back to article Oracle refreshes Sun Xeon server lineup

As El Reg has been telling you it would, Oracle revamp its x64 servers in June and Advanced Micro Devices was not invited to the announcement party. In fact, there wasn't an announcement party at all, just two press releases and a webcast explaining the machines — the latter of which is still not available as we go to press. …

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  1. Allison Park

    Exadata V2 - Larry thinks you are an idiot

    "We are nearing one Billion in Exadata sales pipeline"

    They only sold 20 in 1Q and less than 40 in the first six months.

    I guess Larry does not want to say they cant sell more than 40, but would rather say he has a pipeline of sales that includes every Oracle software customer.

    Word is they will OEM Dell x86 just like Teradata does and the V2 customers will be SOL just like the V1 customers.

    The X4800 server does not have a "glue" chip like the DL890 or System X boxes so the >4 socket config will provide horrendous performance.

    They killed AMD, next is their own Xeon boxes.....Teradata has OEM'd Dell for years...and Netezza OEM's IBM system X.

    The odd man out is HP who does not have a real BI offering.....that has got to Hurd.

    Allison

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      @ Ms Park - You have some facts wrong

      They only sold 20 in 1Q ?

      Which Q1 -

      Oracle's ? - nope that runs Jun/Jul/Aug - ie before the kit was announced

      The V2's ? that ran Oct/Nov/Dec and Oracle showed us evidence of > the number of sales

      This years ? - well that ran Jan/Feb/Mar - and we made an order for > 20 of the boxes in Mar..

      or maybe you have another 1Q in mind ?

      I guess you must work for IBduMb, the amount of inaccuracies you have in this post ;-)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Exadata V2 - Larry thinks you are an idiot

      "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

      Ms. Park, do you work for IBM? Because you either sound like someone from marketing planting FUD or you sound like a politician's campaign manager as you have been using the "stay on message" tactic on all of your recent posts http://forums.channelregister.co.uk/user/39548/

      Perhaps some posts that are based on facts or even your own opinion and not marketing regurgitation would be useful for others reading your posts in response to articles on The Register. Otherwise you sound like a Tea Partier....you know the type that says Obama is a Nazi for socializing everything and when they get asked what social programs they would get rid of, they want to keep everything. Don't be a parrot. Makes you seem either calculating or stupid.

      When you make statements like "They only sold 20 in 1Q and less than 40 in the first six months," perhaps citing your source would be helpful. I'm not saying you're making it up, but until you prove your source to me, I'm going to question it.

      Why would you say "Word is they will OEM Dell x86 just like Teradata does and the V2 customers will be SOL just like the V1 customers." the day that they announce a whole new server refresh? If you look at the fact that had they for whatever reason they wanted to divest their x86 business the day of or the day after they announce a tech refresh and somehow wanted to OEM some product line, I would have imagined the relationship would likely been HP since they had the relationship from Exadata v1, why would you even suggest something as far fetched as Dell?

      What does "The X4800 server does not have a "glue" chip like the DL890 or System X boxes so the >4 socket config will provide horrendous performance." even mean? Firstly are you referring to the DL 980 (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/15351-15351-3328412-241644-4222584-4231377.html)? Secondly, what glue chip are you referring to? Are you referring to HP PREMA? Also, it seems like the IBM System X only goes up to four sockets without using eX5. If you use eX5, you're incurring extreme NUMA behavior, which could impact performance even more negatively than having one vertically scaled system.

      You mentioned "They killed AMD, next is their own Xeon boxes.....Teradata has OEM'd Dell for years...and Netezza OEM's IBM system X." I don't think you can make a direct comparison because Oracle isn't primarily about Business Intelligence. Right now it's the only appliance like solution, but on the earnings call replay they had stated that they were looking at other appliances. So if you have your own x86 engineering department, why would you use Dell and be bound by Dell's release cycle, when Oracle seems to hate doing that kind of stuff and has cut of partner relationships (read HP and Voltaire) in the past like that.

      Finally, HP hasn't really been in the software (mercury - not infrastructure and infrastructure management like Insight manager, Opsware and Openview) business for a while and I'm not sure they need to be. They seem to have a very good cloud story with the systems, management tools, services, and integration points for Insight Manager with Windows and VMWare. I know they've recently been trying to get into the storage market, but EMC and Netapp have that pretty much wrapped up nicely. I suppose Oracle will push their Storage 7000 or ZFS appliance or whatever else they're calling it these days, but they still have a ways to go before gaining serious marketshare. What does IBM have to compete with that? XIV?

  2. ripratm

    At least they look cool

    The X4270 with those 24 disk in front...at least from a design aspect look cooler than a dell.....and cost 5x as much.

    1. Victor 2
      FAIL

      cost?

      You don't know how much do they cost yet

  3. Is it me?

    Hmmm

    Do an OEM deal with Dell, but Larry doesn't like OEM deals. I also can't see Sun customers buying OEM Dell.

  4. Kebabbert

    X4800 perfect for virtualizing Windows servers

    When you virtualize lots of servers, the culprit is RAM. Most servers idle so you dont need lots of CPU, but you need lots of RAM. 1TB or 2TB RAM in a machine equipped with the world's fastest x86 CPU performance, can virtualize lots of x86 Windows servers. Several hundreds without problems.

    Benchmarks:

    http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf/entry/20100628_x4800_spec_cpu2006_rate

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Pricing

    We bought Sun kit ... We like Sun Kit, we especially like the ILOM ability to connect and control the system even when the main system has decided to go goofy over name services or anything stupid like that ...

    We've expanded and need some new servers.

    We asked Oracle for a quote, and have come to the conclusion that they don't want to sell systems, at least not "entry-level" systems.

    Oracle 6 core Xeon, 12 Gb ram, 2 x 320 Gb disks ... nothing special ... £6000

    Dell slightly better Xeon, 12Gb ram, 2 x slightly better disks ... £800 ...

    what on earth are they doing? it costs £200 quid for a disk from dell, £600-800 for EXACTLY THE SAME DISK from Oracle.

    by anyone's determination that's one hell of a markup.

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Boffin

      RE: Pricing

      A more worrisome problem for Snoreacle is their "facelessness" in our company. We have an Oracle rep that used to only turn up every now and again, if we had a major project using Oracle software, and the he'd mainly just sit there and let the hardware resellers/vendors do the talking unless specific info was needed on an Oracle app. I assume he spent most of his time counting the revenue stream from the Oracle software we bought and workng on his tan. Now, the two core resellers we used to buy Sun from have both told us they're pulling away from Oracle because Oracle have just taken their top accounts direct, so they are now effectively pushing IBM, hp and Dell in competition (one said the Dell channel manager was right on the phone to them five minutes after Larry made his "take-the-cherry-accounts-direct" announcement). Those resellers actually know us as a company, they have met with our project teams and wined and dined our senior management. The poor Snoreacle rep doesn't know anything about us, our business model, and hasn't a clue who the influencers and budget-holders are. The new Snoreacle Xeon kit does look like reasonable "me too" x64 offerings, but it will need a whole new Snoreacle sales effort which just isn't there yet.

  6. Billl
    Pint

    Re: MB

    Is it me, or has Matt Bryant sounded a bit more reasonable lately? Perhaps it's just that he does not hate Oracle as much as he hated Sun. He still has an obvious chip on his shoulder, but at least he's thinking outside of his obvious biases.

    1. seven of five
      Happy

      Yup, he calmed down again.

      Was desperately neccessary, that POWER7 launch really sent him over the edge. Just check his posts from around March/April.

      Nice to have him back, though.

    2. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Happy

      RE: Re: MB

      Just hoping the the Sun mess doesn't screw up the Oracle software bizz. Wouldn't miss their hardware, but unplumbing their software from our systems would be a nightmare!

      1. seven of five

        unplumbing Oracle...

        As someone who is currently involved in migrating from Oracle to DB2 I can tell you there is sooo much you could look forward to. The horrors and atrocities commited ON BOTH SIDES of the fence are beyond the descriptable.

        1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
          Happy

          RE: unplumbing Oracle...

          You have my heartfelt sympathies! Just remember, some clever chappie somewhere in senior management thought that it was a good idea, and would "save money for / incurr efficiencies in / future-proof" the company, and if he turns out to be wrong he'll be looking for a scapegoat....! ;)

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