Enterprise Storage Bench - Microsoft SQL UpdateDailyStats

Our next two tests are taken from our own internal infrastructure. We do a lot of statistics tracking at AnandTech - we record traffic data to all articles as well as aggregate traffic for the entire site (including forums) on a daily basis. We also keep track of a running total of traffic for the month. Our first benchmark is a trace of the MS SQL process that does all of the daily and monthly stats processing for the site. We run this process once a day as it puts a fairly high load on our DB server. Then again, we don't have a beefy SSD array in there yet :)

The UpdateDailyStats procedure is mostly reads (3:1 ratio of GB reads to writes) with 431K read operations and 179K write ops. Average queue depth is 4.2 and only 34% of all IOs are issued at a queue depth of 1. The transfer size breakdown is as follows:

AnandTech Enterprise Storage Bench MS SQL UpdateDaily Stats IO Breakdown
IO Size % of Total
8KB 21%
64KB 35%
128KB 35%

With much larger transfer sizes, we expected to see some much bigger numbers out of the Z-Drive R4:

Microsoft SQL UpdateDailyStats - Average Data Rate

Indeed average transfer speeds are up significantly. The Z-Drive R4 is over 61% faster than the RevoDrive 3 X2 and more than 3x the speed of a single Vertex 3.

Microsoft SQL UpdateDailyStats - Disk Busy Time

Microsoft SQL UpdateDailyStats - Average Service Time

A look at average service time paints an even more dramatic picture. During periods of extremely high queuing the Z-Drive R4 is over an order of magnitude faster (36x faster) than a single drive. The most surprising is the comparison to the RevoDrive 3. As we implied earlier, it looks like there may be some additional firmware goodness in the Z-Drive R4 that gives it the edge over the RevoDrive 3 X2.

Enterprise Storage Bench - Oracle Swingbench Enterprise Storage Bench - Microsoft SQL WeeklyMaintenance
Comments Locked

57 Comments

View All Comments

  • squashmeister99 - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link

    You teased us with your video reviews. Now we cant go back... :-)
  • G-Man - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link

    I miss the video reviews already :-)
  • vol7ron - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link

    hahaha. they are a good addition aren't they?
  • Rasterman - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link

    Comparing a single Vertex 3 240GB to a 1.6TB doesn't seem quite valid. Someone considering the R4 would be asking what is the performance difference between the R4 and 4 to 16 Vertex 3s in RAID 0. Especially considering the massive cost savings per GB using the Vertex 3s.
  • MrBungle123 - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link

    I'd like to see some RAID 5/6/10 arrays of 15K RPM SCSI drives in the benchmarks too.
  • marraco - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link

    No. I don't want video reviews, unless they have English subtitles.
  • SilthDraeth - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link

    I have trouble hearing and use subs for all my movies, yet Anand speaks quite clearly, and I have no trouble understanding him.

    Also, he posts the video review in conjunction with the written review, and not as a stand alone feature, so you really don't need it subtitled. So you would still get to enjoy the reviews as you always have.
  • Lonbjerg - Thursday, September 29, 2011 - link

    You can write english but not understand it when it's spoken? *shakes head*
  • connor4312 - Thursday, September 29, 2011 - link

    I'm guessing you never learned a second language?
  • arthur449 - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link

    Not all information provided is specifically relevant to everyone's interests in a review of a product. Similarly, information provided in a video review follows a linear arbitrary organizational structure that cannot possibly align with everyone's preferred method of learning. Also, it's easier to skim / search / quote / share a text-based review.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now