IBM, do they always compare benchmarks in wierd ways?
Wednesday Oct 03, 2007
IBM bloggers seem to talk about any marketing comparison where they look good even if it they compare things they shouldn't.
Recently Sun released SPC-1 results, and because the Sun StorageTek® 9990 System can be hosted by so many systems Sun even used the IBM p595 as the host. How cool is that! Let me shout it out, "Sun used IBM servers on with Sun Storage in a benchmark!" Not that the IBM server provided an particular advantage in performance, in fact it was an older 24-core 1.65GHz power5. Clearly Sun wants everyone to notice you can put our fast and cost-effective storage on your IBM box or whatever.
Did the IBM blogger compare Sun's high-end storage to IBM's high-end storage, of course not, IBM would have lost in that case. Here is Sun's high-end compared to IBM's high-end storage...
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The StorageTek 9990V competes with the IBM DS8300 (both Monolithic technologies). The StorageTek 9990V (200,245.73 @ $17.31 $/SPC-1 IOPS) truly beat IBM DS8300 (123,033.40 SPC-1 IOPS @ $18.99 $/SPC-1 IOPS) by over 60% in performance with SPC-1 and still had better price/performance about 10%.
...but the IBM blogger compared different points on the scale. The mid-range SAN Volume Controller is a different technology (clustering of IBM DS4800s and switches) does not compete with the StorageTek 9990V. Anybody can put together a bunch of mid-range storage, switch them up, and put a common interface on it for a management nightmare.
Disclosure Statement:
SPC Benchmark-1 and SPC Benchmark-2 are trademarks of the Storage Performance Council.
High-end comparison:
Sun StoreTek 9900 system SPC-1 storage benchmark result of 200,245.73 IOPS over 26,000 GB ASU Capacity (mirrored) on the Sun StorageTek® 9990 System ($17.31 $/IOPS). IBM DS8300 (123,033.40 SPC-1 IOPS @ $18.99 $/SPC-1 IOPS, mirrored, ASU (9,103GB) Source: http://www.storageperformance.org/results; Results as of 10/02/07.
Mid-range comparison:
IBM TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller SPC-1 result of 272,505 IOPS (22,433 GB, $12.05/IOP, Mirroring).
...makes me think that this Thursday I should post how IBM says two things at one all of the time. Google, get warmed up 
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