Extreme Performance, Lower Cost: HP’s New Data Accelerator Solution for Oracle Database

September 20, 2012

We first talked about the HP Data Accelerator Solution for Oracle Database in December 2011 in our blog. Recently, HP revised this solution and whitepaper with an option for high availability using Oracle Data Guard, enabling the creation of a multi-server solution which guards against hardware or database failures by eliminating single points of failure. This is HP’s Recommended Architecture for OLTP with Business Continuity and is based on the HP ProLiant DL980 server configured with Fusion-powered HP IO Accelerators as the keystone of the solution.

The HP Data Accelerator Solution for Oracle Database delivers extreme performance for OLTP database workloads without an extreme price tag, without high operating costs, and without locking you or your IT budget into an all-Oracle server solution. HP starts with the enterprise-class HP ProLiant DL980 server and replaces traditional external mechanical storage with HP IO Accelerators—PCIe-based high-capacity, enterprise-quality flash-memory modules. Using IO Accelerators as a new in-server storage memory tier moves terabytes of process-critical data closer to the server processor to dramatically improve performance. You can accomplish this performance boost by either offloading the database’s most active data sets or hosting the entire database on the IO Accelerators, which have microsecond data access latencies—orders of magnitude lower latency than traditional storage. The result is a database solution which can deliver more than four times the transaction throughput of a competitive Oracle Exadata solution at half the acquisition cost and one-quarter the operational cost, according to the whitepaper.

Note that all data reported in this paper is based on HP’s testing performed with Gen1 IO Accelerators and completed prior to the availability of HP’s current, Gen2 IO Accelerators, which provide roughly double the capacity and performance. So while this solution with Gen1 IO Accelerators does offer compelling advantages, use of the Gen2 IO Accelerators in this solution can deliver significantly higher transaction throughput, better cost economics and other benefits.

By deploying IO Accelerators in the server, the solution configuration is very compact – it requires 70% less datacenter space than comparable traditional server configurations. It’s also substantially simpler and more open than other solutions, including the rigid and inflexible Exadata. HP built this solution, with its capacity for multi-terabyte databases, from the ground up for OLTP workloads, rather than re-treading a data warehouse design. With IO Accelerators, the maximum capacity for the HP DL980 server is 25.2 terabytes, (six 2.4TB and nine 1.2TB IO Accelerators).

Get the full HP Whitepaper to learn more about this new HP Data Accelerator Solution for Oracle Database.

For more information about what fusion-io can do for your business applications please contact C24 at http://www.c24.co.uk

 

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Scale Up Your Performance Density with HP IO Accelerators and ioTurbine Software

August 8, 2012

As an update to a previous posting, HP has just published a whitepaper highlighting dramatic TPS performance and VM density using HP IO Accelerators and Fusion’s ioTurbine caching software with virtualized HP DL980 servers.

Benchmark testing demonstrated a 2.8x increase in performance achieved by adding just two 1.28TB IO Accelerators and ioTurbine software to a pair of HP ProLiant DL980 servers running Microsoft Windows 2008 and VMware ESX 4.1, connecting with HP P4800 storage. The configuration supports an aggregated 7120 transactions-per-second (TPS) across 16 VMs running SQL workloads, in parallel. This result compares to 2521 TPS for the same baseline but uncached configuration.

The testing illustrates that this solution not only adds scale to the HP DL980 server but also dramatically increases VM densities to support almost any application, regardless of workload, in a virtual server environment. Having more and larger size VMs makes more efficient use of infrastructure, lowers costs and provides the opportunity to run databases in a virtualized environment, something that was previously not possible or cost prohibitive, at least until now. The solution is an ideal VMware consolidation platform and preserves VMware vMotion and high availability capabilities, important customer requirements.

Of course, this same solution approach can also be attractive for customers interested in using HP IO Accelerators and ioTurbine with other HP servers such as the HP DL580, HP DL380 and the BL460 for bladed environments.

Note also that testing was accomplished with HP’s Gen1 IO Accelerators, so performance results would be expected to be even better using HP’s recently announced ioDrive2 IO Accelerators.

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1.9M row insertions​/sec — HP IO Accelerato​rs, HP ProLiant Gen8 servers & Microsoft SQL Server 2012

June 7, 2012

In terms of passenger throughput, Shinjuku Station in Japan is considered the world’s busiest train station. Connecting rail traffic between central Tokyo and its western suburbs, Shinjuku recorded an average 3.64 million passengers per day in 2007. Now imagine upping that to 10 million per day without adding any new trains and the associated cost. That’s sort of what it’s like to reach 1.9 million row insertions per second in a database table using the new HP ioDrive2 IO Accelerators configured within HP ProLiant Gen8 servers.

If you work with databases, you know that 1.9 million row insertions per second is much more than a lot. We knew that the new generation of HP IO Accelerators, released on May 14th together with the next wave of HP ProLiant Gen8 servers, would provide our customers with a tremendous application performance boost. And recent testing in a Microsoft SQL Server 2012 environment made us virtually giddy.

HP IO Accelerators place data close to the server CPU, dramatically improving application performance by bypassing traditional storage controllers and unlocking trapped compute cycles. Based on ioMemory technology from Fusion-io, they operate as a new storage memory tier within the server.  These devices install on the PCIe bus within your rack, tower, or blade server to help eliminate I/O bottlenecks, performance limitations, latency problems, and database blocking.  For database applications such as Microsoft SQL 2012, you can accomplish this by (1) hosting the entire database in the server (and mirror with a second server if you need high availability), or by (2) using HP IO Accelerators as a high performance read cache for frequently accessed files (such as log files), with the balance of the dataset hosted by external storage.

Three Microsoft SQL Server 2012 database transaction log stress tests were conducted over the past seven months with the 2nd generation HP IO Accelerators. Earlier this month, we created a Microsoft SQL Server environment using a single HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 server configured with two of the new 1.2 TB HP ioDrive2 IO Accelerators. Comparing this testing  with results from the same test operations performed with two other configurations, tested in November 2011 and March 2012, we saw a huge lift in performance.  The November test used four ioDrive2 devices with a single 4-socket server.  The March test was conducted live at SQLBits in London using three ioDrive2 devices with a single HP DL380 G7 server. This test was structured in particular to maximize use of the transaction log, and what we found was stunning:  The environment with the HP DL380p Gen8 server and two HP ioDrive2 IO Accelerators easily sustained over 900 MB/s of log file access – 72% higher performance than the November 2011 tests and 20% more than the March 2012 tests.  And this environment provided 1.9 million row insertions per second – representing 50% more bandwidth than the November 2011 tests and 20% more than the March 2012 tests.  And, this was accomplished by using only two HP ioDrive2 IO Accelerators within a single HP DL380p Gen8 server.  Better performance with fewer cards – that’s a crowd pleaser!

Dynamic workload acceleration is a huge part of the Gen8 story. By pairing HP IO Accelerators with HP ProLiant Gen8 servers and HP Insight Control management software, you have an ideal platform for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 – as well as other databases – to accelerate performance, improve response times, and boost efficiency.

For more information please contact www.c24.co.uk

 

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10x applicatio​n performanc​e boost with next gen HP IO Accelerato​rs for HP ProLiant Gen8 servers

May 17, 2012

by sharicravens Monday – last edited Monday

Guest blog by Thomas Brooks, HP ISS Options

Worldwide Product Marketing Manager, Solid State Products

In a perfect world my flights would always be on time, drivers would always remember to signal, and people would respond to my texts immediately.  But the world is far from perfect – especially when it comes to data center infrastructure.

For example, as we all know, Moore’s law dictates that computer technology has an exponential growth rate, doubling roughly every 18 to 24 months. Unfortunately, while there are powerful storage offerings on the market, storage technology – especially rotational media – has not always advanced at the same pace. The result is often a performance gap between the compute power available in today’s powerful multi-core processors and large-footprint memory and storage. While more spindles have led to some throughput improvements, this evolutional discrepancy can cause IO bottlenecks, slow applications, performance limitations, latency problems, and database blocking.

You can try and solve the problem by adding drives, memory, or even more servers. Application optimization is also a possibility if you can hire enough people. In fact, many processors are being under-utilized by as much as 50% due to IO bottlenecks. The challenge is that these solutions may require more operational or capital expenditures than you’re prepared to offer up.

There’s a simpler solution. HP IO Accelerators, powered by Fusion-io, can accelerate application performance more than 10x. We’ve even seen customers reach higher performance boosts — occasionally up to 30x. How? These server-based memory cards sit directly on the PCIe bus within your rack, tower, or blade server. HP IO Accelerators accelerate applications by bypassing traditional storage controllers and unlocking trapped compute cycles.  They’re made from solid state NAND FLASH, not simply a NAND-based device that emulates a hard disk like a Solid State Drive (SSD). And, because they sit inside the server, they’re not being accessed in the storage array via much slower links.

Sound too good to be true? HP IO Accelerators have been used by innovative companies such as Wine.com and Answers.com to dramatically enhance application performance – a 10x increase for Answers.com – and even consolidate their database tier. (Check out the Wine.com  story on the Reality Check: Server Insights blogs to learn more.)

This week the next generation of HP IO Accelerators – with even greater performance enhancements – was launched as part of the second wave of HP ProLiant Gen8 innovations. In February, HP announced the ProLiant Gen8 server line. This revolutionary new generation represents the world’s most self-sufficient servers, with built-in intelligence to give our customers the highest quality experience over the server’s entire lifecycle. (Read more information on the new HP ProLiant rack, tower, and blade servers released today.)

Dynamic workload acceleration is a huge part of the Gen8 story, and the new HP IO Accelerator ioDrive2 and ioDrive2 Duo can provide significant gains over the first generation of IO Accelerators. In fact, they can roughly reduce access latency by half, deliver five times more read IOPS and three times more write IOPS, as well as twice the read bandwidth. That means you now have outsized performance to unlock applications such as:

  • Database Acceleration (SQL, Oracle, MySQL, Sybase, etc.)
  • Virtualization (VMware, Hyper V, etc.)
  • Tier 1 Apps: CRM, ERP, Exchange, SharePoint, etc.
  • Web / Cloud / SAAS
  • Data Warehousing
  • Entertainment / Multimedia / Imaging
  • Finance / Trading

HP IO Accelerators are available now for HP ProLiant Gen8 servers in a variety of options ranging in capacity from 365GB to 2410GB, for PCI-Express 2.0 x4 and PCI-Express 2.0 x8 bus interfaces. List prices range from $6,499 to $38,699.

You can find more information about the next generation of HP IO Accelerators here.

And, finally, if you haven’t yet registered for HP Discover do it today. We’ll be showing a live demo of HP IO Accelerators at work with HP ProLiant Gen8 servers. There’s no better place to see and prepare for the future of IT – not to mention network with your peers and see live performances by Grammy-winning artists.

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