We continue the series of articles about Cisco Hyperflex. This time we will introduce you to the work of Cisco Hyperflex in conditions of highly loaded Oracle and Microsoft SQL DBMS, and also compare the obtained results with competitive solutions.
In addition, we continue to show the capabilities of Hyperflex in the regions of our country and are pleased to invite you to visit the next demonstrations of the solution, which this time will be held in the cities of Moscow and Krasnodar.
Moscow - May 28. Recording .
Krasnodar - June 5th. Recording .
Until recently, hyperconverged solutions were not a very suitable solution for DBMS, especially with a high load. However, thanks to the use of the UCS factory as a hardware platform for Cisco Hyperflex, which has proven its reliability and performance for 10 years, this situation has already changed today.
Want to know more? Then welcome to cat.
Introduction
Currently, there are two approaches to organizing hyperconverged solutions. The first approach is based on software-defined solutions that are delivered as software, and customers select the hardware themselves. The second approach is based on turnkey solutions, that is, containing software, hardware, and technical support. At Cisco, we take the second approach and deliver out-of-the-box solutions to our customers, as this is the only way to ensure stable system behavior, high-quality technical support from a single vendor, and high performance.
It is the high performance of the system that is one of the key factors in deciding whether to use a particular product in mission-critical tasks.
Organizations today tend to host mission-critical tasks on classic XNUMX-tier architecture solutions (Storage > SAN > Servers). At the same time, most organizations strive to simplify and reduce the cost of their IT infrastructure without compromising its stability and performance. For this reason, more and more customers are paying attention to hyperconverged solutions.
As part of this article, we will talk about the latest tests (February 2019) that were performed by an independent laboratory ESG (Enterprise Strategy Group). During testing, the work of highly loaded Oracle and MS SQL DBMS (OLTP tests) was emulated, which is one of the most critical components of the IT infrastructure in a real productive environment.
This load was performed on three solutions: Cisco Hyperflex, as well as two software-defined solutions that were installed on the same servers that are used in Hyperflex, that is, on Cisco UCS servers.
Test configurations
Vendor A does not use a cache because the cache configuration is not supported by the solution developer. For this reason, disks were used to store more volume.
Testing Methodology
OLTP tests were run with four virtual machines and a 3,2 TB working dataset. Before each test was run, each VM was populated with recorded data using the test tool. This ensures that the test reads "real" data and writes it to existing blocks, rather than just returning zero blocks or zero values directly from memory. This happens when the data is empty, so it was important to make sure that the test accurately reflects how data is read and written in the application environment. Populating this large workset took a long time, but in our opinion it is a productive investment of time, as it allows you to get more accurate performance data.
Testing was done using HCI Bench (based on Oracle Vdbench) and I/O profiles designed to emulate complex mission-critical OLTP workloads using Oracle and SQL Server backends. The block sizes were assigned according to the emulated applications with 100% random data access (full random).
Oracle Database Workload
The first was an OLTP test designed to emulate the Oracle environment. Vdbench was used to create a workload with different read/write ratios. The test was run on four virtual machines. During the four-hour test HyperFlex managed to show more than 420 IOPS with a delay of only 000 milliseconds. Software solutions A and B were only able to show 4.4 and 238 IOPS, respectively.
Latency across systems was about the same, with the exception of Vendor B's write latency, which averaged 26,49ms, with a very good read latency of 2,9ms. Compression and deduplication were active on all systems.
Microsoft SQL Server workload
We then looked at an OLTP workload designed to emulate a Microsoft SQL Server DBMS.
As a result of this test, the Cisco HyperFlex cluster outperformed both competitors A and B by about two times. 490 IOPS from Cisco versus 000 and 200 from vendors A and B.
The latency result in Cisco HyperFlex did not differ much from the Oracle test, that is, it was at a good level of 4,4 ms. At the same time, manufacturers A and B performed significantly worse than in the test for Oracle. The only positive point for competitive solution B is the consistently low level of latency when reading at 2,9 ms, in all other indicators, Hyperflex outperformed competitive solutions by two times or more.
Conclusions
Testing conducted by an independent ESG laboratory not only once again confirmed the decent performance level of the Cisco Hyperflex solution, but also proved that hyperconverged systems are already ready for widespread use in mission-critical tasks.
Hyperconverged systems have long been considered more suitable for non-critical workloads. In 2016, ESG conducted a survey among large companies. They were asked why they chose traditional infrastructure over hyperconverged infrastructure. 54% of respondents answered that the reason is performance.
Fast forward to 2018. The picture has changed: the ESG re-survey revealed only 24% of respondents who still believe that traditional approaches are still better in terms of performance.
When the evolution of technology changes the criteria for choosing a solution in an industry, there is often a mismatch between what customers want and what they can get. Manufacturers who can see what is missing and fill that void are at an advantage. Cisco offers a hyper-converged solution that delivers the simplicity and cost-effectiveness that delivers the consistently high performance that customers need for their mission-critical workloads.
Cisco is moving steadily forward in the field of hyperconverged systems, which is confirmed not only by the excellent characteristics of the Cisco Hyperflex solution, but also by its presence in the market. Therefore, in the fall of 2018, Cisco deservedly entered the group of HCI market leaders according to Gartner.
Already now you can be convinced that Hyperflex is an excellent solution for the most complex and demanding business tasks by visiting our demonstrations, which will be held in the cities of Moscow and Krasnodar.
Moscow - May 28. Recording .
Krasnodar - June 5th. Recording .
Source: habr.com