Administrator Guide

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Direct from Development
Server and Infrastructure
Engineering
Transactional Database Performance Boosted with
Intel® Optane™ DC Persistent Memory
The Advantage of Application Direct Mode
Intel® Optane™ DC Persistent Memory Modules (DCPMMs) have two
different modes with unique advantages; Application Direct mode and
Memory mode. Application Direct mode allows for OS and applications to
register DCPMMs as persistent memory, while Memory mode allows for
increased memory capacity over traditional DIMMs. This technical brief
will focus on the advantages of using Application Direct mode.
DCPMMs working in Application Direct mode can drive change in the
following ways:
• Memory persistence is enabled; In-memory data will remain intact
throughout power cycles
• Memory is read as storage; Operations can be directly performed
on storage class memory instead of having to go through the time-
consuming file system and storage system software layers
• Memory capacity increase; DCPMMs increase memory capacity
over traditional DIMMS by roughly 50%, therefore increasing the
overall capacity.
Testing was conducted to quantify the value of Microsoft SQL2019 by
comparing the performances measured while running DCPMM, NVMe
and SATA drive configurations.
The Testing Conditions
A Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd server ran four storage configurations to compare performance readings:
• 12 Intel D3-S4510 SATA SSDs (capacity of 1.92 TB each)
• 2 Intel P4610 NVMe SSDs (capacity of 1.6 TB each)
• 4 Intel P4610 NVMe SSDs (capacity of 1.6 TB each)
• 12 Intel 8Rx4 PC4-2666V DCPMMs (capacity of 256 GB each)
Tech Note by
Matt Ogle
Todd Mottershead
Trent Bates
Kevin Cross
Summary
An efficient transactional
database running large
amounts of information
requires heavy-duty hardware
performance that can support
an optimized workload output.
Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd
servers configured with Intel®
Optane™ DC Persistent
Memory were able to execute
more transactions per minute
than configurations with NAND
flash NVMe drives or SATA
SSDs.
Figure 1: The 8Rx4 PC4-2666V DCPMM has
a DRAM form factor but functions as both a
memory and storage technology