Sun Fire X4540 Server

A cluster of 43 Sun Fire™ X4540 storage servers equipped with AMD Opteron processors running the OpenSolaris™ operating system (OS) set new performance and price/performance records on the TPC-H benchmark at the 30TB scale factor—the highest scale factor with published results.

The TPC-H benchmark was established by the Transaction Processing Council (TPC) to allow customers to evaluate the performance of various Business Intelligence/Data Warehousing (BIDW) and Decision Support Systems (DSS) systems in conjunction with a standard database size, referred to as the scale factor (SF). The benchmark measures the combined performance of a particular database manager on a specific computer system at scale factors of 100 GB, 300 GB, 1,000 GB, 3,000 GB, 10,000 GB, 30,000 GB and 100,000 GB, and reports the composite TPC-H Query-per-Hour (QphH) performance metric, as well as the price/performance, which is the ratio of total cost of solution (hardware, software and three-year maintenance costs) to the QphH.

The Sun Fire X4540 storage servers combined with the ParAccel Analytic Database (PADB), a high-speed, low-effort, massively parallel (MPP) columnar database management system (DBMS) for data warehousing and analytics, was seven times faster and provided 16 times better price/performance than the only other posted result on the HP Integrity Superdome.

Benchmark Outcome

• A cluster of 43 Sun Fire X4540 servers, each powered by two AMD Opteron 2356 2.3 GHz processors, running ParAccel Analytic Database on Sun OpenSolaris 2009.06 achieved a result of 1,050,556.20 QphH @30000GB with a price performance of $2.86/QphH @30000GB. This is a new World Record for both performance and price-performance at the largest published TPC-H Scale Factor (30TB) to date.
• The Sun/ParAccel solution represents a new-generation of TPC-H submissions that use column-based “shared nothing” DSS DBMS in conjunction with clustered environments to create very large disk-based data warehouses.
• The Sun/ParAccel solution consumed only 1/3 the power in less than 1/6 the floor space of the HP's system, while delivering a fully mirrored storage pool with 1,000 fewer disks, significantly reducing management costs and complexity [1]
• The combination of ParAccel’s columnar MPP database with SunFire™ X4540 servers and supported OpenSolaris 2009.06 OS breaks the 1,000,000 performance barrier on TPC-H benchmark at the 30 TB scale factor. The ParAccel/Sun system loaded the 30 TB in only 3.5 hours at a rate of nearly 9 TB per hour.
• The only 30TB result posted is on a single HP Integrity Superdome, running Oracle 10gR2 on top of HP-UX 11i v3 OS.
• Compared to the competing HP Integrity Superdome-based solution (available 6/18/2007), the Sun Fire X4540 cluster:
  • is 7x faster
  • has 16x better price-performance
  • demonstrated 4x faster DB load time
  • provides complete data protection with mirroring
  • requires 50 percent (or 1000) fewer disks
  • occupies less than 1/6 of the floor space
  • offers 2.3x better TCO (Hardware, Software and three year maintenance costs)

• Benchmark Results

• Press Release

The Sun Fire X4540 server posted the best price/performance result on the TPC-H benchmark at 3000 GB scale factor for all non-clustered systems. Available on 03/04/2009, the Sun Fire X4540 server posted the score of 11,435 QphH@3000GB and achieved the best price/performance among all TPC-H submissions at 3TB scale factor—US$5.25/QphH@3000GB.

The TPC-H benchmark was established by the Transaction Processing Council (TPC) to allow customers to evaluate the performance of various Business Intelligence/Data Warehousing (BIDW) and Decision Support Systems (DSS) systems in conjunction with a standard database size, referred to as the scale factor (SF). The benchmark measures the combined performance of a particular database manager on a specific computer system at scale factors including 100GB, 300GB, 1000GB, 3000GB, 10000GB and 30000GB, and reports the composite TPC-H Query-per-Hour (QphH) performance metric, as well as the price/performance, which is the ratio of total cost of solution, consisting of hardware, software and three-year maintenance costs to the QphH.

Benchmark Outcome

• The unique design of the Sun Fire X4540 Server allows customers to achieve ultimate storage density—up to 48 terabytes—in a single system with a 4RU footprint, offering an unparalleled "Data Warehouse-in-a-Box" solution that consumes 995W of power.
• When combined with Sybase(R) IQ 15 analytics server software, the Sun Fire X4540 running the Solaris 10 Operating System, offers an affordable and easy to manage solution for organizations seeking high performance analytics and reporting platforms, making it ideal for BIDW and DSS processes.
• Powered by a pair of quad-core AMD Opteron processors and running the industry-leading Solaris 10 Operating System, the new benchmark result has the lowest priced configuration, as well as the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO), of any TPC-H submissions at 3000GB.
• This breakthrough "Data Warehouse-in-a-Box" solution needs only 12TB of storage, takes up only four rack units and is the first and only 2-socket submission at 3000GB scale factor.
• Since the Sun Fire X4540 server did not use any external storage, this solution also demonstrates unbeatable space-performance (only 4RU), power-performance (under 1000W) and cost of system administration (single box). Sun is the only vendor to produce "Data Warehouse-in the box" solutions using TPC-H benchmark at any scale factor.
• When compared to the prior best result—the HP Superdome-based solution (see the Competitive Comparisons table), Sun's offering has 84 percent better price/performance.
• Unique features of the Sybase IQ 15 analytics server software allow for compact organization of the data with the footprint that is 10 times smaller than that allowed by traditional databases. The collaboration between Sybase and Sun continue to bring affordable data warehousing solutions to their mutual customers.

• Executive Summary Report

• Full Disclosure Report

• Press Release

The Sun Fire X4540 storage server, powered by two quad-core AMD Opteron model 2356 processors and running the Java System Messaging Server 6.2, a part of Sun Java Enterprise System 4, on top of the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), set a new world record on the SPECmail2008 benchmark. Sun's unique offering delivers a complete solution in a single system that occupies only 4 rack units (RU). Sun further showcases its leadership position in corporate e-mail serving as the first vendor to publish on this new benchmark.

SPECmail2008 is an industry-standard benchmark designed to measure a system's ability to act as a mail server compliant with Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and Internet Mail Application Protocol, Version 4 (IMAP4). This benchmark simulates real-world corporate e-mail environments and enables objective comparisons of mail server products. The mail server under test must maintain a specific Quality of Service (QoS) to produce valid benchmark results which are reported as SPECmail_MSEnt2008 SMTP and IMAP users at SPECmail2008 sessions per hour. The SPECmail2008 sessions per hour is the main metric of the benchmark and it reflects the maximum number of sessions that the mail server can sustain while maintaining a specific QoS.

Benchmark Outcome

• The Sun Fire X4540 storage server posted the best result ever on SPECmail2008 benchmark, clearly demonstrating Sun's leadership position in e-mail serving using off-the-shelf OS and software components.
• The Sun Fire X4540 storage server achieved an overall record of 3,300 SPECmail_MSEnt2008 SMTP and IMAP users at 15,868 SPECmail2008 sessions/hour.
• These results highlight the unique design features of the Sun Fire X4540 storage server which incorporates 48 internal SATA drives in a compact 4 RU package. Moreover, these results were obtained with the highly available Solaris ZFS file system, which offers continuous integrity checking and automatic repair at no additional cost.
  • This benchmark proves that a single Sun Fire X4540 storage server with integrated disk drives coupled with Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2 software can support an enterprise-level IMAP Mail server environment at the highest levels of throughput performance, with a compact, low cost and low power solution.
  • The Sun Fire X4540 storage server equipped with 32GB of memory and 48250GB SATA disk drives had an average power consumption of only 924 Watts. The power consumption was measured during the steady state of the SPECmail2008 benchmark.

• Benchmark Results