SQL Server 2017: The world’s first enterprise-class diskless database

This post is authored by Bob Ward, Principal Architect, and Jamie Reding, Senior Program Manager and Performance Architect, Microsoft Database Systems Group.

Perhaps you saw the keynote at the recent PASS 2017 Summit where Microsoft demonstrated the performance of the world’s first enterprise-class “diskless database”. This demonstration showed how Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server partnered together to deliver > 5x performance on analytic queries directly against storage at up to 50 percent of the cost.

Recently HPE published a new world record 1TB TPC-H benchmark result¹ using this configuration with their DL380 Gen10 Server showing 1,009,065 QphH at an incredible price/performance of $0.47 USD per QphH. Performance and price are achieved by combining the power of SQL Server 2017, HPE’s scalable persistent memory, and SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP3 Persistent Memory Support.

HPE’s scalable persistent memory is a new innovation which combines standard memory with the persistence of standard storage. It allows database engines like SQL Server 2017 to retrieve data from its data files in a matter of seconds.

To see this technology in action, check out this video. To learn more about this amazing result and technology, read HPE’s blog post and SUSE’s blog post. To learn more about SQL Server on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, check out SUSE’s SQL Server on Linux website.

SQL Server 2017 is the world leader in TPC-H performance, price, and value and continues to demonstrate that it is one of the fastest databases on the planet, in your cloud or ours.

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