Abstract

Dell commissioned Tolly to benchmark the end-to-end performance benefits of 64G Fibre Channel connectivity using the Dell PowerEdge 17th Generation R6725 Rack Server with AMD EPYC processors and the Broadcom Emulex LPe38102 64G Secure HBA connected to Dell PowerMax 2500 storage. The main focus of the project was to compare 64G FC against 32G FC in realistic database workloads, measuring application execution time and storage throughput to determine the practical business value of moving to the newer Fibre Channel generation.  

The evaluation used a single port of the dual-port PCIe 4.0 Emulex LPe38102 Secure HBA in a Dell PowerEdge R6725 server connected through a Dell Connectrix B-Series 64G FC switch to Dell PowerMax 2500 storage. The test server was equipped with dual AMD EPYC 9555 32-core processors, 966GB of RAM, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.9, while the storage environment used a Dell PowerMax 2500 with 16 x 3.8TB drives and 64G FC interface modules. Tolly tested both Oracle TimesTen and Microsoft SQL Server workloads to show how 64G FC affects different types of database processing.  

In the Oracle TimesTen in-memory database test, a 102.5GB database was loaded from storage into server memory. Using 32G FC, the load completed in 37 seconds, while 64G FC reduced that to 23 seconds, a 37.8% improvement. Average storage throughput increased from 2,928MBps to 4,878MBps, an improvement of 66.6%. Since TimesTen cannot service transactions until the full database is loaded into memory, Tolly presents this as a direct availability and user-experience benefit.  

In the Microsoft SQL Server test, Tolly used HammerDB 4.12 running the TPROC-H analytics workload, which executes 22 decision-support queries in a read-only pattern. With 32G FC, query completion required 504 seconds. With 64G FC, completion time dropped to 259 seconds, a 48.6% improvement. Average storage throughput rose from about 3,023MBps to 5,669MBps, improving 87.5%. The report notes that specific gains will vary by application access pattern, but the tested results show substantial benefits for both in-memory and analytics-oriented database workloads.  

Overall, the report positions end-to-end 64G FC as a significant upgrade for Dell enterprise database environments, combining faster data movement, shorter transaction times, and higher storage throughput. It also points to prior Tolly testing showing up to 4:1 application server consolidation when moving from older 16G FC servers to 64G FC, extending the value proposition beyond raw performance alone.  

the same 64 GFC fabric can enable roughly 4:1 server consolidation, underscoring the business value of upgrading both host HBAs and storage to Gen-7 64 Gbit/s Fibre Channel .