back to article Oracle, Sun speed-launch Exadata V2

If Oracle is trying to convince Sun customers that it is committed to the Sparc platform, perhaps it is not trying hard enough. As it turns out, "the world's first OLTP database machine with FlashFire technology" that El Reg told you last weekend was coming and that Oracle and Sun trotted out today is based on Sun's "Galaxy" …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Crazy Larry

    "Crazy Larry, his claims are IN-SA-A-A-A-A-ANE!"

    Magically Oracle RAC now scales to 8 nodes per rack * 8 racks = 64 nodes for OLTP?

    We settled on 3 nodes for the applications we have not ripped RAC out.

    "5 Terabytes Flash Cache Memory - Not Flash Disk!!!" Marketing BS. Too bad you forgot to change all the other charts in the deck that said Flash disk....come on you can do better than that...fire someone in marketing....along with that guy who can't forward the charts fast enough.

    We looked at Exadata but even though "its the most successful product launch ever" it looks like only 9 companies bought/took one last quarter

    * Apple

    * Research in Motion

    * Amtrak

    * A large East Coast insurance company

    * Thomson Reuters

    * NTT

    * Barclays Capital (UK)

    * Two banks in Europe

    I looked out at TPC-H and I did not see a new result for 1TB. Who does 1TB any more? I guess you want to play with the little vendors. And why did Oracle show the database vendor name and not Fujitsu and Sun? Oh and you did not show the HP blade result which your own team could not beat? That has got to Hurd.

    8 cores per node * .5, 8 nodes per rack, 8 racks = 256 Oracle licenses of Oracle EE and RAC =

    $16.5 Million for just the base oracle database for year one!!!!!!

    "Crazy Larry, his prices are IN-SA-A-A-A-A-ANE!"

  2. ThreadGuy
    WTF?

    Solaris?

    So no SPARC in this product, fair enough. But a Sun-branded solution that doesn't lead with Solaris? That's crazy talk.

    Oh, and Fowler is an *Executive* Vice President at Sun. That sort of distinction seems to matter greatly to those in the thin air of the executive offices.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Jesus TPM!

    First you complain that Oracle is not proving their love for SPARC, so Oracle professes that they'll double down on SPARC... OK... So you bitch that they obviously don't care about x86 since they didn't say anything about it... So, Oracle and Sun show how much they also love x86... So then you bitch that they didn't also do something with SPARC!!!!

    HEY TPM!!! IBM wants their marketing collateral back!

  4. Ian Michael Gumby

    @pierce... RIF...

    Reading is Fundamental.

    Can you say 2TB 2.5" SATA drives? And yes, they exist.

    There are two ways to look at the benchmark ... 1) Biggest Bang, unlimited budget. That is for the highest volume of TPMs that one can pump out. Or...

    2) The biggest bang for your buck. That is the cheapest cost per transaction per min.

    I think that if you designed your disks w an SSD on the controller, (Adaptec for example), you can use SATA and still get decent performance due to the page caching on SSD.

    And to the AC, seems that you either work for IBM or were an ex Oracle guy. ;-)

    -G

  5. Victor 2

    comments...

    "If Oracle is trying to convince Sun customers that it is committed to the Sparc platform, perhaps it is not trying hard enough."

    You are seeing it from the wrong angle. The SPARC comparison will be done on Oct. 14. Wait until then for any announcement regarding SPARC. Up until now, there wasn't any pitch about the Galaxy server line and many were doubting about it's future, but now, here it is... Also, OTOH, using Intel technology, Oracle assures continuity to he first Exadata generation. Same idea, many upgrades.

    "Interestingly, as Ellison started off his presentation, I could have sworn I heard him refer to "Sun Computer," not Sun Microsystems"

    Yes, he did... but since it's soon to be owned by him, I think it's fair that he calls Sun in whatever way he wants to, heh...

    "While this may be technically true, there is no reason why the new storage servers embedded in the Exadata V2 product can't be hooked up to other x64 or RISC/Unix servers running the Oracle database and RAC extensions."

    Lame. Why hasn't it been done before as a product by someone then, if it was so obvious?

    "Right up until the minute that HP starts partnering with IBM and Microsoft to do similar optimizations to take advantage of flash with their databases."

    Funny. Let's see how/if that plays out. My take: it won't.

    "The storage server portion of this setup consists not of the F5100 flash array that Sun has been working on"

    True, not the array, but the flash technology inside the array is relatively the same.

    "It is interesting that Sun and Oracle didn't choose the top-end 648-port switch."

    What for?

    "The base setup includes a rack, one database server, one storage server, and one switch. "

    No, there's no rack in the standalone version!... only the systems, racks only begin from the quarter rack configuration.

  6. foo_bar_baz

    @pierce

    It says SATA. Not that I've seen those in 2.5" / 2TB either.

  7. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Catch 42 Scenarios ......

    "Crazy Larry, his claims are IN-SA-A-A-A-A-ANE!" ....By Anonymous Coward Posted Wednesday 16th September 2009 00:32 GMT

    Man's natural default is insanity, AC, and it is [only] with education and positive helpful third party social interaction does now IT and Media offer a saner artificially created environment/virtual reality. And it is a always a current work in progress ...... to higher levels of confusion/greater understanding of the enigma.

    The sort of progressive currency that would exercise its Intellectual Property rights and portfolios here ...... http://www.securboration.com/our-vision/ ...... for CyberSpace Command and Control Solos .... Fleet Flight Manoeuvres.

  8. Phil 4
    Thumb Up

    Oracle Sun Exadata Version 2 confirms Oracle is also betting on Sun x86

    This latest Oracle/Sun announcement on Sun Exadata Version 2 now confirms that Oracle is also committed to Sun's x86 servers and storage!

    Your comment that SPARC is MIA is clearly being spewed by your employer, IBM. Oracle has already confirmed several times that they will be investing heavily in SPARC.

    Are the following not enough to confirm this?

    Sun SPARC + Oracle is faster than IBM on TPC-C

    http://www.oracle.com/features/sunoraclefaster.html

    "Where in it to Win", "Spend more money developing SPARC than Sun does now"

    http://www.oracle.com/features/suncustomers.html

    "Are you going to discontinue the SPARC chip?" No. Once we own Sun we're going to increase the investment in SPARC. We think designing our own chips is very, very important"-Larry Ellison

    http://www.oracle.com/sun/lje-oracle-sun-faq.pdf

    http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN0740285120090507?rpc=44

    "Oracle plans to grow the Sun hardware business after the closing, protecting Sun customers' investments and ensuring the long-term viability of Sun products"

    http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341439/000119312509103352/dex991.htm

    http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/709519/000119312509085803/ddefa14a.htm

  9. Shaun Hunter
    Thumb Up

    I saw the webcast earlier

    @pierce they are 3.5" SATA drives.

    @AC From what I could gather the prices included software. I can dig the term "Flash Cache" as the flash is mounted directly on the PCIe network interface card, not in drive bays. From the presentation I gather they're not addressed as disks at all.

    As far as the system not being SPARC/Solaris, I think the few months that Oracle has owned Sun is too short a period for them to port the system to an entirely different ISA/OS. Probably next round though.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    LOL...

    "If Oracle is trying to convince Sun customers that it is committed to the Sparc platform, perhaps it is not trying hard enough."

    Or perhaps El Reg is just shitty for getting it wrong...

    Ofcourse Oracle+Sun went X64. Its the place for price+performance. Lets face it: SPARC is dying/dead. It sure was cute tho...

  11. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Ouch.

    Nice box. No SPARC, No Solaris.

    So, Sun prixed for their chassis design then...

  12. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Happy

    RE: Victor 2

    Firstly, I agree that this has nothing to do with SPARC or Slowaris, this is simply Oracle taking a developed version of the old Oracle-hp x64 design and slapping it onto Galaxy kit. At this point it's probably a bit early to expect Oracle to have a Slowaris on Niagara version, though the likelyhood is qustionable given that it would probably be rather price uncompetitive with their own x64 version. Nice to see that even the Sunshiners are having to admit there are cases where Slowaris-Niagara is just not the right choice and "commodity x64" is.

    "......"Right up until the minute that HP starts partnering with IBM and Microsoft to do similar optimizations to take advantage of flash with their databases."

    "Funny. Let's see how/if that plays out. My take: it won't...."

    Really? You seem to have forgotten that hp have made a big success out of being the the equivalent of the industries biggest slut, being happy to jump into bed with anybody! Take a look at the hp websites, you'll find "strategic relationships" with everyone - Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, IBM Software, Red Hat, Uncle Tom Cobbley (OK, maybe not the last one!). There have only been a few times I can think of when internal politics kept hp from partnering up with someone, one case being support for Slowaris x86 on ProLiant. That was only stalled during Carly Fiorina's rule by the old hp guard, soon as Hurd got in it was "let's make some money selling those Slowaris guys some decent servers and support!" If IBM decide to make a database machine equivalent you can be pretty sure it will turn up on hp kit seeing as more IBM software is sold for hp kit than IBM's own (sorry IBMers, that came direct from a senior IBM salesgrunt, so I have no reason to doubt it). As for M$, since when have they turned down an opportunity to sell SQL Server licences no matter whose kit it was on? AFAIK, there is nothing unique or "locked-in" about the Oracle-hp database machine work that could stop hp offering the same kit for M$ to put their own version on top of, should M$ want to try it. If such storage appliances take off then I'd say we can positively expect IBM and M$ to be jumping on the bandwagon.

  13. Victor 2

    @Matt

    First off, your addressing of Solaris as Slowlaris clearly shows where you come from and who do you align yourself with. Solaris stopped being slow a long time ago, you should take it for a ride sometime.

    Now, onto the rest of your comment... To put it short, they can try, but trying is not enough.

    If HP goes with either, IBM or MS to compete against Sunoracle, it means they will need to have a competitive solution. They will need Infiniband switches, flash drives technologies and for the DB something like Oracle RAC to manage the clustered instances. The most they have , if I recall correctly, is a OEMed infiniband switch for their blades. How much R&D will they have to spend to make something similar? will it be worth the effort?

    I know by looking at your apparent background, that you will try your best to downplay whatever Sunoracle does and say IBM or HP can do it too. But you will have to admit this Exadata v2 is quite an achievement on various fronts.

    Oh, and you should just wait for the Niagara announcements before dismissing it's usefulness.. x86 is good for somethings, CMT is good for others, and Oracle wants money, doesn't matter where it comes from.

  14. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Happy

    RE: @Matt

    "First off, your addressing of Solaris as Slowlaris clearly shows where you come from and who do you align yourself with...." Strange as it may seem to Sunshiners, who seem to believe there is a factory somewhere that churns out "haters" ready-made, many people get their views from experience. My experience of Slowaris is that it has been and still is slow, even on the current Sun servers, compared to AIX, hp-ux or RHEL, which are the competition I have seen in action.

    "....Solaris stopped being slow a long time ago, you should take it for a ride sometime....." I have taken Slowaris for many a "ride" and I still do see Slowaris at work regularly as we do competetive shootouts for all purchases. Unfortunately for you, Sun hasn't won any of our shootouts for a long while despite this having historicly been a Sun shop many years ago. This has nothing to do with whom I "align" with, it's a simple, empirical fact. Now, my experience can't be the same as everyone's in the market, but seeing as we're a large corporation running mainly mainstream apps (including RAC), it would seem pretty representative for the targets Larry wants to get into and Ponytail failed to.

    As for hp needing a "competitive solution", you are forgetting who did the hardware bit for Oracle in the first version. If the market takes off then expect hp to want in, even if it is just offering the same Oracle stack on hp hardware (like those market-dominating blades for those Infiniband switches you mentioned). As it is, hp has the advantage of the massive economies of scale of being the lead x64 vendor whilst Galaxy is in the also-ran bracket. And hp doesn't really care who makes the software if hp gets the hardware deal, just look at the historical support for DB2 on hp-ux and MS SQL on Windows whilst at the same time hp was rabbitting on about their Oracle partnership. Since hp is not a database vendor, why should they care whose database gets sold, as long as the solution works to hp's standards and makes them money.

    And best of all, should Red Hat or Novell or another Linux distie make their own competitive stack (maybe with a branch of the MySQL code - now wouldn't that be ironic!), hp will be primed to sell that, unlike Larry and his on-off Linux relationship. And before you Sunshiners start saying no Linux distie could ever do that, I seem to recall many of you sprouting the same years ago when Linux was first mooted as an enterprise server platform. Simply saying "no-one else can do this" is the same head-in-the-sand posture that saw Sun go from the market-leading UNIX vendor to market-trailing cripple.

    /SP&L

  15. Scott Handy

    What does IBM think?

    Except for flash, the integrated nature of this sounded very similar to what IBM announced in July with the Smart Analytics System -- highlighting high performance and low costs. And of course all Power servers now support flash as do many of our x86 servers and storage arrays, but that was of course not mentioned.

    I also find it interesting, just like last year's Exadata announcement, there was a significant difference between the cost in the announcement versus the true costs; e.g., they left out the Oracle software costs which often are equal or greater than the severs itself. And the scale out of this make for more licenses - which is why oracle likes it ("spend less on hardware so you can spend more with us" I often hear them say). We do a good business with Oracle on scale-up and even RAC on Power Systems (it a huge revenue and profit generator for them) so surprised they trashed us so hard. As we take more HP/Sun UNIX share that growth continues with Oracle on Power so they do benefit from our gain.

    It was interesting that this is an x86-based system after Sun just ran full-page ads in the last few weeks attempting to calm fears regarding commitment to Sun's SPARC ;-) (sly grin)

    So its clear they are panicked, bumping up the Oct 14th announcement since the Sun business is imploding while Power takes very, very significant share - which I view as customers voting with their wallets. We took 7.4 pts UNIX share (that's a LOT in a $18B/year market - UNIX is still 30% of all customer spend on servers each year) per IDC just in 2Q!! (In past years I'd have been happy with that type of gain over a whole year. To get 7.4pts share grab in Sun's fiscal 4th quarter? Its called an implosion, and hence panic has ensued.

    Longer term, IBM has logged 1,800 customer migrations to Power Systems from 2006 thru 2Q09, including 815 versus Sun (250 in 1H09 alone, 170 servers, the rest storage/tape) and 753 versus HP. That’s an average of one customer per day moving to IBM. And on top of that, IBM Software Group reported more than 100 SAP clients alone have switched from Oracle Database to DB2 in the last six months for higher performance and lower cost.

    IBM has the technology lead across servers, storage and database software -- and customers see it and are switching -- this trend will continue.

    Scott K. Handy, VP, Worldwide IBM Power Systems Strategy, Marketing and Sales Support.

  16. Thommy M.
    Welcome

    Scared to death?

    @Scott K. Handy; When a VP from IBM make comments on ElReg he must be really scared of what's coming from the competitors.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Beware of Oracle

    A must read for all Oracle and Sun customers

    http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_38/b4147052120632.htm

    Sun was -11% in Q2, -20% in 3Q, -30.6% in Q4 (minus 31% in their year end quarter?)

  18. DJUNIX

    RE:Scared to death

    Or Scott K Handy is proud of the numbers and whats the whole world to know. Of course doing so makes a bigger target on your back for other vendors to take you down. So IBM maybe the leader today, but tomorrow (which could be awhile) it will be someone else. Heck, I remember when IBM sucked on the UNIX side (anybody remember AIX 3.2.x).

  19. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    IBM Clueless

    Mr IBM Veep, let me speak a word of fairness being both a IBM Power and Sun SPARC customer.

    I've had the privilege of hearing of what Sun has planned and delivering for flash.

    Mr Veep, Flash is not just SSD. IBM is only thinking of SSDs in Power or Storage.

    Sun has got a whole eco-system going and it is nothing but spectacular. Breakthrough economics is what I see. Plus how ZFS is using flash technology (not just SSDs) is simply amazing.

    I had my IBM rep talk about how shitty Sun is doing, how the Sun is setting, quite similar to your tone and language. Two words Mr Veep -- "low class". My feedback, I appreciate honesty, I appreciate good service, pro-activeness, I love great technology, I love saving money for my bosses. I hate mud-slinging. Just too unprofessional, not what I would expect from a corporation like IBM.

    I'm staying put on my Power systems and my SPARC systems, but all these moves that Sun is making with Flash is making SPARC exciting again, and I'm very open to adopting this, especially if Oracle is having a solid result on these kit.

    BTW, your rep must be pretty desperate for numbers for him to predict the sun crashing and I will have no sales and support. The vibes I'm getting from Oracle on the hardware business are good. So I'll be patient and wait for the October the 14th on how Sun SPARC system can beat the IBM Power 595.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Re: Beware of Oracle

    So are all the other Unix vendors... Also, the EU is taking their sweet time to approve this move, so that's making Sun's customers hold off on purchases. Keep your FUD to yourself. We already get enough from TPM and MB. Let's work with facts here!

  21. Victor 2

    @Matt again...

    You fail to address where exactly is Solaris slow... boot times? how many times a year do you expect to reboot a server? once? twice tops?

    Solaris IS NOT slow. Even less when using SSD acelerators via ZFS. What system are you using to benchmark the OSs? where are your numbers?

    "As for hp needing a "competitive solution", you are forgetting who did the hardware bit for Oracle in the first version." And you are forgetting who did Oracle kick in the butt just yesterday... The original Exadata doesn't even come close to Exadata V2. For more info read here: http://oracleexadata.blogspot.com/

    "And hp doesn't really care who makes the software if hp gets the hardware deal, just look at the historical support for DB2 on hp-ux and MS SQL on Windows whilst at the same time hp was rabbitting on about their Oracle partnership. Since hp is not a database vendor, why should they care whose database gets sold, as long as the solution works to hp's standards and makes them money."

    Pure rubbish, as you didn't even answered my question. I never said HP doesn't work with others, I recommend you re-read my previous post and keep focused instead of diverging to your safe ground.

    "And best of all, should Red Hat or Novell or another Linux distie make their own competitive stack (maybe with a branch of the MySQL code - now wouldn't that be ironic!), hp will be primed to sell that, unlike Larry and his on-off Linux relationship. And before you Sunshiners start saying no Linux distie could ever do that, I seem to recall many of you sprouting the same years ago when Linux was first mooted as an enterprise server platform. Simply saying "no-one else can do this" is the same head-in-the-sand posture that saw Sun go from the market-leading UNIX vendor to market-trailing cripple."

    Once again, more rubbish... who said anything about Red Hat or Novell?... Exadata v2 uses Oracle Enterprise Linux, just as Exadata v1 did... so what?

    And I agree wiht Thommy M. That IBM poster was unexpected.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    I hate Oracle with a passion

    When Oracle bought BEA they told me my Oracle application licenses would not transfer to WebLogic and the Oracle application suite was being sunsetted for WebLogic so I better start moving.

    The next week Oracle raised WebLogic prices 47%.

    The only way I got my 60% discount and 18% maintenance of purchase price (not list mind you) was to start bringing in IBM technology.

    DB2 for my BI applications and Power to reduce my license counts and virtualize to get value out of my licenses.

    I am sure most of the Sun gear with be "Sunsetted".... Larry isn't crazy he is buying a captive install base...well I am not your captive since I have IBM fighting for my business. With the new Oracle extensions in DB2 we are finally looking at possibly dumping Oracle all together. For now I have just focused on reducing my license counts with hardware from the blue company to replace the purple companies gear to save on the red companies extortion like pricing

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Re: RE: @Matt

    "...factory somewhere that churns out "haters" ready-made,"

    Nope, just you Matt. No one complains about other "haters". You are the only one that spread FUD to the extent that you do.

  24. David Halko
    Dead Vulture

    I guess a full page announcement is no enough for some people...

    Timothy Prickett Morgan writes, "If Oracle is trying to convince Sun customers that it is committed to the Sparc platform, perhaps it is not trying hard enough."

    That is why there was a full page October announcement about SPARC scheduled before this Intel announcement!

    I am not sure what else was wanted!

  25. David Halko
    Go

    Sun Intel line wild speculation no put to rest...

    There was plenty of speculation that the Intel boxes would be sold off once Oracle acquired Sun.

    This September product announcement puts that to rest.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: IBM Clueless

    "So I'll be patient and wait for the October the 14th on how Sun SPARC system can beat the IBM Power 595."

    Did you mean Sun SPARC system or 10 Sun SPARC systems?

    It's obvious that 10 fastest T2+ servers in RAC cluster will be faster than single 2-year old IBM machine. IBM or HP could do the same and connect 10 superdomes or 10 595s in RAC cluster to achieve higher scores. All your money would go to Oracle then...

  27. Kebabbert

    Mattie Pattie Laddie

    So Solaris is slow? In the same vein as "Niagara suffers from a small cache"? And how do you explain that Niagara crushes three times as higher clocked Power6+ on certain benches? And how do you explain that Solaris is slow? I saw one article that showed Solaris being slow, compared to Linux. That moron (not you) had compared a 800MHz single core Sparc Solaris 8 vs a top modern 2.4 GHz dual core Xeon Linux. Of course a 800MHz SPARC is slower than a dual core 2.4 GHz Xeon! It doesnt matter which OS. The article writer thought that "because most migrations are from old SPARC to modern Linux machines, this is a relevant comparison. Ergo, Solaris is slower than Linux". Now, is it only me that thinks something is wrong here?

    If I consider your (proven) earlier lies and FUD, Mattie Pattie Laddie, I suspect you compared an ancient Solaris 8 vs a new Intel dual core Xeon Linux or something similar and concluded to your bosses that Solaris is slow, based on some dumb argument like "they are in the same price range, hence it is a fair comparison". That is clearly dumb to do. That doesnt prove that Solaris is slower, it only proves that Sparc machines are more expensive than x86.

    Actually, I suspect you lie about this. Again. Now it is time to do as everyone here does, again. See below.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Power6 FTW!

    I work at a large bank / exchange / whatever (pick what you fancy) and I looove the IBM Power servers. They are rock stable and high performant. But when we benched one SUN T5440 against three P570 in Siebel 8.0, we saw that T5440 is twice as fast (according to official white papers) as them. Hence, we are migrating to Sparc. Too bad, I love Power, but we can not justify the cost anymore.

    /Kebabbert (Maybe I should drop my signature? Every FUDer drops their signature)

  29. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Slowaris?

    > My experience of Slowaris is that it has been and still is slow, even on the current Sun servers, compared to AIX, hp-ux or RHEL, which are the competition I have seen in action.

    Funny that. I'll bet DOS 3.2 is even faster than RHEL on that hardware. Doesn't do as much, though. Just like RHEL compared with Solaris.

    Sure, some people don't care about functionality or reliability, and just want benchmarks. The professionals know otherwise.

  30. Rytis
    FAIL

    Should you read it before comment

    @Scott K. Handy;

    http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/09/16/idc_emea_servers_q2_2009/

  31. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    IBM Clueless -> p595 Performance

    >>> "So I'll be patient and wait for the October the 14th on how Sun SPARC system can beat the IBM Power 595."

    > Did you mean Sun SPARC system or 10 Sun SPARC systems?

    > It's obvious that 10 fastest T2+ servers in RAC cluster will be faster than single 2-year old IBM machine. IBM or HP could do the same and connect 10 superdomes or 10 595s in RAC cluster to achieve higher scores. All your money would go to Oracle then...

    Come'on why all this mud-slinging? IBM does 32-node clusters with 2 chip P570 for TPC-H too, right?

    I'm not exactly clueless about IBM and Sun performance, especially I have large scalable applications on both platforms. So stop this bashing, and I only trust the performance data I'm monitoring on my boxes.

    For the Power 595, come'on, every technie knows that though IBM used a 64 core Power 6 with 5GHz processors, you had like 11,000 spindles with crazy database partitioning. You always claim 2-3x per core performance over SPARC64, but in my experience, it is about 1.5x per core at best. Qualification: Common storage on EMC.

    T2+ processors have been incredible with all my throughput applications. And surprisingly IBM Power could not keep up with the throughput and latency was bad at high connections.

    So mudslinging aside, I love technologies from Sun and IBM. They are different, but that brings value to me. I see IBM as a steady improver, but Sun dares to think out of box.

  32. Kebabbert

    Latest AC, just above:

    "T2+ processors have been incredible with all my throughput applications. And surprisingly IBM Power could not keep up with the throughput and latency was bad at high connections."

    No you are dreaming. Dont you know that T2+ suffers from a too small cache and can only beat Power6 on synthetic benchmarks, and never in real work? IBMers say so, then it must be true. And most important; even Mattie Pattie Laddie says so, then it MUST truly be true. Mattie would never lie nor FUD, right?

  33. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    FAIL

    RE: Assorted Sunshiners

    RE: Re: RE: @Matt

    "....Nope, just you Matt. No one complains about other "haters". You are the only one that spread FUD to the extent that you do....." Lol, so anything anyone says that you don't agree with is FUD? Nice, narrow set of friends you have there. Next I'm sure you'll be claiming we're the only customer that has ever migrated off SPARC Slowaris. All the more funny considering my first post was actually a rebuttal of the idea that the new Exedata being Galaxy-based was somehow a disaster for SPARC. Or are you saying that was a lie too?

    RE: Mattie Pattie Laddie

    "So Solaris is slow?...." Yes. In straight shootouts, same generic app stack, same rough price-range, Slowaris 10 vs AIX or hp-ux or RHEL, Slowaris was usaully the laggard. In all cases Sun and their resellers were allowed to tune the kit as they saw fit, so there was no chance of those builds not being the best available. The only instance where Slowaris outperformed the others was on T2 on webserving, but then it lost out on price to RHEL on ProLiant. You can squeal all you like, but that is my direct experience, and you really don't have either the experience or capability to convince me otherwise, especially as I susepct you have never even seen half the kit discussed here.

    "....If I consider your (proven) earlier lies...." The only thing you have proven is that you have neither the experience, knowledge or debating skills necessary to join these discussions. At this point, all you generate is a mixture of unintentional humour and laughable immodesty. Please do explain to me how a maths degree makes you at all qualified to discuss computing, when probably more than half the readers here have computing based degrees and a shedload more practical experience?

    RE: Slowaris?

    "....Sure, some people don't care about functionality or reliability, and just want benchmarks. The professionals know otherwise." Nice attempt at a feature sell without any substance to back up your insinuation that Slowaris has "unique" faetures that Slowaris can provide. Just to forestall the inevitable Sunshiner post of all the "unique" features they calim make Slowaris soooooo much better than anyone else's OS, let me explain that we have, as part of our accpetance criteria, a long list of features and capabilities that solutions must meet before they go through to the shootout stage. As it stands, RHEL, AIX, SPARC Slowaris and hp-ux provide all the features we use, some better than others, but all to the standard we require. Where Slowaris fails is on price (even after discounts), reliability (my experience), and performance. Of course, there is also the board's lack of belief in Sun (a truly unique feature).

    But, just to cheer you all up, Exedata is on our list of systems we will be looking at in 2010. So there is a chance we may actually buy some Sun servers. Of course, if Oracle release a version on our preferred ProLiant blades then the Galaxy option will likely fail without some serious discounting.

    /SP&L

  34. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    re: RE: Assorted Sunshiners #

    "Lol, so anything anyone says that you don't agree with is FUD? Nice, narrow set of friends you have there. "

    No it is merely because you claim to attack Sun, like you do, because of all the FUD that everyone spreads about HP. You rarely provide anything concrete for your arguments. You merely state that Oracle will in no way keep Sun's hardware business and never intended to keep it. This is the definition of FUD. You never lose a chance to attack Sun or anyone that defends or applauds Sun's actions. Yes, you are a FUDster and no, when someone says something specific about Sun that I disagree with it does not automatically make them a FUDster. You have proven your intentions and as a matter of fact you have said that you do not like Sun. You will say anything to convince others and you spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince others that Sun is evil and anyone that likes them is an idiot. Go back to your mothers basement where you belong.

    ...and you wonder why everyone thinks you work for HP or a HP reseller.

  35. zvonr
    Pirate

    Solaris is better than Linux

    Fact: Memory management in Linux sucks

    Implementation is reminiscent of solaris 8. (see linux hugepages, and try to find something like ppgsz on Linux)

    False statement: Linux is cheaper.

    Solaris ZFS compression allows you tu build faster solutions with half the number of disk drives. reducing initial and operating expenses.

    Linux's lack of binarry compatibility will cost you dearly, adding a lot of aditional work and complexity to your upgrades. Saving a few pennies will cost you dearly.

  36. ares
    Linux

    Never again Solaris

    We've been using both Solaris and Linux on our servers. And I have to admit, I am not impressed by Solaris. Guess what servers crapped out when power went down (the filesystem was all corrupt). I have to admin it was using UFS, but again guess on which server I saw Oracle reporting corrupt blocks (on an x86 with Solaris and ZFS). Upgrades are headache, lack of official software repositories, installation problems even on Sun Servers. We are using Oracle a lot and deploying on ASM does the job perfectly. When you want to install an application (that is not int the top 20 most pupular applications) guess on which OS you have to bang your head to compile it !? I will try to stay away from Solaris, except headaches we never got something good. And with the binary compatibility your areimpacted if you write really low level code (drivers and stuff), so zvonr dont spread you FUD around.

  37. Victor 2
    Stop

    @ares and @TPM

    @ares

    sorry, but your comments sound a lot more like lack of skills from the administrator rather than any disadvantage from using solaris.

    There are repositories for Solaris and OpenSolaris, like Blastwave. Granted, they are not official, but Solaris 10 gets updated every six months or something. Remember it's an stable platform, not bleeding edge like Fedora or Ubuntu.

    Binary compatibility has nothing to do with low level code. Nothing at all. It's about an stable ABI and API that allows code compiled (binaries) from the earliest versions of Solaris to run unmodified on Solaris 10.

    And the fact that a lot of OSS software is Linux centered doesn't help when trying to compile some random program (read, not used by a lot of people) on Solaris. I assure you, it is easier to do so on OpenSolaris, give it a try.

    @TPM

    It's funny that your review of Exadata v2 tries to make it look as something unimportant, yet on your itjungle article here: http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh092109-story02.html . you say that IBM should do it's best effort to copy it.

    So, it's a good idea if IBM came up with it first, but not if Oracle did it?... Then which is it, is it good or not?

    Oh, TPM, you IBM troll... make up your mind, please.

    You say IBM "could" do this 13 years ago... As I said earlier, if it was SO obvious, why didn't they do it?... Haven't you though that they might not have found it viable?... Too costly/ too slow to sell it to anyone?

    coments like:

    "Each storage server is equipped with four flash disk modules, each weighing in at 96 GB and apparently plugging into PCI-Express peripheral slots. (Sun and Oracle tried to make a big deal about this, calling it "FlashFire technology." But i 6.1 is already flash aware, as you know, and can move data in the single-level store for memory and disk into flash of that will boost performance.)"

    Are just sad... why does it hurt you so much that Sun + Oracle did something good and you try to show it as "no big deal".

    Oh, and managing Oracle RAC clusters isn't nearly as hard to administer as you imply.

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