Small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) comprise 90 percent of the global business population, and many rely on Microsoft® SQL Server® for daily operations.¹ Because it’s common for these organizations to run SQL Server on a standalone platform, the performance of that platform is critical. The RAID controller, in particular, is a key component on these systems because it not only enhances performance but it protects data from drive failures.
The overall performance of SQL Server depends on server hardware, especially the processor, memory, networking, and storage. To examine the benefits of upgrading hardware in greater detail, Prowess Consulting compared the latest generation of the popular 2U Dell™ PowerEdge™ rack server with the previous generation.
Dell PowerEdge R750 platforms offer several performance advantages for SQL Server over previous-generation platforms. These advantages include 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, 3,200 megatransfers per second (MT/s) memory, PCIe® Gen4 interfaces, and Dell™ PowerEdge RAID Controller 11 (PERC 11) H755N Front NVM Express® (NVMe®) drives, built with industry-leading Broadcom® RAID technologies. With PCIe Gen4 interfaces, Dell PowerEdge R70 platforms can be configured to include data-center-class NVMe solid-state drives (SSDs).
Prowess testing compared the components in the current-generation Dell PowerEdge R750 server against the 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, the Dell PERC 10 H740P, and the Serial ATA (SATA®)-based SSDs found in the previous-generation Dell PowerEdge R740xd platform. This testing allowed us to quantify what upgrading server infrastructure can mean for businesses.
Additionally, Prowess Consulting noted that the Dell PCIe Gen4 data-center NVMe SSDs in the Dell PowerEdge R750 platform offer not only higher data-transfer rates compared to the SATA-based Dell SSDs in the Dell PowerEdge R740xd platform, but they also cost 37 percent less:
- 960 GB Dell data-center NVMe read-intensive AG drive, U2, PCIe Gen4, with carrier: $1,063.55 USD3
- 960 GB SATA Dell SSD, read-intensive, 6 Gbps, 512e, 2.5-in with 3.5-in hybrid carrier drive: $1,689.00 USD4
The Dell PCIe Gen4 data-center NVMe SSDs used in the Dell PowerEdge R750 platform offer compelling value.5