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| Version | User | Scope of changes |
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| Dec 12 2007, 4:30 PM EST (current) | todd_muirhead | 2 words added, 2 words deleted |
| Jul 5 2007, 12:38 PM EDT | wetpaint |
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This page is the wiki home for a whitepaper that compares the price/performance of the Dell PowerEdge 2950 and HP Proliant DL585 G2 for virtualization. The complete paper with all details is linked and a summary / highlights of the paper are included directly on this page.
Discussion and questions about the paper can be written in the commentsdiscussion areasection at the bottom of this page.
Advantages of Dell PowerEdge 2950 2-Socket Servers over HP Proliant DL 585 G2 4-Socket Servers for Virtualization 
All the tables on this page are taken directly from the whitepaper. Please see the complete paper for full details.
This table from the paper shows the configuration and pricing of the two servers used in the testing:
This table from the paper shows the performance results of the two servers on three different virtualization workloads:
The next table shows how the performance results and associated costs would scale and as additional Dell 2-socket or HP 4-socket servers were added to the server farm:
Performance per watt:
Price/Performance:
Please post comments and questions about this paper just below in the comments section - Thanks.
Discussion and questions about the paper can be written in the commentsdiscussion areasection at the bottom of this page.
Advantages of Dell PowerEdge 2950 2-Socket Servers over HP Proliant DL 585 G2 4-Socket Servers for Virtualization Whitepaper Executive Summary
In order to illustrate the advantages of using two-socket servers for virtualization over four-socket servers, a test was conducted with VMware Infrastructure 3 on the Dell PowerEdge 2950 and the HP ProLiant DL585 G2. The results of these tests show that three PowerEdge 2950 two-socket servers can provide up to 44% more performance, 57% more performance per watt and a 95% average advantage in price / performance than two HP ProLiant DL585 G2 four-socket servers.Whitepaper Highlights
All the tables on this page are taken directly from the whitepaper. Please see the complete paper for full details.
This table from the paper shows the configuration and pricing of the two servers used in the testing:
| HP ProLiant DL585 G2 | PowerEdge 2950 servers | |
| Virtualization software | VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 | VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 |
| Processor | Four dual-core AMD Opteron 2.8 GHz 8220SE processors with 1 MB L2 caches (per core) | Two quad-core Intel Xeon X5355 processors at 2.66 GHz with 8MB cache (shared) |
| HyperTransport / Frontside bus | 1 GHz | 1,333 MHz |
| Memory | 32 GB (16x 667 MHz PC2-5300 DDR2 2GB DIMMs) | 16 GB (8x 667 MHz fully buffered 2GB DIMMs) |
| Internal disks | Two Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) 73 GB, 15,000 rpm drives | Two Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) 146 GB, 15,000 rpm drives |
| Network interface card (NIC) | Two 10/100/1,000 Mbps internal NICs | Two 10/100/1,000 Mbps internal NICs |
| Disk controller | Smart Array P400 | PERC 5/i |
| Hardware Cost | $28,088 | $13,498 |
| VMware Licensing Cost | $13,914 | $7,188 |
| Source | http://www.hp.com 12/18/2006 | http://www.dell.com 12/18/2006 |
This table from the paper shows the performance results of the two servers on three different virtualization workloads:
| HP ProLiant DL585 G2 | PowerEdge 2950 | |||||
| Workload | Number of VMs | Performance | Power Consumption (W) | Number of VMs | Performance | Power Consumption (W) |
| Microsoft SQL Server 2005 | 36 | 31,729 OPM | 719 | 32 | 29,346 OPM | 449 |
| SUSE LAMP | 46 | 10,093 OPM | 743 | 44 | 9,852 OPM | 447 |
| NetBench | 52 | 1,028 Mb/sec | 735 | 42 | 1,001 Mb/sec | 444 |
The next table shows how the performance results and associated costs would scale and as additional Dell 2-socket or HP 4-socket servers were added to the server farm:
| 2 HP ProLiant DL585 G2s | 3 PowerEdge 2950s | Dell Advantage | |
| Total Number of Sockets | 8 | 6 | |
| SQL Server 2005 | 72 VMs / 63,458 OPM | 96 VMs / 88,038 OPM | 33% / 39% |
| SUSE LAMP | 92 VMs / 20,186 OPM | 132 VMs / 29,556 OPM | 44% / 46% |
| NetBench | 104 VMs / 2056 Mb/s | 126 VMs / 3003 Mb/s | 22% / 46% |
| Averaged Cumulative Power Consumption on SQL/SUSE/ Netbench (W) | 1465 | 1340 | 9% |
| Hardware Cost | $56,176 | $40,494 | 39% |
| ESX Licensing | $27,828 | $21,564 | 29% |
| Total Cost | $84,004 | $62,058 | 35% |
Performance per watt:
| HP ProLiant DL585 G2 | PowerEdge 2950 | Dell Advantage | |
| SQL Server 2005 | 44.1 OPM / watt | 65.4 OPM / watt | 48% |
| SUSE LAMP | 13.6 OPM / watt | 22.0 OPM / watt | 62% |
| NetBench | 1.4 Mb/s / watt | 2.3Mb/s / watt | 61% |
| 57 % Average |
Price/Performance:
| 2 HP ProLiant DL585 G2s | 3 PowerEdge 2950s | Dell Advantage | |
| SQL Server 2005 | $1.32 / OPM | $ .70 / OPM | 88 % |
| SUSE LAMP | $4.16 / OPM | $2.09 / OPM | 98 % |
| NetBench | $40.86 / Mb/s | $20.67 / Mb/s | 98 % |
| 95 % Average |
Please post comments and questions about this paper just below in the comments section - Thanks.
