Results for the DB2 9 for System z on Linux Tests

After performing our DB2 9 performance tests we charted our test results, interpreted the results, and created recommendations.

We began our experiment by running under a single LPAR. We ran the OLTP workload with 200 concurrent users against a 238 GB database. We then scaled the database to 1.4 TB while keeping the number of users and working set size constant. The result (shown in Figure 1) shows the throughput remains relatively equal even though the database size increased by a factor of six. The average I/O rate for both tests was approximately 18,000 I/Os per second with an average log rate of 6.7 MB per second.

For the second part of the experiments, we ran the workload on a guest z/VM®. To keep the experiment consistent with that of the LPAR, we ran 200 concurrent users against the 1.4 TB-sized database. The results, shown in Figure 2, show the performance on an LPAR is approximately 11% better than that of the guest z/VM.

Summary

DB2 9 on Linux® on System z is a scalable solution for large OLTP workloads. This paper illustrated that a high volume of transactions can be processed on a large database. It demonstrated that the database size can grow by a factor of six to approximately 1.4 TB with no marked performance change. The paper also shows that DB2 9, running on a System z LPAR and z/VM, performs very well. Customers looking to implement their mission-critical data servers can confidently rely on the combination of the extensive value added capabilities and performance enhancement features of DB2 9 with the scalability and robustness of Linux on System z to implement their business solution.