Sun published the PeopleSoft HRMS 8.9 Self-Service benchmark results today. The benchmark was conducted on 3 x Sun SPARC Enterprise M3000 and 1 x Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 servers. Click on the following link for the full report with the benchmark results.

PeopleSoft HRMS 8.9 SELF-SERVICE Using ORACLE on Sun SPARC Enterprise M3000 and Enterprise T5120 Servers

Admittedly it is Sun's first PeopleSoft benchmark after a hiatus of over five years. However I am glad that we came up with a very nice cost effective solution in our comeback effort to the PeopleSoft applications' benchmarking.

Some of the notes and highlights from this competitive benchmark are as follows.

• The benchmark measured the average search and save transaction response times at a peak load of 4,000 concurrent users.
  
  
• 4,000 users is the limitation of the benchmark kit. All vendors using this benchmark kit are bound to this limitation. Hence it is easy to compare the performance as the throughput achieved by each vendor will be the same. In comparing the benchmark results from workloads like these, lower average [transaction response times, CPU, memory utilizations] and the hardware in use (lesser the better), usually indicate better performance.
  
  
• IBM and Sun are the only vendors who published benchmark results with PeopleSoft HRMS 8.9 Self-Service benchmark kit.
  
  
• Sun's benchmark results are superior relative to IBM's best published result on a combination of z990 2084-C24 and eServer pSeries p690 servers. While I leave the price comparisons to the reader¹, I'd like to show the performance numbers extracted from the benchmark reports published by Sun and IBM. All the following data/information is available in the benchmark reports. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
  
  Average Transaction Response Times
  
  
  

  Vendor	Single User Search (sec)	4,000 Users Search (sec)	Single User Save (sec)	4,000 Users Save (sec)
  Sun	0.78	0.77	0.71	0.74
  IBM	0.78	1.35	0.65	1.01

  
  
  Average CPU Utilizations
  
  
  
  

  Vendor	Web Server CPU%	App Server1 CPU%	App Server2 CPU%	DB Server CPU%
  Sun	23.10	66.92	67.85	27.45
  IBM	45.81	59.70	N/A	40.66

  
  
  Average Memory Utilizations
  
  
  
  

  Vendor	Web Server GB	App Server1 GB	App Server2 GB	DB Server GB
  Sun	4.15	3.67	3.72	5.54
  IBM	5.00	15.70	N/A	0.3 (Huh!?)

  
  
  Hardware Configuration
  
  Vendor: Sun Microsystems
  
  Topology Diagram
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Tier	Server Model	Server Count	Processor	Processor Speed	Processor Count	#Cores per Processor	Memory
  Web	T5120	1	UltraSPARC-T2	1.2 GHz	1	4	8 GB
  App	M3000	2	SPARC64-VII	2.52 GHz	1	4	8 GB
  DB	M3000	1	SPARC64-VII	2.52 GHz	1	4	8 GB

  
  
  2 x Sun Storage J4200 arrays were used to host the database. Total disk space: ~1.34 Terabytes. Consumed only 120 GB disk space -- 115 GB for data on one array; and 5 GB for redo logs on the other array.
  
  Vendor: IBM
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Tier	Server Model	Server Count	Processor	Processor Speed	Processor Count	#Cores per Processor	Memory
  Web	p690 (7040-681)	1	POWER4	1.9 GHz	4	NA (?)	12 GB
  App	p690 (7040-681)	1	POWER4	1.9 GHz	12	NA (?)	32 GB
  DB	zSeries 990, model 2084-C24	1	z990 Gen1	???	6	NA (?)	32 GB

  
  
  1 x IBM TotalStorage DS8300 Enterprise Storage Server, 2107-922 ws used to host the database. Total disk space: ~9 Terabytes.
  
  
• The combination of Sun SPARC Enterprise M3000 and T5120 servers consumed 1030 Watts on the average in a 7RU space in achieving 4,000 concurrent users. That is, in the case of similarly configured workloads, M3000/T5120 support 3.88 users per watt of the power consumed; and 571 users per rack unit.
  

Just like our prior Siebel and Oracle E-Business Suite Payroll 11i benchmarks, Sun collaborated with Oracle Corporation in executing this benchmark. And we sincerely thank our peers at Oracle Corporation for all their help and support over the past few months in executing this benchmark.
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I'm planning to post some of the tuning tips to run PeopleSoft optimally on Solaris 10. Stay tuned ..


(Originally posted on blogs.sun.com at:
http://blogs.sun.com/mandalika/entry/peoplesoft_hrms_8_9_self)

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¹: It is relatively hard to obtain IBM's server list prices. On the other hand, it is very easy to find the list prices of Sun servers' from http://store.sun.com