easy!
Why Oracle doesn't take on the more up to date and more difficult TPC-E benchmark and stays with the 1994 devised test? The tpc-c test is a database with 5-10 tables, the tpc-E is a proper trading database.
Oracle claims a world-record TPC-C result with its database running on a Cisco server and not an Exadata system, although doesn't mention that two Violin memory flash arrays were needed. A Cisco UCS C250 extended memory server with two six-core Xeon X5690 processors, 384GB of DRAM, and two Violin Memory flash arrays (5.3TB V- …
Oracle was actually quite prescient in *not* publishing that HP Proliant DL980+Violin result back in 2010.
It turned out, shortly after the decision to hold back on publishing, IBM produced a result of close to 75% the TpmC achieved by the 8-socket DL980. IBM, however, required only half the number of processor sockets and their (awesome) MAX5 kit:
http://tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_result_detail.asp?id=110111601
8 socket Xeon (Nehalem EX and E7 alike) scalability proven by TPC-C has become sort of a holy grail. Likewise, the TPC-H spread between 4 and 8 sockets (E7) is troubling as well. I have a blog entry teed up on that matter.
Now what are the TPC-C costs when you take into account your transition costs between the as is and to be architectures.
How much of that 600K covers the on-going support costs, and are they cheaper than my incumbent supplier, baring in mind that Violin are a niche supplier and Cisco are not noted as being "Low Cost".
Perhaps I'll just wait a few months for mine to catch up and save all the aggrevation and cost.
Benchmarking is a game absolutely. Most know this. And often times the environments are tuned for maximum performance and not specifically scaled to run SAP R3 or even Quarter-End Close for E-Business Suite.
However it does provide us a measure - the TPCC code is unaltered. The OS, the DB and the drive configuration have to be disclosed etc. sometimes a bit of yawner.....
The key take away. A two socket server with the appropriate IO and memory configuration can take Oracle's lowest-cost database (standard edition 1) and drive 1 Million Transactions per-minute.
As configured - $600K.
In a give data center, is there a customer that could chunk their massive M9000 platform with Hitatchi USP storage for a 2U server from Cisco Running Linux and a Violin array and run their entire Back-Office application.
I believe it is possible. That is what the benchmarks are for - though some of us in the HW business would prefer you bought the whole kit. In reality it shows that the OS Kernel/Memory Management, IRQ Management and occasionally a TOUCH of NUMA, handle massive through put and work load.