A Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd server with Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Standard and Windows Server 2016 could help set up your business for long-term customer growth

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Serve more online customers with new
Dell EMC servers and Microsoft SQL
Server 2017 software
A Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd server with Microsoft
SQL Server 2017 Standard and Windows Server
2016 could help set up your business for long-term
customer growth
Successful businesses have the vision to stay one step ahead of the
crowd. Why not apply that same visionary thinking to your datacenter?
Your legacy servers and SQL Server®
database environment could be
lagging when it comes to order processing and response times. Replacing
those servers with new hardware and software could help you support
more online customers as your business needs increase.
In hands-on testing, we ran an order processing workload on a legacy
Dell EMC™
PowerEdge™
R720xd server with older software, as well as
the new 14th generation PowerEdge R740xd server running Microsoft®
SQL Server 2017 Standard and Windows Server®
2016 Standard. The
new solution significantly improved transactional database performance,
processing almost seven times as many orders per minute and reducing
user wait times. By upgrading your existing SQL Server environment to
new Dell EMC servers and the latest software from Microsoft, you could
increase transactional database performance immediately, with room for
future business growth.
Dell EMC
PowerEdge
R740xd
Support
nearly
7x
as many
customers
Cut wait
times by
88%
Serve more online customers with new Dell EMC servers and Microsoft SQL Server 2017 software October 2018 (Revised)
A Principled Technologies report: Hands-on testing. Real-world results.A Principled Technologies report: Hands-on testing. Real-world results.

2. Why refresh your server hardware and software?
Upgrading an outdated server infrastructure can offer a host of business benefits. According to a 2016 report
by the International Data Corporation (IDC), average server performance deteriorated 14 percent per year—
meaning that, by year five in a server’s life, its performance hovered at just 40 percent of what it once was.
IDC claims this performance decline could increase application management costs by 40 percent and server
administration costs by 148 percent.1
In the short term, new Dell EMC servers with the latest Microsoft software help your business hit the refresh
button and avoid the performance decline and increased costs associated with legacy server infrastructure. And
as your customer base continues to grow long-term, the Microsoft-Dell EMC solution’s improved transactional
database performance could help you better support the expected influx of database users.
Support more customers with a new Microsoft-Dell EMC solution
We used the DVD Store 2 (DS2) benchmark to gauge how many online transactions the solution could process,
as measured in orders per minute. First, we ran the workload on a legacy Dell EMC PowerEdge R720xd server
running standard editions of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2. Then we ran the same
workload on a new Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd server with updated software: Microsoft SQL Server 2017
Standard and Windows Server 2016 Standard.
Our testing revealed that the Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd solution delivered markedly better transactional
database performance than the legacy solution, processing 6.7 times as many orders per minute and lowering
average application latencies by 88 percent. These benchmark results provide important insights into real-
world benefits. A solution that can process more orders increases your capacity to support more customers as
your business grows. And reduced application latency indicates that users will spend less time waiting for a
response—decreasing the risk that they’ll take their business elsewhere. If your database is running on legacy
hardware and software, it might be time for a refresh.
The Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd
The 14th generation Dell EMC
PowerEdge R740xd offers strong
database performance with a variety
of storage configuration options. It
can support up to 24 NVMe drives
(we tested with two SAS HDDs and
12 SATA SSDs) and is powered by
Intel®
Xeon®
Scalable processors.2
Windows Server 2016
According to Microsoft, Windows
Server 2016 is a “cloud-ready
operating system that supports your
current workloads while introducing
new technologies that make it easy
to transition to cloud computing.”3
SQL Server 2017 Standard
According to Microsoft, SQL Server
2017 Standard helps users “find rich
programming capabilities, security
innovations, and fast performance
for mid-tier applications and data
marts” with features like end-to-end
database security, enhanced in-
memory performance, basic reporting
and analytics, and hybrid scenarios.4
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About the solution
Serve more online customers with new Dell EMC servers and Microsoft SQL Server 2017 software October 2018 (Revised) | 2

3. Serve more customers with more orders per minute
In our testing, the PowerEdge R740xd solution delivered 6.7
times as many orders per minute as the legacy solution—nearly
two hundred thousand compared to the legacy solution’s 29,135.
Why does this test result matter for your application? Imagine
you’re an online clothing retailer who puts on a one-day-only
sale. As customers rush to your website, your database has
to process each interaction—whether someone’s clicking on
a new page or reviewing their cart. If these interactions come in
faster and in greater bulk than your servers can handle, application
wait times could skyrocket. This slowdown could negatively impact a
user’s experience and even drive them away from your site. A study by
Bing engineers on the impact of server delays found that a 2-second
slowdown resulted in a 4.3 percent loss in revenue per user.5
By contrast, a server solution that can handle 6.7 times as many orders
per minute reduces the chance of a slowdown (even during periods of
peak use) and opens up new options for datacenter use. Your business
could choose to consolidate, using fewer servers to process just as many
orders. This can reduce datacenter costs like power and cooling, as well as
ease the burden on IT staff. Alternatively, you could expand your overall
capacity by fitting servers that process more orders into the same amount
of datacenter space. With either approach, your business could stand to
benefit from upgrading to new Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd servers with
Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Standard and Windows Server 2016.
About the DVD Store 2 benchmark
DVD Store 2 (DS2) models an online
DVD store where customers log
in, search for movies, and make
purchases. DS2 reports the rate
at which orders are processed
as orders per minute (OPM).
Over the course of a test
run, DS2 updates the
rate’s running average in
1-second intervals. For our
results, we used the last
reported OPM number after
a 30-minute run. The DS2
workload performs actions
like adding new customers
to mimic the wide range
of database functions an
e-commerce environment
would need. For more
information, see https://
github.com/dvdstore/ds21
197,635
29,13550,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
PowerEdge R740xd PowerEdge R720xd
Orders per minute
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1011100
1000010Serve more online customers with new Dell EMC servers and Microsoft SQL Server 2017 software October 2018 (Revised) | 3

4. Help users wait less with faster response times
New Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd servers with
standard editions of SQL Server 2017 and Windows
Server 2016 could also dramatically decrease read/
write and application latency. On average, this
solution reduced drive read latency by 99 percent and
write latency by 98 percent versus the legacy solution.
While read/write latency indicates how long the
system waits between orders, application latency
measures how long a user would wait for a response
after sending an order. This helps us understand
how users would experience the system—and
consequently your business. The new PowerEdge
R740xd solution cut application latency for the DVD
Store 2 workload by 88 percent. This means a user
could spend less time waiting, potentially translating
into higher customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
You want to serve more customers and accommodate future business growth—but are updated servers and
software the answer? Our testing showed that a Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd server, with Microsoft SQL Server
2017 Standard and Windows Server 2016 Standard, handled significantly more orders per minute and reduced
application latency compared to a legacy solution—benefits that can directly translate into a better customer
experience. With a new Microsoft and Dell EMC solution, your business could stop worrying about whether your
legacy servers will support customer growth, and start winning those customers so you can increase revenue.
1 IDC, “Why Upgrade Your Server Infrastructure Now?” Accessed May 8, 2018, https://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-re-
ports/idc-why-upgrade-server-infrastructure.pdf
2 Dell EMC, “Dell EMC R740xd spec sheet,” accessed May 8, 2018, http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/
data-sheets/en/Documents/poweredge-r740xd-spec-sheet.pdf?newtab=true
3 Microsoft Windows datasheet, accessed May 8, 2018, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/windows-server
4 Microsoft SQL Server datasheet, accessed May 8, 2018, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-2017-editions
5 Jake Brutlag and Eric Schurman, ”Performance Related Changes and their User Impact,” accessed May 8, 2018, https://
www.slideshare.net/dyninc/the-user-and-business-impact-of-server-delays-additional-bytes-and-http-chunking-in-web-
search-presentation
6
48
10
20
30
40
50
60
PowerEdge R740xd
Time
(ms)
PowerEdge R720xd
Application latency
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Read the science behind this report at http://facts.pt/ehdjn5
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.
Serve more online customers with new Dell EMC servers and Microsoft SQL Server 2017 software October 2018 (Revised) | 4