Testing Times 1
It's an interesting time with being asked to performance test/benchmark a new server setup for a migration of sql server and data centre.
Both current and new servers are SAN attached and it has been what is effectively the testing of the storage which has proved interesting.
To add to the mix I have a similar spec server with internal disk and I ran a couple of tests on one of my my home servers ( essentially a pc with lots of disks )
The three proper servers are modern top spec kit with similar processors - the standalone having the slowest clock speed
The hardware stacks up like this:
Server 1 - current:
x32 sql 2000 4 x quad xeon 2.9Mhz 32gb ram, san attached, raid 10 data ( 10 x 15k ), raid 1 logs ( 15k )
Server 2 - new:
x64 sql 2005 4 x quad xeon 2.9Mhz 64gb ram, virtualised san
Server 3 - standalone:
x64 sql2005 4 x quad xeon 2.4Mhz 32gb ram, raid 10 data ( 4 x 10k sas ), raid 1 logs ( 10k sas )
Server 4 - home:
x64 sql 2008 1 x dual core amd 4200 8gb ram, hardware raid 0 data ( 4 x 7.2k sata ), single 7.2k sata logs.
So on a basic test of inserting 1 million rows into a table ( has 4 secondary indexes and a text column ) generating 8.5 Gb of data where would you rank the
servers? Vote now on 087xxxxxx etc. etc.
Average results of several runs:- ( single table test )
Server 3 6 mins 30 secs 2,564 rows/sec 22Mb/sec 1,330Mb/min
Server 4 9 mins 1,851 rows/sec 16Mb/sec 961Mb/min
Server 1 11 mins 1,515 rows/sec 13Mb/sec 786Mb/min
Server 2 17 mins 980 rows/sec 8.5Mb/sec 509Mb/min
( I'm currently putting a doc together on all the tests including the code )