Data analytics aren’t just for big enterprises—small and medium-sized businesses accumulate lots of data from CRMs, spreadsheets, and various customer or sales databases.

1. Analyze data faster by upgrading to a
Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd running
Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Standard on
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5*
Data analytics aren’t just for big enterprises—small and medium-sized
businesses accumulate lots of data from CRMs, spreadsheets, and various
customer or sales databases. That data is worthless if businesses can’t
make sense of it though, so they need a powerful solution that can
analyze information and help them use it to serve customers better.
In the Principled Technologies datacenter, we compared how fast a new 14th generation
Dell EMC™
PowerEdge™
R740xd running Microsoft®
SQL Server®
2017 Standard on Red
Hat®
Enterprise Linux®
7.5 could analyze data versus an older 12th generation Dell EMC
PowerEdge R720xd running Windows Server®
2012 R2 with SQL Server 2008 R2.
Compared to the legacy solution, a new Dell EMC + Microsoft + Red Hat solution
reduced the amount of time it took to analyze data from nearly three hours to just
13 minutes. Plus, the updated Dell EMC + Microsoft + Red Hat solution used fewer
resources, leaving room to handle other tasks as business grows. This means that if you
upgrade to the new solution, you—and your customers—could get the answers you need
faster than ever, which can help make your business more profitable.
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Answer
database
queries in
92%
less time*
Cut query
times from 3
hours to just
13
minutes†
010000001101111011
000001110101011100
100100000011000010
* when running a business analytics workload, compared to a legacy solution consisting of a 12th generation
Dell EMC PowerEdge R720xd running Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 on Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
†
in our example test
Analyze data faster by upgrading to a Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd running Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Standard October 2018 (Revised)
on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5
A Principled Technologies report: Hands-on testing. Real-world results.A Principled Technologies report: Hands-on testing. Real-world results.

2. Meet data challenges with fast query times
The hardware and software solution you employ to collect and sort
your data can have a big impact on your business’s bottom line,
depending on what you do with your data. If you’re looking to
make correlations and discover hidden insights in your data to help
plan your next course of action, a speedy and powerful solution
can help you do so more quickly. Or perhaps you have an online
retail business, where analyzing past-purchase data can offer your
customers suggestions to help them find something they’d like to
buy, which leads directly to increased sales.
Technology improvements happen quickly. In fact, a 2016 IDC
study found that by failing to upgrade in a timely manner, “IT
organizations can lose up to 39 percent of peak performance and
add up to 40 percent in application management costs and up to
148 percent in server administration costs."1
What does all this mean? That if you’re looking to analyze data
quickly, updating the hardware and software you use is a simple way
to speed up the process.
Microsoft SQL Server 2017
now supports Red Hat
Enterprise Linux
Long-time Linux users now have
more options when it comes to
choosing a database platform.
While previous Microsoft SQL
Server releases required a
Windows Server operating system,
SQL Server 2017 is now supported
by Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5.
This compatibility gives you one
more way to run your datacenter
exactly how you want.
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0000110011101110010011011110111
New feature alert:
Boost data analysis speeds with
a new Dell EMC PowerEdge
R740xd running Microsoft SQL
Server 2017 Standard on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 7.5
Our tests proved that upgrading to a completely new
solution based on the latest technology from Dell
EMC, Microsoft, and Red Hat could have you clocking
data analysis at speeds you didn’t dream of in the past.
We ran 22 queries using HammerDB and a TPC-H-like
workload and found that the upgraded Dell EMC +
Microsoft + Red Hat solution cut database query time
from nearly three hours to just over 13 minutes.
Query time (in seconds)
799
10,169
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
110
Dell EMC PowerEdge
R740xd solution
Dell EMC PowerEdge
R720xd solution
Lower is better
Analyze data faster by upgrading to a Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd running Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Standard October 2018 (Revised) | 2
on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5

3. The data analysis didn’t tax the upgraded solution—speed
increased while drive read latency improved, shortening the
wait time by 99 percent (averaged over the course of the test)
compared to the 12th generation server and older software.
We understand that higher disk throughput numbers
are often a sign of stronger performance, but
sometimes new features can reduce throughput
needs and leave headroom on your drives for other
activities, making a decrease in throughput desirable.
SQL Server 2017 on Linux has such a feature,
Clustered Columnstore Indexes (CCI), which provides
higher compression rates and query performance by
organizing data in columns. Using this feature with our
TPC-H-like workload significantly lowered the load
on the drives while increasing workload performance.
For instance, we experimented with CCI on the 14th
generation solution with SQL Server 2017 on Linux
and found that using it reduced throughput from 3,345
MB/s to 160 MB/s. Likewise, moving from the legacy
solution running SQL Server 2008 to the new solution
running SQL Server 2017 on Linux using CCI reduced
throughput by 63 percent. Putting less load on your
drives means that ultimately, you can do more work.
0.35
36
0
10
20
30
40
Dell EMC PowerEdge
R740xd solution
Dell EMC PowerEdge
R720xd solution
Average drive read latency (ms)
1
0
Lower is better
About the HammerDB benchmark
HammerDB is an open-source
tool that tests the database
performance of many leading
databases, including Oracle®
Database, Microsoft®
SQL Server®
,
PostgreSQL®
, and MySQL™
.
The benchmark includes two
built-in workloads derived
from industry-standards: a
transactional (TPC-C-like)
workload and an analytic
(TPC-H-like) workload. Our
test results do not represent
official TPC results and
are not comparable in
any manner to the official
TPC-audited results. For
more information about
HammerDB, visit www.
hammerdb.com.
160
439
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Dell EMC PowerEdge
R740xd solution
Dell EMC PowerEdge
R720xd solution
Average drive read throughput (MB/s)
Lower is better
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0101011100
0011000010
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1110011011
0000011101
1011100100
0011110110
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0111001001
0000000110
1101110000
1110011001
0000011100
1011011100
Analyze data faster by upgrading to a Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd running Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Standard October 2018 (Revised) | 3
on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5

4. Stop sluggish data analysis by refreshing your hardware and software
If your datacenter uses 12th generation or earlier hardware and outdated software versions of Microsoft
Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server, you aren’t reaping the benefits that updated tech and new software
features can provide. As we found in our tests, a new Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd running Microsoft SQL
Server 2017 Standard on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 was able to dramatically reduce the time it took to answer
queries during our business analytics workload compared to a legacy hardware and software solution. By moving
to a new solution now, you can speed up data analysis, use resources more efficiently, and even plan for future
growth. Remember, you can’t wait forever to analyze your data—your customers won’t wait that long.
The Dell EMC
PowerEdge R740xd
The 14th generation Dell EMC
PowerEdge R740xd offers strong
database performance with a
variety of storage configuration
options. It can support up to 24
NVMe drives (we tested with two
SAS HDDs and 12 SATA SSDs)
and is powered by Intel®
Xeon®
Scalable processors.2
Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 7.5
According to Red Hat, the 7.5
release of the open-source
OS offers improvements
“including enhanced security
and compliance, usability at
scale, continued integration
with Windows infrastructure on-
premise and in Microsoft Azure®
,
and new functionality for storage
cost controls.”3
Microsoft SQL Server 2017
Standard on Linux
According to Microsoft, SQL
Server 2017 Standard on
Linux helps users “find rich
programming capabilities, security
innovations, and fast performance
for mid-tier applications and data
marts” with features like end-to-
end database security, enhanced
in-memory performance, basic
reporting and analytics, and
hybrid scenarios.4
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001001100001001000000110010001110101011000
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010000001100010011000010010000001100100011
010100100000011001000110111101110000000101
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000000110001001101111011100000010110000100
About the new solution
1 IDC, “Why Upgrade Your Server Infrastructure Now?” accessed May 8, 2018, https://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-re-
ports/idc-why-upgrade-server-infrastructure.pdf
2 Dell EMC, “Dell EMC R740xd spec sheet,” accessed May 8, 2018, http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/da-
ta-sheets/en/Documents/poweredge-r740xd-spec-sheet.pdf?newtab=true
3 Red Hat, “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 released,” accessed May 8, 2018, https://access.redhat.com/announce-
ments/3405871
4 Microsoft SQL Server datasheet, accessed May 8, 2018, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-2017
Read the science behind this report at http://facts.pt/1h0f83
Principled Technologies is a registered trademark of Principled Technologies, Inc.
All other product names are the trademarks of their respective owners. For additional information, review
the science behind this report.
Principled
Technologies®
Facts matter.®Principled
Technologies®
Facts matter.®
This project was commissioned by Dell Technologies.
Analyze data faster by upgrading to a Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd running Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Standard October 2018 (Revised) | 4
on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5