Demystifying Hardware - SQL Server 2012 Internals and Troubleshooting - page 38

TABLE 2-2: TPC-E Scores by Total Physical Cores

TOTAL
CORES

SCORE
PER CORE SYSTEM PROCESSOR TPC-E SOCKETS

HP Proliant DL380 G7 Intel Xeon X5690 1284.14 2 12 107.01

IBM System × 360 M4 Intel Xeon E5-2690 1863.23 2 16 116.45

HP Proliant DL385 G7 AMD Opteron 6282SE 1232.84 2 32 38.53

HP Proliant DL585 G7 AMD Opteron 6176SE 1400.14 4 48 29.17

IBM System × 3850 × 5 Intel Xeon E7-4870 2862.61 4 40 71.57

NEC Express 5800/A1080a Intel Xeon E7-8870 4614.22 8 80 57.68

It is very unlikely that you would ever upgrade to a better processor in an existing database server,
so you will be stuck with your processor choice for the life of the server. If you have “excess”
processor capacity, consider using it to trade CPU utilization for I/O utilization by using backup
compression and data compression (if you have the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2008 or
newer). Unlike a laptop or web server, it is a mistake to buy a processor that is a couple of steps
down from the top-of-the-line model for database server usage. Trading some extra CPU utilization
for less I/O utilization is usually a net win, especially if you have a modern, multi-core processor
that can readily handle the extra work.

Of course, a new two-socket server will have a lower total RAM limit than a new four-socket
server. For example, a two-socket Xeon X5690 would be limited to 288GB of RAM, which is
probably enough for most workloads. A two-socket server will also have less total I/O capacity
than a new four-socket server because it has fewer PCIe expansion slots. Still, you can easily get
5-6GB/sec of sequential throughput out of a modern two-socket server, which should be plenty
for most workloads. After the Intel 32nm Sandy Bridge-EP Xeon E5-2600 series was released
in early 2012, the wisdom of choosing a two-socket Intel-based server was even clearer, as it has
higher memory density, more I/O bandwidth, and even better per-core performance than the
Xeon 5600 series did.

If you are looking at the lower end of the cost and workload spectrum, you have several options.
The one-socket 22nm Intel Xeon E3-1290 v2 processors (which are basically the same as the
desktop Ivy Bridge Core i7 processor) are limited to 32GB of RAM, which somewhat limits their
utility for larger database usage. If 32GB of RAM is not enough for your workload, a single-socket
Dell R320 server with one Intel Xeon E5-2400 series processor and up to 96GB of RAM is avail-
able. Keep in mind that the memory limit for SQL Server 2012 Standard Edition is still 64GB,
which is too low considering the memory density of modern hardware. One possible way around it
with good hardware (with more than 128GB of RAM) is to install more than one instance of SQL
Server 2012 Standard Edition on the same physical server.