Dual CPU Database Server Comparison
by Johan De Gelas on December 2, 2004 12:11 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
HP Proliant DL585
While our focus is on Dual processor entry level Database servers, we could not refuse the Quad Opteron DL585. This is one impressive server, which has a daughtercard for each Opteron and its local memory.
When we received this monster, it was outfitted with 8 GB of PC2100, 16 x 512 MB. The DL585 is able to use up to 64 GB of PC2100. It was remarkable that the DL585 with PC2100 (266 MHz) came close to AMD's reference Quartet server, which featured faster PC2700 (333 MHz) DDR SDRAM.
With PC2700 DDR SDRAM, the DL585 can "only" use 6 of its 8 DIMMs per daughtercard; thus, 12 GB per processor installed, using 2GB DIMMs. With all four CPUs installed, the DL585 is capable of supporting a maximum of 48 GB DDR SDRAM. Quite impressive, as AMD's Quartet based systems only support 4 DIMMs per CPU or 32 GB in total.
It is especially impressive if you consider the fact that the load on the address lines of DDR makes it very hard to use more than 4 DIMMs per memory channel. Most Xeon and Opteron systems with DDR-I are limited to 4 DIMMs per memory channel
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smn198 - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
Would love to see how MS SQL performs in similar tests.mrVW - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
This test seems foolish to me. A 1GB database? All of that fits in ram.A database server is all about being the most reliable form of STORAGE, not some worthless repeat queries that you should cache anyway.
Transactions, logging... I mean how realistic is it to have a 1GB of database on a system with 4GB of RAM and expensive DB2 software.
A real e-commerce site likeMWave, NewEgg, Crucial could have 20GB per year! Names, addresses, order detail, customer support history, etc.
Once you get over a certain size, a database is all about disk (putting logging on one disk indepdent of the daata, etc.). The indexes do the main searching work.
This whole test seems geared to be CPU focused, but only a hardware hacker would apply software in such a crazy way.
mrdudesir - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
man i would love to have one of those systems. Great job on the review you guys, its good to know that there are places where you can still get great independent analysis.Zac42 - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
mmmmmmm Quad Opterons......Snoop - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
Great readksherman - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
is that pic from the 'lab'? (the one on pg 1)