The Throwdown: SharePoint vs. SharePoint with StoragePoint.

SharePoint Techfest 2009 is upon us and we are getting ready to begin the throw down between SharePoint and SharePoint running StoragePoint.  But first we need to discuss the basic foundation for the tests that we are about to execute.  The StoragePoint team has assembled two identical Dell PowerEdge T605 servers (see the server specifications below) running identical SharePoint environments (environment configuration is listed below as well).  The only difference between the servers is that one is running StoragePoint 2.0 … oh and one was dropped from the back of an SUV onto the pavement … no seriously it happened …  and for good measure we are running StoragePoint on the server that looks like it came from the dent-and-scratch soup can bin at your local grocery store.  To our surprise a 75 pound Dell server can survive a three foot drop onto concrete.  I am beginning to think Dell actually does drop tests on servers.

As you can see these are extremely modest servers costing around $1500 each … and we are about to slam 1 million documents into each server (documents varying in size with an average size of 214KB).  I know what you are thinking.  This flies in the face of everything that you have heard about SharePoint scalability.  Let me be the first to tell you that it is possible to manage millions (that’s millions with an “s”) of documents in SharePoint without StoragePoint 2.0.  Adding StoragePoint 2.0 to the mix makes managing millions of documents in SharePoint significantly easier and allows you to put more content in SharePoint running on modest amounts of hardware. 

The test:  Bulk load (using BlueThread’s Import Manager product) a sampling of 1 million documents over the course of the day to determine which environment performs better and which environment contains smaller content databases.  Rob D’Oria has developed a slick dashboard that will monitor the servers (elapses time, document counts, and content database sizes) throughout the day.  Here is a screenshot of what you will see if you are visiting us at the SharePoint Techfest 2009 event.  I will be posting actual images of the test throughout the day so check back to receive updates on the progress of the tests.

Warning: The following is a screen shot containing sample data.  I will update the StoragePoint blog throughout the day with images of the actual test.