarks as Ziff Davis Media’s Winstone and WebBench. They founded and
led eTesting Labs, and after the acquisition of that company by Lionbridge
Technologies were the head and CTO of VeriTest.
Principled Technologies is a registered trademark of Principled Technologies, Inc.
All other product names are the trademarks of their respective owners.
Disclaimer of Warranties; Limitation of Liability:
PRINCIPLED TECHNOLOGIES, INC. HAS MADE REASONABLE EFFORTS TO ENSURE THE ACCURACY AND VALIDITY OF ITS TESTING, HOWEVER,
PRINCIPLED TECHNOLOGIES, INC. SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, RELATING TO THE TEST RESULTS AND
ANALYSIS, THEIR ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS OR QUALITY, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
ALL PERSONS OR ENTITIES RELYING ON THE RESULTS OF ANY TESTING DO SO AT THEIR OWN RISK, AND AGREE THAT PRINCIPLED
TECHNOLOGIES, INC., ITS EMPLOYEES AND ITS SUBCONTRACTORS SHALL HAVE NO LIABILITY WHATSOEVER FROM ANY CLAIM OF LOSS OR
DAMAGE ON ACCOUNT OF ANY ALLEGED ERROR OR DEFECT IN ANY TESTING PROCEDURE OR RESULT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL PRINCIPLED TECHNOLOGIES, INC. BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES IN
CONNECTION WITH ITS TESTING, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. IN NO EVENT SHALL PRINCIPLED TECHNOLOGIES,
INC.’S LIABILITY, INCLUDING FOR DIRECT DAMAGES, EXCEED THE AMOUNTS PAID IN CONNECTION WITH PRINCIPLED TECHNOLOGIES, INC.’S
TESTING. CUSTOMER’S SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDIES ARE AS SET FORTH HEREIN.
Exchange server consolidation A Principled Technologies test report 28