Shoe Fetish or Benchmark Comparison ?

Last month I visited the Fashion Institute of Technology’s new exhibit “Shoe Obsession.” And for anyone who relishes shoes, this was the place to be. You enter the dark rooms and the glass cases are absolutely glowing in light, highlighting the SHOES. There’s Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin, Prada and many more, as far as the eye can see. Each shoe is made out of a huge array of materials — plastics, metals, beads, ribbons, velvet, even mirrors. Many have 6 inch heels. Or even higher. Gorgeous.

But of course most of these shoes you could never even wear — and not because there’s only one of them. These shoes don’t even make sense as shoes. What ultimately matters is that you can’t do what you need to do with shoes which is walk in them.

Many times I see benchmark comparisons that don’t really focus on the right things as well. Here’s why in comparisons of systems, cores ultimately matter:

• Cores are the processing units for computation.
• Cores are used to charge for software licensing.
• Cores represent a more apples-to-apples method of comparing systems of varying technologies.
• The right Cores enable efficient virtualization and consolidation which ultimately leads to better total cost of ownership.

Interesting that when these facts are so clear that Oracle’s newest ad on the front page of the Wall Street Journal totally ignores processor cores and many other important components in the comparisons. As you look at the SPECjEnterprise2010 comparisons, here is what you need to know:

• The IBM benchmark result is from 2012, the Oracle result is brand new. As we know, this is a lifetime of difference for benchmarking.
• Oracle needed 4x the number of processing cores and 3x the amount of memory than IBM for this benchmark. See all the details here and here.
• The IBM POWER7+ Power 780 actually has over 1.5x more performance per core than the Oracle SPARC T5 system.(1)
• Cost is not even a metric of this benchmark. And note that server cost does not include storage and the all expensive software licensing costs, which by the way, are calculated per core.

 

I like shoes and benchmark comparisons which make sense. Give me my New Balance any day. I can walk for miles in them, they look good, and their TCO screams.

Bottom line: Oracle’s latest comparative advertisement targeting IBM Power Systems, like so many before them, strains credulity. Caveat emptor.

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(1)SPARC T5-8 (8-chip, 128 cores), 27,843.57 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS; IBM Power 780 (8-chips, 32 cores), 10,902.30 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS. Sources: http://www.spec.org. Results current as of 5/23/13.
SPEC and the benchmark name SPECjEnterprise are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

technorati tags: IBM, systems, performance,Wall Street Journal,Java,SPECjEnterprise,WebSphere,11g,Oracle,SPARC,WebLogic,T5,POWER7+,POWER7,storage,

DB2,benchmark,benchmarking

On Investing in the Cloud

It’s 7AM on a weekday morning and I’m in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Ohio. And as I drive by the faded barns, the cattle, and the one town with the giant McDonald’s and the adult bookstore, I start to laugh.

I’m alone in the car. I’m supposed to be thinking deep thoughts about what I will discuss at a client meeting in an hour or two. I don’t even let myself listen to music in case it distracts me. But I can’t keep from cracking up.

You see, it’s a billboard. Specifically the words on the billboard. An advertisement for a store. And not just any store. This is for, of all things, Grandpa’s Cheesebarn.

I don’t know why it’s so funny. It reminds me of my grandpa in a plaid robe and slippers. Maybe even eating cheese. Or smelling like cheese. In a barn. (disclosure – It actually looks like a great place to buy many cool foods and I promise to stop there next time.)

Anyway, the name is really really really funny.

Which reminded me of an article I read this morning on an investment manager’s thoughts on cloud computing.

Here’s the reality and what, of course, all of us who are actually in IT already know:

• Private, public, and hybrid clouds all have their places. Some applications are best in an organization’s private cloud. Sometimes applications do well in a public cloud. And sometimes hybrids are the perfect solution.
• Best fit for these options depends on many things including security, reliability, availability, performance.
• Guess what ? Clouds are actually backed by something real — called servers.
• IBM and other IT companies offer many products and services. Hardware is one piece. Software is another. Complex transformation services are another. All are valuable in their own way and integrate to make IT solutions for clients that end up running important businesses for all of us.

 

This morning I realized that taking advice from an investment manager on cloud computing is like trying to get an oil change at Grandpa’s Cheesebarn. You just shouldn’t.

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The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

technorati tags: IBM, systems, performance,cloud,computing,private,enhancement,package,public,hybrid,briefing,investment,POWER7+,

stock,design,center,benchmark,benchmarking

On Fencing Claims and Real World Benchmarks

I am so intimately familiar with fencing it’s not funny.

I’ve had épées, foils, and even sabers at my house. I’ve been to Junior Olympics (as a spectator, of course). My washer has seen fencing jackets, knickers, and a various assortment of brightly colored and very sweaty high socks.

I grew up with a wooden hitching post fence in my yard. My current neighbor has a white picket fence that I look at every day. There is a chain link fence in the back so my black lab can’t get into trouble.

But the fencing I really wanted to talk about is the fencing of claims.

OK, so maybe if a metric is not an overall #1 it does make sense to look at it in a slightly different way. I get per core. I get single system. I get #1 for a particular subset of a benchmark suite. But I would say it has just about gone too far.

A claim I saw the other day was fenced not by a piece of hardware, not a particular type of system, not a benchmark category. This claim was a “world record” for a very specific enhancement package of a very specific version of a very specific type of application software. It’s like saying I am the #1 grape picker in the world with purple eyes wearing yellow pants with green stripes on them. Oh, and pink stilettos. Oh and by the way, those grapes are actually raisins.

Enough already with playing these segmentation games.

Many times what really matters most is how your specific workload performs on a specific system.

For that I would recommend

• A briefing on specific technology
• An architectural review of your application
• And of course a full-fledged down-to-earth real world benchmark.

 

 

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The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

technorati tags: IBM, systems, performance,SAP,SD,2-tier,enhancement,package,Oracle,SPARC,briefing,T5,POWER7+,780,design,center,benchmark,benchmarking

Moonshot vs. Metrics

Some of you may know that last week I was on some college visits. I love this time of info sessions, tours, cafeterias, classrooms, and dorms. I even got to stay in a real dorm one night. Funny, it was not any dorm I had ever been in, not at a college that I had ever been at, and not even a section of a city I had ever been to – but the cooking smells brought me right back to senior year.

Anyway, one thing I’ve noticed with these visits is how important statistics are. At first I was so tired of asking/hearing the same questions on metrics. I mean, isn’t it the feel of the campus that matters? But I found that the really key questions are ones like these: What percent of freshmen live in dorms, what is the student to professor ratio, what is the placement rate 6 months after graduation in the field of study? The answers to these questions which are backed by real data really matter because in the end that’s what the big bucks are paying for.

I’ve been feeling that way this week as I look at some of the latest IT news. I see Moonshot claims, backed by “internal HP engineering.” I see Fujitsu M10 and Oracle faster performance claims that don’t even go that far. If I don’t have any data maybe if I don’t include a footnote nobody will notice.

Meanwhile, IBM this week published a new #1 SAP Sales and Distribution 3-tier benchmark result. 266K users, over 1.4M SAPS, over 29M line items per hour, over 88M dialog steps per hour, on the POWER7+ IBM Power 780 with DB2 10.5.(1) With more metrics available than you probably even want to know about.

I hope HP’s alternative thinking with Moonshot was referring to the United States Apollo program — and not the abortive Soviet moonshot or the defunct beer with caffeine.

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(1)IBM Power 780 three-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark on SAP enhancement package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0 achieved 266,000 SAP SD benchmark users. Configuration: 8 processors / 64 cores / 256 threads, POWER7+ 3.72 GHz, 512 GB memory, running AIX 7.1, DB2® 10.5; dialog resp.: 0.84s, line items/hour: 29,433,670, dialog steps/hour: 88,301,000, SAPS: 1,471,680, DB time (dialog/ update): .036s/.061s, DB CPU utilization: 97%, average application server CPU utilization: 88%. Certification #2013010.
Source: http://www.sap.com. Results current as of 4/10/13.

SAP, mySAP and other SAP product and service names mentioned herein as well as their respective
logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all
over the world.

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

technorati tags: IBM, systems, performance,SAP,SD,3-tier,Moonshot,HP,Oracle,SPARC,engineered,T5,POWER7+,780,storage,DB2,benchmark,benchmarking

Oracle’s SPARC T5 and M5 Benchmarks: Lather, Rinse, Repeat

I think I’ve said this before but one of my most absolute favorite movies is Groundhog Day. (Attention: spoiler is coming but since the fricking movie is from 1993 and most of us were old even way back then, I don’t think I will be ruining it for anyone.) Groundhog Day is an American comedy film directed by Harold Ramis and starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell (who by the way I’ve been told that I sort of look like which is really cool since she does L’Oréal ads). In the film an arrogant and egocentric TV weatherman, covering the annual Groundhog Day event, finds himself repeating the same day again and again.

The phrase “Groundhog Day” now has entered common lexicon as a reference to an unpleasant situation that continually repeats, or seems to.

And I would say that is exactly what we have with Oracle’s new SPARC T5 and M5 benchmarks.

Just as with every Oracle processor announcement, the benchmark results do the same thing. Many of the claims are Oracle’s own benchmarks that are not published and audited. There are a small number of industry standard benchmarks — and of course these are ones where it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to compare to other relevant results. For price claims, Oracle, as they’ve done in the past, only factors in the price of the pizza box – make sure you add in the all-important software and storage.

Let’s take a look at the T5 and M5 benchmark results:

SAP: The IBM POWER7+ with DB2 10 SAP SD 2-tier result from back in September was 1.3x greater per core than the M5 and 1.9x greater than the T5 result.(1) The IBM average database request time was also much better and the CPU utilization of the IBM system was also more effective.

TPC-C: An IBM POWER6 result from 2008, 2 generations ago, is 42% higher per core than the new T5 result on this OLTP benchmark. An IBM POWER7 result from 2010, 1 generation ago, is 2.2x better performance per core than the Oracle result. (2) The price for all Oracle database software support used in computing the price/performance for this benchmark is $2300/year – I can only guess what you get for that. Also note that this benchmark used Oracle Partitioning which may not be realistic for your real world workloads. The Oracle database software is not even available until September.

SPECjEnterprise2010: Oracle’s T5 result needed four times the number of database cores, four times the amount of memory and significantly more storage than the IBM POWER7 result. (3)

SPECjbb2013: For Java business, let’s run a benchmark that can only be compared with a couple of ProLiants, one of our old T4s, and a Supermicro. (4)

SPECcpu: IBM Power Systems is #1 – don’t forget to look at number of cores for integer and floating point claims.

TPC-H: Ha, got you. There is no TPC-H. Funny, was expecting one based on what we saw for the T4. I wonder why . . .

The other benchmark claims? These are once again ones that either are Oracle’s own benchmarks or ones nobody cares about because they don’t look like anything we actually run. Chance of departure from useful benchmark results: 100%.

Don’t let these claims distract from asking about the business value delivered by these systems.

I wake up every day, right here, right in Cleveland, and it’s always snowing, and there’s nothing I can do about it. “Winter, slumbering in the open air, wears on its smiling face a dream… of spring.”

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(1)IBM Power 780 (3.72 GHz) two-tier SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark result (SAP enhancement package 5 for the SAP ERP 6.0 application: 12 processors / 96 cores / 384 threads, POWER7+, 1536 GB memory, 57,024 SD benchmark users, running AIX® 7.1 and DB2® 10, dialog resp.: 0.98s, line items/hour: 6,234,330, Dialog steps/hour: 18,703,000, SAPS: 311,720, DB time (dialog/ update): 0.009s / 0.014s, CPU utilization: 99%, Certification #2012033

Oracle SPARC Server M5-32 SAP SD 2-tier result of 85,050 users, Average dialog response time: 0.80 seconds, Fully processed order line items per hour: 9,452,000,Dialog steps per hour: 28,356,000,SAPS: 472,600,Average database request time (dialog/update): 0.018 sec / 0.044 sec,CPU utilization of central server: 82%,Operating system, central server: Solaris 11,RDBMS: Oracle 11g,SAP Business Suite software: SAP enhancement package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0,32 processors / 192 cores / 1536 threads,SPARC M5, 3.60 GHz, 16 KB (D) and 16 KB (I) L1 cache and128 KB L2 cache per core, 48 MB L3 cache per processor,4096 GB main memory,Certification #2013009

Oracle SPARC Server T5-8 SAP SD 2-tier result of 40,000 users,Average dialog response time: 0.86 seconds,Fully processed order line items per hour: 4,419,000,Dialog steps per hour: 13,257,000,SAPS: 220,950,Average database request time (dialog/update): 0.049 sec / 0.131 sec,CPU utilization of central server: 88%, Operating system, central server: Solaris 11,RDBMS: Oracle 11g,SAP Business Suite software: SAP enhancement package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0, 8 processors / 128 cores / 1024 threads,SPARC T5, 3.60 GHz, 16 KB (D) and 16 KB (I) L1 cache and 128 KB L2 cache per core, 8 MB L3 cache per processor,2048 GB main memory,Certification #2013008.

(2) IBM Power 780 (2 chips, 8 cores, 32 threads) with IBM DB2 9.5 (1,200,011 tpmC, $.69/tpmC, configuration available 10/13/10); IBM Power 595 (5 GHz, 32 chips, 64 cores, 128 threads) with IBM DB2 9.5 (6,085,166 tpmC, $2.81/tpmC, configuration available 12/10/08); vs. Oracle SPARC T5-8 (8 chips, 128 cores, 1024 threads – 8,552,523 tpmC, $.55/tpmC, configuration available 9/25/13).

(3) WebSphere Application Server V7 on IBM Power 780 and DB2 on IBM Power 750 Express, (64 core app server, 32 core db server), 16,646.34 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS vs. SPARC T5-8 server (SPARC T5-8 server base package, 8x SPARC T5 16-core processors, 128x16GB-1066 DIMMS, 2x600GB 10K RPM 2.5” SAS-2 HDD result of SPARC T5-8, 57,422.17 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS.

(4) http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/performance-scalability/sparc-t5-2-specjbb2013-1925099.html

Sources: http://www.spec.org, http://www.tpc.org, http://www.sap.com. Results current as of 3/26/13.

TPC-C ,TPC-H, and TPC-E are trademarks of the Transaction Performance Processing Council (TPPC).

SAP, mySAP and other SAP product and service names mentioned herein as well as their respective
logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all
over the world.

SPEC, SPECint, SPECfp, SPECjbb, SPECweb, SPECjAppServer, SPECjEnterprise, SPECjvm, SPECvirt, SPECompM, SPECompL, SPECsfs, SPECpower, SPEC MPI and SPECpower_ssj are trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC).

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

technorati tags: IBM, systems, performance,TPC-C,SAP,SPECjEnterprise,SPECjbb,Siebel,Oracle,SPARC,M5,T5,POWER6,POWER7,storage,DB2,benchmark,benchmarking

Oracle’s New T5 TPC-C: Where’s the SPARC?, Part II

With Oracle’s new SPARC server announcement today, we are all still waiting in anticipation (take your pick of Rocky Horror or Carole King) for something exciting. The just released TPC-C benchmark result surely is not.

Here are some reasons why:

The performance of the Oracle T5-8 (even with the use of Oracle database partitioning) is downright lackluster. An IBM POWER6 result from 2008, 2 generations ago, is 42% higher per core. An IBM POWER7 result from 2010, 1 generation ago, is 2.2x better performance per core than the Oracle result. (1)

The price for all Oracle software support used in computing the price/performance for this benchmark is $2300/year. I can only guess what you get for that.

The Oracle database software is not even available until September. Yes, September.

It’s keeping me wa a a a aiting . . .

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(1) IBM Power 780 (2 chips, 8 cores, 32 threads) with IBM DB2 9.5 (1,200,011 tpmC, $.69/tpmC, configuration available 10/13/10); IBM Power 595 (5 GHz, 32 chips, 64 cores, 128 threads) with IBM DB2 9.5 (6,085,166 tpmC, $2.81/tpmC, configuration available 12/10/08); vs. Oracle SPARC T5-8 (8 chips, 128 cores, 1024 threads – 8,552,523 tpmC, $.55/tpmC, configuration available 9/25/13).
Source: http://www.tpc.org. Results current as of 3/26/13.
TPC-C ,TPC-H, and TPC-E are trademarks of the Transaction Performance Processing Council (TPPC).

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

technorati tags: IBM, systems, performance,TPC-C,Oracle,SPARC,M5,T5,POWER6,POWER7,storage,DB2,benchmark,benchmarking

New Oracle M5 and T5 SAP Benchmark Results: No SPARC at all

If you were hoping for some Last Friday Night excitement from Oracle’s new SPARC servers announcement this week, we haven’t seen it yet. Oracle just this morning published two SAP SD 2-tier benchmark results, one on the M5-32 and one on the T5-8.

The IBM POWER7+ with DB2 10 result from back in September was 1.3x greater per core than the M5 and 1.9x greater than the T5 result.(1) The IBM average database request time was also much better and the CPU utilization of the IBM system was also more effective.

Will the sun come out tomorrow for Oracle?

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(1)IBM Power 780 (3.72 GHz) two-tier SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark result (SAP enhancement package 5 for the SAP ERP 6.0 application: 12 processors / 96 cores / 384 threads, POWER7+, 1536 GB memory, 57,024 SD benchmark users, running AIX® 7.1 and DB2® 10, dialog resp.: 0.98s, line items/hour: 6,234,330, Dialog steps/hour: 18,703,000, SAPS: 311,720, DB time (dialog/ update): 0.009s / 0.014s, CPU utilization: 99%, Certification #2012033

Oracle SPARC Server M5-32 SAP SD 2-tier result of 85,050 users, Average dialog response time: 0.80 seconds, Fully processed order line items per hour: 9,452,000,Dialog steps per hour: 28,356,000,SAPS: 472,600,Average database request time (dialog/update): 0.018 sec / 0.044 sec,CPU utilization of central server: 82%,Operating system, central server: Solaris 11,RDBMS: Oracle 11g,SAP Business Suite software: SAP enhancement package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0,32 processors / 192 cores / 1536 threads,SPARC M5, 3.60 GHz, 16 KB (D) and 16 KB (I) L1 cache and128 KB L2 cache per core, 48 MB L3 cache per processor,4096 GB main memory,Certification #2013009

Oracle SPARC Server T5-8 SAP SD 2-tier result of 40,000 users,Average dialog response time: 0.86 seconds,Fully processed order line items per hour: 4,419,000,Dialog steps per hour: 13,257,000,SAPS: 220,950,Average database request time (dialog/update): 0.049 sec / 0.131 sec,CPU utilization of central server: 88%, Operating system, central server: Solaris 11,RDBMS: Oracle 11g,SAP Business Suite software: SAP enhancement package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0, 8 processors / 128 cores / 1024 threads,SPARC T5, 3.60 GHz, 16 KB (D) and 16 KB (I) L1 cache and 128 KB L2 cache per core, 8 MB L3 cache per processor,2048 GB main memory,Certification #2013008.

Source: http://www.sap.com; Results current as of 03/25/12.

SAP and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

technorati tags: IBM, systems, performance,SD,Oracle,SPARC,M5,T5,POWER,POWER7+,storage,DB2,benchmark,benchmarking