Solid State Speed. Cisco and Intel Publish World Record Performance for Big Data Systems

Cisco continues to lead the industry in performance for Big Data systems, this time smashing the previous TPCx-HS benchmark world record by over 14% while simultaneously reducing cost by 5%.

The TPC developed the TPCx-HS benchmark several years ago as Big Data systems grew from a curiosity to one of the fastest growing segments in IT. This industry-standard benchmark evaluates both raw performance and cost. It is a vendor-neutral way to evaluate the performance and price-to-performance ratio of different solutions.

At the 3-TB scale factor, Cisco’s new benchmark configuration achieves 13.47 HSph and US$41,830.67 / HSph. This is a 14.5% increase in performance over the previous record and a 5% improvement in price-performance.

These results leverage the architecture, scalability, and performance of the Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure for Big Data and Analytics. Working with our strategic partners, Intel and Cloudera, we addressed the three primary sources of performance bottlenecks: networking, I/O bandwidth and processing power:

We upgraded to the latest generation of Cisco UCS fabric interconnects, increasing the bandwidth from 10 Gbps to 40 Gbps

We replaced traditional spinning disks with state-of-the-art Solid State Disks (SSDs) from Intel

We incorporated the latest generation of Intel Xeon processors

The performance of any big data system is directly affected by the underlying infrastructure, including computing, networking and storage: all three must be addressed in a holistic way. With our new SSD-based configuration, we are addressing these sources of performance bottlenecks.

In addition to our leading performance, our solution consumes 26% less power. This translates in real savings in energy and cooling costs.

Cisco UCS® Integrated Infrastructure for Big Data and Analytics harnessing the power of Intel® solid-state disks (SSDs), Intel Xeon processors and 40-Gbps network bandwidth delivers the best results on the TPC Express Benchmark HS (TPCx-HS) at the 3-TB scale factor.

Cisco is committed to more than just raw performance. We are interested in solutions that create value for your business, too. The results reported here were achieved using the Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure for Big Data and Analytics.  This integrated infrastructure combines the network, storage and computing into a unified, fabric-based architecture optimized for Big Data workloads.

You can quickly deploy and cost-effectively expand this efficient, scalable, high- performance solution. You can start small, yet scale to thousands of servers hundreds of petabytes of storage, all controlled from a single pane with Cisco UCS management offerings. Widely adopted across industry vertical markets, our solution affords you a proven, fast, and simple way to deploy Big Data environments, accelerate data analysis, and quickly deliver results to users.

Additional Information:

Cisco UCS Performance Brief

Cisco UCS Benchmark Summary Report Dec. 2015

Cisco Big Data Solutions