STAC-M3 Report: kdb+ on 4-socket IBM x3850 and DataDirect Networks SFA10000

Audited STAC-M3 Benchmark of Kx Systems kdb+ 2.7 on the IBM x3850 server and DataDirect Networks SFA 10000 Storage. This is the first SUT to publish results for volume-scaling (STAC-M3 Kanaga) benchmarks.

19 September 2011 - New York

STAC has released two audited STAC-M3(TM) Benchmarks of Kx Systems kdb+ 2.7 with the Data Direct Networks (DDN) SFA10K-X Storage Platform and an IBM x3850 X5 server. For the full STAC Reports, go to www.STACresearch.com/kx

kdb+ is a system for managing large volumes of real-time and historical timeseries data, such as security prices. The DDN SFA10K-X is a multi-RAID storage architecture that combines up to 1200 multiple disk types into a single platform.

The project used both the baseline suite of STAC-M3 Benchmarks (Antuco) for tick database stacks and a new, optional suite (Kanaga) designed to demonstrate how well such a stack scales as the volume of data increases.

This solution stack set several new official STAC-M3 records. For example, it delivered the highest mean data throughput in the heaviest throughput test of the Antuco suite of any system publicly benchmarked against STAC-M3 to date (STAC-M3.ß1.1T.YRHIBID.BPS). It also beat the next best YRHIBID mean response time benchmark for a 4-socket server by over 4x (STAC-M3.ß1.1T.YRHIBID.LAT2).

In the volume-scaling (Kanaga) benchmarks, the system achieved a mean data throughput as high as 2535 MB/s (STAC-M3.ß1.1T.3YRHIBID). It also scaled better than linearly in the volume-adjusted mean response time benchmarks for year-high bid ([n]YRHIBID.VLAT2) as the queriable data set grew from 2.8 TB (Year 1) to 26.3 TB (Years 1 through 4).

The landing page for each report includes instructions on how qualified firms can obtain the detailed STAC-M3 Benchmark specifications, the STAC-M3 Test Harness materials, and the kdb+ STAC Pack that were used, so that you can run comparative benchmarks on your own systems.