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PowerEdge Product Group

Direct from

Development

Boosting Performance with the PowerEdge R740 and

Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors

Tech Note by:

Todd Mottershead

Tad Walsh

SUMMARY

Performance benefits of the

latest server technologies can

help IT decision makers

accommodate increasingly large

and complex workloads, deliver

faster response times necessary

to satisfy users and customers,

and gain or maintain competitive

advantage.

Independent testing found that

the PowerEdge R740 with 2

Generation Intel Xeon Scalable

Processors delivered more than

2.6 times the performance of an

HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen 9.

This significantly higher

performance, combined with the

benefits of the latest systems

management capabilities and

the potential for server

consolidation and power

savings, make upgrading to

PowerEdge R740’s a prudent

move worth considering.

Driving workloads faster is paramount for IT organizations tasked with

supporting the success of their businesses. Exponentially-growing databases

driven by rapidly expanding numbers of external customers and internal users,

all of whom expect faster and faster response times, makes it incumbent upon

IT DM’s/org’s to periodically refresh their infrastructures with new resources

capable of meeting workload requirements and user demands.

In this light, we were interested in evaluating the performance of one of our

most popular server models, the 2-socket PowerEdge R740 rack server,

configured with the latest 2

generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors. The

R740 is a general-purpose server with configuration flexibility allowing it to be

tailored to specific requirements for demanding workloads including data

analytics, web tech, VDI, cloud applications, HPC and OLTP.

We chose OLTP as the environment to test, and in particular chose the OLTP

workload from the Hammer DB suite of benchmarks. This benchmark reports

results in two metrics – Transactions Per Minute (TPM) and New Orders Per

Minute (NOPM), both of which give an indication of the ability of the server to

accomplish heavy workloads. The database selected for these tests was

Oracle.

In selecting the server to which the R740 would be compared, we wanted the

base point to reflect what users might already have installed. In other words,

we wanted to be able to provide users with insight along the lines of,

“compared to your installed server, the R740 with 2

Generation Xeon

Scalable Processors can give you X% greater performance.” Of all the server

models installed out there in IT infrastructures worldwide, we chose the HPE

ProLiant DL380 Gen 9 configured with previous-generation Intel Xeon

processors.

Image 1: The 2-socket, 2u, PowerEdge R740 rack server

Since we were comparing to a non-Dell EMC server, and we wanted to ensure

that the comparison would be valid, neutral and fair, we chose an outside

vendor to do the testing. The vendor chosen was Principled Technologies.

(Readers can learn more about Principled Technologies at

www.principledtechnologies.com). Testing and evaluation were performed in

June 2019.

Summary of content (3 pages)

PAGE 1
Direct from Development PowerEdge Product Group Boosting Performance with the PowerEdge R740 and 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors Tech Note by: Todd Mottershead Tad Walsh SUMMARY Performance benefits of the latest server technologies can help IT decision makers accommodate increasingly large and complex workloads, deliver faster response times necessary to satisfy users and customers, and gain or maintain competitive advantage.
PAGE 2
Direct from Development PowerEdge Product Group The results The results were highly meaningful and important for any user wondering about the timing of their server upgrades, or about how to maintain or gain greater competitive advantage. As shown in Image 2 below, the PowerEdge R740 cranked out more than 2.6 times the Transactions Per Minute (TPM) delivered by the HPE DL380 Gen 9.
PAGE 3
Conclusion Accommodating rapidly growing workloads, satisfying user demands for faster response times, and maintaining or gaining competitive advantage are crucial objectives for IT decision makers. The PowerEdge R740 2-socket rack server can assist with each of these goals by driving significantly higher performance compared to installed systems. The R740 configured with 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors can deliver up to 2.6 times the OLTP performance of an HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen 9.