Improve performance and gain room to grow by easily migrating to a modern OpenShift environment on Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers with 4th Generation AMD EPYC processors and high-speed 100GbE Broadcom NICs

Improve performance and gain room to grow by easily
migrating to a modern OpenShift environment on Dell
PowerEdge R7615 servers with 4th
Generation AMD EPYC
processors and high-speed 100GbE Broadcom NICs
We deployed this modern environment, then migrated database VMs from
legacy servers and saw performance improvements that support consolidation
Transactional databases are the backbone of many business operations, powering ecommerce and
order fulfillment, human resources and payroll, and a host of other activities. If your company is running
these kinds of workloads on server infrastructure that is several years old, you might believe that
performance is adequate and that you have little reason to consider upgrading to new servers with
modern processors, networking, and a Red Hat®
OpenShift®
container-based environment. In fact, by
continuing to use this older gear, you could be incurring higher than necessary operating expenditures
by maintaining and powering more servers than you need to perform a given volume of work. You could
also be risking downtime with aging hardware that is likelier to break down. By upgrading to a modern
environment, you could mitigate these issues and future-proof your infrastructure. A 2019 Forrester
Consulting report recommended that organizations refresh their servers at least every three years to
maximize agility and productivity.1
The report states not only that modern servers allow organizations to
adopt more emerging technologies at a faster rate, but also “modern hardware has a profound impact
on business benefits such as better customer experience, employee productivity, and innovation.”2
We explored the process of migrating VMs from a legacy environment and conducted testing to quantify
the resulting improvements in network and database performance. We started with a legacy environment
consisting of MySQL™
virtual machines (VMs) running on a cluster of three Dell™
PowerEdge™
R7515
servers with 3rd
Generation AMD EPYC™
processors and 25Gb Broadcom®
NICs. We then deployed
a modern OpenShift container-based environment comprising three Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers
with 4th
Generation AMD EPYC processors and high-speed 100Gb Broadcom NICs. While the primary
application of OpenShift is typically for containerized workloads, we used OpenShift Virtualization,
which presents a familiar VM layer to administrators while utilizing the containerized technology on the
underlying layer. Both environments used a Dell PowerStore 1200T for external storage that the servers
accessed using iSCSI. We measured database performance using the HammerDB TPROC-C benchmark.
3 modern servers
can replace 4
legacy servers*
Easy to deploy
OpenShift and
migrate VMs from
legacy environment
Reduce OpEx
with fewer servers
to power, cool,
and maintain
*based on database performance improvement over legacy cluster **compared to legacy cluster
44% better
database
performance**
Improve performance and gain room to grow by easily migrating to a modern OpenShift environment on Dell PowerEdge R7615
servers with 4th
Generation AMD EPYC processors and high-speed 100GbE Broadcom NICs
May 2024 (Revised)
A Principled Technologies report: Hands-on testing. Real-world results.

We found that the modern cluster environment of Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers with 4th
Generation
AMD EPYC processors and high-speed 100Gb Broadcom NICs outperformed the legacy cluster
environment, delivering 44 percent greater database performance. These improvements mean that
companies that upgrade can enjoy savings by meeting their workload requirements with fewer servers
to license, maintain, power, and cool. Selecting 100Gb Broadcom NICs also positions companies well to
take advantage of increasingly popular network-intensive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).
The benefits of containerization and Red Hat
OpenShift Virtualization
Many organizations choose containers for DevOps due to their easy scalability and portability. Because a
container encapsulates an application as well as everything necessary to run that application, it’s simple
to move the container from development to test and production environments, adding instances of the
application by replicating the container. Containers can also be useful for microservices, data streaming,
and other use cases.3
Containers aren’t necessarily ideal for every use case, however, and for some infrastructures, IT teams
may wish to incorporate both containers and VMs. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, which we used in
our testing, enables organizations to run both VMs and containers on the same platform by bringing
VMs into containers.4
This lets IT reap the benefits of both containers and VMs with the efficiency benefit
of relying on one management tool, rather than having to maintain two distinct infrastructures.
About our testing
We explored the process of deploying a modern data center environment and migrating VMs to
it from a legacy environment. We also measured the database performance the VMs achieved in
both environments:
Legacy environment
• Three Dell PowerEdge R7515 servers with
3rd
Generation AMD EPYC 7663 56-core
processors and Broadcom Advanced Dual
25Gb Ethernet NICs
• External storage using Dell PowerStore
1200T over iSCSI
• VMware®
vSphere®
8
Modern environment
• Three Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers with
4th
Generation AMD EPYC 9554 64-core
processors and Broadcom NetExtreme-E
BCM57508 100GB NICs
• External storage using Dell PowerStore
1200T over iSCSI
• Red Hat OpenShift 4.14
Figure 1 presents a diagram of our test configuration. In addition to our test server clusters, we needed
three servers to host infrastructure VMs, workload client VMs, and the OpenShift control node VMs. We
configured a Dell PowerEdge R7525 to serve as the host for our infrastructure VMs for services such as
AD, DHCP, and DNS, as well as HammerDB client VMs. We also configured a Dell PowerEdge R7625 to
host additional HammerDB client VMs. For the OpenShift environment, we deployed a Dell PowerEdge
R540 to host the OCP control nodes. We virtualized the control nodes to reduce the number of servers
needed for the test bed.
May 2024 (Revised) | 2
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To test the MySQL database performance of each environment, we used the TPROC-C workload from
the HammerDB benchmark. HammerDB developers derived their OLTP workload from the TPC-C
benchmark specifications; however, as this is not a full implementation of the official TPC-C standards,
the results in this paper are not directly comparable to published TPC-C results. For more information,
please visit https://www.hammerdb.com/docs/ch03s01.html.
Each VM had a single MySQL instance with a TPROC-C database. We targeted the maximum
transactions per minute (TPM) each environment could achieve by increasing the user count until
performance degraded.
What we learned
Finding 1: Deploying OpenShift in the modern environment was easy
For our environment, the OpenShift installation process using the Red Hat Assisted Installer to install an
OpenShift Installer-Provisioned Cluster was straightforward and simple. We started by setting up the pre-
requisites for the environment, which included a VM for Active Directory, DNS, and DHCP. We created a
domain for our private network and added the API and ingress routes as DNS A records. Next, we set up
a VM as a router so that our OpenShift environment could access the internet from our private network.
Finally, we created three blank VMs to serve as our OpenShift controller nodes. Once we had met the
pre-requisite requirements, we logged into the Red Hat Hybrid Console and navigated to the Assisted
Installer to create the cluster.
PowerEdge R7525
infrastructure server
PowerEdge R7625
infrastructure server
PowerStore 1200T
PowerEdge R7515 - legacy node 1
PowerEdge R7615 - OCP worker 1
PowerEdge R540 –
OCP control VMs
TOR switch (external)
100GbE switch (private)
OCP control
node 1
OCP control
node 2
OCP control
node 3
Figure 1: Our test configuration. Source: Principled Technologies.
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The Assisted Installer streamlined the process by walking us through configuration menus for storage,
network, and access to the cluster. We started the cluster creation by assigning it a name, providing
the domain, and selecting an OpenShift version. From there the installer guided us through the
process of providing an installer image using the SSH public key of the server running the installer.
After downloading the ISO, we booted each of the controller and worker nodes into the image and the
Assisted Installer discovered each node. After discovering the controller and worker nodes, the installer
walked us through the rest of the configuration process and then began the installation. The Assisted
Installer made the process very simple with only six configuration tabs to advance through, and with our
total install time after configuration taking around three hours. Once the installation was complete, each
node rebooted into the OpenShift OS and the Assisted Installer provided us with a cluster console fully
qualified domain name (FQDN) to connect to and manage the cluster from. For detailed steps on the
OpenShift deployment process, see the science behind the report.
Finding 2: Migrating VMs from the legacy VMware environment to the modern
OpenShift environment was easy
Migrating a VM from the VMware environment to OpenShift was also a straightforward process and quick
to set up. While the actual migration time will vary depending on VM size and hardware speed, the setup
consists of only a few steps and took us less than 10 minutes. We first installed the Migration Toolkit for
Virtualization from the OpenShift OperatorHub. We then entered the IP address and credentials for the
vCenter as a new provider. Next, we created a NetworkMap and a StorageMap to connect the respective
resources between the environments. We then created a new migration plan to map the VMs to a
namespace in OCP. We ran the migration plan on a single VM, and confirmed that we were able to enter
the VM console once the migration was complete. For detailed steps on the process of migrating VMs
from the legacy environment to the modern environment, see the science behind the report.
About 4th
Gen AMD EPYC 9554 processors
According to AMD, EPYC 9554 processors deliver fast performance “for cloud, enterprise, and
HPC workloads—helping accelerate your business.”5
EPYC processors include AMD Infinity
Guard, which per AMD is “a set of layered, cutting-edge security features that help you protect
sensitive data and avoid the costly downtime cause by security breaches.”6
In addition to performance and security features, AMD claims their processors are energy-
efficient, which can reduce energy costs and “minimize environmental impacts from data center
operations while advancing your company’s sustainability objectives.”7
When comparing SPECCPU Floating Point peak rates and the default thermal design power
(TDP) of the AMD EPYC 9554 and the AMD EPYC 7663, the 9554 has 54 percent better
performance per watt, which demonstrates the improved power efficiency with the new 4th
Gen
AMD EPYC process.8,9
For more information about 4th
Gen AMD EPYC processors visit:
https://www.amd.com/en/processors/epyc-server-cpu-family.
servers with 4th

Finding 3: Database performance improved by 44 percent in the new environment
Figure 2 shows the results of our database performance testing using the TPROC-C workload from
the HammerDB benchmark suite. The modern OpenShift cluster of Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers
outperformed the legacy cluster by 44 percent. This extra capability could benefit companies upgrading
to the new environment in several ways. The company could provide a better user experience, perform
more work—or support more users—with a given number of servers, or reduce the number of servers
necessary to execute a given workload.
Finding 4: Performance improved in the modern cluster, supporting consolidation,
which leads to savings
Based on the results of our performance tests (see Figure 3), a company could consolidate the database
workloads of a four-node Dell PowerEdge 7515 cluster with some additional headroom into three
modern Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers with 4th
Generation AMD EPYC processors and high-speed
100Gb Broadcom NICs.
The cluster of three modern servers delivered a total of 9,674,180 transactions per minute (3,224,726
TPMs per server). The cluster of three legacy servers delivered a total of 6,714,712 TPM (2,238,237 per
server). Based on these results, four legacy servers would achieve a total of 8,952,948 TPM, which would
leave 721,231 additional TPM room for growth on the modern three-node cluster.
Reducing the number of servers you need means that operational expenditures such as data center
power and cooling and administrator time for maintenance also decrease, leading to ongoing savings.
Figure 3: Performance in transactions per minute that three modern servers and four legacy servers could achieve, based on our
hands-on testing. Higher is better. Source: Principled Technologies.
Modern OpenShift environment on Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers
Server 1
Server 1
Server 2
Server 2
Server 3
Server 3 Server 4
Comparison of TPM that three modern servers and four legacy servers can achieve
Transactions per minute | Higher is better
Legacy environment on Dell PowerEdge 7515 servers
8,952,948
9,674,180
Figure 2: Performance in transactions per minute using the TPROC-C workload of the HammerDB benchmark suite.
Higher is better. Source: Principled Technologies.
6,714,712
Transactions per minute | Higher is better
9,674,180
Modern OpenShift environment on Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers
Legacy environment on Dell PowerEdge 7515 servers
servers with 4th

How high-speed 100Gb Broadcom NICs can help
your organization
Even if a 25Gb NIC is sufficient to meet a company’s current networking needs, opting to equip new
servers with the high-speed 100Gb Broadcom NIC can be a smart move. Future-proofing your network
can allow you to meet the increasing demands of emerging technologies.
Advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which can require the
processing and transmission of large amounts of data, are becoming increasingly prevalent across
businesses of all sizes. In a June 2023 survey of small business decision-makers, 74 percent were
interested in using AI or automation in their business and 55 percent said their interest in these
technologies had grown in the first half of 2023.14
Upgrading to a modern environment with a high-
speed 100Gb Broadcom NIC positions companies to take advantage of AI applications for social media,
content creation, marketing, customer support, and many other use cases.
Another way that investing in the high-speed 100Gb Broadcom NIC can help your company is through
improved efficiency. You might be tempted to go with a 25Gb NIC, thinking that as your networking
needs increase, you can simply add more NICs of this size. However, consider a 2023 Principled
Technologies study that compared the performance of a server solution with a 100Gb Broadcom 57508
NIC and a solution with four 25Gb NICs.15
Testing revealed that the 100Gb NIC solution achieved
up to 2.3 times the throughput of the solution with 25Gb NICs. It also delivered greater bandwidth
consistency, which can translate to providing a better user experience; the report states that applications
using the 25Gb NICs network configuration “would experience significant variation in available
bandwidth, potentially causing jittery or interrupted service to multiple streams.”16
About Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers
The Dell PowerEdge R7615 is a 2U, single-socket rack server. Dell states that it has designed
this server to provide “performance and flexible, low-latency storage options in an air or Direct
Liquid Cooling (DLC) configuration.”10
According to Dell, this server uses the AMD EPYC 4th
generation processor to deliver up to 50
percent higher core count per single-socket platform in an innovative air-cooled chassis.11
It also
supports DDR5 at 4800 MT/s memory and PCIe®
Gen5 with double the speed of previous Gen4
for faster access and transport of data, optimizing application output.12
It supports up to six
single-wide full-length GPUs or three double-wide full-length GPUs, to improve responsiveness
or reduce app load time for power users, plus lower-latency, high-performance NVMe SSDs to
help maximize compute performance.13
Learn more at https://www.delltechnologies.com/asset/en-us/products/servers/technical-
support/poweredge-r7615-spec-sheet.pdf.
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Conclusion
If your organization’s transactional databases are running on gear that is several years old, you have
much to gain by upgrading to modern servers with new processors and networking components and
an OpenShift environment. In our testing, a modern OpenShift environment with a cluster of three Dell
PowerEdge R7615 servers with 4th
Generation AMD EPYC processors and high-speed 100Gb Broadcom
NICs outperformed a legacy environment with MySQL VMs running on a cluster of three Dell PowerEdge
R7515 servers with 3rd
Generation AMD EPYC processors and 25Gb Broadcom NICs. We also easily
migrated a VM from the legacy environment to the modern environment, with only a few steps required
to set up and less than ten minutes of hands-on time. The performance advantage of the modern
servers would allow a company to reduce the number of servers necessary to perform a given amount
of database work, thus lowering operational expenditures such as power and cooling and IT staff time
for maintenance. The high-speed 100Gb Broadcom NICs in this solution also give companies better
network performance and networking capacity to grow as they embrace emerging technologies such as
AI that put great demands on networks.
About the Broadcom BCM57508-P2100G Dual-Port 100GbE PCle 4.0
ethernet controller
A higher performing NIC can reduce latency, increase
throughput, and allow the server to transmit and receive
a great volume of data. The Dell PowerEdge R7615 we
tested features the Broadcom BCM57508-P2100G Dual-
Port 100GbE PCle 4.0 ethernet controller, which supports
speeds of up to 200 Gigabits per second. Broadcom
designed the BCM57508-P2100G “to build highly-
scalable, feature-rich networking solutions in servers
for enterprise and cloud-scale networking and storage
applications, including high-performance computing,
telco, machine learning, storage disaggregation, and
data analytics.”17
The BCM57508-P2100G features BroadSAFE®
technology, “to provide unparalleled platform
security” and a “unique set of highly-optimized hardware acceleration engines to enhance
network performance and improve server efficiency.”18
BCM57508-P2100G Dual-Port
100GbE PCle 4.0 ethernet controller
Image provided by Dell.
servers with 4th

1. Forrester, “Why Faster Refresh Cycles and Modern Infrastructure Management are Critical to Business Success,”
accessed May 1, 2024, www.techrepublic.com/resource-library/casestudies/forrester-why-faster-refresh-cy-
cles-and-modern-infrastructure-management-are-critical-to-business-success/.
2. Forrester, “Why Faster Refresh Cycles and Modern Infrastructure Management are Critical to Business Success,”
accessed May 1, 2024, www.techrepublic.com/resource-library/casestudies/forrester-why-faster-refresh-cy-
cles-and-modern-infrastructure-management-are-critical-to-business-success/.
3. Red Hat, “Understanding containers,” accessed April 12, 2024, https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/containers.
4. Red Hat, “Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization,” accessed April 12, 2024,
https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/cloudcomputing/openshift/virtualization.
5. AMD, “AMD EPYC Processors,” accessed April 12, 2024,
https://www.amd.com/en/processors/epyc-servercpu-Family.
6. AMD, “AMD EPYC Processors.”
7. AMD, “AMD EPYC Processors.”
8. SPEC, “SPEC CPU®
2017 Floating Point Rate Result for Dell PowerEdge R6615 (AMD EPYC 9554 64-Core Proces-
sor),” accessed May 2, 2024, https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/results/res2024q1/cpu2017-20240212-41481.html.
9. SPEC, “SPEC CPU®
2017 Floating Point Rate Result for Dell PowerEdge R6515 (AMD EPYC 7663 56-Core Proces-
sor),” accessed May 2, 2024, https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/results/res2021q3/cpu2017-20210913-29288.html.
10. Dell, “PowerEdge R7615 Specification Sheet,” accessed April 12, 2024, https://www.delltechnologies.com/asset/
en-us/products/servers/technical-support/poweredge-r7615-spec-sheet.pdf.
11. Dell, “PowerEdge R7615 Specification Sheet.”
14. Constant Contact, “AI Stats and Trends Small Businesses Need to Know Now,” accessed April 12, 2024,
https://news.constantcontact.com/small-business-now-ai-2023.
15. Principled Technologies, “Opt for modern 100Gb Broadcom 57508 NICs in your
Dell PowerEdge R750 servers for improved networking performance,” accessed April 12, 2024,
https://www.principledtechnologies.com/Dell/PowerEdge-R750-networking-iPerf-1023.pdf.
16. Principled Technologies, “Opt for modern 100Gb Broadcom 57508 NICs in your
Dell PowerEdge R750 servers for improved networking performance,” accessed April 12, 2024,
https://www.principledtechnologies.com/Dell/PowerEdge-R750-networking-iPerf-1023.pdf.
17. Broadcom, “BCM57508 – 200GbE,” accessed April 12, 2024,
https://www.broadcom.com/products/ethernetconnectivity/network-adapters/bcm57508-200g-ic.
18. Broadcom, “BCM57508 – 200GbE.”
Principled Technologies is a registered trademark of Principled Technologies, Inc.
All other product names are the trademarks of their respective owners.
For additional information, review the science behind this report.
Principled
Technologies®
Facts matter.®
Principled
Technologies®
Facts matter.®
This project was commissioned by Dell Technologies.
Read the science behind this report at https://facts.pt/Dj53ZJb
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Improve performance and gain room to grow by easily migrating to a modern OpenShift environment on Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers with 4th Generation AMD EPYC processors and high-speed 100GbE Broadcom NICs

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Improve performance and gain room to grow by easily migrating to a modern OpenShift environment on Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers with 4th Generation AMD EPYC processors and high-speed 100GbE Broadcom NICs