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HP ProLiant DL360 Gen9 Server - Overview, Test and Outlook

HP ProLiant DL360 Gen9 Review


With the advent of Intel's Xeon E5-2600 v3 family of processors, many vendors have launched computing platforms that take advantage of the increased performance of the new Xeon architecture. The DL360 Gen9 is a new 1U serial computing platform in the HP ProLiant family, and in addition to the new E5-2600 v3 processors and DDR4 DL360 Gen9 memory, HP’s technological advances and the company's overall vision for converged data centers.



Like the larger DL380 Gen9 platform with a 2U form factor, the DL360 increases the performance of Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 processors. In combination with HP SmartMemory DDR4 memory modules, the server capacity can be increased up to 768 GB, the speed up to 2 133 MHz, unlike the maximum speed of 1 866 MHz in the processors of the previous generation Gen 8 with DDR3 memory. The new E5-2600 v3 processors have up to 18 cores and allow to increase the performance per watt by three times compared to the Gen8 ProLiant servers. For the DL360 servers, the latest generation Smart Array Controller with 12 Gb / s speeds and PCIe accelerators are suitable. Unlike its predecessors, the DL360 Gen9 supports graphics processors: up to two active cards of a single width up to 9.5 inches long.

The device tested in this review uses a DL360 chassis with a 1U form factor with 8 compartments for a small form factor drive, is equipped with two Intel Xeon E5-2697 v3 2.6GHz processors, 256 GB of RAM (16 DIMM slots of 16 GB of 2Rx4 PC4 each -2133) and five solid-state SAS drives of a small form factor of 400 GB. There is no Media Bay universal bay in the device under test, but it can optionally be used to accommodate two additional bays for a small form factor drive or optical drive and a VGA connector with front-side access. We use a two-slot PCA FLR 10GbE SFP + type transceiver interface card for a network connection.
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HP ProLiant DL360 Gen9 specifications:




Development and creation


The device in question uses a chassis with eight compartments for a small form factor drive available on the front side, and there is no universal bay Media Bay in the upper right corner, which can be used for two additional small form factor drivers or a combination of optical disc drive and VGA port with access from the front. The status panel with the power button and LED indicators to display the status, system health, device ID and network status is located on the right next to a single USB port. HP DL360 Gen9 and HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9 chassis are also available with four bays for a large form factor drive.



The ventilation network provides cooling from the front of the system. Our configuration uses two Intel Xeon E5-2697 v3 2.6GHz processors and 16 of 24 DIMM slots. The system uses the form factor DIMM16GB 2Rx4 PC4-2133 DDR4 with a total of 256 GB DDR4 memory. The microSD slot is located between the power supplies and the DIMM slots. A secondary PCIe PCI adapter card with a third PCIe slot can be used for dual-processor DL360 server configurations, as in our case, the FlexibleLOM slot and two SATA ports are also located on the back side.



The DL360 Gen9 servers are equipped with one standard PCIe dual motherboard PCIe transition card, while the optional midpoint board provides a third PCIe slot for dual-core configurations. The back of the server includes a VGA port, a built-in 1GbE network adapter with four ports, an iLO control port, a serial port, two USB 3.0 ports, a device LED ID, and access to the FlexibleLOM card, in this case in a PCA FLR 10GbE SFP type configuration and network interface.
Our server is equipped with dual fast-replaceable 800W power supplies Flexible Slot Platinum with an efficiency of 94%. The HP Flex Slot power supply design allows hot-swappable replacement and also does not require tools to be installed on HP ProLiant Gen9 servers. Currently available models are 500W, 800W and 1400W.

Control


HP ProLiant Gen9 servers are designed to be commissioned using a single, extensible firmware interface (UEFI), but also allows for the old-style boot mode.

HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) is HP's intelligent control system built into HP's agent-free management servers. Agentless Management communicates using Direct Media Interface (DMI), and can also be used in conjunction with Intelligent Provisioning to deploy and upgrade servers without an environment configuration with reusable deployment profiles. New backup features of ProLiant Gen9 include the ability to access 1 TB of HP StoreVirtual virtual storage at no additional cost and a new script to automatically install the server.



Standard iLO features include Agentless Management, Active Health System, Embedded Remote support and the new Adaptive ProLiant Management Layer (APML) abstraction layer to improve the temperature level to update system health data without reprogramming the system ROM and non-destructive online temperature and ventilation data updates. On the new ProLiant Gen9 servers , the iLO Federation feature has been added to allow the discovery and management of multiple servers, as well as providing access to 1TB of space for additional storage use when 4 GB of iLO NAND is connected to the server. Various iLO licensing schemes are available that provide various aspects of the functionality of iLO Federation.



The HP Active Health System (AHS) is an integrated component of HP iLO Management for self-diagnosis. AHS monitors server health, configuration and real-time telemetry on iLO 4, system ROM, complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), smart arrays, BladeSystem Onboard Administrator, Agentless Management Service, and network interface cards. It provides synchronized monitoring and data collection across all systems for accelerated problem detection and can be automatically sent for HP analysis via a direct connection to Insight Online or Insight Remote Support 7.x.



The iLO mobile app for iOS and Android can interact directly with the iLO processor on ProLiant servers to provide access to system status and protocols, as well as scripts and virtual environments. The new HP RESTful tool for HP ProLiant Gen9 servers uses an API that can create a configuration for rapid deployment of ProLiant servers , and also configures servers with heterogeneous operating systems. HP ProLiant Gen9 servers also support management through HP Systems Insight Manager 7.4 and HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager 7.4.



HP Gen9 servers are currently shipped with Insight Control software. HP Insight Control includes automated server deployment and relocation tools along with virtual machine management integration with VMware ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, and Xen on Linux VMs. Performance management tools detect and analyze hardware configuration problems and performance constraints.

Insight Control includes centralized monitoring and control tools for server power consumption and heat dissipation. Access to HP Insight Control is through Systems Insight Manager (HP SIM) through a networked graphical user interface. HP Insight Control runs on a Windows-based central management server (CMS) and can manage Linux and Windows network nodes. Remote management features include graphical remote access (Virtual KVM), team collaboration, server loading and video footage errors, video report and on-demand playback, and remote access to the virtual environment.

License keys for HP OneView and HP Insight Control are provided in the same system for customers planning to switch to OneView as soon as it becomes possible in 2014. The OneView service is designed to integrate HP server , storage, and networking management, offering software-defined templates, centralized automation center, and other features designed to base the transition to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and hybrid cloud architecture.

HP OneView can be combined with VMware vCenter, Microsoft System Center, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV), HP Universal Configuration Management Database (UCMDB) and HP Operations Orchestration. HP Insight Online is supplied free of charge with an HP warranty and is serviced under a contract. Insight Online is a cloud-driven and supported portal with a surveillance panel that tracks service events, displays device configurations and monitors HP contracts and warranties. The HP Support Center application provides access to Insight Online data for mobile devices.

HP Insight Online Direct Connect, a small and medium-sized remote service offering, allows ProLiant Gen8 / 9 servers and BladeSystem c-class blades to send hardware failure and diagnostics information directly for analysis, script generation, and automated parts replacement.

HP Insight Remote Support uses local hosting to collect data and send it to HP. The service is developed by IT-environment with a maximum of 2 500 devices. Insight Remote Support can monitor predecessor Gen8 HP ProLiant servers , as well as HP storage and network products. Insight Remote Support is available through both the local console and the online dashboard.

Test conditions


We publish information about laboratory resources, network capabilities of the laboratory and other details of our testing so that administrators and those responsible for purchasing equipment can fairly assess the conditions under which we achieved these results. To support testing independence, none of our reviews are funded or managed by the manufacturer of the equipment we are testing.

Our first results relate to the HP ProLiant DL360 Gen9 server as standard with a RAID10 array using four installed SSDs and the fifth as a boot disk. The second set of results relates to the performance of the FlexibleLOM PCA FLR 10GbE SFP server DL360 + network interface card connected to the all flash array to demonstrate network storage capabilities.

Analysis of simulated enterprise load


For each assessment, we previously transferred the device to a steady state with a significant load of 16 threads with 16 queues in the stream. Then, the storage will be checked with many variations of flows and queue depths to determine the effectiveness of work with low and high loads.

Preliminary preparation and first checks in a stable condition:


This analysis includes four profiles that are widely used in manufacturers specifications and benchmarking tests:
  1. 4k - 100% read or 100% write
  2. 8k - 100% read or 100% write
  3. 8k -70% read 30% write
  4. 128k - 100% read or 100% write

With workloads composed of 4k random operations, the ProLiant DL360 Gen9 reaches 244,058 I / O operations per second when reading and only 41,021 I / O operations per second when writing using the internal RAID10 array. In combination with the all flash array, the DL360 10GbE is capable of withstanding 253,984 I / O operations per second when reading and 300,743IOPS I / O operations per second when writing.



The average latency of the internal RAID10 array was just 1.05 ms for reading and 6.24 ms for writing. The average delay time of the 10GbE interface with the all flash array was 10.1 ms for reading and 0.85 ms for writing.



The maximum DL360 Gen9 delay time is 86.6 ms when reading and 112.3 ms when writing. The maximum delay time of the DL360 10GbE network interface with the all flash array was 60.9 ms when reading and 28.4 ms when writing.



The standard deviation results indicate a large change in the latency results for 4k write operations on a RAID10 SSD, which is consistent with the results shown above.



After changing the server and all flash array conditions for 8k serial data transmission, we measured throughput at a load of 16 threads and with 16 queues in the stream for 100% read and 100% write operations. Gen9 DL360 RAID10 internal storage results were 147,178 I / O operations per second for sequential read operations and 36,786 I / O operations per second for write operations. The 10GbE network interface with the all flash array showed 159,158 I / O operations per second for read operations and 217,183 I / O operations per second for write operations.



The following results were obtained on the basis of a protocol composed of random read operations of 70% and write operations of 30% 8k with different loads of threads and queues. No combination of threads and queues created any unexpected difficulties for the DL360 Gen9 server with a RAID10 array. The throughput of a RAID10 array approaches its maximum of 75,147 I / O operations per second with 16 threads with 8 queues in the stream. The bandwidth of the 10GbE interface to the all flash array with 16 threads and 16 queues in the stream reaches 218,801 I / O operations per second.



During the first few workload cycles of 8k in the 70/30 benchmark, the 10GbE all flash array configuration kept the average delay time at a theoretical minimum of approximately 0.23 ms. No configuration showed weak points in terms of average latency.



The RAID10 array experienced several noticeable latency jumps with a large queue depth. During the heaviest load of the 8k 70/30 network interface there was a jump in the delay time, the rest of the time the maximum delay was consistent.



The standard deviation of the latency with comparative testing of 8k 70/30 also reflects the maximum latency in a RAID10 configuration with multiple queues. Standard deviation results show that the RAID10 array is experiencing the most trouble with consistent latency times at maximum load.



Our final testing is based on a 128k serial transfer with 100% read operations and 100% write. The Gen9 ProLiant DL360 RAID10 internal array is able to handle 1 678 541 Kb / s for read operations and 637 581 Kb / s for write operations. When evaluating the additional dual network interface 10GbE Gen9 DL360, the result was 2 311 475 kB / s for read operations and 2 310 042 Kb / s for write operations.



Conclusion


HP ProLiant DL360 Gen9 has a development that can serve as a useful component in a converged enterprise or information center architecture along with the OneView HP platform and other company innovations in management, which makes it easy to coordinate the work of hundreds and thousands of servers. For those with more modest goals, the DL360 Gen9 offers storage density and computing power as a flexible and efficient addition to a variety of environments. In the DL300 family, HP embraced major technological advances, including support for the latest Intel chipset, DDR4 DRAM, 10GbE and SAS3. In our case, the server is connected to 2.5-inch solid-state drives, although the DL360 server could be used with four 3.5-inch drives, depending on work preferences. In general, there is nothing revolutionary in the DL300 family, but there is a reason why HP sells more servers than anyone else, because it continues to provide functionality that solves the problems of the vast majority of the market.

In our configuration with five “outdated” solid-state drives based on a small logical controller in the SAS2 interface based on SanDisk Pliant, we received expectedly stable operation. In addition to the high levels of internal storage, the availability of high-performance 10GbE interfaces means that the DL360 Gen9 can be put above high-speed storage arrays in order to carry out a large number of I / O operations with minimal latency and fewer cables. In many cases, the load versus storage will be the most popular usage scenario. In our testing, we connected the DL360 Gen9 server with the all flash array based on Windows Server 2012 R2 and achieved indicators that easily outperformed the double 10GbE connection. We applied a significant load of mixed I / O operations, with a maximum load of 218,000 random I / O operations per second 8k 70/30, as well as 2.3 Gb / s of sequential operations. Since the internal slot FlexibleLOM coped with this, we were able to leave all additional PCIe slots free for future use.

The updated ProLiant Gen9 family continues to be the most reliable server. HP has taken all the new developments and applied them to the server. While we have noticed that other manufacturers are experimenting with storage density in the 1U and 2U form factor, HP plays big, giving customers exactly what they need. While others only use new technology in some products, HP’s position is more pragmatic; when there is a large enough demand for a new technology, they introduce it. At the moment, they rely on a good reputation for the quality of the build, control, and cost structure that put them in the vanguard of server makers.

Benefits


disadvantages


Total


HP ProLiant DL360 Gen9 offers data centers that are managed by compact computing servers with a 1U form factor based on the origin of the HP server and provide a performance and power advantage over the previous Gen8 family.

Comrades, please do not judge strictly, the post published at night and forgot to issue it as a translation.
The original article is here: www.storagereview.com/hp_proliant_dl360_gen9_review

From myself I can add that we carried out this test (repeated) on the stand at our friends in the UK.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/240071/

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