"Sun Fire X2270 MSC/Nastran Vendor_2008 Benchmarks, an article in the Sun Performance and Best Practice series, reports on the results of the I/O intensive MSC/Nastran Vendor_2008 benchmark test suite, which was used to compare the performance on a Sun Fire X2270 server when using SSDs internally instead of HDDs. The effect on performance from increasing memory to augment I/O caching was also examined.

The Sun Fire X2270 server in this test was equipped with Intel QC Xeon X5570 processors (Nehalem). The positive effect of adding memory to increase I/O caching is offset to some degree, the report states, by the reduction in memory frequency with additional DIMMs in the bays of each memory channel on each cpu socket for these Nehalem processors.

Among the findings:

• SSDs can significantly improve Nastran performance especially on runs with larger core counts.

• Additional memory in the server can also increase performance, however in some systems additional memory can decrease memory GHz so this may offset the benefits of increased capacity.

• If SSDs are not used striped disks will often improve performance of I/O -bound MCAE applications.

• To obtain the highest performance it is recommended that SSDs be used and servers be configured with the largest memory possible without decreasing memory GHz. One should always look at the workload characteristics and compare against this benchmark to correctly set expectations.

SSD vs. HDD Performance

The performance of two striped 30GB SSDs was compared to two striped 7200 rpm 500GB SATA drives on a Sun Fire X2270 server. The results showed:

• At the 8-core level (maximum cores for a single node) SSDs were 2.2x faster for the larger xxocmd2 and the smaller xlotdf1 cases.

• For 1-core results SSDs are up to 3% faster.

• On the smaller mdomdf1 test case there was no increase in performance on the 1-, 2-, and 4-cores configurations.

Performance Enhancement with I/O Memory Caching

Performance for Nastran can often be increased by additional memory to provide additional in-core space to cache I/O and thereby reduce the I/O demands. The main memory was doubled from 24GB to 48GB. At the 24GB level one 4GB DIMM was placed in the first bay of each of the 3 CPU memory channels on each of the two CPU sockets on the Sun Fire X2270 platform. This configuration allows a memory frequency of 1333MHz.

At the 48GB level a second 4GB DIMM was placed in the second bay of each of the 3 CPU memory channels on each socket. This reduces the memory frequency to 1066MHz.

Adding Memory With HDDs (SATA)

• The additional server memory increased the performance when running with the slower SATA drives at the higher core levels (e.g. 4- & 8-cores on a single node)

• The larger xxocmd2 case was 42% faster and the smaller xlotdf1 case was 32% faster at the maximum 8-core level on a single system.

• The special I/O intensive getrag case was 8% faster at the 1-core level.

Adding Memory With SDDs

• At the maximum 8-core level (for a single node) the larger xxocmd2 case was 47% faster in overall run time.

• The effects were much smaller at lower core counts and in the tests at the 1-core level most test cases ran from 5% to 14% slower with the slower CPU memory frequency dominating over the added in-core space available for I/O caching vs. direct transfer to SSD.

• Only the special I/O intensive getrag case was an exception running 6% faster at the 1-core level.

Increasing performance with Two Striped (SATA) Drives

The performance of multiple striped drives was also compared to single drive. The study compared two striped internal 7200 rpm 500GB SATA drives to a singe single internal SATA drive.

- On a single node with 8 cores, the largest test xx0cmd2 was 40% faster, a smaller test case xl0tdf1 was 33% faster and even the smallest test case mdomdf1 case was 12% faster.

• On 1-core the added boost in performance with striped disks was from 4% to 13% on the various test cases.

• One 1-core the special I/O-intensive test case getrag was 29% faster.

More Information

Sun Fire X2270 Server

"Unleashing Application Performance with Solid-State Drives and Sun Servers"

A Look at the Costs/Benefits of Switching Out HDDs for SDDs [...read more...]

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