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A Principled Technologies test report 2
Virtualized database performance comparison: Dell PowerEdge
R815 vs. IBM System x3850 X5
PROJECT OVERVIEW
We tested the following servers and processors:
Four-socket Dell PowerEdge R815 server with AMD Opteron processors Model 6174
Four-socket IBM System x3850 X5 server with Intel Xeon Processor X7560s
For testing, each server ran 48 virtual machines with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
Edition with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2. The goal of this report is to show the virtualized performance
difference, the active power usage difference, and the price-performance difference one can expect between
the Dell PowerEdge R815 server and the IBM System x3850 X5 server.
WHAT WE TESTED
To build the workload, we used DVD Store Version 2 (DS2), an open-source simulation of an online e-
commerce DVD store. DS2 has database components and Web server components, and includes driver
programs that put heavy loads on these components. We used the included driver program to stress the
database component. The Dell PowerEdge R815 and IBM System x3850 X5 both ran one Microsoft SQL Server
2008 R2 instance per VM. We configured each SQL Server 2008 R2 instance with a 2.5GB database. By
combining multiple virtual machines, all running a CPU, memory, and disk-intensive workload, the test placed
a heavy load on both servers’ CPUs. Thus, it measured the performance of the server, especially as it relates to
an active online transaction processing (OLTP) environment.
The main DS2 metric is average orders per minute (OPM) over the duration of the test, which the
driver program calculates and reports via the Windows Performance Monitor utility and the command-line
output on the client machines. We used the output from the driver program to record OPM, and we report
the last OPM score the benchmark reported.
When DS2 is executing, simulated customers log in; browse movies by actor, title, or category; and
purchase movies. Each DS2 order consists of a customer login, a number of searches for movies, and a
purchase. Each search is by either title, actor, or category. The title and actor searches use full-text search. The
other customer actions, including adding new customers, exercise a wide range of database functions.
As we note above, because our goal was to isolate and test database server performance, we did not
use the front-end Web client component of DS2. Instead, we ran the included driver application on client
machines directly via its command-line interface. We used the default DS2 parameters and setup