Durham, NC, August 14, 2023 — The uncertainty of the pandemic caused many small or medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to delay hardware upgrades. Now, as decision-makers contemplate server upgrades, they have a choice between latest-generation hardware and previous-generation gear, which can seem like a more economical choice.
To quantify the potential benefits of each of these approaches, Principled Technologies tested two three-node Microsoft Windows Server 2022 clusters with Hyper-V and Storage Spaces Direct. One used previous-generation 15G Dell PowerEdge R7515 servers and the other used latest-generation 16G Dell PowerEdge R7615 servers powered by 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors with Broadcom network interface cards (NICs) and PERC 11 storage controllers.
Testing involved simultaneously running three workloads similar to the ones that many SMBs run: a database workload, a container-based application, and a web app. The report states, “On all three workloads, the new cluster demonstrated significant performance advantages over the previous-generation cluster, to the point where you would need fewer new servers to do a given amount of work. With software licensing being such a large expense, the savings you would reap from being able to eliminate one server could more than offset the purchase price of the new servers.”