Performance puzzle

We have a new Compaq Proliant DL760 server running
Windows 2003 that we bought to replace a Dell 8450
running Windows 2000
The new machine has 4 2.5 Ghz processors with hyper-
threading (when you open Task Mgr it looks like it
has 8 processors)
The old machine has 8 P3 700 Mhz processors.
Both machines have direct attached fiber channel
arrays configured identically except the new one uses
72 Gig hard drives and the old one has 36 Gig drives.
I am using 9 drives in Raid5 for data and 4 drives in Raid
1+0 for logs on both machines. Both arrays have 15000 RPM
drives.
Both machines have SQL Server 2000. My test database is
about 4 Gig and it is identical on both servers.
I have a stress test script with a variety of operations
such as bulk insert, create clustered index, calculations,
etc.
As you would expect, the new machine runs processor
intensive operations much faster. But the old machine runs
disk intensive operations faster than the new one. We had
expected at least comparable performance.
Overall, the test runs in 39 minutes on the old machine
and 40 minutes on the new one (pretty close, I know, but
the new one should win by a larger margin).
Is there anything special about running SQL Server 2000 on
Windows 2003 that we need to know?
Does the Compaq drive array have some limitation that the
Dell does not?
Thanks
Dave GDave,
don't know whether you have considered the following two variants:
1. seek time. it is a specification of the hard drive, and though not much,
different drives can have different seek times. With the rotation speed on
the higher end, the seek times' difference plays a larger role
2. sorting mechanism of the RAID controllers: some controllers support
elevator sorting that is clearly at advantage than without.
hth
Quentin
"DaveG" <anonymous@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:02c701c3dae2$a256fde0$a401280a@.phx.gbl...
> We have a new Compaq Proliant DL760 server running
> Windows 2003 that we bought to replace a Dell 8450
> running Windows 2000
> The new machine has 4 2.5 Ghz processors with hyper-
> threading (when you open Task Mgr it looks like it
> has 8 processors)
> The old machine has 8 P3 700 Mhz processors.
> Both machines have direct attached fiber channel
> arrays configured identically except the new one uses
> 72 Gig hard drives and the old one has 36 Gig drives.
> I am using 9 drives in Raid5 for data and 4 drives in Raid
> 1+0 for logs on both machines. Both arrays have 15000 RPM
> drives.
> Both machines have SQL Server 2000. My test database is
> about 4 Gig and it is identical on both servers.
> I have a stress test script with a variety of operations
> such as bulk insert, create clustered index, calculations,
> etc.
> As you would expect, the new machine runs processor
> intensive operations much faster. But the old machine runs
> disk intensive operations faster than the new one. We had
> expected at least comparable performance.
> Overall, the test runs in 39 minutes on the old machine
> and 40 minutes on the new one (pretty close, I know, but
> the new one should win by a larger margin).
> Is there anything special about running SQL Server 2000 on
> Windows 2003 that we need to know?
> Does the Compaq drive array have some limitation that the
> Dell does not?
> Thanks
> Dave G
>|||Thanks, I'll see if I can find the specs.
DG
>--Original Message--
>Dave,
>don't know whether you have considered the following two
variants:
>1. seek time. it is a specification of the hard drive,
and though not much,
>different drives can have different seek times. With the
rotation speed on
>the higher end, the seek times' difference plays a larger
role
>2. sorting mechanism of the RAID controllers: some
controllers support
>elevator sorting that is clearly at advantage than
without.
>hth
>Quentin
>
>"DaveG" <anonymous@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message
>news:02c701c3dae2$a256fde0$a401280a@.phx.gbl...
>> We have a new Compaq Proliant DL760 server running
>> Windows 2003 that we bought to replace a Dell 8450
>> running Windows 2000
>> The new machine has 4 2.5 Ghz processors with hyper-
>> threading (when you open Task Mgr it looks like it
>> has 8 processors)
>> The old machine has 8 P3 700 Mhz processors.
>> Both machines have direct attached fiber channel
>> arrays configured identically except the new one uses
>> 72 Gig hard drives and the old one has 36 Gig drives.
>> I am using 9 drives in Raid5 for data and 4 drives in
Raid
>> 1+0 for logs on both machines. Both arrays have 15000
RPM
>> drives.
>> Both machines have SQL Server 2000. My test database is
>> about 4 Gig and it is identical on both servers.
>> I have a stress test script with a variety of operations
>> such as bulk insert, create clustered index,
calculations,
>> etc.
>> As you would expect, the new machine runs processor
>> intensive operations much faster. But the old machine
runs
>> disk intensive operations faster than the new one. We
had
>> expected at least comparable performance.
>> Overall, the test runs in 39 minutes on the old machine
>> and 40 minutes on the new one (pretty close, I know, but
>> the new one should win by a larger margin).
>> Is there anything special about running SQL Server 2000
on
>> Windows 2003 that we need to know?
>> Does the Compaq drive array have some limitation that
the
>> Dell does not?
>> Thanks
>> Dave G
>>
>
>.
>|||You don't mention which drive arrays you have but from what I've seen of our
Compaq RA8000's there is more to the configuration than just the RAID level.
So it might still be something between the way the arrays are configured. If
you're familiar with IOMeter from Intel you might want to use that to test
the disk systems performance.
Also, from the tests I've seen hyperthreading isn't the same as having more
full processors, so maybe the difference in processor count plays a larger
part than expected. It may be possible that hyperthreading is actually
causing worse performance, you might want to test disabling it.
Mike Kruchten
"DaveG" <anonymous@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:02c701c3dae2$a256fde0$a401280a@.phx.gbl...
> We have a new Compaq Proliant DL760 server running
> Windows 2003 that we bought to replace a Dell 8450
> running Windows 2000
> The new machine has 4 2.5 Ghz processors with hyper-
> threading (when you open Task Mgr it looks like it
> has 8 processors)
> The old machine has 8 P3 700 Mhz processors.
> Both machines have direct attached fiber channel
> arrays configured identically except the new one uses
> 72 Gig hard drives and the old one has 36 Gig drives.
> I am using 9 drives in Raid5 for data and 4 drives in Raid
> 1+0 for logs on both machines. Both arrays have 15000 RPM
> drives.
> Both machines have SQL Server 2000. My test database is
> about 4 Gig and it is identical on both servers.
> I have a stress test script with a variety of operations
> such as bulk insert, create clustered index, calculations,
> etc.
> As you would expect, the new machine runs processor
> intensive operations much faster. But the old machine runs
> disk intensive operations faster than the new one. We had
> expected at least comparable performance.
> Overall, the test runs in 39 minutes on the old machine
> and 40 minutes on the new one (pretty close, I know, but
> the new one should win by a larger margin).
> Is there anything special about running SQL Server 2000 on
> Windows 2003 that we need to know?
> Does the Compaq drive array have some limitation that the
> Dell does not?
> Thanks
> Dave G
>|||> Also, from the tests I've seen hyperthreading isn't the same as having
more
> full processors, so maybe the difference in processor count plays a larger
> part than expected. It may be possible that hyperthreading is actually
> causing worse performance, you might want to test disabling it.
Absolutely right.
> "DaveG" <anonymous@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:02c701c3dae2$a256fde0$a401280a@.phx.gbl...
> > We have a new Compaq Proliant DL760 server running
> > Windows 2003 that we bought to replace a Dell 8450
> > running Windows 2000
> > The new machine has 4 2.5 Ghz processors with hyper-
> > threading (when you open Task Mgr it looks like it
> > has 8 processors)
> > The old machine has 8 P3 700 Mhz processors.
> > Both machines have direct attached fiber channel
> > arrays configured identically except the new one uses
> > 72 Gig hard drives and the old one has 36 Gig drives.
> > I am using 9 drives in Raid5 for data and 4 drives in Raid
> > 1+0 for logs on both machines. Both arrays have 15000 RPM
> > drives.
> >
> > Both machines have SQL Server 2000. My test database is
> > about 4 Gig and it is identical on both servers.
> >
> > I have a stress test script with a variety of operations
> > such as bulk insert, create clustered index, calculations,
> > etc.
> >
> > As you would expect, the new machine runs processor
> > intensive operations much faster. But the old machine runs
> > disk intensive operations faster than the new one. We had
> > expected at least comparable performance.
> >
> > Overall, the test runs in 39 minutes on the old machine
> > and 40 minutes on the new one (pretty close, I know, but
> > the new one should win by a larger margin).
> >
> > Is there anything special about running SQL Server 2000 on
> > Windows 2003 that we need to know?
> > Does the Compaq drive array have some limitation that the
> > Dell does not?
> >
> > Thanks
> > Dave G
> >
> >
>sql