Ikoula has tested for you: the server IBM POWER8

Presentation of Power8

Ikoula decided to test the new POWER S822L making advantage of the range of the POWER8 designed by IBM.

These servers running with a little endian PowerPC system are compatible with bones such as Fedora, Ubuntu, RedHat or Suse.

It is possible to deploy a system compatible with the PowerPC system virtualization: PowerVM or PowerKVM.

The administration of this server is possible via the IPMI management console, enabling the configuration of the disks, the RAID and install the OS chosen via CD or net install.

tests conducted by Ikoula

Ikoula has tested the POWER8, with 153 cores, 256 GB RAM enough configuration and a 776 GB partition.

The creation of the partition is made through IPMI.

Using the command "iprconfig" we created a RAID5 + 1 disk of hot spare on SSD.

Ubuntu 14.04 (ubuntu - 14.04.1 - server-ppc64el) is the OS that we decided to install, in order to achieve performance tests, both on the physical aspect that application.

Ikoula used the following tools to demonstrate the performance provided by the IBM POWER8 server:

  • Phoronix Test Suite

Phoronix Test Suite is a tool for achieving benchmarks on environments Linux.

Ikoula has made the choice to use this tool for the realization of all of the benchmarks, because Phoronix offers a large number of preconfigured tests (aio-stress, fio, apache, dbench, ramspeed,...) in the form of gross profit and via graphics.

Phoronix has also a centralized interface, giving the possibility to perform tests on multiple machines identical or different and then compare them.

  • Sysbench (perfomances MariaDB)

Sysbench is a test suite that allows you to quickly get an impression on the performance of the system, which is important if you plan to run a database under intensive load.

NB: we had to use sysbench testing of database-level performance, because pgbench/sqlite scripts preconfigured in Phoronix could not settle.

We have also encountered other problems during our tests on the Power8.

To start unable to create a RAID 5T 2 or RAID 10T 2, after completing the prerequisites IBM. the only information obtained is 'Create disk array failed'. we could not test the Easy Tier feature that is available through this RAID T2 after having contacted IBM, it turns out that the drives were not compatible with the EasyTiering.

At the application level, the Phoronix solution is compatible on the Power8, however all of the tests are not compatible. There is much that code on this type of material is specific and it is possible to meet a large number of blocking top.

As well as for pgbench, it gained a large number of errors, bound to rights issues and files missing.

results

  • Phoronix:

(Résultat également disponible sur: http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1501279-DE-POWER8GLO59).

(fichier: results-power8.png)

  • Sysbench:

(file: result - mariadb - power8.png)

analysis

Server IBM POWER8, Ikoula has been able to test, proved very powerful and robust. It is a server essentially created and designed for virtualization and heavy database work, as long as it meets certain conditions including due to its processor architecture.

Interested? do not hesitate to contact our sales department Ikoula Enterprise Services sales-ies@ikoula.com for more information.

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