This article is part of our WWT Primer Series, a collection of content focused on the fundamental understanding of complex technologies and solutions.

World Wide Technology's Advanced Technology Center (ATC) is a collaborative ecosystem where WWT experts, customers and partners can explore, evaluate and educate themselves on integrated architectural solutions that accelerate digital transformation and help solve business challenges. Recently the ATC has experienced a significant increase in customer requests with SQL 2019 due to Microsoft ending support on their SQL 2005, SQL 2008, and SQL 2008 R2 products this past year. Customers are particularly interested in comparing 2-socket servers, 4-socket servers and servers integrated with Intel Optane solutions. These requests lead the ATC team to build an environment that combines these options into one solution. The environment includes an SQL 2019 workload, HammerDB for load generation, 2-socket blade (MX740c) and 4-socket blade (MX840c) solutions from Dell's MX7000 kinetic blade infrastructure, Dell's PowerMax Array and Intel Optane PMem.