Hey, everyone, in my last blog post, “Getting More Performance with Micron 5210 ION SSDs,” I was able to show optimized system performance with Micron 5210 QLC SSDs by moving TempDB from a Microsoft SQL Server 2017 instance to a general purpose or write intensive drive, the Micron 5200 PRO TLC SSD. Recently, our team started looking into solutions involving NVDIMM's and I decided to take the learnings from the previous test a step further.
The Setup
Dell PowerEdge 740XD
2x Intel Xeon 8168
384 GB RAM
12x 16GB NVDIMM-N
4x Micron 5210 ION 7.68TB QLC SSD
Windows Server 2016
SQL Server 2017 Enterprise
TPC-H 3000 scale factor dataset
The setup here is virtually the same as the previous 5200 configuration with one major exception, we replaced the Micron 5200 PRO SSD with 12x NVDIMMs formatted into a simple storage space (capacity is a premium with these) and placed TempDB on this volume. Just as before, we ran a single stream executing all 22 of the TPC-H queries to measure the stream run time and disk throughput.
The Results and Analysis
Compared to the original 5210 ION configuration, adding the NVDIMMs cut our stream time by more than half. In addition, we achieved a 35% stream time improvement over the 5200 PRO + 5210 ION configuration. Our results are consistent with our previous testing where moving the writes from TempDB to faster media allowed overall read throughput to increase. We can see that the NVDIMM configuration improved dramatically with an 87 percent gain over the 5210 ION only configuration and a 22 percent increase over the 5200 PRO + 5210 ION configuration.
This proof of concept testing shows how using NVDIMMs in block mode can improve performance for application use cases that may not need much capacity.
Would You like to Know more?
In addition to demonstrating the value of QLC drive, keep an eye out for more information on leveraging NVDIMMs to improve your system performance. In the meantime, check out some of our tech briefs on the 5210 and Micron NVDIMMs. Learn more about how these Micron solutions can address your needs.
Have questions about our testing or methodology? Leave a comment below or you can email us at ssd@micron.com.
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Sept 24-28 | Orlando, FL
Come visit the Micron Booth #209 to win prizes, mingle with the experts, and learn more about SQL Server testing, as well as our solutions for hyper-converged infrastructures using Microsoft® Hyper-V® and Storage Space Direct with Micron® enterprise SSDs.
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