Our Benchmark Methods and Choices
As is traditional now with AMD CPU launches, we got very little time to perform our benchmarks. By the time we were running with the right BIOS and figured out that our Adaptec RAID cards absolutely refused to work with this new BIOS, we had less than a week left to do our server benchmarks which take at least a few hours per setup. So we had to make some choices. Without our Adaptec card, we had to cancel the most disk intensive test we used so far: the transactional DVD Store test. For all other tests, our four local SLC SSD’s kept disk queues more than low enough.
Despite timing constraints, we tried to stay as faithful as we can to our new benchmark methodology. Remember that instead of throwing every software box we happen to have on the shelf, we decided that the “buyers” should dictate our benchmark mix. Basically, every software type that is really important should have at least one and preferably two representatives in the benchmark suite. In the table below you can find an overview of the software types servers are bought for and the benchmarks you may expect in this review. We add the “relevance” column, as “Istanbul” only targets a part of this market. Very few people will buy a hex-core for print, domain controller or mailservers.
| Server Software Market | Importance | Benchmarks Used | Relevance (Six-Core) |
| ERP, OLTP | 10-14% | SAP SD 2-tier (Industry Standard benchmark) Oracle Charbench (Free available benchmark) | High, but not yet published High |
| Reporting, OLAP | 10-17% | MS SQL Server (Real world + vApus) | Very high |
| Collaborative | 14-18% | MS Exchange Loadgen (TBD) | Medium |
| Software Dev. | 7% | Not yet | Medium |
| e-mail, DC, file/print | 32-37% | MS Exchange Loadgen (TBD) | Very Low (not CPU intensive) |
| Web | 10-14% | MCS eFMS (Real World + vApus) | Low |
| HPC | 4-6% | TBD | Only specific dense matrix apps are relevant |
| Other | 2%? | 3dsmax (Our own bench) | Medium |
| Virtualization | 33-50% | VMMark (Industry standard), vApus Mark I | Very High |
Due to time constraints, we decided to postpone the Exchange and Linpack benchmarking. Their relevance for evaluating “Istanbul” is low anyway. SAP benchmarks were not available at the time that we wrote this.
Benchmark Configuration
None of our benchmarks required more than 20 GB. Database files were placed on a 3 drive RAID-0 Intel X25-E SLC 32 GB SSD, log files on one Intel X25-E SLC 32 GB.
Xeon Server 1: ASUS RS700-E6/RS4 barebone
Dual Intel Xeon "Gainestown" X5570 2.93GHz
ASUS Z8PS-D12-1U
6x4GB (24GB) ECC Registered DDR3-1333
NIC: Intel 82574L PCI-E Gbit LAN
Xeon Server 2: Intel "Stoakley platform" server
Dual Intel Xeon E5450 "Harpertown" at 3GHz
Supermicro X7DWE+/X7DWN+
24GB (12x2GB) Crucial Registered FB-DIMM DDR2-667 CL5 ECC
NIC: Dual Intel PRO/1000 Server NIC
Xeon Server 3: Intel "Bensley platform" server
Dual Intel Xeon X5365 "Clovertown" 3GHz
Dual Intel Xeon L5320 at 1.86GHz
Dual Intel Xeon 5080 "Dempsey" at 3.73GHz
Supermicro X7DBE+
24GB (12x2GB) Crucial Registered FB-DIMM DDR2-667 CL5 ECC
NIC: Dual Intel PRO/1000 Server NIC
Opteron Server: Supermicro SC828TQ-R1200LPB 2U Chassis
Dual AMD Opteron 2435 at 2.6GHz
Dual AMD Opteron 8384 at 2.7GHz
Dual AMD Opteron 2222 at 3.0GHz
Dual AMD Opteron 8356 at 2.3GHz
Supermicro H8QMi-2+
24GB (12x2GB) DDR2-800
NIC: Dual Intel PRO/1000 Server NIC
vApus/Oracle Calling Circle Client Configuration
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz
Foxconn P35AX-S
4GB (2x2GB) Kingston DDR2-667
NIC: Intel PRO/1000
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duploxxx - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
ESX 4 should add IOMMU to the AMD istanbul platform, not sure how far this is implemented in the beta esx4 builds.Are you using the paravirtualization scsi driver in the new esx4 platform, I would expect bigegr differences between 3.5 and 4 and not just because EPT is included in esx4 together with enhanced HT.
for the rest very good thorough review.
The only thing I always miss in reviews is that although it is good to test the fastest out there, it is now where near the most deployed platform, you rather should look at the 5520-5530 against 2387 - 2431 as the mid range platform that will be deployed in a wide range of systems, this will have a much healthier performance/price/power platform then the top bin. Even the 5570 is not supported in all OEM platforms for the TDP range.
Adul - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
I do not see oracle running on top of windows all that often. It is normally running on some *nix OS. How about running the same benchmark on say RHEL instead?InternetGeek - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
There's actually an odd bug on Oracle's DB that makes it run faster on Windows than on Linux. Search on the internet and you'll find info about it.In the other hand, in my now 9 years in the IT industry I've only come across one Oracle DB running on HP-UX. Everything else (Sybase, MySQL, etc) runs on Windows.
LizVD - Friday, June 5, 2009 - link
Could you provide us with a link for that? I'd like to see if this "bug" corresponds with the behaviour we're seeing on our tests.Nighteye2 - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
You give a good description of how it works and how it has so much benefit, but then you benchmark only dual-socket servers?It would be fairer to also test and compare octo-socket servers - to see the real impact of that HT assist feature.
phoenix79 - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
Completely agreed (I was typing up a comment about this too when yours popped up)I'd love to see some 4-way VMWare scores
ltcommanderdata - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
Yes. Nehalem is in a great position in the DP market, but isn't yet available in MP. It'd be great to see six-core Dunnington and six-core Istanbul go head to head. Conveniently their highest models have similar clock speeds at 2.66GHz and 2.6GHz respectively although Dunnington would be a lot more power hungry and although I don't remember their prices, probably more expensive too.JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
Dunnington vs Istanbul coming up ... But we are going to take some time to address the shortcomings of this "deadline" article such as better power consumption readings.solori - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
"Notice that HT-assist is a performance killer in 2P configurations: you remove two times 1 MB of L3-cache, which is a bad idea with 8 VM’s hitting your two CPUs."BIOS guidance suggests that HT Assist be disabled by default on 2P systems, and enabled only for specialized workloads. So that begs the question: Were vAPUS tests performed with or without HT Assist in the 2P configuration? It was not clear.
I assume AMD-V and RVI were enabled for ALL workloads in ESX 3.5 and 4.0 (forced for 32-bit workloads.) Is this accurate? Based on the number of ESX 3.5 installations out there, this probably should be clearly stated...
I do want to take issue with your memory sizing and estimates on vCPU loading. Let me put it this way: while Nehalem-EP has better memory bandwidth and SMT threads, Opteron has access to abundant memory. Therefore, it does not make sense - for example - to be OK with enabling SMT but then constrain the benchmark to 24GB due to a Xeon memory limitation.
I would urge you to look at 48GB configurations on Xeon and Istanbul for your comparison systems. By the way, in consolidation numbers, this makes a significant reduction in $/VM with only a minor increase in per-system CAPEX.
Another interesting issue you touched on is tuning and load balance. Great job here. These are "black magic" issues that - as you noted - can have serious effects on virtualization performance (ok, scheduling efficiency.) Knowing your platform's balance point(s) is critical to performance sensitive apps but not so critical for light-load virtualization (i.e. not performance sensitive.)
It sounds like your learning - through experimentation with vAPUS - that virtualization testing does not predict similar results from "similarly configured machines" where performance testing is concerned. In fact, the "right balance" of VM's, memory and vCPU/CPU loading for one system may be on the wrong side of the inflection point for another.
All and all, a very good article.
JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
"this probably should be clearly stated... "Good suggestion. I adapted the article. RVI and EPT are always on if possible (so also 32 bit). HT-assist is of always on "Auto" (so off) unless we indicate otherwise.
"Therefore, it does not make sense - for example - to be OK with enabling SMT but then constrain the benchmark to 24GB due to a Xeon memory limitation. "
1) You must know that vApus Mark I uses too much memory for the webportals. They can run without any performance loss in 2 GB, even 1 GB. So as we move up on the number of tiles we run, it is best to reclaim the wasted memory.
2) I agree that a price comparison should include copious amount of memory (48 GB or so).
3) We don't have more than 24 GB DDR-3 available right now. It would be unfair to force the system to swap in a performance comparison.
"Opteron has access to abundant memory". What do you mean by this? Typical 2P Opterons have 64 GB, 2P Nehalems 72 GB as upper limit?
"In fact, the "right balance" of VM's, memory and vCPU/CPU loading for one system may be on the wrong side of the inflection point for another"
Great comment. Yes, that makes it even more complex to compare two systems. That is why we decided to show 2 datapoints for the 2 tile systems.
Collin, thanks for the excellent comments. It is very rewarding to notice that people take the time to dissect our hard work. Even if that means that you find wrinkles that we have to iron out. Great feedback.