NEC Enterprise Server Breaks Virtualization Performance Record

NEC Express5800/A1160 Xeon Processor-based Server Adds First-place VMmark Benchmark to Growing List of Leading Performance Benchmarks.

Tokyo, Japan and Santa Clara, Calif.- NEC Corporation and NEC Corporation of America today announced that their newest enterprise server, the NEC Express5800/A1160, has established a world record in overall VMmarkTM performance benchmark results.1

VMmark™ is the industry’s first virtualization benchmark, developed by VMware®, Inc., to measure the performance and scalability of multiple enterprise applications running in virtualized servers so that customers can compare different virtualization platforms. The metrics are defined in “score @ tiles.” “Score” is referred as a throughput performance metric and “tiles” are the consolidation capacity of the system.2

The record-breaking score, 34.05 @24 tiles1, was achieved using the NEC Express5800/A11603 server, which was configured with 8 sockets populated with the Intel® Xeon® X7460 processors, powered by VMware ESXTM 4.0.

The NEC Express5800/A1160 features state-of-the-art NEC server technology with an up-to-4 nodes scalable building block architecture using the HSI technology to connect the blocks along with enhanced reliability, availability and serviceability, all of which are based on long-standing rich heritage of NEC mainframe, supercomputer and Intel® Itanium® server products.

“We’re delighted to join VMmark benchmark results as another World Record Debut,” said Takayuki Noguchi, General Manager, Enterprise Server Division of NEC Corporation. “The VMmark performance world record demonstrates that NEC’s advanced server technology together along with innovative VMware ESX 4.0 software provides industry leading performance and scalability even with multiple heterogeneous application workloads on a virtual infrastructure. We’re confident the NEC Express5800/A1160 is the ideal choice for mission-critical virtualization platforms like server-consolidation or cloud computing platforms with multiple virtual machines.”

“Intel congratulates NEC on continuing to raise the performance bar,” said Shannon Poulin, Director of Xeon Platform Marketing, Server Platforms Group, Intel Corporation. “NEC’s ability to leverage the performance of the Intel Xeon X7460 processor to establish new world records with their scalable 8-Socket+ systems is testament to their development team and our close working relationship.”

“Not only is NEC’s VMmark result an outstanding testament to our server’s performance in virtual environments, it is a continuation of other outstanding achievements, including leadership in OLTP performance benchmarks5,” said Marc Hafner, vice president of Servers and System Software Division, IT Platform Group, NEC Corporation of America. “These benchmarks show a strong track record for NEC’s Express5800/A1160 Enterprise server. NEC customers can feel confident they are getting top performance combined with high reliability.”

Taking advantage of the server’s robust scalable architecture, high consolidation capacity, and high performance, NEC is promoting the NEC Express5800/A1160 server as a reliable virtualization platform.

Published Result
VMmark score 34.05@24 tiles
Availability Date July 31, 20094

Measured System
Server NEC Express5800/A1160
Processor Intel® Xeon® processor X7460 (2.66GHz/16MB L3 cache)
Number of processors 8
Number of processor cores 48
Number of processor threads 48
System Memory 128 GB
Data Storage NEC Storage S2500
Virtualization Software VMware ESXTM 4.0

NEC Express5800 series of servers are part of NEC’s Dynamic IT Infrastructure-a solution that includes servers, storage, virtual desktop solutions, and system software that are smart, flexible, adaptive to change, scalable, resilient, and continuously evolving. Along with NEC’s broad range of services-the NEC Dynamic IT Infrastructure provides an ideal platform for virtualization, consolidation and business continuity and is ideal for driving greater value and efficiencies in solutions for physical security, law enforcement, emergency response, travel and entertainment, education, high performance computing, and business. This type of infrastructure allows IT organizations to move forward confidently and meet changing and growing business needs in an efficient manner. For more information about NEC’s Express5800 servers, please visit www.necam.com/Servers/Enterprise.

1. Comparison out of all the published results as of 07/28/2009
Source: http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html
2. In VMmark, there is a set of six virtual machines defined, each of which runs different workloads respectively including web server (SPECweb®2005-based), file server (dbench), mail server (Exchange 2003), database server (MySQL), java server (SPECjbb®2005-based) and standby server. The set of six virtual machines is referred as a tile. VMmark test is done with running workloads with as many tiles simultaneously as testers decided to get throughput performance for each virtual machine. The number of tile here is the “tiles” in VMware metrics. “Score” in VMmark metrics comes through normalizing each throughput performance data with those in a reference system defined, computing the geometric mean of the normalized scores for each tile and getting the sum of the geometric mean of each tiles. Higher number in score means better in performance. And higher count in tiles means the system is able to run more workloads concurrently.
3. Product reference to a model in the North American market. A 2-node configuration is used.
4. Availability as configured with the combination with specific software products used in this benchmark. The NEC Express5800/A1160 is now generally available to customers.
5. Source: Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). The competitive benchmark results stated in this press release reflect results published on http://www.tpc.org as of March 18, 2009. NEC Express5800/A1160, 1568.22 tpsE, USD 1,180.01 /tpsE; Availability Date: Mar 18, 2009. Availability Dates is that for the North American Market. TPC Benchmark, TPC-E and tpsE are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council.