Performance breakthroughs happen frequently, but often go under noticed. We all remember when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier for the first time and when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, but one event happened June 1, 2018 that went largely unnoticed, until now- a new TPC-H benchmark was achieved with a Cisco C240 M5 system running Microsoft SQLserver 2017. Not only did this benchmark place the C240 near the top, it also established a new price performance benchmark for the C240 system for SQL server deployments.  This new result:

• Is the#1 SQL Server 2017 TPC-H result
• Is the#1 SQL Server 2017 Linux result
• Is the#1 SQL Server based two-socket result

Why is this important?

The TPC-H benchmark is just one performance indicator for decision support services. As documented by TPC.org, the TPC-H "consists of a suite of business oriented ad-hoc queries and concurrent data modifications. This benchmark illustrates decision support systems that:

• Examine large volumes of data;
• Execute queries with a high degree of complexity;
• Give answers to critical business questions.

Without systems that provide fast access to data through a structured query language such as SQL, financial reports would take days instead of hours to complete, business analysis would be stalled, and user access to business critical information would be disrupted. And it's not just performance, it's the value decision support systems provide to the business that makes these investments critical.

This recent result continues a tradition of top SQL Server TPC-H benchmarks since SQL Server 2014.  Details are located at: http://www.tpc.org/tpch/default.asp

Recent Cisco blogs present compelling arguments for the business value Cisco UCS systems provide to enterprise data centers, regardless of size. To quote from one blog, "the savings customers realize has been remarkably consistent. Based on our published customer case studies, customers see:

• 83% reduction in provisioning times
• 62% reduction of ongoing administrative/management costs
• 78% reduction in cabling
• 52% reduction in power and cooling costs".

Couple this value with the new price-performance benchmark for Cisco C240M5 systems for SQL server, and you have the right approach for SQL server deployments.

Read more about this new leading benchmark here from our partner Western Digital