please help build a new server - HP DL380 or DL580

[Anonymous]

Hi guys,

I am looking for a second opinion as we are already working with our vendors and Qlik reps. We just purchased a new server and I found out that it performs terribly with QV even though it is 4 times more expensive and powerful. We are going to return this server to our vendor (HP) and get something different hence I am asking for an opinion on an ideal and fastest for QV HP server.

Right now my company uses a single server to run all QV services, including QVS, QDS and AccessPoint. It is very fast but we are running out of RAM and it is not expandable so we are in the process of getting a second server for QV which will only run AccessPoint and QVS.

Our old server:

2 socket HP DL380P GEN8

Intel Xeon CPU E5-2690 2.90GHz

256Gb of RAM

Our new server (which we are going to return):

4 socket HP DL580 Gen8

Intel Xeon CPU E7-4870 v2 2.30GHz

1Tb of RAM

I was super excited about DL580 and when it arrived I started running some tests. We have a fairly complex dashboard with 90+ million rows and a lot of extensive calculations and I found out that our old server was 2-5 times faster on the most of the tabs. We tuned the server using QV tech. paper specifically made sure that max. energy profile is used, hyper threading is off and NUMA is off. Turbo Boost is on.

It helped a little bit especially then we disabled NUMA – I am confused why though because according to QV, NUMA is not a problem on 11.2 but apparently it is. So after we disabled NUMA, things improved maybe by 10-20% but it was still a way slower than our old server.

We reached to HP and one of their senior architects explained that DL580 has to do more work with RAM because of the way RAM is shared between processors and the clock speed is 1333 vs. 1666 on DL380.

At that point I downloaded and ran 4 different benchmarking tools (MAXXMEM2,NOVABENCH, PassMark and SiSoft Sandra) and all of them showed 2-6 times difference in RAM tests – DL580 was slower again!

Our goals for a new server:

1. 1) Should be faster than the old one
2. 2) Should be expandable to 1Tb of RAM at least
3. 3) Should support at least 50 concurrent users
4. 4) Should be made by HP – rack server HP Proliant family.
5. 5) Our budget is 50k
6. 6) The server will run ONLY QVS and AccessPoint.

I apologize for a long introduction to my question but now I am puzzled what HP server we should pick since DL580 with 4 processors clearly does not meet our needs.

I am not a hardware expert and was relying on our hardware people and Qlik but apparently the configuration they picked did not meet our goals. They are working again to revise the config but I wanted to get a second opinion from a forum and you.

I am thinking now to either get the fastest E5 or E7 and this time only two sockets to minimize memory hops. Also I wanted to see if we can use higher clocked RAM (1887?)

It is going to be a rack server from HP Proliant family – you can actually build it online here

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/proliant-servers/index.html?facet=ProLiant-DL-Rack

Any suggestions are highly appreciated!

[Anonymous]

sorry cannot disclose exact numbers about users and dashboards, but we have over 50 apps and 10-15 concurrent users. Most apps are pretty small but the most popular one is huge in terms of QlikView - 150 million rows, 15Gb uncompressed with a lot of complex calculations and a nice optimized star schema. I feel like we are pushing it with QlikView.

But remember every case is different - it is all about your data model, complexity of calculations and objects so it you have to test your own.

BTW if you work with CDW / HP, they will be happy to loan you 2 or 3 CPUs for 30 days and you can pick the best you like with your DL380.

as for RAM, i am not an expert really but i noticed than HP and DELL publishes their performance benchmarks they normally do not put a lot of RAM on servers which might get you a hint Personally I would go with max amount of the fastest RAM though - QlikView is very hungry in terms of RAM.

[Troy1]

Thanks Boris.

Do you have single machine for all server & publisher. or is it cluster enviornment. I wonder what the results would be in your envionment if you have 2 15gb app running at the same time with 15 concurrent user. In your case can 16 cores handle the load.

[#4]

Has anybody tried implementing Qlikview on Cloud? Its better we first test on cloud and use the auto-scaling options. I think Qlikview is compatible on cloud. The only concern over here is the data Security which is stopping the financial institutes to move on cloud.

[Troy1]

Hi Boris

Just wondering if you gave a thought of just upgrading your CPU from E5-2690v2 to v3 and if you would have seen the same performance. Did you give it a thought.

Since 2690 is 10 core and what you chose 2667 is 8. do you see any difference in handing number of concurrent users.

We are debating as to what to choose between these 2 chipset.

[Anonymous]

it was not an option really for us as we needed more RAM and also were going to split publisher from QVWS.

I do not think going from v2 to v3 would give a significant boost in performance, but going from gen8 to gen9 and using DDR4 and faster processing is worth if your budget allows that.

As for # of cores - it is a compromise as it was explained to me by HP architect.  The more cores - the more users and calculations your server can handle, but frequency wise (and performance) it will get slower. Top performing CPU (in terms of speed) have less cores and higher frequency. I felt that 8 core 2P configuration was a sweet spot for us but you case might be different.

Consider getting trial CPU from HP for 30 days like we did - if you are not happy with it, you can return it

[Troy1]

Hi Boris

Quick Question:

512Gb of DDR4 LRDRAM 2333Mhz

(you could go up to 768Gb but it will force it to work at 1600Mhz)

since you are using 2 CPU, does 512gb refer to 1 cpu max memory or 2 cpu combined.

Can you point me to a link where it says you cannot go beyond 512 if you want to maintain highest speed.

[Anonymous]

Hi mgdpuro1

Normally you can use "HP memory configurator" - just google it or you get to it from your HP server home page.

I found it a bit inaccurate though for HP Gen9 and used spec for the server instead - it has some diagrams and options. in our case it was 512Gb per server (not per CPU) for the highest clocked RAM.