Record Price Perf TPC-H @300GB Sun Fire X4100 M2, Sybase IQ

Monday Jun 04, 2007

The Sun Fire X4100 M2 has 50% better price performance than the HP DL585. This benchmark result demonstrates that the Sun Fire X4100 M2, powered by 2 dual-core 3.0GHz Opteron, improves upon Sun's previously published world-record $/performance result at 300GB. The Sun Fire X4100 M2 is the only 1U system ever submitted for a TPC benchmark at the 300GB scale-factor.

The Sun Fire X4100 M2 achieved the best price-performance among all systems at 300GB. It improved upon Sun's previous world-record price-performance, achieved by the Sun Fire X4200, by 6%.

Note all of this detail, and the very different ways in which results are marketed with the IBM POWER6 post.

The Sun Fire X4100 M2 achieved a 55% QphH@300GB improvement upon previously published 2-socket Single-core RevE Sun Fire X4200 result, i.e., 7641 QphH@300GB versus 4936 QphH@300GB.

Specifically, Sun, using its Sun Fire X4100 M2 server achieved a $/QphH@300GB of $5.89, whereas the Sun Fire X4200 achieved a $/QphH@300GB of $6.29. The latter result was submitted on June 23, 2006.

TPC-H @300GB Performance Results (sorted by $/QphH for single (non-clustered) systems:

$/QphH = $/QphH@300GB TPC-H Price/Performance metric (smaller is better)
QphH = QphH@300GB TPC-H Composite Metric (bigger is better)
Disk Data Ratio is the ratio of the total number of gigabytes of configured storage to the scale factor number of gigabytes (smaller is better)

System	Sockets/ Cores/ Threads CPU GHz	QphH	Price/ QphH	Price in currency	DBMS	Available	Disk Data Ratio	Cluster
Sun X4100 M2	2/4/4 Opteron 3.0	7641	$5.89	45,001 $US	SybIQ	6/23/06	3.17	N
Sun X4100	2/2/2 3.0 Opteron	4936	$6.29	31,033 $US	SybIQ	6/23/06	2.9	N
HP DL585 G1	4/8/8 Opteron 2.4	12225	$11.71	143,041 $US	SQLS	01/26/06	19.9	N
HP DL585 G2	4/8/8 Opteron 2.8	18298	$13.67	250,057 $US	SQLS	04/19/07	24.96	N
IBM x3650	2/4/4 WoodC 3.0	10165	$15.40	156,535 $US	DB2	10/06/06	12.8	N
Sun V440	4/4/4 US IIIi 1.6	2501	$22.09	55,245 $US	SybIQ	05/09/05	1.81	N
HP DL585 G1	4/8/8 Opteron 2.4	11915	$22.78	271,379 $US	DB2	10/05/05	19.7	N
HP DL585 G1	4/4/4 Opteron 2.6	8434	$30.18	255,586 $US	DB2	05/17/05	13.8	N
IBM eServer 366	4/4/8 Xeon 3.6	7762	$32.94	255,702 $US	DB2	05/02/05	18.5	N

The results reported here were performed on a Sun Fire X4100 M2 system running the Sybase IQ database manager. Sybase IQ is a special product designed specifically for data warehousing applications. Sybase IQ was developed as a totally separate product from the more widely known Sybase database management system (Sybase Adaptive Server).

Sun achieved this result using only 14 disks. Other vendors used anywhere from  104 disks (the IBM x3650 result) to 208 disks (the HP DL585 G2 result).

The significance of being able to house a data warehouse with fewer disks provides numerous advantages far beyond the scope of the TPC-H metrics. These include, ease of management, lower probability of admin errors, a much lower probability of disk failures and a true reduction in the total cost of ownership over the life of a system.

All Sun/SybaseIQ submissions, including this one, RAID protect their storage. Only a few, of the almost 30 existing non-Sun submissions, at 300GB RAID protect their storage. The lack of RAID protection results in artificially cheaper configurations, which no production shop would ever deploy.

Benchmark Description

The TPC-H benchmark is a performance benchmark established by the Transaction Processing Council (TPC) to demonstrate Data Warehousing/Decision Support Systems (DSS). TPC-H measurements are produced for customers to evaluate the performance of various DSS systems. These queries and updates are executed against a standard database under controlled conditions. Performance projections and comparisons between different TPC-H Database sizes (100GB, 300GB, 1000GB, 3000GB and 10000GB) are not allowed by the TPC.

TPC-H is a data warehousing-oriented, non-industry-specific benchmark that consists of a large number of complex queries typical of decision support applications. It also includes some insert and delete activity that is intended to simulate loading and purging data from a warehouse. TPC-H measures the combined performance of a particular database manager on a specific computer system.

The main performance metric reported by TPC-H is called the TPC-H Composite Query-per-Hour Performance Metric (QphH@SF, where SF is the number of GB of raw data, referred to as the scale factor). QphH@SF is intended to summarize the ability of the system to process queries in both single and multi user modes. The benchmark requires reporting of price/performance, which is the ratio of QphH to total HW/SW cost plus 3 years maintenance. A secondary metric is the storage efficiency, which is the ratio of total configured disk space in GB to the scale factor.

Disclosure Statement:

TPC-H @300GB Sun Fire X4100 M2 7641 QphH@300GB, $5.89/QphH@300GB, avail 5/25/07; TPC-H, QphH, $/QphH tm of Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). More info www.tpc.org.

Audited Results
	Database Size:	300 GB (Scale Factor 300)
	TPC-H Composite:	7641 QphH@300GB
	Price/performance:	$5.89 / QphH@300GB
	Available	May 25, 2007
Number of Systems:		Sun Fire X4100 M2
Total Processors, cores, Threads:		2,2,2
Processor		Dual-core Opteron 3.0GHz
Storage:		951 Gigabytes of disk
Database:		Sybase IQ 12.6
Operating System:		Solaris 10
Total 3 year Cost:		$45,001.35
Other Performance Metrics
	TPC-H Power:	7847
	TPC-H Throughput:	7440.5
	Database Load Time	4 hours 22 minutes 53 seconds
	Storage Ratio/type:	3.17 ratio/ two STK3320 SCSI JBOD array

See Also

Sun Fire X4100 M2 TPC-H Executive Summary Report Acrobat PDF (68K)

Complete Sun Fire X4100 M2 TPC-H Full Disclosure Report Acrobat PDF (590K)

Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) Home Page

Ideas International Benchmark page

I'll even show my math, I challenge other vendors to show it too!

6% claim from: (6.29-5.89)/6.29 = 0.0635
50% claim from: (11.71-5.89)/11.71 = 0.4970 (49.7 rounds to 50)
55% claim from: (7641-4936)/4936 = 0.5480 (54.8 rounds to 55)

Funny math to the core

Monday Apr 09, 2007

IBM thinks it is about the core count or performance per core. Get real. It is about the whole system. You can do the math based on the info in the TPC-H submissions below...
Sun: $4,207,126 /144 core = ?
IBM: $5,358,874 /64 core = ?

It is clear to see that IBM's cores each cost more than 2.5 times more than Sun's cores. Before you get too confused with 'rotten-to-the-core-math', just remember this. The IBM system costs more and the IBM system is a slower on the TPC-H benchmark. http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/database_world_record_sun_us.

• The Sun Fire E25K 1.8GHz outperformed the IBM p5-595 (Power5+) by 14% and also had 31% better price/performance. Also beat the p595 by 26% on the multi-user test (Throughput).
• The Sun Fire E25K beat the HP Integrity Superdome (Itanium2) by 60% on performance and 34% on price/performance. Sun also beat the Itanium2 Superdome by 72% for the multi-user test (Throughput).
• Last week Sun announced Sun Fire E25K systems with 1.95GHz processors.

TPC-H Disclosure Statement:

Sun Fire E25K 114,713.7 QphH@3000GB, $36.68/QphH@3000GB, avail 04/09/07, HP BladeSystem ProLiant BL25p cluster 64p DC 110,576.5 QohH@3000GB, $37.80/QphH@3000GB avail 06/08/06, Sun Fire E25K 105430.9 QphH@3000GB, $54.87/QphH@3000GB, avail 01/23/06, IBM eServer p5 595 100,512.3 QphH@3000GB, $53.32/QphH@3000GB, avail 03/01/06, HP Integrity Superdome 71,847.8 QphH@3000GB, $55.79/QphH@3000GB, avail 01/18/06, Sun Fire E25K 59,435.7 QphH@3000GB, $100.66/QphH@3000GB, avail 07/27/05, TPC-H, QphH, $/QphH tm of Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). More info www.tpc.org.

Record SPECjAppServer Sun Fire E2900 / Sun Fire T2000 combo

Tuesday Apr 03, 2007

World Record Performance on 2-node Configuration! One Sun Fire E2900 equipped with 12 UltraSPARC IV+ at 1.95GHz running the BEA Weblogic 9.2 Application Server and one Sun Fire T2000 equipped with one UltraSPARC T1 processor at 1.2 GHz running the DB2 8.2 Univeral Database achieved 1781.37 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard.

This SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark result is a World record for application server performance on a single system.

The Sun Fire E2900 result is an example of J2EE Server Consolidation. The result was obtained using 6 BEA Weblogic application server instances, each running in a separate Solaris Container.

The Sun Fire E2900 and Sun Fire T2000 performed 7% better than the cluster of 6x HP DL380 G4 running BEA Weblogic 9 and 1x HP rx8620 server running Oracle 10g database.

The Sun Fire E2900 and Sun Fire T2000 performed 32% better than the cluster of 5x IBM eServer xSeries 365 servers running IBM Websphere 6 and 2x IBM eServer xSeries 365 running DB2 8.2 database.

This result also demonstrates the superior performance of the Sun Fire T2000 as a database server, using IBM DB2 Universal Database software. The UltraSPARC-T1 based T2000 Sun server supports a higher SPECjAppServer2004 workload (JOPS) than one HP rx8620 [16x 1.5 GHz Itanium 2] using Oracle 10g or two IBM xSeries 365 [8x 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon MP] using IBM DB2 v8.2.

SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard (bigger is better) 04/03/2007

	SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard	J2EE Server	DB Server
Sun	1781.37	1x Sun Fire E2900 24 cores, 12 chips @ 1.95 GHz US-IV+ BEA WebLogic 9.2	1x Sun Fire T2000 8 cores, 1 chip @ 1.2 GHz US-T1 IBM DB2 8.2.6
HP	1664.36	6x HP DL380 12 cores, 12 chips @ 3.6 GHz Xeon BEA WebLogic 9.0	1x HP rx8620 16 cores, 16 chips @ 1.5 GHz Itanium 2 Oracle 10g 10.1.0.4
IBM	1343.47	5x IBM eServer xSeries 365 20 cores, 20 chips @ 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon MP WebSphere 6.0	2x IBM eServer xSeries 365 8 cores, 8 chips @ 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon MP IBM DB2 v8.2
Sun	1781.47	5x Sun Fire X4100 20 cores, 10 chips @ 2.4 GHz AMD 280 BEA WebLogic 9.0	1x Sun Fire E6900 32 cores, 16 chips @ 1.2 GHz US-IV Oracle 10g 10.1.0.4
HP	1266.42	1x HP rx6600 8 cores, 4 chips @ 1.6 GHz Itanium 2 BEA WebLogic 9.1	1x HP rx8620 16 cores, 16 chips @ 1.6 GHz Itanium 2 Oracle 10g 10.1.0.4

Benchmark Description

SPECjAppServer2004 (Java Application Server) is a multi-tier benchmark for measuring the performance of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology-based application servers. SPECjAppServer2004 is an end-to-end application which exercises all major J2EE technologies implemented by compliant application servers as follows:

• The web container, including servlets and JSPs
• The EJB container
• EJB2.0 Container Managed Persistence
• JMS and Message Driven Beans
• Transaction management
• Database connectivity

Moreover, SPECjAppServer2004 also heavily exercises all parts of the underlying infrastructure that make up the application environment, including hardware, JVM software, database software, JDBC drivers, and the system network.

The primary metric of the SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark is jAppServer Operations Per Second (JOPS) which is calculated by adding the metrics of the Dealership Management Application in the Dealer Domain and the Manufacturing Application in the Manufacturing Domain. There is NO price/performance metric in this benchmark.

Disclosure Statement:

SPECjAppServer2004
1 Sun Fire E2900 (24 cores, 12 chips) and 1 Sun Fire T2000 (8 cores, 1 chip) 1781.37 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard.
6 HP DL380 (12 cores, 12 chips) and 1 HP rx8620 (16 cores, 16 chips) 1664.36 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard.
5 IBM xSeries 365 (20 cores, 20 chips) and 2 IBM xSeries 365 (8 cores, 8 chips) 1343.47 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard.
1 HP rx6600 (8 cores, 4 chips) and 1 HP rx8620 (16 cores, 16 chips) 1266.42 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard.
5 Sun Fire X4100 (20 cores, 10 chips) and 1 Sun Fire E6900 (32 cores, 16 chips) 1781.47 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard.
SPEC, SPECjAppServer reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.
Results from www.spec.org as of 04/03/2007.

Results Summary

Certified Results			1781.37 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard
Reference Date:			Apr 3, 2007
Systems:			1 x Sun Fire E2900, 12x 1.95 GHz UltraSPARC IV+
			1 x Sun Fire T2000, 1.2 GHz UltraSPARC T1
# Processors:			12, 1
Processor/GHz of Server:			UltraSPARC IV+ 1.95 GHz
			UltraSPARC T1 1.2 GHz
Operating System:			Solaris 10 11/06
Software:			BEA WebLogic 9.2 Advantage Edition
			IBM DB2 8.2.6 Enterprise Editon
JVM:			J2SE 5.0 update 11

... yes more coming even tomorrow and beyond, keep checking...

Sun Fire X2200 M2 running Fluent CFD Beats Woodcrest & Clovertown

Friday Mar 30, 2007

The Sun Fire X2200 M2 server beats Woodcrest on large CFD models. The X2200 M2 Cluster beats all currently posted Opteron cluster results (dual core HP XC4000 2.2GHz, HP DL145 G2 2.2GHz, HP XW9300 2.4GHz, and HP DL585 2.6GHz) for all "cpu" levels and for all test cases. All clusters had the high performance Infiniband interconnects.

The X2200 M2 beats the IBM X3650 2.66GHz quad core Clovertown across the board at all cpu levels and for all test cases.

Tests were run on the official version of Fluent (lnxamd64 V6.3.26 build). The Sun Opteron server numbers were generated under 64-bit SUSE SLES 9 SP 3. Sun many customers that use Solaris, Linux, and windows so we show benchmarks on all of these.

Although the X2200 M2 cluster has the best performance on the larger and more complex tests, "FL5L3". It is most closely representative of actual customer benchmarks (requires over 9GB of memory, best run using several cpu's). FL5L3 simulates turbulent flow through a transition duct.

Note that the X2200 M2 cluster results shown in following table are consistently better than those obtained on the two Woodcrest cluster systems at the same "cpu" levels and for all indicated "cpu" levels (4 to 32).

The efficiency of the Sun X2200 M2 cluster is superb at well above 90% up to 32 cores. This essentially perfect scalability is contrasted with the Woodcrest clusters where scalability has dropped off and efficiency is below 70% at and above 4 cores.

Scaling Performance : Results in "Ratings" (# runs/day, bigger is better)

System	4 Cores	8 Cores	16 Cores	32 Cores
Sun X2200 M2 2.8GHz Operton	89.9	174.4	341.5	664.4
HP BL460C 3.0GHz Woodcrest	80.3	155.4	299.0	576.0
HP DL140 3.0GHz Woodcrest	N/A	160.7	320.5	620.1
Bull NovaScale 3.0GHz Woodcrest	78.9	157.8	313.2	619.0

Fluent Performance : Results in "Ratings" (# runs/day, bigger is better)

System	Interconnect/MPI	cores	FL5L1	FL5L2	FL5L3
X2200 2.8GHz DC 2220 SLES 9 SP 3	IB(V)/HP-MPI	8	1219.5	952.1	174.4
X2100 3.0GHz SC 156 SLES 9 SP3	IB(V)/MVAPICH	8	1148.2	1063.4	184.6
HPDL140 3.0GHz DC WC EM64T Linux	IB/HP-MPI	8	1378.0	915.0	160.7
Bull Nova 3.0 GHz DC WC EM64T RHEL4	IB	8	1323.6	884.1	157.8
HP BL460C 3.0GHz WC EM64T WinCCS	IB(V)	8	1289.6	881.6	155.4
Intel White 3.0GHz WC EM64T DC RHAS4	IB(Mellanox)	8	---	828.0	137.8
Tyan Typh. 630 2.3GHz WC SLES 10	GbE	8	1011.7	692.4	122.7
Tyan Typh. 630 2.3GHz WC WinCCS	GbE	8	981.8	635.3	---
HPDL140 3.6GHz EM64T WINCCS	IB	8	970.8	675.0	120.0
HPDL585 2.6GHz DC 152 RHEL4	IB(V)/HP-MPI	8	966.2	723.2	119.2
HPXC4000 2.2GHz DC 148 Linux	IB(V)/HP-MPI	8	951.0	680.4	102.7
HPDL145 G2 Opteron 2.2GHz DC WinCCS	IB(V)	8	847.1	654.5	119.2
IBMX3650 2.66GHz 4C Clovert. EM64T RHEL4	?	8	953.6	551.2	93.3

Benchmark Description

Nine industrial CFD applications ranging in size from 32,000 to 10,000,000 cells have been selected to demonstrate the performance of FLUENT on a variety of hardware platforms. The performance of a CFD code will depend on several factors including size and topology of the mesh, physical models, numerics and parallelization, compilers and optimization, in addition to performance characteristics of the hardware where the simulation is performed. The problems selected represent a range of simulations typical of those which might be found in industry. The principal objective of this benchmark suite is to provide comprehensive and fair comparative information of the performance of FLUENT on available hardware platforms.

System Configuration

Hardware Configuration:

Sun Fire X2200 M2
2-socket 2x2.8 GHz dual core Opteron 2220 processors
4x1GB + 4x2GB (12GB) DDR2 667 MHz dimms
IB(Voltaire)/PCI-Express (interconnect)

Software Configuration:

64-bit SuSE SLES 9 SP 3
Fluent V6.3.26
Voltaire Infiniband Software Stack: 3.5.5_16-S2sles9.k2.6.5_7.244_smp.x86_64
Message Passing Interface: HP-MPI V hpmpi-2.02.05.00-20061003r.x86_64

See Also

Current V6.2(.16) results at:
http://www.fluent.com/software/fluent/fl5bench/flbench_6.3/fullres.htm

1.4 GHz Sun Fire T2000 Lotus World Record per-socket performance and Perf/watt

Wednesday Jan 10, 2007

Lotus Domino NotesBench R6iNotes Sun Fire T2000 Lotus World Record per-socket performance and Perf/watt

The Sun FireT2000 1.4GHz US T1 using Lotus Domino 7.0.2 mail server delivered world record results with best per-socket performance of 23200 and world record performance/watt for the Lotus[R] R6iNotes on Domino mail HTTP based R6iNotes benchmark.

• The Sun Fire T2000 is 22% faster with 25% faster response times than the latest HP DL380G5 based on two 3GHz dual-core Intel 5160 (WoodCrest) running Microsoft Windows Server 2003. This translates to 2.4x higher performance per socket.

• The Sun Fire T2000 delivers this performance while consuming nearly three times less power, adding up to 3.4x higher Performance per Watt and SWaP. While the HP system achieved lower price/performance, for many customers, this would be offset by the higher energy consumption of the system.

• When compared to IBM's latest p5+ 550Q server, based on 2 x Quad Core p5+ processors and the AIX operating system, the Sun Fire T2000 was able to deliver comparable performance with 35% faster response times, and 2x higher Performance per Socket.

• Also, the Sun Fire T2000 Server consumed 2.5x less power, and only half the space of the IBM system, adding up to 5X higher SWaP.

• In addition to the power, cooling and space savings, the Sun Fire T2000 also delivered one third superior price / performance than IBM system.

  Lotus Domino 7.0 NotesBench R6iNotes Performance Chart (in decreasing #Users order)

  System	$/User	Users	NotesMark	#Partitions	Response
  Sun Fire V890 8xUltraSPARC IV+ 1800MHz Solaris10	$7.19	40000	33862	4	324 ms
  IBM eServer Power5 550Q 8x1.5GHz POWER5, AIX 5L V5.3	$5.97	24000	20108	4	932 ms
  Sun Fire T2000 1xUltraSPARC T1 1400MHz Solaris 10	$4.48	23200	19518	4	692 ms
  IBM X3650, 4x3.0GHz Xeon SUSE 9	$3.47	22000	18989	4	>3 Sec
  Sun Fire T2000 1xUltraSPARC T1 1200MHz Solaris 10HW2	$3.94	19000	16061	4	400 ms
  HP DL380G5, 2x3.0GHz Xeon 5160, Windows Server 2003	$3.15	19000	15750	3	868 ms
  HP Proliant DL580 G3 4x3.0GHz Xeon, Windows Server 2003	$4.29	18500	15953	4	434 ms

  Complete benchmark results may be found at the Lotus NotesBench website http://www.notesbench.org. Benchmark version is Notesbench 6.5 running on Lotus Domino 6.5.1

Benchmark Description

The benchmark simulates active users accessing their Domino[R] R6iNotes mail files via standard Web browser. Each simulated user periodically sends, retrieves, and deletes a specified number of e-mail messages from a browser. An average user runs this script four times per hour.

The R5iNotes and R6iNotes workloads, using the Lotus Domino Mail server (R5 or R6) are both HTTP based workloads. R6iNotes is heavier with added features and larger mail files using the MIME format.

The Lotus Webmail and iNotes workloads are NOT comparable.

see also:

NotesBench Results on Ideas International

NotesBench Website

Disclosure Statement:

NotesBench R6iNotes Sun Fire T2000(1chip, 8cores/chip@1.4GHz UltraSPARC T1, 4threads/core, 64GB), 4 partitions, Solaris[TM] 10 U3, Lotus[R] Domino 7.0.2, 23200 users, $4.48per user, 19518 NotesMark tpm, 692ms avg rt. , IBM eServer 550Q, 8x1.5GHz POWER5, 32GB, 4 partitions, AIX 5L V5.3, Lotus Domino 7.0, 24000 users, $5.97 per user, 20108 NotesMark tpm, 932 ms avg rt., HP DL380G5, 2x3.0GHz, Intel Xeon 5160, 6GB, 3 partitions, Windows Server 2003, Lotus[R] Domino 7.0.1, 19000 users, $3.15 per user, 15750 NotesMark tpm, 868ms avg rt., More info: www.notesbench.org

HP DL380G5 power consumption estimated by taking 70% of the maximum input wattage rating of 1193W reported here on 11/14/06: http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12477_na/12477_na.html#Power%20Specifications IBM p5 550Q power specifications calculated by applying 70% of the maximum Watts published in “Facts and Features Report”, 11/14/06, posted at: ftp:/ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_sp/n/PSB01628USEN/PSB01628USEN.PDF

SunFire T2000 1.4GHz server Power consumption has been taken during the full benchmark execution.

Results Summary

Audited Results
	Users:		23200
	NotesMark:		19518
	Price Performance:		$4.48 $/User
	Price Performance:		$5.33 $ /NotesMark
	Response:		692 ms
Systems:			One Sun Fire T2000
Number Processors:			1 chip, 8cores/chip@1.4GHz, 4threads/core
Speed of Processors:			1400 MHz
Storage:			3 x SS3320 (12x73GB)
Notes Version:			Lotus Domino 7.0.2
	#Domino Partition		4
Operating System:			Solaris 10 U3
Cost:			$104,051.75.00
Other Performance Metrics
	Users/CPU:		23200
	Users/Core		2900

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Posted at 06:06AM Jan 10, 2007 by BM Seer in Benchmarks
Tags: fire lotus performance record sun swap t2000

NEW 1.4GHz Sun Fire T2000 World Record 1-socket SPECweb2005 & World Record Perf/Watt

Tuesday Jan 09, 2007

The Sun Fire T2000 obtained a world record single-socket 16,407 SPECweb2005 with one UltraSPARC T1 and 64 GB memory running Solaris 10 11/06 with Sun Java[TM] System Web Server 6.1 SP5 64-bit web server.

The Sun Fire T2000 had an average power consumption of 340 watts for all benchmark workloads at steady-state.

Secured web server is critical for most of today's datacenters, unfortunately other vendors have a big performance and cost penalty for security. The Sun Fire T2000 has a unique hardware design and coupled with Solaris 10's software features secured web services only adds 10%. Now users can use SSL-enabled web service by default. This is a huge advantage for Sun customers.

Various Comparisons

• The Sun Fire T2000 delivers 24% faster on SPECweb2005 than the 4-core HP DL380G5 with 3.0GHz Intel Xeon 5160  (WoodCrest), while consuming 2.5X less power, and up to 3x higher SWaP.


• The Sun Fire T2000 is 13% faster on SPECweb2005 performance than the 4-core Dell PowerEdge 2950 with 3.0GHz Intel Xeon 5160  (WoodCrest).


• The Sun Fire T2000 is 10% faster on SPECweb2005 than the 8-core Fujitsu Siemens PRIMERGY RX600 S3 with Intel Xeon 7140M.


• The Sun Fire T2000 is 10% faster on SPECweb2005 than the 8-core HP ProLiant DL585 G2 with 2.0 GHz AMD Opteron 8212.


• The Sun Fire T2000 is 4% faster on SPECweb2005 than the 8-core HP Proliant DL585 with 2.6GHz AMD Opteron 885.


• The Dell 2950 equipped with 2 of the latest Quad-core Intel Xeon 5300 Series “Clovertown” running Red Hat Enterprise Linux delivers only 3% higher throughput than the single socket Sun Fire T2000, but consumes nearly 55% more power. As a result the T2000 delivers 1.5X better Performance per Watt and SWaP


• The Sun Fire T2000 is 208% faster on SPECweb2005 than the 4-core IBM p5 550 with 1.9GHz POWER5+.

The Sun Java[TM] System Web Server 6.1 Service Pack 5 for 64-bit Solaris 10 on SPARC hardware is optimized to leverage the 64-bit processing environments.

This world record benchmark result clearly demonstrates that the Sun Fire T2000 running the Solaris 10 OS and Java System Webserver 6.1 SP5 can support thousands of concurrent web server sessions while allowing larger and more complex Java applications to be run.

SPECweb2005 Benchmark Performance as of 01/09/2007. all results at http://www.spec.org website.

System	CPU MHz	OS	Web Server	SPEC web2005	Bank/Ecom/Supp	Watts
HP/Proliant DL585 G2	AMD Opteron 8220 @ 2.8GHz (4 chips, 2 cores/chip)	RH Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4	Accoria Rock Web Server v1.4.0 (x86_64), Accoria Rock JSP/Servlet Container v1.2.0 (x86_64)	20235	36400/28000/18016
Dell/PowerEdge 2950	Intel Xeon X5355 (Clovertown) @ 2.66GHz (2 Chips, 4 cores/chip)	RH Enterprise Linux 4 AS Update 3	Accoria Rock Web Server v1.4.0 (x86_64), Accoria Rock JSP/Servlet Container v1.2.0 (x86_64)	16830	33250/20500/15500	525
Sun/Sun Fire T2000	UltraSPARC T1 @ 1.4 GHz (1 Chip, 8 Cores/Chip,  4 threads/core)	Solaris 10 11/06	Sun Java [TM] System Web Server 6.1 SP5 64-bit	16407	25812/24048/15768	340
HP/Proliant DL585	AMD Opteron 885 @ 2.6GHz (4 chips, 2 cores/chip)	RH Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4	Accoria Rock Web Server v1.4.0 (x86_64), Accoria Rock JSP/Servlet Container v1.2.0 (x86_64)	15850	32992/25024/10688
HP/Proliant DL585 G2	AMD Opteron 8212 @ 2.0GHz (4 chips, 2 cores/chip)	RH Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4	Accoria Rock Web Server v1.4.0 (x86_64), Accoria Rock JSP/Servlet Container v1.2.0 (x86_64)	14964	27200/20960/13024	812
Fujitsu/PRIMERGY RX600 S3	Intel Xeon 7140M @ 3.4GHz (4 chips, 2 cores/chip)	RH Enterprise Linux 4 Update 3	Accoria Rock Web Server v1.4.0 (x86_64), Accoria Rock JSP/Servlet Container v1.2.0 (x86_64)	14896	25260/21480/13500
Dell/PowerEdge 2950	Intel Xeon 5160 (Woodcrest) @ 3.0GHz (2 Chips, 2 cores/chip)	RH Enterprise Linux 4 Update 3	Accoria Rock Web Server v1.4.0 (x86_64), Accoria Rock JSP/Servlet Container v1.2.0 (x86_64)	14495	23800/20400/13900
Sun/Sun Fire T2000	UltraSPARC T1 @ 1.2 GHz (1 Chip, 8 Cores/Chip,  4 threads/core)	Solaris 10 3/05 HW2 plus patches	Sun Java [TM] System Web Server 6.1 SP5 64-bit	14001	21500/21500/13160	339
HP/Proliant DL380 G5	Intel Xeon 5160 (Woodcrest) @ 3.0GHz (2 Chips, 2 cores/chip)	RH Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4	Accoria Rock Web Server v1.4.0 (x86_64), Accoria Rock JSP/Servlet Container v1.2.0 (x86_64)	13257	23808/20400/10632	835
Sun/Sun Fire T1000	UltraSPARC T1 @ 1.0 GHz (1 Chip, 8 Cores/Chip,  4 threads/core)	Solaris 10 6/06	Sun Java [TM] System Web Server 6.1 SP5 64-bit	10466	20000/16500/7700	178
IBM/IBM System p5 550	POWER5+ @ 1.9 GHz (2 Chips, 2 Cores/Chip w SMT)	SLES 9 SP2	Zeus 4.3r1 (64 bit), Apache Tomcat 5.5.9 plus Compat 5.5.9	7881	12240/11820/7500	770

The Sun Fire T2000 1.4 results currently under SPEC review.

Sun Fire T2000/T1000 server power consumption taken from measurements made during the benchmark run. Power is average measured watts during benchmark run.

IBM 550 power specifications calculated by applying 70% of the Maximum Wattss published in “Facts and Features Report”, 11/14/06, posted at ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_sp/n/PSB01628USEN/PSB01628USEN.PDF.

Dell 2950 power rating estimated by calculating 70% of the power supply data reported in the product brochure,http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/2950_specs.pdf

HP DL585 power consumption estimated by taking 70% of the maximum input wattage rating of 1160W reported here on 11/14/06: http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11902_na/11902_na.html#Power%20Specifications

HP DL380G5 power consumption estimated by taking 70% of the maximum input wattage rating of 1193W reported here on 11/14/06: http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12477_na/12477_na.html#Power%20Specifications

Benchmark Description

SPECweb2005, is the latest industry standard benchmark for evaluating Web Server performance developed by SPEC. The benchmark simulates multiple user sessions accessing a Web Server and generating static and dynamic HTTP requests. The major features of SPECweb2005 are:

• Measures simultaneous user sessions
• Dynamic content: currently PHP and JSP implementations
• Page images requested using 2 parallel HTTP connections
• Multiple, standardized workloads: Banking (HTTPS), E-commerce (HTTP and HTTPS), and Support (HTTP)
• Simulates browser caching effects
• File accesses more accurately simulate today's disk access patterns
  

Disclosure Statement:

SPEC, SPECweb reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Sun Fire T2000 (8 cores/1 chip) 16407 SPECweb2005, submitted to SPEC for review. HP Proliant DL585 G2 (2 cores/4 chips) 20235 SPECweb2005. Dell PowerEdge 2950 (4 cores/2 chips) 16830 SPECweb2005. HP Proliant DL585 (2 cores/4 chips) 15850 SPECweb2005.  HP Proliant DL585 G2 (2 cores/4 chips) 14964 SPECweb2005. Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX600 S3 (2 cores/4 chip) 14896 SPECweb2005. Dell PowerEdge 2950 (2 cores/2 chip) 14495 SPECweb2005. Sun Fire T2000 (8 cores/1 chip) 14001 SPECweb2005. HP Proliant DL380 G5 (2 cores/2 chips) 13257 SPECweb2005. Sun Fire T1000 (8 cores/1 chip) 10466 SPECweb2005. IBM System p5 550 (2 cores/2 chips 7881 SPECweb2005. Results from www.spec.org as of January 9, 2007.

Certified Results			16,407 SPECweb2005
Reference Date:			January 9, 2007
Systems:			1 x Sun Fire T2000
Total # Processors:			1 chip / 8 cores/chip (4 threads/core)
GHz Processor:			Sun UltraSPARC T1 1.4 GHz
Operating System:			Solaris 10 11/06
Software:			Sun Java[TM] System Web Server 6.1 SP5 64-bit
Storage/network:			3 internal 73GB 10K SAS drives 1 PCI-X Sun PCI Dual Fibre Channel 2GB HBA, 1 Sun StorEdge 3510 RAID, 2 Sun StorEdge 3510 JBOD, 3 Sun PCI-E Dual GigE UTP adapters

NEW 1.4GHz Sun Fire T2000 sets World Record 2-Node SPECjAppServer

Tuesday Jan 09, 2007

The new 1.4GHz Sun Fire T2000 achieved 801.70 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS and beats the HP Itanium-2 rx3600 two-node result of 618.22 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS by 29%. This is the dual-core 1.6GHz Itanium2!

The T2000 result also beats the IBM two-node result using the p5 505Q and p5 550 of 618.38 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard by 29%.

One Sun Fire T2000 server equipped with one 1.4GHz UltraSPARC T1 running BEA Weblogic 9.2 Advantage Edition and one Sun Fire T2000 equipped with a UltraSPARC T1 processor at 1.0 GHz running IBM DB2 8.2.6 delivered a result of 801.70 JOPS@Standard for best performance of single socket servers in the SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark.

IBM POWER5+ and Itanium2 Dual-cores also take a lot more power and space:

When compared to HP's rx4640 equipped with Itanium2 and running Linux, the T2000 delivers nearly 1.5X higher performance in 4x less power and half the space, delivering over 6X higher performance per watt and 12x SWaP.

The Sun Fire T2000 delivers nearly 1.3X higher performance in nearly 3x less power and half the space, resulting in nearly 3.5X higher performance per watt and 7x SWaP when compared to HP's rx3600 equipped with two of the latest dual core Itanium2 processors and running HP-UX11i.

This result highlights the performance benefits of the latest BEA Weblogic Server 9.2 release on Sun Fire servers. It also shows the best way to get superior performance on IBM DB2 software is to use the Sun T2000 server.

This benchmark result demonstrates that the Sun Fire T2000 running the Solaris 10 Operating system can support thousands of concurrent users accessing Web Services applications.

SPECjAppServer2004 Performance Chart - JOPS@Standard
c/c = cores/chip.

	JOPS@ Standard	J2EE Server	App SW	DB Server	DB SW
Sun	801.70	1 x Sun Fire T2000 1.4GHz US-T1 8 core/1 chip (8 c/c)	BEA WebLogic 9.2	1 x Sun Fire T2000 1.0GHz US-T1 6 core/1 chips (6 c/c)	IBM DB2 8.2.6
IBM	618.38	1 x IBM p505Q 1.65GHz POWER5+ 4 core/2 chips (2 c/c)	IBM WebSphere 6.1	1 x IBM p550 2.1GHz POWER5+ 4 cores/2 chips (2 c/c)	IBM DB2 8.2
HP	618.22	1 x HP rx3600 1.6GHz Itanium2 4 core/2 chip (2 c/c)	BEA WebLogic 9.2	1 x HP rx4640 1.6GHz Itanium2 4 core/4 chip (1 c/c)	Oracle 10g
Sun	615.64	1 x Sun Fire T2000 1.2GHz US-T1 8 core/1 chip (8 c/c)	BEA WebLogic 9.0	1 x Sun Fire V490 1.5GHz US-IV+ 8 core/4 chips (2 c/c)	Oracle 10g 10.1.0.4
HP	542.17	1 x rx4640 1.6GHz Itanium2 4 core/4 chip (1 c/c)	BEA WebLogic 9.1	1 x rx4640 1.6GHz Itanium2 4 core/4 chip (1 c/c)	Oracle 10g 10.1.0.4
IBM	404.88	1 x p5 505 2.1GHz POWER5+ 2 cores/1 chip (2 c/c)	IBM WebSphere V6.1	1 x p4 505Q 1.65GHz POWER5+ 4 core/2 chips (2 c/c)	IBM DB2 v8.2

SPECjAppServer2004 Results Page

Benchmark Description

SPECjAppServer2004 (Java Application Server) is a multi-tier benchmark for measuring the performance of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology-based application servers. SPECjAppServer2004 is an end-to-end application which exercises all major J2EE technologies implemented by compliant application servers as follows:

• The web container, including servlets and JSPs
• The EJB container
• EJB2.0 Container Managed Persistence
• JMS and Message Driven Beans
• Transaction management
• Database connectivity

Moreover, SPECjAppServer2004 also heavily exercises all parts of the underlying infrastructure that make up the application environment, including hardware, JVM software, database software, JDBC drivers, and the system network.

The primary metric of the SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark is jAppServer Operations Per Second (JOPS) which is calculated by adding the metrics of the Dealership Management Application in the Dealer Domain and the Manufacturing Application in the Manufacturing Domain. There is NO price/performance metric in this benchmark.

Disclosure Statement:

SPECjAppServer2004 Sun Fire T2000 (8 cores, 1 chip) 801.70 JOPS@Standard. SPECjAppServer2004 IBM p5 505Q (4 cores, 2 chips) 618.38 JOPS@Standard. SPECjAppServer2004 HP rx4600 (4 cores, 4 chip) 542.18 JOPS@Standard. SPECjAppServer2004 IBM p5 505 (2 cores, 1chip) 404.88 JOPS@Standard. SPECjAppServer2004 HP rx3600 (4 cores, 2 chips) 618.22 JOPS@Standard.
SPEC, SPECjAppServer reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. All results from www.spec.org as of 01/09/07.
HP rx4640 server specifications 10/19/05 from http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/integrity/entry_level/rx4640/
HP rx4640 power rating of 1,303 watts taken from HP Enterprise Configurator 10/19/05 from http://h30099.www3.hp.com/configurator/catalog-hpintegrity.asp. System configured with Redundant Power, 4 x 1.6GHz Itanium processors, 8 x 2GB DIMMs, 0 x PCI cards and 2 x 73GB HDDs.
IBM specifications from Fact and Features report, 1/9/06: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_sp/n/PSB01628USEN/PSB01628USEN.PDF. IBM power is based on the reported maximum power consumption.
HP rx3600 power consumption estimated by taking 70% of the maximum output power supply rating reported here on 11/14/06: http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/cache/387834-0-0-225-121.html
Sun Fire T2000 server power consumption taken from measurements made during the benchmark run.

Certified Result in a two-system configuration:

• Certified Result: 801.70 JOPS@Standard
• Reference Date: Jan 9, 2007

Application Server:

• Sun Fire T2000:
• one 1.4 GHz 8-core UltraSPARC T1
• 64 GB memory (16x4GB)
• Solaris 10 11/06
• BEA WebLogic 9.2 Advantage Edition
• JVM J2SE 5.0 Update 10

Database Server:

• Sun Fire T2000:
• one 1.0 GHz 6-core UltraSPARC T1 processor
• 8 GB memory
• 2x Sun StorEdge SE3320 SCSI Array
• Solaris 10 6/06
• IBM DB2 Universal Database v8.2.6

details on power budgets: Opteron advantage over Woodcrest

Thursday Dec 07, 2006

More details on power budget differences that give Opteron at least a 34% lead over Woodcrest.

I gave some basics of this in this posting: http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/design_strategies%3A_wattage_advantage_of

Woodcrest power budget: Dual-core Xeon's : 160 watts per socket (80w each) PLUS 44.8 watts for chipset (incl memory controllers) PLUS 66.4 watts 166.4 watts FBDIMM (16 DIMMs).

{{typo corrected: yes FB-DIMMs suck an amazing 170 watts for 16 DIMMs -- that's nearly 100watts more than DDR2. That is why Intel-based systems only report wattage on small memory configs, but still use the same large memory configs for various benchmarks.}}

Opteron power budget: Dual-core Opteron's: 190 watts socket (95w max each) PLUS 16 watts for chipset PLUS 70.4 watts for DDR2 (16 DIMMs).

...and this is just looking at just the chips -- and not adding the typical controllers you'd have for a functioning system like disk , network, etc...

Woodcrest memory lacks an important power-saving feature

Thursday Dec 07, 2006

There are technical reasons why a 32GB 2-processor Woodcrest server draws a hefty 510 watts. Intel decided not to implement the energy saving "page open mode" for the power-hungry FB-DIMMs. So CPU power throttling may have limited benefit on Woodcrest systems.

System	8GB	10GB	16GB	32GB
Woodcrest	330 watts 2-socket	400 watts 1-socket	430 watts 2-socket	510 watts 2-socket
Disk Config	1x150GB 7200 rpm SATA disk	disk	one 73GB 15K rpm SAS (disk idle)	just 2 SATA HDDs
Sources:	Intel disclosed	intel whitepaper	Sun measured	www.c0t0d0s0.org posting

Intel has shown that a 10GB 1 socket Woodcrest draws 400 watts, but you have to dig past some marketing spin to find it, see page 3 of www.intel.com/it/pdf/energy-efficient-perf-for-the-data-center.pdf.

Sun publishes benchmark performance and watts on Sun Fire T2000(~330 watts) and the Sun Fire T1000(~185 watts), performance, and configuration on all of its benchmarks http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/t1000/benchmarks.jsp.

• 330 watts 32GB Sun Fire T2000
  • 32GB; 4 x 73GB 10K rpm SAS disks, 3 Northstar NICs, Crystal FCAL
  • 32GB T2000 has 100 less watts and twice the memory of the 16GB Woodcrest config
  • measured by Sun, CPUs busy, network busy, disks idle
• 185 watts 16GB Sun Fire T1000
  • Measured on every T2000/T1000 benchmark

Woodcrest 16GB 430 watt measured config details:

Dell 2950
2 x 3GHz Woodcrest Xeon 5160 (4MB L2 cache)
16GB = 8 x 2GB DIMM;
one 73GB 15K rpm SAS (disk idle)
1.333MHz FSB
PERC 5/i, x6 Backplane Integrated Controller Card
QLogic 2462 Dual Channel 4GB Optical FC HBA PCI-E
OS: SuSE - SLES
all bios settings correct

Design strategies: wattage advantage of Opteron vs. Woodcrest

Tuesday Dec 05, 2006

Some things to look at when you seen marketing around wattage. You can avoid errors by really looking at total measured wattage when systems running and doing real work. I've seen a lot of Intel marketing about wattage of Woodcrest being 65 watts. But that really doesn't show the whole picture. I'll break it down a bit...

What GHz at what wattage?:First recognize that Woodcrest 2.66 GHz & 2.33 GHz is 65 watts for chip only, but Woodcrest at 3.0 GHz is 80 watts. ...and all benchmarks I've seen is on the 80 watt 3.0 GHz systems.

What about the memory controller?: The CPU isn't everything. Woodcrest designs have an external memory controller. Opteron designs have an integrated memory controller. So you need to add another 30 watts (or more) for the pair of Woodcrest CPUs.

What about the memory technology differences?: The CPU+Memory_controller isn't everything. Woodcrest designs use FB-DIMMs. Opteron designs use the more power efficient DDR2. FB-DIMMS draw a lot more power. In fact, as I've blogged about before, 32GB 2-socket Woodcrest system draws 500 watts! Measured when the CPU is busy. Sun's Opteron systems is way over 100 watts less.

Every IT department I talk to really wants to cut cost out -- power consumption is a growing a major factor in IT costs.

...this just in...

Sun is now shipping a wattage meter with the "Try-and-buy" program for Sun Fire T2000. More details at: http://blogs.sun.com/cohen/entry/kill_a_watt_--_power

Open-Source Database Deployments (and on Sun Fire T2000)

Monday Dec 04, 2006

Seems Vonage is starting to deploy Open-source databases and on Sun Fire T2000 & T1000 and they may do even more. For details read the following ComputerWorld article. http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=networking&articleId=9005227

Total Tyranny of low utilization datacenters

Friday Nov 17, 2006

The Total Tyranny of low utilization datacenters

In this blog and other blogs I've commented on, Woodcrest supporters always want to say their servers are better at low utilisation. This is totally the wrong way to go! They first claim typical datacenters are running at low utilisations, example: Xen claims typical datacenters are at 15%. Horrible, HORRIBLE.

So why shouldn't use just add all kinds of techniques to power at lower utilisations, clearly that is the best way to save money? Right? Wrong.

Lets take a simple example of a 400 watt server(@ 100%) that saves 20 watts for each 10% reduction in utilisation. Will show this in a table below and compare equivalent work done compared to 100% so you can see the hyperbolic nature of the curve. Of course I'm only looking at one server so there is some discretisation but when you have a datacenter it will quickly approach these numbers.

%Utilisation	100%	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%	0%
Watts-at-Util	400	380	360	340	320	300	280	260	240	220	220
watts/work	400	422	450	486	533	600	700	867	1200	2200	inf.

Now that I've got you shocked, let's look at a more typical example. Lets compare 5 servers running at 10% utilisation (that is 220 watts each or 1100 watts for the 5 of them). A single server running at 50% utilisation only uses 300 watts! The 10% case almost require 3.7 times more power! OUCH!

Bottom line: It is far too easy to be fooled to think you are saving money if power-saving features at low utilisation is your answer. By the by, a significant number of Sun's large servers run at over 80% utilisation using Solaris, of course.

Here is an example from 2004 of someone on different products who likely understands this math. As reported in Computerworld:

"Dennis Callahan, CIO at The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America in New York, server utilization has shot up to nearly 50% in the past 18 months, with a goal in coming years of nearly 70%.

Sun Fire X4100/X4200 M2 4-thread 2-socket World Record beats IBM Power5+

Wednesday Oct 25, 2006

The Sun Fire X4100/X4200 M2 using Solaris 10 and Sun Studio 11 delivers the best performance on the SPEC OMPM2001 benchmark suite of all 2-socket systems running 4-threads. The Sun Fire X4100/X4200 M2 beat the IBM p5 520 POWER5+ 1.9GHz AIX5L V5.3 result by 61%

The results show that the combination of Solaris 10 using Sun Studio 11 is unmatched by the competition for assisting users in writing parallel code.

SPECompM2001 Performance Comparison (bigger is better):

Result		Cores	Chips	Thrds	System
Peak	Base
13222	12763	4	2	4	Sun Fire X4100/X4200 M2, Opteron 2220SE, 2.8GHz
12574	12127	4	2	4	Sun Fire X2200 M2, Opteron 2218, 2.6GHz
10964	10424	4	2	4	Sun Fire X4100, Opteron 285, 2.6GHz
8174	8141	2	1	4	IBM System p5 520 (1.9 GHz, 2 CPU)

See Also

SPEC Home Page
sun.com X4100 Benchmark Page
sun.com X4200 Benchmark Page

Benchmark Description

The SPEC OMPM2001 Benchmark Suite was released in June 2001 and tests HPC performance on a variety of scientific applications using OpenMP for parallelism. It consists of 11 programs (8 fp and 3 int intensive) in C and Fortran parallelized using OpenMP API

System Configuration:

• Sun Fire X4100/X4200
• 2 x 2.8 GHz Opteron 2220SE processors
• 16GB memory (4x2GB per chip), DDR667
• Solaris 10
• Sun Studio 11

Disclosure Statement:

SPEC, SPEComp reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of Oct 16, 2006, Sun result submitted to SPEC. Sun Fire X4100/X4200 M2 (4 cores, 2 chips, 4 threads), 13,222 SPECompM2001. IBM System p5 520 (2 cores, 1 chips, 4 threads), 8,174 SPECompM2001. Sockets refers to chips.

Economics of a Container Datacenter - first thoughtsb

Friday Oct 20, 2006

Many are excited about the rapid deployment of Sun's Blackbox. I agree this is very very interesting. Especially with what's been done to make it 'rough & tough' like the 8G shock testing.

But what is even more compelling for me is the datacenter economics. As many of you know when you design a datacenter it takes a lot to make sure the servers, network gear, CRACs (computer room AC units), and people can all be moved around. To replace a CRAC takes 6' Aisles, for instance. And since that is on raised floor it is kinda useless wasted space. Your thinking changes when the 'Blackbox' is the FRU.

As mentioned, a single Project Blackbox (20' container = TEU = 20 x 8 ft = 160 sqft) could accommodate 250 Sun Fire T1000 servers with the CoolThreads technology. As we know from all of the benchmark testing on the T1000 (1 RU) uses a measured ~188 watts while running benchmarks. So on TEU is designed to comfortably support 293.75 watt/sqft =(250 servers * 188 watt/server)/(160 sqft). Note this is server and 'datacenter cooling' area. You'd need a LOT more space if you wanted to do this in a traditional datacenter. Maybe 75 to 300 or more sqft for traditional - ouch.

...I will disgress...

Other vendors don't have Blackbox and have systems that use a lot more wattage when running workloads Dell PowerEdge 2850(450 watts in 2RU), IBM x3650 (585 watts in 2RU), IBM p550 (770 watts in 4RU) -- but unfortunately they won't share their wattage data on benchmarks they say compete against the T1000 & T2000. So customers you must demand that other vendors show their wattage at know performance levels and make this public.

Coming back, if you want to compare the amount of total space you need for a traditional datacenter (total-space = server space + white space + server aisles + CRAC replacement aisles + other) vs. Blackbox+Coolthreads, you'll see that Sun can really change things.