STAC Report: kdb+ 4.0 and Pure FlashBlade//S500 under STAC-M3

STAC (Strategic Technology Analysis Center LLC) recently performed the 1st baseline and scaling STAC-M3 benchmarks on a stack involving Pure Storage, Inc. 

STAC-M3 is the set of industry standard enterprise tick-analytics benchmarks for database software/hardware stacks that manage large time series of market data (‘tick data’). In this project, we ran the baseline benchmark suite (code named Antuco) and the optional scaling suite (code named Kanaga).

Purechose to highlight that this solution involving 8 database servers accessing a FlashBlade//S500 via NFSv3 and using Compatibility Rev I of the kdb+ STAC Pack:

• Was faster than a solution involving the same number of database servers, 3 network attached flash storage nodes, and Compatibility Rev H of the STAC Pack (KDB220506) in:

  • 13 of 17 Antuco mean-response time benchmarks, including:
    • 7x speedup in 10-user theoretical P&L
      (STAC-M3.β1.10T.THEOPL.TIME)
    • 5.8x speedup in 10-user market snapshot
      (STAC-M3.β1.10T.MKTSNAP.TIME)
  • 17 of 24 Kanaga mean-response time benchmarks, including:
    • 1.3–1.5x speedup in 50-user 12-day VWAB
      (STAC-M3.β1.50T.YR{1,2,3,4,5}VWAB-12D-HO.TIME)
    • 1.2–1.4x speedup in one-user year high bid
      (STAC-M3.β1.1T.{2,3,4,5}YRHIBID.TIME)

• Was faster than a cloud-based solution using 15 database VM instances accessing data distributed across 40 VM instances, using Compatibility Rev E of the STAC Pack (KDB210507) in:

  • 9 of 17 Antuco mean-response time benchmarks, including:
    • 11x speedup in 10-user market snapshot
      (STAC-M3.β1.10T.MKTSNAP.TIME)
    • 8.4x speedup in 10-user volume curve
      (STAC-M3.β1.10T.VOLCURV.TIME)
  • 12 of 24 Kanaga mean-response time benchmarks, including:
    • 4.4–5.3x speedup in 10-user market snapshots
      (STAC-M3.β1.10T.YR{2,3,4,5}-MKTSNAP.TIME)

For details, see the report at this link. (registration required)
Premium subscribers have access to the code used in this project as well as the micro-detailed configuration information for the solution.