A just published STAC report sponsored by Intel provides insight into performance benchmarks for Kx Systems’ kdb+ database running against an Ion Computer Systems storage appliance containing solid state disk (SSD) technology from Intel.
According to the report, several tests that form part of STAC’s M3 benchmark suite – focused on the performance of historical tick databases – showed performance boosts compared to traditional ‘spindle’ disk storage. Specifically, results were between 2.2x and 2.7x that of spindle technology, with Ion’s Storion SR-71 appliance taking up just 2U of rack space and drawing less than 500 watts of power.
The ‘stack under test’ used to perform the benchmarks consisted of:
– Kx Systems kdb+ 2.8
– Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 with ext4
– Ion Storion SR-71 appliance, equipped with Intel 320 SSD Storage Systems
– IBM x3850 X5 Server with 4 * 10-core Intel E7-4870 chips, at 2.4 GHs, and 512 GB RAM
– Intel 520 x10gE adaptors, and a Netgear XSM7224S switch, linking the IBM server to the Ion storage appliance. A total of 4 adaptors in the server linked to 4 in the SR-71.
Ion’s SR-71 provides up to 10 GB of usable storage, with 600,000 input/output operations per second. Storage can be increased by connecting multiple SR-71s.
