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SEPTEMBER 2010
A PRINCIPLED TECHNOLOGIES TEST REPORT
Commissioned by Dell Inc.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
We tested the following server and storage solutions:
Dell PowerEdge R710 server using the PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) H700 with six SATA solid
state drives and two SAS hard disk drives (Dell SATA SSD solution)
HP ProLiant DL380 G7 server using the HP Smart Array P410i controller with six SATA solid state
drives and two SAS hard disk drives (HP SATA SSD solution)
For testing, the servers ran Microsoft Windows Server® 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition. The goal of this
report is to show the performance increase one can expect from the Dell SATA SSD solution over the HP SATA
SSD solution.
As Figure 1 shows, Percentage Dell SATA SSD solution win over the HP SATA SSD solution
across all RAID levels, the 200% 182.9%
180%
Dell SATA SSD solution 155.9%
160% 148.3%
delivered from 104.5 percent 140%
114.6%
Percentage win
WHAT WE TESTED
Iometer measures input/output per second (IOPS) on single and clustered systems. Iometer performs
input/output (I/O) operations on a system in order to stress the system, and then records the performance of
and system stress created by these I/O operations. Iometer can create and measure workloads on a single
system or on networked systems. We used Iometer version 2006.07.27 on the servers to simulate various
typical server workloads on the RAID controllers and corresponding storage. We used the same Iometer
workload across both SSD storage solutions, but tuned the number of outstanding I/Os to obtain the
maximum possible input/output operations per second (IOPS) for each controller and each RAID level tested.
SYSTEM COMPARISON
Figure 3 shows a side-by-side comparison of the key hardware features of the two solutions. Appendix
A presents the detailed system information of the Dell SATA SSD solution and the HP SATA SSD solution, and
Appendix B presents the detailed system information about the internal storage.
WHAT WE FOUND
We report the average percentage results of our custom Iometer tests, based on the IOPS scores of
each test. For all tests, higher IOPS numbers are better. We ran each test three times and report results from
the run that produced the median of the three IOPS results. We calculated the average percentage win for
each access specification for each RAID level tested, in this case RAID 0, 5, 6, 10, and 50.
Figure 4 shows the percentage wins of the Dell SATA SSD solution over the HP SATA SSD solution across
the nine access specifications we tested. See Appendix C for detailed test results.
Access specification RAID level
RAID 0 RAID 5 RAID 6 RAID 10 RAID 50
DB OLTP 8K, 70/30, 100/0 117.6% 102.0% 163.6% 237.3% 182.2%
Exchange email 4K, 67/33, 100/0 138.7% 163.7% 176.6% 267.4% 195.9%
Exchange email 8K, 67/33, 100/0 123.0% 148.2% 167.8% 253.8% 192.7%
Exchange email 32K, 50/50, 100/0 111.7% 146.5% 159.7% 227.8% 211.1%
Exchange email 64K, 50/50, 100/0 100.4% 122.1% 193.6% 194.0% 212.3%
OS drive 8K, 70/30, 100/0 111.9% 138.8% 165.2% 238.1% 182.7%
Web file server 4K, 95/5, 75/25 116.0% 103.0% 123.6% 108.6% 97.7%
Web file server 8K, 95/5, 75/25 86.6% 76.7% 101.4% 78.1% 84.8%
Web file server 64K, 95/5, 75/25 34.3% 30.3% 83.5% 40.8% 43.8%
Average of all access specifications 104.5% 114.6% 148.3% 182.9% 155.9%
Figure 4: Percentage wins of the Dell SATA SSD solution over the HP SATA SSD solution.
Figure 5 shows the outstanding I/O settings we tested on the Dell PowerEdge R710.
Access specification Dell SATA SSD solution testing outstanding I/Os
RAID 0 RAID 5 RAID 6 RAID 10 RAID 50
DB OLTP 8K, 70/30, 100/0 256 256 256 256 256
Exchange email 4K, 67/33, 100/0 256 256 256 256 256
Exchange email 8K, 67/33, 100/0 256 256 256 256 256
Exchange email 32K 256 256 256 256 256
Exchange email 64K 256 256 256 256 256
OS drive 8K 256 256 256 256 256
Web file server 4K 256 256 256 256 256
Web file server 8K, 95/5, 75/25 256 256 256 256 256
Web file server 64K, 95/5, 75/25 256 256 256 256 256
Figure 5: Outstanding I/O settings for each access specification we tested on the Dell PowerEdge R710.
Figure 6 shows the outstanding I/O settings we tested on the HP ProLiant DL380 G7.
Access specification HP SATA SSD solution testing outstanding I/Os
RAID 0 RAID 5 RAID 6 RAID 10 RAID 50
DB OLTP 8K, 70/30, 100/0 256 128 64 32 128
Exchange email 4K, 67/33, 100/0 256 128 64 32 64
Exchange email 8K, 67/33, 100/0 256 32 64 16 64
Exchange email 32K 128 16 32 64 64
Exchange email 64K 128 32 16 32 256
OS drive 8K 256 128 256 64 256
Web file server 4K 256 256 64 256 256
Web file server 8K, 95/5, 75/25 256 256 256 256 256
Web file server 64K, 95/5, 75/25 256 256 256 256 256
Figure 6: Outstanding I/O settings for each access specification we tested on the HP ProLiant DL380 G7.
HOW WE TESTED
We used the servers’ respective RAID BIOS configuration utilities to create the virtual drives as we
outline in Figure 7 and allowed time for any disk initialization operations to complete. We then proceeded to
install the operating system as follows.
Access specification name and block RAID 0 RAID 5 RAID 6 RAID 10 RAID 50
size IOPS IOPS IOPS IOPS IOPS
DB OLTP 8K, 70/30, 100/0 30,830.24 11,273.07 9,290.47 21,272.02 14,713.86
Exchange email 4K, 67/33, 100/0 36,276.58 15,948.73 10,592.03 24,495.85 16,856.87
Exchange email 8K, 67/33, 100/0 29,725.49 12,452.60 8,586.18 19,863.57 13,807.90
Exchange email 32K, 50/50, 100/0 12,492.16 4,215.76 3,219.09 7,112.16 5,247.83
Exchange email 64K, 50/50, 100/0 7,937.26 2,981.30 2,629.25 4,513.95 3,825.36
OS drive 8K, 70/30, 100/0 30,738.63 13,321.01 9,205.84 21,152.69 14,737.41
Web file server 4K, 95/5, 75/25 86,529.19 56,582.18 41,553.36 77,828.98 54,966.01
Web file server 8K, 95/5, 75/25 61,571.91 40,601.09 31,499.84 55,433.98 42,119.65
Web file server 64K, 95/5, 75/25 15,358.44 11,273.07 10,248.57 13,695.63 12,113.39
Figure 10: IOPS results from the Dell SATA SSD testing. Higher numbers are better.
Figure 11 shows results, in IOPS, from the HP SATA SSD testing.
Access specification name and block RAID 0 RAID 5 RAID 6 RAID 10 RAID 50
size IOPS IOPS IOPS IOPS IOPS
DB OLTP 8K, 70/30, 100/0 14,169.92 5,580.81 3,524.82 6,305.85 5,213.49
Exchange email 4K, 67/33, 100/0 15,198.31 6,049.11 3,829.38 6,667.87 5,697.25
Exchange email 8K, 67/33, 100/0 13,331.10 5,017.86 3,205.90 5,614.01 4,717.93
Exchange email 32K, 50/50, 100/0 5,899.76 1,710.44 1,239.47 2,169.57 1,686.70
Exchange email 64K, 50/50, 100/0 3,960.88 1,342.15 895.47 1,535.32 1,224.79
OS drive 8K, 70/30, 100/0 14,509.53 5,578.52 3,471.93 6,256.52 5,213.79
Web file server 4K, 95/5, 75/25 40,051.99 27,876.07 18,580.37 37,312.66 27,801.14
Web file server 8K, 95/5, 75/25 32,997.50 22,975.42 15,642.34 31,116.49 22,787.92
Web file server 64K, 95/5, 75/25 11,439.02 8,650.17 5,585.19 9,729.22 8,421.67
Figure 11: IOPS results from the HP SATA SSD testing. Higher numbers are better.
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.
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.