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TEST REPORT
MAY 2009
Initial investment payback analysis: Dell
PowerEdge R710 solution with VMware ESX vs.
HP ProLiant DL385 solution
Executive summary
KEY FINDINGS
Dell Inc. (Dell) commissioned Principled Technologies (PT)
Each Dell PowerEdge R710 solution with
to estimate how many months it would take to recapture
VMware® ESX™ can replace seven HP
initial investment costs when consolidating multiple 4-year-
ProLiant DL385 solutions, and could
old HP ProLiant DL385 s
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OPM in each VM equivalent to that of the HP ProLiant DL385 solution. The total number of VMs the Dell PowerEdge R710 solution could handle determines the replacement factor. Based on our specific workload, the replacement factor is seven. Figure 1 depicts this replacement factor for replacing seven AMD Opteron 254- based HP ProLiant DL385 solutions with a single Intel Xeon Processor X5550-based Dell PowerEdge R710 solution, as well as the initial investment payback time of under 18 months.
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Estimated year-one and -two costs for the Dell PowerEdge R710 solution and the HP ProLiant DL385 solutions $90,000 $81,928 $80,000 $70,000 $65,660 $60,000 $50,000 $40,000 $30,000 $20,000 $10,000 $0 Dell PowerEdge R710 Seven HP ProLiant solution with VMware DL385 solutions ESX Server and storage hardware $0 $43,652 Software licenses $0 $2,993 Migration costs $0 $905 Management costs $39,200 $5,300 Energy costs $13,608 $1,894 Facility costs $4,046 $450 Hardware support agreements $11,452 $2
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Four benefits of the Dell PowerEdge R710 solution contribute significantly to the cost savings for this solution: • Replaces up to seven HP ProLiant DL385 servers with HP StorageWorks MSA30 storage arrays. The increased I/O capacity, database performance, and memory efficient design of the Dell PowerEdge 2 R710 solution enables consolidation of multiple older systems for the specific workload we tested. • Uses slightly more than one-fifth of the power of the seven HP ProLiant DL385 solu
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The DS2 driver application creates an orders-per-minute performance counter on each client machine. While the DVD Store client application visually outputs OPM at 10-second intervals, we chose to collect this OPM metric via a performance monitor counter on each client machine at 1-second intervals. For more details about the DS2 tool, see http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/DVD+Store We ran this workload on the Dell PowerEdge R710 server and the HP ProLiant DL385 server for 30 minu
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Our results show the advantage in performance, cost, and workload consolidation that modern hardware, OSs, hypervisors, and database software can offer over legacy hardware and software solutions for this workload. Test results Figure 4 illustrates the number of virtual machines Microsoft SQL Server workload results the Dell PowerEdge R710 Higher results are better solution can sustain 8 compared to the HP ProLiant DL385 solution. 7 The Dell PowerEdge R710 6 solution delivere
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Dell PowerEdge R710 Run 1 Run 2 Run 3 solution VM 1 OPM 16,218.6 16,233.8 15,036.6 VM 2 OPM 17,261.6 17,146.0 16,496.1 VM 3 OPM 17,012.3 16,887.3 16,289.6 VM 4 OPM 17,335.5 17,040.7 16,471.6 VM 5 OPM 17,537.8 16,795.8 15,901.0 VM 6 OPM 17,093.4 17,324.7 16,325.2 VM 7 OPM 16,029.3 15,360.9 15,697.6 Minimum OPM 16,029.3 15,360.9 15,036.6 Figure 6: Individual VM scores and the minimum VM score for the Dell PowerEdge R710 solution. Higher OPM numbers are better. Figure 7 shows the sp
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Test methodology Adjusting BIOS settings We used the default BIOS settings on the HP ProLiant DL385 server and enabled Virtualization Technology on the Dell PowerEdge R710 server. Setting up and configuring the Dell PowerEdge R710 storage and Dell EqualLogic PS6000 storage Dell PowerEdge R710 and Dell EqualLogic PS6000 storage configuration We installed four internal drives in the Dell PowerEdge R710 server. We attached the server to a Dell EqualLogic PS6000 containing 16 drives. We
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management workstation, which was an Intel Pentium 4, 630 3.00GHz running Windows Server 2003 with 2GB RAM. Installing ESX Build 148592 1. Insert ESX Build 148592 DVD, and restart the computer. 2. While booting, press F11 to enter Boot Menu. 3. Press the down arrow to navigate to the appropriate boot device, and press Enter. 4. To start ESX in graphical mode, press Enter. 5. On the Welcome screen, click Next. 6. Click the checkbox to accept the terms of the license agreement, and
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12. Click OK. Connecting the storage to the host We attached the database volumes on the Dell EqualLogic PS6000 storage to the Dell PowerEdge R710 server by connecting all four NICs available on the PS6000 array to a Dell PowerConnect 6248 switch. We used two physical NICs in the server dedicated to iSCSI traffic to connect the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator within each VM to their respective database volumes. We used the remaining NICs in the server for normal network communication and VMk
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Creating the virtual machine with vSphere 1. Click Start, All Programs, VMware, VMware vSphere client. 2. Enter the IP address or hostname, user name, and password. Click Login. 3. Click the Virtual Machines tab. 4. Right-click, and choose New Virtual Machine. 5. Choose Custom, and click Next. 6. Assign a name to the virtual machine. Click Next. 7. Select a datastore for the virtual machine files. We chose the OS Datastore. Click Next. 8. Choose Virtual Machine Version 7 to utilize bui
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31. Click OK to restart, click Close, and click Restart Now. Configuring networking in the VM 1. Power on the VM, and open the console. 2. Click Start, Control Panel, Network Connections, and click Manage Network Connections. 3. Right-click the NIC, and choose properties. 4. Select TCP/IP (v4), and choose properties. 5. Set the IP address, subnet, gateway, and DNS server for this NIC, which will handle outgoing server traffic (e.g., the public IP). Click OK, and click Close. 6. Repea
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Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB959130) Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB957200) Security Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB953733) Security Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB950762) Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool x64 – April 2009 (KB890830) Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB955839) Security Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB958624) Security Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB950974)
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22. On the Instance configuration screen, leave the default selection of default instance, and click Next. 23. On the Disk space requirements screen, click Next. 24. On the Server configuration screen, choose NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM for SQL Server Agent, and choose NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM for SQL Server Database Engine. Click Next. 25. On the Database Engine Configuration screen, select Mixed Mode. 26. Enter a password for the system administrator account. 27. Click Add Current user. This may ta
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6. Click OK. 7. Click the Targets tab. 8. Find the two relevant SQL Data volumes for this VM, and select it. Click Log On… 9. Check the checkbox to allow automatic logon on reboot, and to also enable multipath. 10. Click OK. Configuring additional virtual disks in Disk Management inside the VM 1. Inside the VM, click Start, Administrative Tools, Computer Management. 2. Click Disk Management. 3. Right-click the uninitialized disks (if any), and choose Initialize Disk. 4. Choose MBR.
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We configured the internal drives in two RAID 1 volumes, with two disks per volume. The MSA30 contained 14 146GB 10,000 RPM drives. We configured MSA30 in a RAID 10 array for all 14 drives, resulting in approximately a 1TB drive at the operating system level. We installed Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition and SQL Server 2005 software on the first mirrored internal volume, configured the SQL Server transaction logs on the second internal volume, and placed the SQL Server database
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Installing system updates in Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition • Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB961118) • Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Family Update (KB951847) • Security Update for Microsoft XML Core Services 6.0 Service Pack 2 (KB954459) • Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows Server 2003 (KB938127) • Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB923561) • Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - April 2009
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• Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB930178) Connecting the storage to the host We attached the database volume on the MSA30 storage to the HP ProLiant DL385 server by using a SCSI cable connected from the Smart Array 6400 Controller in the server to the SCSI connector on the back of the MSA30. Adding additional drives to the server via the HP Smart Array Configuration Utility, DISKPART utility, and Disk Management Utility 1. Download and install the HP Smart Array Configur
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18. Accept the default Error and Usage Report Settings, and click Next. 19. At the Ready to Install screen, click Install to begin the installation. 20. At the end of the installation in the Setup Progress screen, click Next. 21. Click Finish to complete the installation. 22. Click Start, All Programs, Microsoft SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio. Connect to the SQL Server instance. 23. Right-click the instance in Object explorer, and choose Properties. 24. Click Processors, and s
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Editing the ds2_create_cust.c module We had to make the same changes to the ds2_create_cust.c module that we made to the ds2_create_orders.c module. On the command line for the ds2_create_cust.c module, we specified the size. The available options were S (small), M (medium), and L (large). We added the case T for the 10GB database. In the switch statement that sets the values for the variables max_cust_id and max_prod_id, we added cases that assigned them the proper values for the 10GB da
