System News for Sun Users

World Record x86 TPC-C Result

2012-01-23T17:00:00+01:00

Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 M2 server equipped with eight 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon Processor E7-8870 chips and 4TB RAM and 160 CPU threads obtained a result of 4,803,718 tpmC on the TPC-C benchmark with a price performance of $0.98/tpmC using the Oracle Linux OS with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 with partitioning. This result is 2.5x times better performance than the next 8-processor result, an IBM System p 570 equipped with POWER6 processors, and 3.1x times better price/performance than the 8-processor 4.7GHz POWER6 IBM System p 570.

Oracle Sun Fire X4800 M2 Sets x86 World Record on TPC-C Benchmark

2012-01-17T17:00:00+01:00

Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 M2, running Oracle Database 11g Release 2, achieved an x86 record of 4,803,718 transactions per minute (tpmC) with a price/performance of $.98/tpmC. The X4800 equipped with eight Intel Xeon E7-8870 processors and 4 Terabytes (TB) of Samsung's Green DDR3 memory was nearly 3x faster than IBM's eight-processor result for a p570 and nearly 60 percent faster than the best DB2 result on IBM's x86 server. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 delivered nearly 3x better price per TPC-C transaction than a 64-processor HP Superdome server and over 2.65x faster than HP's best Proliant DL580 G7 score.

Record Performance Result for a Two Processor Intel-Based System with TPC-C Benchmark

2011-12-14T17:00:00+01:00

Oracle reports that its Oracle Database 11g Standard Edition One and Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2, running on a Cisco UCS C250 M2 Extended-Memory Rack-Mount Server with two Intel Xeon X5690 3.46 GHz processors, achieved 1,053,100 transactions per minute (tpmC) with a price/performance of $0.58/tpmC.com/us/corporate/press/1425234. This is in contrast to the nearly 11 percent lower per tpmC of the nearest competition -- the HP ProLiant DL380 G7 -- on a configuration utilizing identical Intel processors and memory capacity.

Investigation Results in 2000x Performance Win

2011-12-09T17:00:00+01:00

"Picking a non-C locale can hurt performance - something that has been known for many years. In this case, a GNU grep(1) bug inflated the translation overhead to slow down performance by a huge degree: up to 2000x. In short: leave LANG=C; aim DTrace at everything - even grep(1)." This is the recommendation Brendan Gregg arrives at in his post "2000x performance win." He recounts his experience in testing hypotheses framed to discover performance degradation in a production SmartOS cloud environment and the code samples involved with arriving at the conclusion above.

SPARC T4-4 Beats 8-CPU IBM POWER7

2011-12-05T17:00:00+01:00

The four-processors SPARC T4-4 Server bested the eight-processor per-core results of both IBM's Power7 and HP's ProLiant DL980 G7, achieving 205,792 QphH@3000GB with price/performance of $4.10/QphH@3000GB, 7% faster than the IBM Power 780 server with POWER7 processors (total of 32 cores) on the TPC-H @3000GB benchmark and 27% faster than the HP ProLiant DL980 G7 server with x86 processors. The SPARC T4-4 Server also outperformed its IBM and HP rivals in data loading and refresh function while achieving a peak IO rate from the Oracle database of 17 GB/sec and showing linear scaling from TPC-H @1000GB to TPC-H @3000GB.

SPARC T4-4 Server Outperforms HP and IBM for 12th World Record

2011-12-01T17:00:00+01:00

In a recent press release Oracle announced a new performance record for its SPARC T4-4 server: a best-in-class TPC-H benchmark result at the three TB scale factor. Oracle Database 11g Release 2 and Oracle Solaris 11, running on a SPARC T4-4 server with four SPARC T4 3 GHz processors, achieved a stellar result of 205,792 QphH@3000GB with a price of $4.10/QphH@3000GB, over two times better performance per processor with 36 percent lower price per query (reported as $/QphH@3000GB) than IBM's most recent result by an eight processor Power 780 server running Sybase.

Recent Benchmarks Using Oracle Solaris 11

2011-11-16T17:00:00+01:00

Oracle's BestPerf site lists a series of links to recent benchmarks using Oracle Solaris 11. Among them are the following:

SPARC T4-2 Delivers World Record SPECjvm2008 Result with Oracle Solaris 11
SPARC T4-4 Produces World Record Oracle OLAP Capacity
SPARC T4-2 Server Beats Intel (Westmere AES-NI) on ZFS Encryption Tests
SPARC T4 Processor Beats Intel (Westmere AES-NI) on AES Encryption Tests
SPARC T4 Processor Outperforms IBM POWER7 and Intel (Westmere AES-NI) on OpenSSL AES Encryption Test
SPARC T4-1 Server Outperforms Intel (Westmere AES-NI) on IPsec Encryption Tests

See the BestPerf site for details.

New World Record for SPARC T4-2 on SPECjvm2008 Result with Oracle Solaris 11

2011-11-14T17:00:00+01:00

The SPARC T4-2 Server equipped with two SPARC T4 processors running at 2.85 GigaHertz (GHz) and using Oracle Solaris 11 and Oracle JDK 7 Update 2 set a world record of 454.25 SPECjvm2008 Peak ops/m on the SPECjvm2008 benchmark, a benchmark suite for measuring the performance of a Java Runtime Environment (JRE). This level of performance is 41% better than the mark set by the SPARC T3-2 Server. The hardware cryptography acceleration built into the SPARC T4-2 was found to greatly increase performance on subtests using AES and RSA encryption ciphers.

SPARC T4 Servers Set World Record on PeopleSoft HRMS 9.1

2011-10-11T16:00:00+01:00

Using two SPARC T4-4 servers to run the application and database tiers and one SPARC T4-2 server to run the webserver tier, Oracle demonstrated world record performance of 15,000 concurrent users running the PeopleSoft HRMS Self-Service 9.1 benchmark on Oracle Solaris 10. This combination of the SPARC T4 servers running the PeopleSoft HRMS 9.1 benchmark supports 3.8x more online users with faster response time compared to the best published result from IBM on the previous PeopleSoft HRMS 8.9 benchmark. The average CPU utilization on the SPARC T4-4 server in the application tier handling 15,000 users was less than 50%, which leaves significant room for application growth. The application tier was configured with two PeopleSoft application server instances on the SPARC T4-4 server hosted in two separate Oracle Solaris Containers to demonstrate consolidation of multiple application, ease of administration, and load balancing.

SPARC T4 Processor Beats Intel (Westmere AES-NI) on AES Encryption Tests

2011-10-10T16:00:00+01:00

The Oracle SPARC T4 processor demonstrated its superior cryptographic capabilities against Intel (Westmere AES-NI) on AES Encryption tests that measure cryptographic capabilities in terms of general low-level encryption, in-memory and on-chip using various ciphers, including AES-128-CFB, AES-192-CFB, AES-256-CFB, AES-128-CBC, AES-192-CBC, and AES-256-CBC. The benchmark results were obtained using tests created by Oracle that use various application interfaces to perform the various ciphers. They were run using optimized libraries for each platform to obtain the best possible performance.

Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Sets New Dual-Node Record on SPECjEnterprise2010 Benchmark

2011-10-05T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle has released details on the record breaking performance of Oracle WebLogic Server 11g together with Oracle Linux and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 running on a Cisco Unified Computing System B440 M2 server each with four, ten-core Intel Xeon E7-4870 2.4 GHz processors with Intel Turbo Boost Technology set a world record dual-node result with the SPECjEnterprise2010 industry standard benchmark.Oracle WebLogic Server 11g delivered over 50 percent more performance than IBM WebSphere's best eight processor SPECjEnterprise2010 result running IBM DB2 9.7 on a POWER7 server.

SPARC T4-2 Servers Set World Record on JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Day in the Life Benchmark

2011-10-05T16:00:00+01:00

An Oracle SPARC T4-2 server running as the application tier and another SPARC T4-2 server running as the database tier (both using Oracle Solaris 10) set a world record result on Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0.2 application Day in the Life (DIL) benchmark concurrently with a batch workload, turning in a better response time than the IBM Power 750 system, which only ran the online component of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0.1 Day in the Life test.

Oracle Database Clusters Running on Sun Fire X4800 M2 Servers with Oracle Solaris Set New Record

2011-10-04T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 and Oracle Real Application Clusters running on Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 M2 servers running on Sun Fire X4800 M2 servers with Oracle Solaris set a new overall world-record result on the SAP Sales and Distribution-Parallel (SD-Parallel) standard application benchmark running the SAP enhancement package 4 for the SAP ERP 6.0 application. The new world-record result of 180,000 SAP SD-Parallel benchmark users far exceeds the performance of any IBM result ever published with the SAP SD standard application benchmark.

SPARC T4 Servers Deliver Record-Breaking Performance Results

2011-09-26T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle's SPARC T4 processor and the servers it powers swept away the competition in a number of record breaking performances involving several benchmarks ranging from the SPECjEnterprise2010 to Oracle PeopleSoft HRMS Self-Service 9.1 (a complex OLTP benchmark) to Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Oracle SiebelLoyalty Management and testing on a number of Oracle communications applications. In every case the competition, whether IBM or HP, wilted before the white-hot assault of the SPARC T4.

Six Sun Fire X4800 M2 Servers Combine for World Record on SAP SD Parallel Benchmark

2011-09-21T16:00:00+01:00

Six of Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 M2 servers, Oracle Solaris 10 and Oracle Database 11g Real Application Clusters (RAC) software delivered an SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (Unicode) Sales and Distribution - Parallel (SD Parallel) Benchmark result of 134,080 users as of 09/12/2011. This was 6% more performance compared to the IBM Power 795 server SD two-tier result of 126,063 users.

Oracle Sun Fire X4800 M2 Server Sets World-Record Result Against IBM Power 795

2011-09-13T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle has announced that its Oracle Database 11g Release 2 and Oracle Real Application Clusters running on a six-node cluster of Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 M2 servers, each equipped with eight Intel Xeon E7-8870-processors and Oracle Solaris, set a record of 134,080 users on the two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution-Parallel benchmark, well above the 126,063 user mark attained by an IBM Power 795 Server with DB2 database. This superior level of performance demonstrates the power and value of Oracle's integrated systems approach to its portfolio.

New World Record for Oracle Database 11g on SAP Assemble-to-Order (ATO) Standard Application Benchmark

2011-09-05T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle announced that Oracle Database 11g Release 2 running on Oracle's SPARC Enterprise M9000 Server with 64 SPARC64 VII+ 3.0 GHz quad-core processors has set a new world record on the SAP Assemble-to-Order (ATO) standard application benchmark, delivering a record result of 206,360 fully business processed assembly orders per hour. In running this benchmark both the application tier and the database tier were deployed on a single SPARC Enterprise M9000 server, demonstrating its capabilities for workload consolidation.

Sun Blade X6270 M2 with Oracle WebLogic Sets World Record on 2-Processor SPECjEnterprise 2010 Benchmark

2011-08-15T16:00:00+01:00

The Sun Blade X6270 M2 two-chip server modules used Oracle WebLogic Server 11g Release 1 (10.3.5) application, Java SE 6 Update 26, and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 to set a world record performance mark against both the IBM System HS22 Server and the IBM Power 730 Express server. The X6270's results were superior to the HS22 and the 730 by 47% and 33%, respectively. The Sun Blade X6270 M2 application server was equipped with 2 x 3.46 GHz Intel Xeon X5690 chips, 48 Gigabytes (GB) of memory, and 4 x 10 GbE NIC.

Oracle Solaris Performance Analysis Cheat Sheet

2011-07-14T16:00:00+01:00

In his blog Constantin Gonzalez shares his personal cheat sheet for Oracle Solaris Performance Analysis, including some guidance on how to systematically catch that elusive bottleneck, which begins with the need to define the particular performance issue under consideration. Gonzalez sees this process in terms of finding all the bottlenecks in the system. He suggests looking for the bottlenecks in a definite series of places: CPU, RAM, Disk, and network. Gonzalez promises further details on what to expect to find in each of these locations in a forthcoming blog.

SPARC T3-1 Record Results Running JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Day in the Life Benchmark

2011-07-07T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle has set new benchmark records with the SPARC T3-1 Server running JD Edwards Enterprise One Day in the Life. Using an Oracle SPARC T3-1 server for the application tier and Oracle's SPARC Enterprise M3000 server for the database tier, a world record result was produced running the Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications Day in the Life benchmark run concurrently with a batch workload. Performance was 25% better than an IBM Power 750 POWER7 server that was not running a batch component. Space/performance was also 25% better for the Oracle product than for the POWER7 as measured by the online component. The SPARC T3-1 server based result is 5x faster than the x86-based IBM x3650 M2 server system when executing the online component of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0.1 Day in the Life benchmark. The IBM result did not include a batch component. The SPARC T3-1 server based result has 2.5x better space/performance than the x86-based IBM x3650 M2 server as measured by the online component. Other aspects of the benchmark result can be found at the link above.

Merck & Co Achieves Fivefold Performance Increase, Projects $8 Million Benefit

2011-06-15T16:00:00+01:00

Migration to Oracle Exadata Database Machine to power its CambridgeSoft electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) system has brought huge benefits to Merck & Company whose 4,000+ user network -- perhaps the world's largest deployed pharmaceutical ELN system -- is expected to pay dividends in the neighborhood fo $8 million. Exadata Database Machine is easily capable of meeting the projections that indicate rapid growth in both number of users and volume of data on Merck's ELN network. The migration was completed in a single weekend in late 2010 using Oracle GoldenGate data-synching technology to make the switch, as opposed to taking weeks for migration using conventional software. No business downtime was necessary. According to a Merck spokesperson, "We were literally able to flip the switch to launch the new platform. Scientists left Friday afternoon and returned Monday morning to a new system that was up and running with all the old data. There was no negative impact to the scientists.' Moreover, Oracle's release adds, Merck wasn't required to make any changes to the ELN application itself to run on Oracle Exadata.

SPARC Enterprise M5000 Delivers First PeopleSoft Payroll 9.1 Benchmark

2011-06-14T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle reports that its SPARC Enterprise M5000 server configured with eight 2.66 GHz SPARC64 VII+ processors together with Oracle's Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array storage achieved world record performance on the Unicode version of Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Payroll (N.A) 9.1 with extra large volume model benchmark using Oracle Database 11g Release 2 running on Oracle Solaris 10. In setting this record, the SPARC Enterprise M5000 server processed payroll payments for the 500K employees PeopleSoft Payroll 9.1 (Unicode) benchmark in 46.76 minutes compared to a previous result of 50.11 minutes for the PeopleSoft Payroll 9.0 (non-Unicode) benchmark configured with 2.53 GHz SPARC64 VII processors resulting in 7% better performance, according to the Oracle release. The SPARC Enterprise M5000 server completed the end-to-end run in 66.28 mins, 11% faster than earlier published result of 73.88 mins with Payroll 9.0 configured with 2.53 GHz SPARC64 VII processors.

SPARC Enterprise M8000 Outdoes IBM POWER7 on TPC-H@1TB Benchmark

2011-06-08T16:00:00+01:00

Among the recent records set by Oracle technology is the one reported in SPARC Enterprise M8000 with Oracle 11g Beats IBM POWER7 on TPC-H @1000GB Benchmark. In this instance an Oracle SPARC Enterprise M8000 server configured with SPARC64 VII+ processors, Oracle's Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array storage, Oracle Solaris, and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 achieved a TPC-H performance result of 209,533 QphH@1000GB with price/performance of $10.13/QphH@1000GB, surpassing the performance of the IBM POWER7 server on the 1 TB TPC-H decision support benchmark.

The benchmark revealed that the SPARC Enterprise M8000 server delivers higher performance than the IBM Power 780 even though the SPARC VII+ processor-core is 1.6x slower than the POWER7 processor-core. The SPARC Enterprise M8000 server was found to be 27% faster than the IBM Power 780. IBM's reputed single-thread performance leadership did not provide benefit for throughput in this test.

Oracle Benchmarks Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity on 100 Million Policy Database

2011-05-26T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle has announced superior performance in a recently completed benchmark test of Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity Version 9.3 running on Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 and Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 application servers.

The benchmark included 100 million policies and more than 2,000 concurrent users. According to the Oracle press release, the findings show that the technology combination can enable even the largest Tier One insurers to achieve the scalability, system availability and performance needed to meet increasingly rigorous requirements for better customer service and reduced risk.

The benchmark performance test included a data set containing five years of financial history, totaling nearly 30 terabytes of data.

Oracle Performance Testing on Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-8

2011-05-12T16:00:00+01:00

"Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management 7.4 and Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-8" is a 20-page white paper (downloadable as a pdf) that reports on the testing performed using a 100-million-subscriber workload the results of which demonstrate Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management's ability to handle the most stringent workload requirements of Tier 1 service providers while substantially reducing the costs associated with typical deployments, according to Oracle. For example, the performance of complex rating and discounting of over 50,000 operations/sec, clearly prove the ability to process over 2 billion CDRs in a single 12 hour business day. Similarly, the ability to perform complex billing with taxation for over 2,500 subscribers/sec, the equivalent shows it is possible to process a bill run for 100 million subscribers in just over 11 hours.

Oracle Reports Superior Cryptographic Performance with SPARC T-3 vs. Xeon

2011-05-12T16:00:00+01:00

Benchmark testing shows that the SPARC T3 processor running the IPsec AES-256-CCM can operate at near-line speed over a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) network, blogs Joerg Moellenkamp, who goes on to write that these results demonstrate more than 2x the throughput of the latest generation Intel Xeon processor. He adds that, with dedicated hardware support for encryption/decryption for AES and eleven other ciphers, the SPARC T3 processor is 12 times faster than the Intel Xeon processor for in-memory RSA decryption. Oracle's own announcement of these results asserts that, "This outstanding cryptographic throughput performance makes servers equipped with SPARC T3 processors an attractive platform for applications requiring secure network communications."

SPARC T-3, Enterprise M-Series Servers Demonstrate Outstanding Performance

2011-05-11T16:00:00+01:00

Several recent benchmark results demonstrate the viability of Oracle's integrated approach to hardware and software design, making it clear that Oracle solutions run optimally on Sun Oracle hardware. Oracle tested its SPARC T-Series and SPARC Enterprise M-Series servers in performance measures against IBM notably and in one instance delivered results nearly 2.5 times the IBM entry. Among the benchmarks involved were TPC-H@3000GB; JD Edwards EnterpriseOne "Day-in-the-Life" benchmark; and Oracle Communications ASAP. Oracle announced results as well for benchmarking tests using the Avitek medical Records application and on cryptographic performance of the SPARC T3 processor running the IPsec AES-256-CCM cipher. In every instance, Oracle's current line of servers outperformed either the competition or earlier versions of hardware.

Improving Oracle Database Performance by Adding Smart Flash Cache

2011-05-05T16:00:00+01:00

In a paper released on the Oracle Technetwork and written by Roger Bitar, significant improvements in the performance of Oracle database were found when smart flash cache was added to the configuration. Testing was done with the iGEN-OLTP 1.6 benchmark formulated to simulate a lightweight Global Order System. Tests were run both with and without the smart flash cache, each time varying the size of the SGA buffer cache at 10%, 16%, and 20% the size of the database, Bitar reports.

The results demonstrate that an intelligent database that knows how to efficiently take advantage of flash-based storage can experience significant improvements in performance. Specific findings are that, when the SGA buffer cache size in memory is equal to 10% of the total database size, the system can scale to support 43% more users and 29% greater TPM than on a Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000 server without Database Smart Flash Cache technology.

This approach is markedly less costly than increasing the capacity of the SGA buffer cache size.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g: Sterling Tool for Managing Exadata Database Machine

2011-05-03T16:00:00+01:00

The Information Indepth Newsletter for March 2011, "Extreme Performance: Managing Oracle Exadata Database Machine with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g," reports the views of Mughees Minhas, senior director of Oracle Product Management, that Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g can maximize Oracle Exadata performance and manageability at every phase of the lifecycle, including:

Deployment and provisioning
Infrastructure testing
Management and monitoring of multiple elements managed as one
Policy-based management and precautions against configuration drift
Maintenance made essentially automatic with My Oracle Support

Boosting OLTP Performance with Sun Smart Flash Cache

2011-04-26T16:00:00+01:00

A post in the OTN Garage, Oracle's blog for Sys Admins and the developer community, discusses the experiments of Roger Bitar, who has written about Oracle Database Performance Results with Smart Flash Cache on Sun SPARC Enterprise Midrange Server. Bitar coupled the Sun Flash Accelerator F20 PCle Card with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 in an effort that resulted in a 25% increase in number of users and 17.2% more TPM when he ran the GEN-OLTP 1.6 benchmark, an internally developed transaction processing database workload that simulates a lightweight Global Order System.