Migrating Oracle 9iBased Sun Servers to
Dell Servers Running
Windows 2000 Server
Part 3: Dell PowerEdge 2650 with
Windows 2000 Server
Enterprise Systems Group (ESG)
Dell White Paper
By Todd Muirhead and Dave Jaffe
todd_muirhead@dell.com
dave_jaffe@dell.com
February 2003
Contents
Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 4
The Database Servers................................................................................................................... 5
The Hardware ......................................................................................................................... 5
The Database Software................................................................................................................ 7
Oracle9i .................................................................................................................................... 7
The Queries ............................................................................................................................. 8
Migrating the Database ........................................................................................................ 8
The Tests ........................................................................................................................................ 9
Conclusions ................................................................................................................................. 10
Table 1: Database Server Comparison: PowerEdge 2650 vs. Sun Fire V480 .................... 5
Table 2: Oracle Parameters ........................................................................................................ 7
Table 3: Test Results ................................................................................................................... 9
February 2003
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Dell Enterprise Systems Group
Section
1
Executive Summary
Oracle9i ™ data mining performance was studied using the Dell™ PowerEdge™
2650 with dual 2.8 GHz Xeon™ processors, running Windows® 2000 Server, and
the Sun FireTM V480 from Sun Microsystems, Inc. with four 900 MHz
UltraSPARC® III processors, running Solaris® 9.0. A database of baseball
statistics was built on the Sun database server and easily migrated to the Dell
server.
A set of eight intensive queries was developed and run against this database on
both servers. The Dell PowerEdge 2650 completed the eight queries in an average
time of 18.26 seconds, 42% faster than the Sun FireV480’s 25.85 seconds. The Dell
system tested was 83% less expensive than the Sun system, giving Dell an overall
price/performance advantage of 8.17X.
February 2003
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Dell Enterprise Systems Group
Section
2
Introduction
In two previous papers (Migrating Oracle9i - Based Sun Servers to Dell Servers
Running Linux Part 1, and Migrating Oracle 9i – Based Sun Servers to Dell
Servers Running Linux Part 2 at
http://www.dell.com/us/en/esg/topics/products_oracle_papers_pedge_software_
oracle_papers.htm) we conducted studies showing that Dell PowerEdge 6450,
8450, and 6650 Servers running Red Hat Linux outperformed comparably
equipped Sun Enterprise 4500 and V480 servers while also costing significantly
less. This resulted in the Dell servers enjoying a significant price/performance
advantage over the Sun Servers.
Both studies used the same baseball statistics database and the same set of eight
complex queries to demonstrate the migration from Sun to Dell and provide a
performance comparison. The Sun and Dell servers were equipped and
configured as equally as possible and the eight queries were run in parallel on
each system. The queries used Oracle analytical features to answer questions
such as “who had the best five straight years in home runs, batting average,
earned run average, etc.”
In the first study we found that a Dell PowerEdge 6450 with four 700 MHz Xeon
processors was 69% faster and 85% less expensive than a comparably equipped
Sun Enterprise 4500 machine with four 450 MHz UltraSPARC II processors.
The second study compared the Dell PowerEdge 6650 with four 2.0 Ghz Xeon
MP processors and a SunFire V480 with four 900 Mhz UltraSPARC III
processors. In this study the Dell PowerEdge 6650 achieved a performance
advantage of 89% faster while costing $20,000 less than the fastest SunFire V480.
In this study we compared a Dell PowerEdge sever running Microsoft Windows
against the same SunFire V480 data that was used in the previous study. The
Dell PowerEdge 2650 was configured with dual 2.8 Ghz Xeon Processors and 4
GB of memory. A set of eight complex baseball queries was run against the same
baseball statistics database on both servers. The Dell PowerEdge 2650
outperformed the SunFire V480 even though the PowerEdge 2650 had two
processors and the SunFire V480 had four. The PowerEdge 2650 was also 83%
less expensive than the SunFire V480 resulting in a price/performance advantage
of 8.17X.
February 2003
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Dell Enterprise Systems Group
Section
3
The Database Servers
The Hardware
The Sun server was a Sun Fire V480 running the December 2002 version of
Solaris 9.0. The V480 used four 64-bit UltraSPARC-III 900 MHz CPUs. The Dell
2-CPU PowerEdge 2650 ran Microsoft Windows 2000 Server on 2.8 GHz Intel®
Xeon processors with a 512k cache based on the Intel 32-bit architecture. See
Table 1 for details.
Dell PowerEdge 2650
Sun Sun Fire V480
Operating System
Microsoft Winodws 2000
Server
Solaris 9.0 12/02
CPU
2x 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon
4 x 900 MHz
UltraSPARC III
CPU L2 Cache
512 K
8MB
Memory
4 GB
8 GB
Internal Disk
2x 36 GB**
2x 36 GB
NICs
2x 10/100/1000* Mb/s
(both internal)
2x 10/100/1000 Mb/s
(both internal)
Disk Controller
PERC3-Di Dual Channel
FC/AL Controller
Video
On-board
PGX64 PCI Card,
Remote Console
Height
2 Rack Units (2U) or
3.5-inches
5 Rack Units (5U) or 8.75inches
Price as configured
With 3-Year Gold
Support
$9,324
Source
http://www.dell.com
2/10/03
$53,796
http://www.sun.com
2/10/03
*This term indicates compliance with IEEE standard 802.3ab for Gigabit Ethernet, and does not connote
actual operating speed of 1 Gb/sec. For high speed transmission, connection to a Gigabit Ethernet server
andnetwork infrastructure is required.
**For
hard drives, GB means 1 billion bytes; total accessible capacity varies depending on operating
environment.
Table 1: Database Server Comparison: PowerEdge 2650 vs. Sun Fire V480
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Dell Enterprise Systems Group
Since this was primarily a CPU horsepower test, the Sun and the Dell database
servers were configured with only internal storage. The Sun server uses two
fibre channel arbitrated loop drives attached to the onboard fibre channel
controller. The Dell PowerEdge 2650 used two Ultra 160 SCSI drives attached to
the embedded Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller/3 (PERC/3i). Both of the systems
used two 36 GB1 10,000 RPM drives. The drives were configured as single
drives. No RAID level was used. Due to the small size of the database used in
the testing, the disk configuration was not a factor in the testing. The amount of
memory assigned to the Oracle SGA is large enough that most of the test is run
from memory and disk I/O is very low.
The memory amounts configured for the two servers are different with the Dell
2650 having 4 GB and the Sun V480 with 8GB. This is because on the Sun
website the minimum configuration for the Sun V480 with 4 processors is 8 GB.
The total amount of memory allocated to the Oracle SGA for this study is small
enough to fit comfortably into 4 GB so it should not affect performance.
Additionally, any performance advantage would be to Sun’s favor in this case.
February 2003
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Dell Enterprise Systems Group
Section
4
The Database Software
Oracle9i
Oracle9i Release 2 Database was installed using the Oracle Universal Installer on
both Windows 2000 Server and Solaris 9. The same options were selected on
both. Oracle9i installation was completed without creating an initial database.
The Oracle Database Creation Assistant (DBCA) was then used to create a new
database instance using the same settings on the two platforms. The control files,
log files, and data files were placed on different mount points on the internal
disks and the dedicated server option was used. Version 9.2.0.1 of Oracle 9i was
used on both servers.
The database initialization parameters are listed in Table 2. The Sun V480 and
the PowerEdge 2650 were set up the same way to facilitate comparison. These
parameters were used to maximize the performance of Oracle by ensuring that
plenty of memory would be available.
Parameter
Dell
PowerEdge
Sun Sun
Fire
2650
V480
DB_BLOCK_SIZE
8192
8192
DB_CACHE_SIZE
141557760
141557760
LARGE_POOL_SIZE
419430400
419430400
OPEN_CURSORS
300
300
PROCESSES
150
150
SHARED_POOL_SIZE
419430400
419430400
SORT_AREA_SIZE
67108864
67108864
Table 2: Oracle Parameters
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Dell Enterprise Systems Group
The Queries
A set of eight data mining queries was written using Oracle’s SQL for Analysis
functions. The queries are representative of fairly CPU-intensive queries that
baseball analysts would typically make. The database schema and queries is
fully documented in the first Linux paper in this series of studies titled
Migrating Sun-based Oracle Databases to Dell PowerEdge Servers, Part 1 at
http://www.dell.com/downloads/us/pedge/sun_oracle_linux.doc.
Migrating the Database
Migrating the baseball statistics database from the Sun database server to the
Dell server was easily accomplished using Oracle’s export and import
commands. Full details are given in the previous paper titled Migrating Sunbased Oracle Databases to Dell PowerEdge Servers, Part 2 at
http://www.dell.com/downloads/us/pedge/sun_oracle_linux_2.doc.
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Section
5
The Tests
The workload consisted of simultaneously running the eight queries and
measuring the elapsed time with the Oracle timing function. Simultaneous
execution was achieved by starting each query in background mode in a simple
shell script using the SQLPLUS command. The scripts were run directly on the
database servers. Three runs were performed on each system, with the results
averaged.
The results are shown in Table 3:
System
Average
Query Time
(sec)
Performance:
Dell
Advantage
Price as
Configured
(see Table 1)
Price:
Dell
Advantage
Price/|
Performance:
Dell
Advantage
Sun FireV480
with 4
Processors
25.85
1
$53,796
1
1
Dell PowerEdge
2650 with 2
Processors
18.26
1.42X
$9,324
5.77X
8.17X
Table 3: Test Results
The Dell PowerEdge 2650 completed the eight queries in an average time of 18.26
seconds, 42% faster than the Sun FireV480’s 25.85 seconds. The Dell system
tested was 83% less expensive than the Sun, giving Dell an overall
price/performance advantage of 8.17X.
February 2003
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Dell Enterprise Systems Group
Section
6
Conclusions
Running the same queries against a migrated Oracle database, a Dell PowerEdge
2650 equipped with two state-of-the-art Intel processors outran a much more
expensive system from Sun Microsystems, Inc., running four state-of-the-art
SPARC processors. The over 8X better price/performance of the Dell system
illustrates the power and value of Industry Standard Architecture servers
compared against systems running proprietary processor architectures and
operating systems.
THIS WHITE PAPER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, AND MAY CONTAIN TYPOGRAPHICAL
ERRORS AND TECHNICAL INACCURACIES. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND.
Dell and PowerEdge are trademarks of Dell Computer Corporation. Oracle is a registered trademark and Oracle9i is a
trademark of Oracle Corporation. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Red Hat is
a registered trademark of Red Hat Inc. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and
names or their products. Dell disclaims proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.
©Copyright 2003 Dell Computer Corporation. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any manner whatsoever without the
express written permission of Dell Computer Corporation is strictly forbidden. For more information, contact Dell.
Information in this document is subject to change without notice.
February 2003
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Dell Enterprise Systems Group