Lenovo ThinkSystem SR665 and ThinkSystem DE6000H Set SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 Benchmark Result

Lenovo published the first result for the industry’s new virtual datacenter benchmark, SPECvirt Datacenter 2021.

 ThinkSystem SR665

This document summarizes the SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 benchmark result for the ThinkSystem SR665 that was published on September 2, 2021. The document lists the result, summarizes the major components of the configuration under test, and provides the link to the relevant benchmark organization’s web site for details about the result.

Introduction
Lenovo has published the first SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 benchmark result utilzing 4 ThinkSystem SR665 servers and the ThinkSystem DE6000H Hybrid Storage Array.

The Lenovo solution achieved the following score ⁽¹⁾: SPECvirt Datacenter-2021 5.952 per host @ 4 Hosts

The SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 benchmark is a multi-host benchmark for measuring the performance of a scaled-out datacenter. The benchmark uses real-world and simulated workloads to measure the overall efficiency of virtualization solutions and their management environments.

Each of 4 SR665 servers used to achieve record level of virtualized data center performance had following configuration:

• 2xAMD AMD EPYC 7763 64-core processors at 2.45GHz (2 processors, 64 cores, 128 threads)

• 2,048 GB of Lenovo TruDDR4 memory

• 1xThinkSystem Emulex LPe35002 PCIe 32Gb 2-Port SFP+FC adapter

• 2xThinkSystem Broadcom 57414 10/25GbE SFP28 2-port PCI Ethernet adapters

• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0 U2a

The vSphere cluster was managed via VMware vCenter Server (VCSA) 7.0 U2b.

For SAN storage, the solution included the ThinkSystem DE6000H Hybrid Storage Array. The SAN was comprised of one DE6000H 4U60 controller enclosure with 60x800GB 3DWD SSDs. The Emulex 32Gb FC adapters in the servers were connected to the DE6000H controller using a ThinkSystem DB620S FC switch.

All network traffic (vMotion, intra-host, and client-to-host) was routed through 2 Broadcom 25GbE adapters in each server and managed through a ThinkSystem NE10032 RackSwitch.

Results referenced are current as of September 2, 2021: all SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 results

About ThinkSystem SR665
This server, now with AMD EPYC 7003 Series processors, delivers TCO for transactional database, ERP, virtualization, big data and analytics and software-defined deployments. The combination of 2 AMD EPYC 7003 CPUs with memory speed, storage, and GPU density, rapidly outpaces the power of prior generation 2-socket servers. The company’s system reliability, management capabilities, and security infrastructure layer on to the high value that the ThinkSystem SR665 brings to the data center. With the enterprise-class AMD EPYC 7003 Series or 7002 Series processor, the first 7nm data center CPU, the ThinkSystem SR665 features 2 processors with up to 128 total cores with 128 PCIe Gen4 lanes to reduce bottlenecks and increase server utilization.

Compared to the previous processor generations, ThinkSystem SR665 delivers up to 2x performance and 4x floating point capability, providing faster data transfer and analytics without sacrificing memory capacity or I/O with PCIe Gen4 support and faster memory speeds up to 3,200MHz.

Key features:

• 128 cores across 2 processors to handle heavy-lift ERP, CRM, and virtualization workloads; provides application efficiency in health care applications such as medical imaging, EMR, and PACS, or electronic trading platforms for financial services applications.

• Multi-GPU optimized rack server, providing support for up to 8 single-wide GPUs that offer 200% more workload acceleration in AI Inference, and virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI).

• Support for up to 32 NVMe SSDs; when paired with high speed networking, make the system for workloads that need large amounts of low-latency high-bandwidth storage, including virtualized clustered SAN solutions, SDS, and applications leveraging NVMe over Fabrics.

About ThinkSystem DE6000H storage
It is a scalable, hybrid mid-range storage system that is designed to provide performance, simplicity, capacity, security, and high availability for medium to large businesses. It delivers enterprise-class storage management capabilities in a performance-optimized system with a choice of host connectivity options, flexible drive configurations, and enhanced data management features.

ThinkSystem DE6000H

Available as either a 2U or 4U enclosure, the DE6000H is for a range of enterprise workloads, including big data and analytics, video surveillance, technical computing, backup and recovery, and other storage I/O-intensive applications.

DE6000H 4U appliance front and rear

The DE6000H scales up to 480 drives with the attachment of expansion enclosures. It offers flexible drive configurations with the choice of 2.5-inch (SFF) or 3.5-inch (LFF) drive form factors using SAS HDDs and SSDs.

Key features:

• Scalable, high performance mid-range hybrid storage with dual active/active controller configurations with 16 or 64GB cache per controller for high availability and performance.

• Faster application response times with support for NVMe over Fabrics.

• 12Gb SAS drive-side connectivity.

• Performance and data protection with Dynamic Disk Pools (DDP) technology, as well as support for traditional RAID 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, and 10.

• Flexible storage protocols to match diverse client needs with support for SAS, iSCSI, FC, NVMe/FC, and NVMe/RoCE.

• Available in 2 different enclosure form factors:

  • DE6000H 2U24 SFF: 2U with 24 SFF drive bays

  • DE6000H 4U60: 4U with 60 LFF drive bays

• Support for 3 different expansion enclosures:

  • DE240S 2U24 SFF: 2U with 24 SFF drive bays

  • DE120S 2U12 LFF: 2U with 12 LFF drive bays

  • DE600S 4U60 LFF: 4U with 60 LFF drive bays

• Base scalability to up to 192 SFF or 240 LFF drives with the optional upgrade to increase the number of LFF drives to 480 by attaching expansion enclosures to satisfy growing needs for storage capacity and performance.

• Set of standard storage management functions available at no extra cost, including Dynamic Disk Pools, SSD read cache, snapshots, volume copy, thin provisioning, and encryption (requires optional FIPS drives).

About SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 benchmark
It is a new multi-host benchmark for measuring the performance of a scaled-out data center. It uses real-world and simulated workloads to measure the overall efficiency of virtualization solutions and their management environments.

The benchmark provides a methodical way to measure a virtualization platform’s performance in a dynamic virtualized data center environment. It models typical, modern-day usage of virtualized infrastructure, such as VM resource provisioning, cross-node load balancing (including management operations such as VM migrations), and VM power on/off. It exercises data center operations under load including dynamically provisioning new workload VMs and powers on pre-existing VMs.

SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 is used to compare the performance of different hardware platforms and configurations in multi-host virtualized data center environments. Customers implementing or evaluating virtualization platforms can use the benchmark to compare the performance and scalability of various server platforms and storage solutions, to make appropriate hardware choices, and to measure platform performance on an ongoing basis.

⁽¹⁾ The total solution availability for this benchmark result is July 2021.

Resources:
2-Socket rack servers
DE Series storage
ThinkSystem SR665 server
SPECvirt benchmark results