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Benchmarks: The Good, the Bad, and the Useful

Schooner MySQL delivers the best MySQL performance available, at the best total cost of ownership. Here's one good example, using the standard DBT2 benchmark with 1,000 warehouses. You have good reason to be skeptical about benchmarks, and should insist on evaluating performance using your own most demanding workloads. But while it's not the be-all or end-all of benchmarks, DBT2 is a great place to start when you set it to drive a demanding workload.

Here's the data for the Schooner MySQL Appliance, with its 64 GB of DRAM and 512 GB of Intel flash memory on a dual quad-core x86 IBM 2U server, compared apples-to-apples with a variety of popular roll-your-own offerings. Each alternative was also measured on a dual quad-core x86 IBM or HP 2U server with 64 GB of DRAM and either hard drives, Intel flash, or Fusion-io flash*:

Schooner wins hands down, even against the forthcoming MySQL 5.5.4 release with its new flash and multi-core optimizations. MySQL 5.5.4 is in Beta and not yet widely used compared to the mainstream 5.1.44 release. Schooner today is already 2x faster than Fusion-io will be when 5.5.4 is released. And of course, Schooner will get even faster when we move to 5.5.4.

Notes: These benchmark results are for DBT2 (TPC-C Open Source Equivalent) at 1,000 warehouses. Beyond the equal amount of DRAM in each case, the exact storage configuration varies:

  • HDD = 12 HDDs, using RAID5
  • SSD = 8 Intel X-25Es using RAID5
  • Fusion-io = 2 Fusion-io Duo 320 cards using their recommended RAID10
  • Schooner Appliance = 8 Intel X25-Es using RAID5

The RAID modes reflect the most common configuration for availability and performance in a 2U form factor.

What about the economics—what's the Schooner cost advantage?

See the relative 3-year TCO (total cost of ownership), normalized to 1.00 for the Schooner Appliance for easy comparison. You'll see that Fusion-io is 69% more expensive today and will still be 44% more expensive with MySQL 5.5.4. Learn more

What is Schooner's "secret sauce"?

How does Schooner MySQL blow away the performance of every other MySQL solution, even based on those assembled from best-of-breed parts like expensive Fusion-io flash drives, fast HP or IBM or Dell 2U servers, multi-core Intel Xeon processors, and some variant of the MySQL source code? Learn more