System information
A Principled Technologies test report 2
Comparing performance and cost: Dell PowerEdge VRTX vs.
legacy hardware solution
GET BETTER PERFORMANCE WHILE USING LESS POWER
We compared performance, power consumption, space, and cost of running
typical office applications (email, database, and file/print server) on these two solutions:
A Dell PowerEdge VRTX with two Dell PowerEdge M620 server nodes,
running VMware vSphere 5 in a high availability (HA) cluster
configuration with three Microsoft® Windows Server® 2012 virtual
machines (VMs) – one running SQL Server® 2012, one running Exchange
Server 2010, and one acting as a file/print server.
A legacy, disparate hardware solution consisting of three older HP
tower servers, a NETGEAR® switch, and an HP storage appliance. The
legacy tower servers ran bare metal instances of Windows Server 2012
with one running SQL Server 2012, one running Exchange Server 2010,
and one running as a dedicated file/print server.
We ran three benchmarks simultaneously to stress the email, database, and file
and print applications at once. We also measured the power consumption of the Dell
PowerEdge VRTX and the legacy solution while idle and during the simultaneous
workloads. For detailed configuration information about the solutions we tested, see
Appendix A. For testing details, see Appendix B. For detailed test results, see Appendix
C.
Dell PowerEdge VRTX optimized application performance while reducing power
consumption and providing headroom for future growth
As Figure 1 shows, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX optimized performance compared
to the legacy, disparate hardware solution, achieving as much as 64.3 percent better
performance while running the three workloads simultaneously on VMs.
Figure 1: The Dell PowerEdge
VRTX outperformed the legacy,
disparate hardware solution in
simultaneous email, database,
and file and print workloads.
64.3%
9.5%
10.4%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Email Database File and print
Percentage win
Simultaneous workloads
Percentage win for the Dell PowerEdge VRTX
vs. legacy, disparate hardware solution