Note: For an updated comparison, refer to Oracle Database Performance: VMware Cloud on AWS i4i vs i3en vs i3.
With the introduction of the i3en instance type for VMware Could on AWS, it is possible to achieve higher performance than with the previous i3 instance type. The new i3en instances use hosts with newer Intel Xeon Processors, have more RAM, and more raw storage capacity. To measure exactly what the impact to performance is of these great new i3en instance types, we did some performance testing with SQL Server and Oracle Database. We found that it was possible to get about double the throughput per host with i3en as was possible with i3 for both SQL Server and Oracle Database.
There are four main reasons for the increase in performance:
- The use of newer Intel Xeon processors with more powerful cores
- The increase in cores per host with the new processors
- The additional RAM available
- The enablement of hyperthreading.
The i3en instance type looks like this when you log in:
The i3en hosts are running with 24 cores per socket, 48 cores total for the two socket system, 96 logical processors with hyper-threading enabled, and 768 GB of RAM. The 3-node SDDC we used for testing has vSAN storage with a capacity of 137TB. As more hosts are added to the SDDC, the storage capacity will grow accordingly.
The total throughput achieved for the i3en-based SDDC was about double that of the i3-based SDDC for both Oracle DB and SQL Server. This first chart shows that 12 Oracle DB VMs, sized to 4 per host, achieved about double the throughput on i3en.
The chart below shows that tests with the maximum number of 16-vCPU VMs that could run on both i3 and i3en 3-host SDDCs. The i3en SDDC was able to run twice the number of VMs and achieve double the total throughput as what was possible on i3.
For more performance results, full analysis, and additional details about the tests, please see the whitepapers:
- Oracle Database Performance: VMware Cloud on AWS i3 vs i3en
- Performance Characterization of Microsoft SQL Server Using i3en Instances on VMware Cloud on AWS
Note: An updated paper for Oracle is available. Refer to Oracle Database Performance: VMware Cloud on AWS i4i vs i3en vs i3.