This page is the wiki home for a whitepaper that compares the price/performance of the Dell PowerEdge 2950 and HP Proliant DL385 G2 using Exchange 2007 as the workload. 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 discussion threads area at the bottom of this page.

Exchange Server 2007 Performance Comparison of the Dell PowerEdge 2950 and HP Proliant DL385 G2 Servers -
While the Dell PowerEdge 2950 and the HP Proliant DL385 G2 are both two-socket x86-based servers, they are based on different processor-to-memory interconnect technologies. This difference can result in very different application performance when cost- and energy-efficient one processor configurations are compared. For example, the Dell TechCenter lab ran tests simulating 4000 email users, and determined that running Exchange Server 2007 on the HP DL385 G2 server can cost up to 21% more than on the Dell PowerEdge 2950.

Whitepaper Highlights

The following diagrams from the whitepaper illustrate how the two systems used in testing differ in terms of processor to memory architecture.

Simple PowerEdge 2950 Memory and Processor Architecture diagram:


Simple Proliant DL385 G2 Memory and Processor Architecture diagram:



The specific configuration of the two servers tested is detailed in the whitepaper.

Here is a screenshot from LoadGen, the new Exchange load tool from Microsoft. LoadGen was used as the load simulation tool for testing in the paper:




The results from testing on both servers with the variations in configuration are reported in a final table which has been copied from the whitepaper and included below. Please see the complete paper for full details:

	PowerEdge 2950	PowerEdge 2950	Proliant DL385 G2	Proliant DL385 G2	Proliant DL385 G2	Proliant DL385 G2
Processors / Cores	2 / 8	1 / 4	2 / 4	1 / 2	1 / 2	1 / 2
RAM	16GB	16GB	16GB	8GB	8GB	8GB
LoadGen Heavy Users	4000	4000	4000	4000	3000	2000
Average CPU Utilization %	11%	12 %	11 %	23 %	21 %	15 %
Average % Longer Latency	Best Performing	3%	8%	109%	36%	7%
Server HW and OS Price (as of 4/20/2007)	$12,955	$11,706	$14,181	$11,030	$11,030	$11,030
Server Cost Per User	$3.24	$2.93	$3.55	$2.76 (Perf Not on Par)	$3.68 (Perf. Not on Par)	$5.51
Table 3 Results of PowerEdge 2950 and DL385 G2 comparison testing with Exchange 2007.