Specifications

A Principled Technologies test report 5
The datacenter in a box performance test: Comparing Dell and HP
blade solutions
Dell EqualLogic PS-M4110 solution
Total number of major steps: 8
Total amount of time: 16 min, 46.7 sec
HP StorageWorks D2200sb + VSA solution
Total number of major steps: 18
Total amount of time: 1 hour, 30 min, 58.2 sec
12. Set the second VSA VM IP address/networking.
Failover Manager (FOM)
13. Deploy the FOM on an appropriate host server to
establish quorum between the two nodes.
HP Centralized Management Console
14. Log into the LeftHand Centralized Management
Console on the management system and add the
VSA nodes and FOM to the CMC.
15. Use the console to create a new management
group and cluster using the two VSA nodes and
FOM, and assign a virtual group IP.
16. Create the volumes, add the application servers,
and assign the relevant volumes to the application
servers.
Install HP multipathing software
17. Install HP DSM for MPIO software on each
application blade.
iSCSI configuration on application blades and storage
18. Configure iSCSI initiator on each application blade
in Windows.
Figure 4. Summary of steps required to configure the two solutions.
GREATER PERFORMANCE AND MORE USERS SUPPORTED
We used three different benchmarks to assess database, mail, and collaboration
performance: DVD Store version 2.1, Microsoft Load Generator 2010, and WSSDW
1.0.0.0 Beta respectively. To determine the maximum number of users supported by
each configuration in our tests, we used read latency for each storage solution as a
threshold to determine the supported users (and subsequently, the workload) for each
configuration. We simulated the same number of SharePoint and Exchange users, and
scaled the SQL Server workload while maintaining an acceptable read latency threshold
for each configuration.
As Figure 5 shows, the Dell solution supported more users than the HP solution
on all three workloads: 50.0 percent more Exchange mailboxes, 45.1 percent more SQL
Server users, and 49.3 percent more SharePoint users. The Dell datacenter in a box also
delivered 40.2 percent more total IOPS.