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rinted from Dell Power Solutions, February 2007. Copyright © 2006 Dell Inc. All rights reserve
DELL POWER SOLUTIONS
DELL SCALABLE ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY CENTER SERIES
W
hen decidin
how to implement a virtualized envi
ronment with industr
-standard com
onents such
as Dell PowerEd
e servers and VMware Virtual Infrastruc
ure 3 so
tware, two ke
actors are how man
virtual
machines (VMs) a single server can run and what level o
er
ormance these VMs can provide. Althou
h the answer
depends on many different factors, testing with common
applications and workloads can provide a startin
point
or enterprises planning such an environment
n September and October 2006, Dell en
ineers tested
irtualized environments based on VMware Virtual In
ra
structure 3 on two differently confi
ured PowerEd
e 2950
servers and one previous-
eneration PowerEd
e 2850
server. Using three different workloads, the test team
h
n
m
r
VM
h
h
rv
r
l
h
and the overall system performance, and found that the
PowerEd
e 2950 servers o
ered si
ni
icant
ains in both
egar
s compare
to t
e PowerE
ge 2850. T
ese tests
are intended to provide an example of the scalability and
erformance increases possible when mi
ratin
to a new
enter
rise IT environment
Hardware configuration for test environment
T
e PowerE
ge 2950 is a
ua
-soc
et server t
at sup-
orts Intel Xeon 5000, 5100, and 5300 series
rocessors.
The Dell test team configured one PowerEdge 2950 with
two dual-core Intel Xeon 5160 processors at 3.0 GHz, and
anot
er wit
two
ua
-core Inte
Xeon X5355
rocessors at
.66 GHz. The Intel Xeon 5160 has a 4 MB processor cache
that is shared between the two cores and a 1
333 MHz
rontside bus. The Intel Xeon X5355 is essentially two dual-
core Intel Xeon 5160
rocessors combined, and so has an
MB level 2 (L2) cache (4 MB shared by each set of two
cores
and a 1,333 MHz
rontside bus.
An additional benefit of Intel Xeon 5160 processors is
lower power consumption compared to previous-
eneration
ntel Xeon
rocessors. A
revious stud
ound that ninth-
eneration PowerEd
e servers with Intel Xeon 5100 series
BY T
DD MUIRHEA
Performance Scaling
with Dell PowerEd
e 2950 Servers
n
VMw
r
Virt
l Infr
tr
t
r
To assess virtualization scalability and performance, Dell engineers tested two Dell
™
PowerEdge
™
2950 servers with dual-core Intel
®
Xeon
®
5160 and quad-core Intel Xeon
X5355 processors alongside a previous-generation PowerEdge 2850 server with dual-
core Intel Xeon processors in a virtualized environment based on VMware
®
Virtual
Infrastructure 3. The results show that the PowerEdge 2950 servers can provide
enhanced performance and host more virtual machines than the PowerEdge 2850.
Related Categories:
Dell PowerEdge servers
Dell Scalable Enterprise
Technology Center
Intel
Scalable enterprise
Virtualization
VMware
Visit www.dell.com/powersolutions
for the complete category index.
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