New SPECjAppServer2004 Performance on the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440

One Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server with four UltraSPARC T2 Plus processors at 1.6GHz delivered a single-system World Record result of 7661.16 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard using Oracle WebLogic Server, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, together with Oracle Database 11g.

This benchmark used the Oracle WebLogic 10.3.1 Application Server and Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition. This benchmark result proves that the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server using the UltraSPARC T2 Plus processor performs as an outstanding J2EE application server as well as an Oracle 11g OLTP database server.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server (four 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC T2 Plus chips) running as the application server delivered 6.4X better performance than the best published single application server result from the IBM p 570 system based on the 4.7 GHz POWER6 processor.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server (four 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC T2 Plus chips) demonstrated 73% better performance than the HP DL580 G5 result of 4410.07 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard, which used four 2.66 GHz Intel 6-core Xeon processors.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server (four 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC T2 Plus chips) demonstrated 2.3X better performance than the HP DL580 G5 result of 3339.94 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard, which used four 2.93 GHz Intel 4-core Xeon processors.

One Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server (four 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC T2 Plus chips) demonstrated 1.9X better performance than the Dell PowerEdge R610 result of 3975.13 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard, which used two 2.93 GHz Intel 4-core Xeon processors.

One Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server (four 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC T2 Plus chips) demonstrated 5% better performance than the Dell PowerEdge R610 result of 7311.50 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard, which used two Dell R610 systems each with two 2.93 GHz Intel 4-core Xeon processors.

These results were obtained using Sun Java SE 6 Update 14 Performance Release on the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server and running the Solaris 10 5/09 Operating Environment.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server used Solaris Containers technology to consolidate 7 Oracle Weblogic application server instances to achieve this result.

Oracle Fusion Middleware provides a family of complete, integrated, hot pluggable and best-of-breed products known for enabling enterprise customers to create and run agile and intelligent business applications. Oracle WebLogic Server’s on-going, record-setting Java application server performance demonstrates why so many customers rely on Oracle Fusion Middleware as their foundation for innovation.

Performance Landscape

SPECjAppServer2004 Performance Chart as of 7/20/2009. Complete benchmark results may be found at the SPEC benchmark website http://www.spec.org. SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard (bigger is better)

Vendor	SPECjApp-Server2004 JOPS@Standard	J2EE Server	DB Server
Sun	7661.16	1x Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 32 cores, 4 chips, 1.6 GHz US-T2 Plus Oracle WebLogic 10.3.1	1x Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 32 cores, 4 chips, 1.4 GHz US-T2 Plus Oracle 11g DB 11.1.0.7
Dell	7311.50	2x PowerEdge R610 16 cores, 4 chips, 2.93 Xeon X5570 Oracle WebLogic 10.3	1x PowerEdge R900 24 cores, 4 chips @ 2.66 Xeon X7460 Oracle 11g DB 11.1.0.7
Sun	6334.86	1x Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 32 cores, 4 chips, 1.4 GHz US-T2 Plus Oracle WebLogic 10.3	1x Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 32 cores, 4 chips, 1.4 GHz US-T2 Plus Oracle 11g DB 11.1.0.7
Dell	4794.33	2x PowerEdge 2950 16 cores, 4 chips, 3.3 Xeon X5470 Oracle WebLogic 10.3	1x PowerEdge R900 24 cores, 4 chips, 2.66 Xeon X7460 Oracle 11g DB 11.1.0.6
HP	4410.07	1x ProLiant DL580 G5 24 cores, 4 chips, 2.66 GHz Xeon X7460 Oracle WebLogic 10.3	1x ProLiant DL580 G5 24 cores, 4 chips, 2.66 GHz Xeon X7460 Oracle 11g DB 11.1.0.6
HP	3975.13	1x Dell PowerEdge R610 8 cores, 2 chips, 2.93 GHz Xeon X5570 Oracle WebLogic 10.3	1x PowerEdge R900 24 cores, 4 chips, 2.66 GHz Xeon X7460 Oracle 11g DB 11.1.0.7
IBM	1197.51	1x IBM System p 570 4 cores, 2 chips, 4.7 GHz POWER6 WebSphere Application Server V6.1	1x IBM p5 550 4 cores, 2 chips, 2.1 GHz POWER5+ IBM DB2 Universal Database 9.1

Results and Configuration Summary

Application Server:

Database Server:

Benchmark Description

SPECjAppServer2004 (Java Application Server) is a multi-tier benchmark for measuring the performance of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology-based application servers. SPECjAppServer2004 is an end-to-end application which exercises all major J2EE technologies implemented by compliant application servers as follows:

The web container, including servlets and JSPs
The EJB container
EJB2.0 Container Managed Persistence
JMS and Message Driven Beans
Transaction management
Database connectivity

Moreover, SPECjAppServer2004 also heavily exercises all parts of the underlying infrastructure that make up the application environment, including hardware, JVM software, database software, JDBC drivers, and the system network. The primary metric of the SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark is jAppServer Operations Per Second (JOPS) which is calculated by adding the metrics of the Dealership Management Application in the Dealer Domain and the Manufacturing Application in the Manufacturing Domain. There is NO price/performance metric in this benchmark.

Key Points and Best Practices

7 Oracle WebLogic server instances on the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 server were hosted in separate Solaris Containers to demonstrate consolidation of multiple application servers.
Each appserver container was bound to a separate processor set each containing 4 cores. This was done to improve performance by reducing memory access latency using the physical memory closest to the processors. The default set was used for network & disk interrupt handling.
The Oracle WebLogic application servers were executed in the FX scheduling class to improve performance by reducing the frequency of context switches.
The Oracle database processes were run in 4 processor sets using the psrset utility and executed in the FX scheduling class. This was done to improve perfomance by reducing memory access latency and reducing conext switches.
Oracle Log Writer process run in a separate processor set containing 1 core and run in the RT scheduling class. This was done to insure that the Log Writer had the most efficient use of cpu resources.
Enhancements to the JVM had a major impact on performance.
The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 used 2x 10GbE NICs for network traffic from the driver systems.

Disclosure Statement

SPECjAppServer2004, Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 (4 chips, 32 cores) 7661.16 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard; HP DL580 G5 (4 chips, 24 cores) 4410.07 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard; HP DL580 G5 (4 chips, 16 cores) 3339.94 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard; Two Dell PowerEdge 2950 (4 chips, 16 cores) 4794.33 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard; Dell PowerEdge R610 (2 chips, 8 cores) 3975.13 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard; Two Dell PowerEdge R610 (4 chips, 16 cores) 7311.50 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard; IBM p570 (2 chips, 4 cores) 1197.51 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard; SPEC, SPECjAppServer reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from http://www.spec.org as of 7/20/09

BestPerf: Performance & Best Practices

Tuesday Jul 21, 2009