Decision Support benchmark: Nieuws.be

Operating System: Windows 2008 Enterprise RTM (64 bit)
Software: SQL Server 2008 Enterprise x64 (64 bit)
Benchmark software: vApus + realworld “Nieuws.be” Database
Database Size: > 100 GB
Typical error margin: 1-2%

The Nieuws.be site is sitting on top of a pretty large database: more than 100 GB and growing. This database consists of a few hundred separate tables, which have been carefully optimized by our lab (the Sizing Servers Lab). We have described our testing methods here in more detail. As some of our readers suggested we upgraded from SQL Server 2005 SP3 to SQL Server 2008. This gave a boost of 29 to 38% (!) to the performance of our decision support database. All configurations use 2 sockets. Take a look at the MS SQL Server 2005 numbers:

Nieuws.be MS SQL Server 2005

And compare with the numbers on SQL Server 2008.

Nieuws.be MS SQL Server 2008

SQL Server 2008 is clearly better optimized for the complex queries that an OLAP database has to absorb.

Back to the hardware. In both cases, you can clearly see that this workload depends less on “uncore” factors (caches, memory bandwidth) than the OLTP test. The Opteron 2435 is a healthy 41% faster than the 2.7 GHz Opteron 2384. A 2.6 GHz quad-core Opteron would score about 385, which means that the scaling from 4 to 6 cores is excellent: 46%. That kind of scaling is very close to the theoretical maximum of 50%, but it is not enough to beat the newest Xeon, which sees its advantage shrink to a 16% lead. However, as the Opteron 2435 competes with 2.66 GHz Xeon and not the Xeon 2.93 GHz, this is the first benchmark where “Istanbul” is competitive. In sharp contrast with the quad-core “Shanghai”, which does not have a chance against the Xeon X55xx armada.

OLTP benchmark: Oracle Charbench “Calling Circle” Website: MCS eFMS (Windows 2003 32 bit EE)
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  • befair - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link

    yeah, yeah, its always "more details review coming soon"
  • smith1795 - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link


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  • genkk - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link

    ohhh I see, johan is only doing what his boss (anand) has told him so...
  • aguilpa1 - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    As an AMD fanboy I skipped to the one metric that AMD shows competitive performance and focused on that ignoring all other.
  • classy - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    That is laughable. Lets see I have only purchased all Intel servers in the last 7 years. But in the last 2 years anyone who does any system administration knows virtualization has just leaped to the forefront. Its that important. Even email is being virtualized. Databases are still physical and will probably be for some time to come. But make no mistake about it, how well it does at virtualizing is at the top of the list. Especially considering the recent recession. Virtualizing allows more to be done with less of everything. Next time maybe have some experience in something else besides reading the internet and maybe you might understand a thing or two.
  • Natfly - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    Virtualization isn't the be-all end-all of computing. It definitely can be a way to make more efficient use of your hardware, but the "virtualize everything" mentality isn't going to help you in the long run.
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  • nycromes - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link

    I don't think thats really what he/she was saying, they were saying that in terms of the IT world, Virtualization is now one of the (if not the) most important features. Right now, there are major pushes in the industry to make more efficient use of hardware, virtualization is one major part of doing that. I agree that a "virtualize everything" mentality is not good, but the OP makes a great point about the importance of virtualization in todays IT world.
  • Jakey1999 - Thursday, May 6, 2010 - link

    Dudes,

    What would you recommend for a SQL Server 2005 64bit database server? Hybrd, system OTLP and OLAP - 75% read. Thanks. Please respond to e-mail "jerry@tre.wa.gov". Thanks man.
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