SQL Server Scales By Two

PC Expo, New York NY -- Microsoft has announced that it has achieved world record performance results with SQL Server 7.0 running on Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition using new 8-way systems from Unisys and Compaq. Microsoft measured the Transaction Processing Council’s TPC-C transaction benchmark and SAP R/3 sales and distribution (SD) benchmark. Scores for both benchmarks dramatically improved over previous scores measured on the fastest 4-way Intel-based servers available today. To perform the tests, Microsoft used systems powered by Intel's new 8-way Profusion chip set. These 8-way systems were abundant on the trade floor of PC Expo and in the corporate demo rooms of vendors such as IBM, Compaq, and Unisys. In something of a surprise move, Intel took the wraps off its long awaited Profusion chip set and will let vendors ship systems based on this chip set in mid-September.Measured against the SD benchmark on a Compaq ProLiant sever code-named “Lightening” with eight 550MHz processors, SQL Server 7.0 was able to support 4512 SD users. This performance resulted in an 88 percent increase over the previous measurement for 4-way servers of 2400 users and set a new record on the NT platform. These numbers would support greater than 95 percent of SAP’s current installed customer base, and scaling in this instance is nearly linear.The tpmC metric improved by 51 percent to 37,757.23 transactions per minute on a Unisys ES2085R server with eight Pentium III 550MHz Xeon processors and 4GB of RAM--another record for NT on SMP hardware. The results indicate that SQL Server will scale well above four processors, although this configuration didn't provide the strongest evidence. IBM has also indicated that it has recently achieved benchmark results 1.6 times greater than previous results using its database products.SQL Server’s price/performance numbers for transaction processing are the best in the industry, with tpmC costing out above $23.18 per tpmC. IBM measured the next closest price/performance benchmark on an RS/6000 system using AIX. This system costs six times as much as the Microsoft and Compaq system and contains twice as much memory and 12 processors.