Big data is no longer the exclusive domain of big business. Organizations of all types and sizes rely on big data applications to support critical operations, generate profitable insights, and provide tailored products and services for their customers. As data management demands continue to grow in scope and importance, many businesses may begin to push the operational limits of their aging server and storage solutions. Investments in hardware upgrades can equip businesses for future growth, but there are many options to choose from. Further, some storage solutions have historically required tradeoffs between speed and redundancy. How can decision makers have confidence that a new solution will provide a combination of data performance and availability that will meet their needs?

In two separate studies, we used the TeraSort big data workload to compare the Apache Hadoop performance of a Dell PowerEdge R750 with a Broadcom-based Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller 11 (PERC 11) server and storage solution to a competitor and to a previous-gen solution. Dell PowerEdge R750 with PERC 11 solutions support both the speedy performance of non-volatile memory express (NVMe) storage and the data redundancy of RAID. In the first study, we compared the PowerEdge R750 server with PERC 11 to an HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 server with an HPE Smart Array P440ar Controller. In the second study, we tested the PowerEdge R750 with PERC 11 against a previous generation PowerEdge R740 with PERC 10. In both the competitor and gen vs. gen comparison studies, the PowerEdge R750 with PERC 11 delivered stronger performance, finishing disk-intensive workloads faster and with higher throughput.

Our tests show that data-driven companies that are considering investments in new server and storage solutions may be able to avoid frustrating tradeoffs. The Dell PowerEdge R750 with PERC 11 server and storage solution provides a possible best-of-both-worlds option, with fast NVMe data performance and dependable redundancy and availability.

For more details about our Dell PowerEdge R750 with PERC 11 big data performance comparison tests, check out the reports below.