Dot Hill Systems White Paper
SPC-1 Performance Brief
AssuredSAN™ Pro 5000
Dot Hill Systems | SPC-1 Benchmarking Results
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Dot Hill Systems White Paper
SPC-1 BENCHMARKING RESULTS
Results published 2/25/13
The AssuredSAN™ Pro 5000 has demonstrated the strength of Dot Hill’s real-time tiering,
producing 39,041.81 SPC-1 IOPS (input/output operations per second). SPC is an industry
recognized benchmark designed to measure storage performance in high transaction-oriented
workloads generated by many business critical applications.
Compared to other midrange systems (those priced between $30,000 and $200,000), the
AssuredSAN Pro 5000 demonstrates the best combination of SPC-1 Price-Performance,
providing 0.34 SPC-1 IOPS per Dollar 1 ($2.96 per SPC-1 IOPS) at a class-leading 0.15 GB per
Dollar ($6.48 per GB) 2. Many submissions are either cost-effective at the expense of
performance, or performance optimized with the consequence of high price and low system
capacity. Dot Hill’s result highlights the benefit of a tiered storage solution, with high
performance that is still cost-effective. In addition, the configuration used to achieve these results
is practical for real-world deployments. The Pro 5000 SPC-1 Result also reported very low
average latency of 6.95 milliseconds, representing fast response times even at very high
performance levels.
Real-time tiering moves data between different types of drives, learning from and adjusting to
the workload. Data begins to move right away, and high performance is attained very quickly. In
addition, only a small number of SSDs is required, significantly reducing cost. The SPC-1 Total
Price of $115,407.15, or $2.96 per SPC-1 IOPS, for the benchmark configuration illustrates
exceptional value for midrange customers.
The Storage Performance Council is a non-profit corporation founded to define, standardize and
promote storage benchmarks and to disseminate objective, verifiable storage performance data to
1
The SPC-1 Price-Performance metric is based on Total Price (as recorded in SPC-1 results) / SPC-1 IOPS. The SPC-1
IOPS per Dollar value reported above inverts the calculation, yielding the result for SPC-1 IOPS / Total Price.
2
Along with SPC-1 Price-Performance and its inverse, GB per Dollar is shown to address the cost of usable capacity
instead of looking solely at performance. This is done because both capacity and performance are important
factors when comparing products. The calculation is based on SPC-1 values, using Total ASU (Application Storage
Unit) Capacity / Total Price. Total ASU Capacity is defined as the “total storage capacity available to be read and
written in the course of executing the SPC-1 benchmark” – from SPC FDR, page 12.
Dot Hill Systems | SPC-1 Benchmarking Results
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Dot Hill Systems White Paper
the computer industry and its customers. The SPC-1 benchmark measures total SPC-1 IOPS,
price-performance (cost per SPC-1 IOPS), and total cost of ownership (which includes three
years of warranty support). It consists of a single workload designed to demonstrate the
performance of a storage subsystem while supplying the typical functions associated with
business critical applications. Those applications are characterized by predominately random I/O
operations and require both queries as well as update operations. Examples of these include
OLTP, database operations, and mail server implementations, all of which are excellent
environments for the Pro 5000. For more information, go to
http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_spc1#a00127
CHART 1
Dot Hill Systems | Chart 1
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Dot Hill Systems White Paper
Chart 1 shows the results for products with published SPC-1 results in terms of capacity and
transaction performance per dollar 3. Note that the Dot Hill AssuredSAN Pro 5000 has the
highest capacity per dollar and one of the highest measures of SPC-1 IOPS per dollar.
DETAILS FOR CHART 1
Company
Model
SPC-1
IOPS/$
GB/$
SPC-1
IOPS
Price
GB
SPC-1
Submission ID
Dot Hill
IBM
IBM
Fujitsu
Huawei
XIO
AssuredSAN™ Pro 5000
DS3524 Express Turbo
DS3524 Express
ETERNUS DX80 S2
OceanStor™ S5500T
Emprise™ 5000 (ISE 9.6
TB/10.2 DataPac)
OceanStor™ S2600T
ETERNUS DX80
InfiniteStorage 5000-SP
OceanStor™ S5600
OceanStor™ S2600
Emprise™ 5000 (ISE 2.4
TB/15.1 DataPac)
Sun Storage 6180 Array
DS3400
Emprise™ 5000 (73 GB)
AMS 2100
Sun StorEdge™ 3510
OceanStor™ Dorado 2100
Storwize® V7000 (SSDs)
0.34
0.26
0.31
0.44
0.34
0.15
0.15
0.14
0.14
0.12
0.12
0.11
39,041
24,449
14,797
34,995
60,242
12,603
$
$
$
$
$
$
115,407
95,384
48,310
78,757
178,191
84,479
17,801
13,412
6,706
9,700
21,367
9,277
A00127
A00100
A00101
A00111
A00122
A00095
0.36
0.29
0.28
0.32
0.38
0.20
0.11
0.08
0.08
0.07
0.07
0.06
40,266
19,492
24,555
34,002
16,995
8,102
$
$
$
$
$
$
111,415
67,296
88,530
108,380
45,459
41,195
11,811
5,355
6,543
7,200
2,920
2,319
A00123
A00082
A00102
A00091
A00090
A00096
0.21
0.26
0.24
0.17
0.27
1.11
0.67
0.04
0.03
0.03
0.02
0.01
0.01
0.01
26,090
9,000
8,720
31,498
11,647
100,051
120,492
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
114,042
34,127
36,500
187,321
43,327
90,320
181,029
5,145
981
1,030
3,967
604
1,104
1,527
A00084
A00061
A00065
A00076
A00038
A00112
A00116
Huawei
Fujitsu
SGI
Huawei
Huawei
XIO
Oracle
IBM
XIO
HDS
Oracle
Huawei
IBM
3
Transaction performance per dollar is defined as SPC-1 IOPS / Total Price, and capacity per dollar is Total ASU
Capacity / Total Price.
Dot Hill Systems | Details for Chart 1
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Dot Hill Systems White Paper
CHART 2
SPC-1 IOPS and Response Time
45000
80
R
70 e
s
60 p
o
50 n
s
e
40
40000
35000
S
P
30000
C
25000
1
20000
I
O 15000
P
S 10000
T
i
m
20 e
30
i/o rate ramp up
i/o rate steady-state
resp time ramp up
resp time steady-state
10 m
s
5000
0
0
500
1000
1500
0
2000
Run Time - mins
During the test performed by Dot Hill, the effect of Dot Hill's real time tiering was demonstrated
as the storage array autonomically adapted to the SPC-1's dynamic workload: there was an 85%
increase in performance when comparing the reported performance (21,134.27 SPC-1 IOPS @
73.83ms) at the start of the Ramp-Up Test Run's measurement interval to the reported
performance (39,050.08 SPC-1 IOPS @ 7.32ms) of the Sustainability Test Run.
© 2013 Copyright Dot Hill Systems Corporation. All rights reserved. Dot Hill Systems Corp., Dot Hill, the Dot Hill logo, and
AssuredSAN are trademarks or registered trademarks of Dot Hill Systems. SPC, SPC Benchmark 1, SPC-1, SPC-1 IOPS and SPC-1
Price-Performance are trademarks of the Storage Performance Council. All other trademarks are the property of their
respective companies in the United States and/or other countries. 2.26.13
Dot Hill Systems | Chart 2
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