Website: MCS eFMS (Windows 2003 32 bit EE)
Operating System: Windows 2003 R2 – 32 bit
Software: MCS eFMS 9.2
Benchmark software: vApus + realworld “MCS” PHP site
Typical error margin: 1-2%
The modular MCS Enterprise Facility Management Software (MCS eFMS), developed by MCS, is one of the heavier web applications. We have described this application in more detail here. The objective of eFMS is to integrate the management of space usage (buildings), assets and equipment (such as furniture, beamers etc.), cabling infrastructure and others while keeping track of costs. MCS eFMS stores all information in a central Oracle database.
MCS eFMS integrates three key technologies: A web-based frontend that integrates CAD drawings and gets its information from a rather complex, ERP-like Oracle database. Building overview trees of all rooms available and their reservations in a certain building, drilling down using the CAD drawing to get more detail: MCS eFMS is one of the most demanding web applications we have encountered so far. MCS eFMS uses the following software:
- Microsoft IIS 6.0 (Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition R2)
- Php 4.4.0
- FastCGI
-Oracle 9.2
The results are below:
When we profiled the benchmark, we noticed that the php website did not scale past 8 cores. So it is an inaccurate benchmark for any system with more than 8 cores, but it does show what happens in the real world. The results clearly demonstrate the issues we talked about in the introduction of this article: many server applications do not scale well beyond 8 or 16 cores. Remember, just 4 to 5 years ago, 8 core machines were very expensive machines. In less than 5 years we have gone from 2 cores to 12 cores in a server. It is only natural that in many cases software can not use, or simply does not need all that processing power. The six-core Opteron runs at only 60% and is outperformed by its quad-core brother and of course the latest Xeon. Both the Dual Opteron 2435 and Dual Xeon X5570 (HT enabled) run at 50-60% usage. A single 8-thread Xeon X55xx is by far the best choice here.
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duploxxx - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
ESX 4 should add IOMMU to the AMD istanbul platform, not sure how far this is implemented in the beta esx4 builds.Are you using the paravirtualization scsi driver in the new esx4 platform, I would expect bigegr differences between 3.5 and 4 and not just because EPT is included in esx4 together with enhanced HT.
for the rest very good thorough review.
The only thing I always miss in reviews is that although it is good to test the fastest out there, it is now where near the most deployed platform, you rather should look at the 5520-5530 against 2387 - 2431 as the mid range platform that will be deployed in a wide range of systems, this will have a much healthier performance/price/power platform then the top bin. Even the 5570 is not supported in all OEM platforms for the TDP range.
Adul - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
I do not see oracle running on top of windows all that often. It is normally running on some *nix OS. How about running the same benchmark on say RHEL instead?InternetGeek - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
There's actually an odd bug on Oracle's DB that makes it run faster on Windows than on Linux. Search on the internet and you'll find info about it.In the other hand, in my now 9 years in the IT industry I've only come across one Oracle DB running on HP-UX. Everything else (Sybase, MySQL, etc) runs on Windows.
LizVD - Friday, June 5, 2009 - link
Could you provide us with a link for that? I'd like to see if this "bug" corresponds with the behaviour we're seeing on our tests.Nighteye2 - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
You give a good description of how it works and how it has so much benefit, but then you benchmark only dual-socket servers?It would be fairer to also test and compare octo-socket servers - to see the real impact of that HT assist feature.
phoenix79 - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
Completely agreed (I was typing up a comment about this too when yours popped up)I'd love to see some 4-way VMWare scores
ltcommanderdata - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
Yes. Nehalem is in a great position in the DP market, but isn't yet available in MP. It'd be great to see six-core Dunnington and six-core Istanbul go head to head. Conveniently their highest models have similar clock speeds at 2.66GHz and 2.6GHz respectively although Dunnington would be a lot more power hungry and although I don't remember their prices, probably more expensive too.JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
Dunnington vs Istanbul coming up ... But we are going to take some time to address the shortcomings of this "deadline" article such as better power consumption readings.solori - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
"Notice that HT-assist is a performance killer in 2P configurations: you remove two times 1 MB of L3-cache, which is a bad idea with 8 VM’s hitting your two CPUs."BIOS guidance suggests that HT Assist be disabled by default on 2P systems, and enabled only for specialized workloads. So that begs the question: Were vAPUS tests performed with or without HT Assist in the 2P configuration? It was not clear.
I assume AMD-V and RVI were enabled for ALL workloads in ESX 3.5 and 4.0 (forced for 32-bit workloads.) Is this accurate? Based on the number of ESX 3.5 installations out there, this probably should be clearly stated...
I do want to take issue with your memory sizing and estimates on vCPU loading. Let me put it this way: while Nehalem-EP has better memory bandwidth and SMT threads, Opteron has access to abundant memory. Therefore, it does not make sense - for example - to be OK with enabling SMT but then constrain the benchmark to 24GB due to a Xeon memory limitation.
I would urge you to look at 48GB configurations on Xeon and Istanbul for your comparison systems. By the way, in consolidation numbers, this makes a significant reduction in $/VM with only a minor increase in per-system CAPEX.
Another interesting issue you touched on is tuning and load balance. Great job here. These are "black magic" issues that - as you noted - can have serious effects on virtualization performance (ok, scheduling efficiency.) Knowing your platform's balance point(s) is critical to performance sensitive apps but not so critical for light-load virtualization (i.e. not performance sensitive.)
It sounds like your learning - through experimentation with vAPUS - that virtualization testing does not predict similar results from "similarly configured machines" where performance testing is concerned. In fact, the "right balance" of VM's, memory and vCPU/CPU loading for one system may be on the wrong side of the inflection point for another.
All and all, a very good article.
JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
"this probably should be clearly stated... "Good suggestion. I adapted the article. RVI and EPT are always on if possible (so also 32 bit). HT-assist is of always on "Auto" (so off) unless we indicate otherwise.
"Therefore, it does not make sense - for example - to be OK with enabling SMT but then constrain the benchmark to 24GB due to a Xeon memory limitation. "
1) You must know that vApus Mark I uses too much memory for the webportals. They can run without any performance loss in 2 GB, even 1 GB. So as we move up on the number of tiles we run, it is best to reclaim the wasted memory.
2) I agree that a price comparison should include copious amount of memory (48 GB or so).
3) We don't have more than 24 GB DDR-3 available right now. It would be unfair to force the system to swap in a performance comparison.
"Opteron has access to abundant memory". What do you mean by this? Typical 2P Opterons have 64 GB, 2P Nehalems 72 GB as upper limit?
"In fact, the "right balance" of VM's, memory and vCPU/CPU loading for one system may be on the wrong side of the inflection point for another"
Great comment. Yes, that makes it even more complex to compare two systems. That is why we decided to show 2 datapoints for the 2 tile systems.
Collin, thanks for the excellent comments. It is very rewarding to notice that people take the time to dissect our hard work. Even if that means that you find wrinkles that we have to iron out. Great feedback.