Significance of Results

Sun has a new SPECmail2009 result on a Sun Fire X4275 server and Sun Storage 7110 Unified
Storage System running Sun Java Messaging server 6.2.  OpenStorage and ZFS were a key part of the new World
Record SPECmail2009.

• The Sun Fire X4275 server, equipped by 2, 2.93GHz
  Intel Xeon QC X5570
  processors, running the
  Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2 on Solaris 10
  achieved a new World Record 8000 SPECmail_Ent2009 IMAP4 users at
  38,348 Sessions/hour. 

• The Sun result was obtained using  about half disk
  spindles, with the Sun Storage 7110 Unified Storage System, than  Apple’s direct attached storage solution.  The Sun submission is the first result using a NAS solution, specifically two Sun Storage 7110 Unified Storage System.
• This benchmark result clearly demonstrates that the Sun Fire
  X4275 server together with Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2,
  Solaris 10 on
  Sun Storage 7110 Unified Storage Systems
  can support a large,
  enterprise level IMAP mail server environment as a reliable low cost
  solution, delivering best performance and maximizing data integrity with ZFS.

SPECmail 2009 Performance Landscape(ordered by performance)

Notes:

Number of SPECmail_Ent2009 users (bigger is better)
SPECmail2009
Sessions/hour (bigger is better)
Ch, Co, Th: Chips, Cores, Threads

Complete benchmark results may be found at the SPEC benchmark
website http://www.spec.org

Results and Configuration Summary

Hardware Configuration:

Sun Fire X4275
2 x 2.93 GHz QC Intel Xeon X5570 processors
72 GB
12 x 300GB, 10000 RPM SAS disk

2 x Sun Storage 7110 Unified Storage System, each with

16 x 146GB SAS 10K RPM

<!–
Sun Fire E2900 load generator

11 x UltraSPARC IV+ 1.95 GHz DC processors
90 GB
2 x 73GB disks

Sun Fire X4600 benchmark manager and load generator

8 x AMD Opteron 8356 2.3 GHz QC processors
64 GB
3 x 73GB disks

–>

Software Configuration:

O/S: Solaris 10
ZFS
Mail Server: Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2

Benchmark Description

The SPECmail2009 benchmark measures the ability of corporate
e-mail systems to meet today’s demanding e-mail users over fast
corporate local area networks (LAN). The SPECmail2009 benchmark
simulates corporate mail server workloads that range from 250 to
10,000 or more users, using industry standard SMTP and IMAP4
protocols. This e-mail server benchmark creates client workloads
based on a 40,000 user corporation, and uses folder and message MIME
structures that include both traditional office documents and a
variety of rich media content. The benchmark also adds support for
encrypted network connections using industry standard SSL v3.0 and
TLS 1.0 technology. SPECmail2009 replaces all versions of
SPECmail2008, first
released in August 2008. The results from the two benchmarks are not
comparable.

Software on one or more client machines generates a benchmark load
for a System Under Test (SUT) and measures the SUT response times. A
SUT can be a mail server running on a single system or a cluster of
systems.

A SPECmail2009 ‘run’ simulates a 100% load level associated with
the specific number of users, as defined in the configuration file.
The mail server must maintain a specific Quality of Service (QoS) at
the 100% load level to produce a valid benchmark result. If the mail
server does maintain the specified QoS at the 100% load level, the
performance of the mail server is reported as SPECmail_Ent2009 SMTP
and IMAP Users at SPECmail2009 Sessions per hour. The
SPECmail_Ent2009 users at SPECmail2009 Sessions per Hour metric
reflects the unique workload combination for a SPEC IMAP4 user.

Key Points and Best Practices

• Each XTA7110 was configured as 1xRAID1 (14×143GB) volume with 2 NFS
  Shared LUNs, accessed by the SUT via NFSV4. The mailstore volumes were mounted with the nfs mount options: nointr,hard, xattr.
  There were a total of 4GB/sec Network connections between the SUT and the 7110 Unified
  Storage systems using 2 NorthStar dual 1GB/sec NICs.
• The clients used these Java options: java -d64 -Xms4096m -Xmx4096m
  -XX:+AggressiveHeap
• See the SPEC
  Report for all OS, network and messaging server tunings.

See Also

• SPECmail2009 Benchmark
  Page

Disclosure Statement

SPEC, SPECmail reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation
Corporation. Results as of 07/06/2009 on www.spec.org. SPECmail2009:
Sun Fire X4275 (8 cores, 2 chips) SPECmail_Ent2009 8000 users at
38,348 SPECmail2009 Sessions/hour.
Apple Xserv3,1 (8 cores, 2 chips) SPECmail_Ent2009 6000
users at 28,887 SPECmail2009 Sessions/hour.

Source/Kaynak : http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf/entry/sun_fire_x4275_and_sun