A Principled Technologies report: Hands-on testing. Real-world results.

Executive summary

Upgrade transactional database performance with Dell PowerEdge R660 servers running VMware vSphere 8.0

In a VMware vSAN cluster, the latest‑generation servers powered by 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors completed more orders per minute (OPM) than clusters of older servers

Online transactional processing (OLTP) performance can affect your ability to generate revenue, offer services, and support users. Replacing aging servers with a VMware vSAN cluster of latest-generation Dell PowerEdge R660 servers powered by 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, or just adding the new servers to your data center, could boost OLTP workload performance to meet current or future needs.

We found that latest-generation Dell PowerEdge R660 servers processed more transactions for Microsoft SQL Server OLTP workloads running in a vSAN cluster. Compared to the performance of older Dell PowerEdge R650 or R640 servers in vSAN clusters at the time of their releases, the performance of the latest-generation servers could help your organization generate more revenue, offer more services, or expand your user base.

The PowerEdge R660 cluster supported 2.3 times the operations per minute of the vSAN cluster using PowerEdge R640 servers. The PowerEdge R660 cluster supported 17 percent more operations per minute than the vSAN cluster using PowerEdge R650 servers.

Our results

The testing results for the PowerEdge R650 and R640 servers come from our previous work. We’ve continued that work in this study with the latest-generation Dell PowerEdge R660 server, comparing its OLTP results to those we found in the previous study. Thanks in part to its 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Gold 6430 processors, the latest-generation PowerEdge R660 servers show strong performance improvements compared to PowerEdge R650 and R640 models.

Generate more revenue with greater application delivery capacity

The PowerEdge R660 cluster hosted 42 Microsoft SQL Server 2022 VMs (14 VMs per host), against which we ran iterations of an OLTP workload that we created with the benchmarking tool DVD Store 2 (DS2). The latest-generation servers delivered 17 percent more OPM than the previous-generation PowerEdge R650 solution and 2.3 times the OPM of the older PowerEdge R640 solution (see Figure 1).

Chart of total operations per minute. Higher is better. PowerEdge R660 shows 1,954,979. PowerEdge R650 shows 1,659,697. PowerEdge R640 shows 845,914.
Total OPM each solution achieved while running the OLTP workloads against SQL Server 2022 VMs. Higher is better. Source: Principled Technologies.

Based on these outputs, a vSAN cluster of latest-generation PowerEdge R660 servers with 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors could help organizations handle more ecommerce orders now and in the future.

Conclusion

If the performance of your Microsoft SQL Server workloads has diminished over time or just cannot keep up with the growing demands of your organization, new servers could help you rectify those problems. In our transactional database testing, a VMware vSAN cluster of latest-generation Dell PowerEdge R660 servers with 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors outperformed clusters of the servers’ two most recent predecessors. The latest-generation solution handled 17 percent more OPM than the PowerEdge R650 server cluster and 2.3 times the OPM of the PowerEdge R640 cluster.

This project was commissioned by Dell Technologies.

March 2023

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