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Initial investment payback analysis: Dell
PowerEdge R710 solution with VMware ESX vs.
HP ProLiant DL385 solution
TEST REPORT
MAY 2009
KEY FINDINGS
z Each Dell PowerEdge R710 solution with
VMware® ESX™ can replace seven HP
ProLiant DL385 solutions, and could
yield a payback in under 18 months.
(See Figure 1.)
z The Dell PowerEdge R710 solution with
VMware ESX delivered seven virtual
servers, each of which yielded
performance equivalent to or better than
the performance of one physical HP
ProLiant DL385 solution. (See Figure 4.)
z The Dell PowerEdge R710 solution with
VMware ESX used little more than 1/5th
of the power, about 4/5 of the software
costs, and 1/7th of the data center rack
space of the seven HP ProLiant DL385
solutions. (See Figures 3 and 7.)
Executive summary
Dell Inc. (Dell) commissioned Principled Technologies (PT)
to estimate how many months it would take to recapture
initial investment costs when consolidating multiple 4-year-
old HP ProLiant DL385 server and storage solutions onto a
Dell™ PowerEdge™ R710 server and storage solution using
VMware ESX. In this report, we estimate both the number of
older solutions each Dell PowerEdge R710 solution can
replace and the payback period for replacing those older
solutions. We compare the following two solutions:
• Intel® Xeon® Processor X5550-based Dell
PowerEdge R710 server with 96 GB of memory
using VMware ESX and Dell™ EqualLogic™
PS6000XV storage (Dell PowerEdge R710 solution)
• AMD Opteron 254-based HP ProLiant DL385 G1
server with 4 GB of memory and HP StorageWorks
MSA30 storage (HP ProLiant DL385 solution)
Our test case modeled a typical enterprise datacenter with multiple legacy HP ProLiant DL385 solutions running
high-demand database workloads. The legacy servers each used 4 GB of memory. The enterprise in this test
case seeks to consolidate several of these legacy workloads onto Dell PowerEdge R710 solutions using VMware
ESX and configured with sufficient processors, memory, and storage to handle these workloads.
We used benchmark results from the Dell DVD Store Version 2.0 (DS2) performance benchmark to determine the
number of older servers with accompanying storage that a Dell PowerEdge R710 solution could replace. To
define the replacement factor, we measured the number of orders per minute (OPM) that the HP ProLiant DL385
solution could perform when running a demanding DS2 workload. We then ran DS2 in virtual machines (VMs) on
the Dell PowerEdge R710 solution and measured how many VMs this newer solution could run, while obtaining
Figure 1: A single Intel Xeon Processor X5550-based Dell PowerEdge R710 solution with VMware ESX allows you to consolidate
seven AMD Opteron 254-based HP ProLiant DL385 solutions, with an initial investment payback period of under 18 months. We base
this estimation on our specific database workload.