[Bush2000]

Note these results. This is where it gets really bad for the Solaris and Oracle sales guys. You see, the clustered configuration offered by Compaq did 709,220 transactions per minute at a $14.96 cost. That's almost twice the number of transactions as the non-clustered Fujitsu/Solaris/SymfoWARE combination (455,818) at half the cost ($28.58). Do you understand what this means? It means that clustered configs -- scaling out as opposed to scaling up -- kick the crap out of non-clustered configs. The TCO is better. The cost is lower. This is the reason that Sun and Oracle guys are having a tough time explaining to their customers why they should pay twice as much and get half the performance.

Look, I understand why a lot of you don't want to rock the boat. You're comfortable with Unix. There's a certain bigotry against MS in some IT shops. You're afraid of getting fired for promoting a solution that goes against the grain of your pencil-neck bosses. Plus, it's not your money anyway. But, frankly, if you ignore these results, you only have yourselves to blame for paying more and getting less.

Top Ten Clustered TPC-C by Performance Version 5 Results

All Results

Clustered Results

Non-Clustered Results

Rank	Company	System	tpmC	Price/tpmC	System Availability	Database	Operating System	TP Monitor	Date Submitted
1		ProLiant DL760-900-256P	709,220	14.96 US $	10/15/01	Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition	Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server	Microsoft COM+	09/19/01
2		IBM e(logo) xSeries 370 c/s	688,220	22.58 US $	05/31/01	Microsoft SQL Server 2000	Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server	Microsoft COM+	04/10/01
3		ProLiant DL760-900-192P	567,882	14.04 US $	10/15/01	Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition	Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server	Microsoft COM+	09/19/01
4		IBM e(logo) xSeries 370 c/s	440,879	19.35 US $	12/07/00	IBM DB2 UDB 7.1	Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server	Microsoft COM+	04/11/01
5		ProLiant DL760-900-128P	410,769	13.02 US $	10/15/01	Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition	Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server	Microsoft COM+	09/19/01
6		IBM e(logo) xSeries 370 c/s	363,129	21.80 US $	05/31/01	Microsoft SQL Server 2000	Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server	Microsoft COM+	04/10/01
7		IBM eServer xSeries 370	136,766	16.93 US $	09/20/01	Microsoft SQL Server 2000	Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server	Microsoft COM+	04/24/01
8		IBM e(logo) xSeries 370 c/s	121,319	18.97 US $	05/31/01	Microsoft SQL Server 2000	Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server	Microsoft COM+	04/10/01

[Liberal Classic]

Look, I understand why a lot of you don't want to rock the boat. You're comfortable with Unix. There's a certain bigotry against MS in some IT shops.

You know, I don't see why I should bother to answer your posts. I've said a number of times that I am not a computer bigot. Many of these other folks are trying to talk to you in friendly tones, too. From what I can tell, all you want to do is make the "other guy" look bad. I'm sick of your attitude and snotty tone. For example, in post number 14 you said:

Can you read? Go over to tpc.org and read the results, if you can. Windows and SQL Server kicked the crap out of every competitor.

This isn't exactly true. You always pay a premium for top of the line performance. I don't have a problem with Window's price point, or having a good price/performance ratio. This has always been the selling point for IBM/Intel and Microsoft/Intel. But performance costs, whether it's a mid or large computer.

The Unisys ES7000 that came in a the good pricepoint was a single 32-processor Pentium III machine with a main memory of 64GB. For $3.5 million you can get a Sun or IBM that performs just as well. But it wasn't the top performer. The Fujitsu PrimePower 2000 that had the good performance was a 128-processor computer with 256GB main memory. It's certianly expensive, but gives you a great deal of computing power in one package.

The absolute top-performing configration from the Intel/Microsoft side was a group of 32 Compaq Proliant DL-760s each with 8 processors. Note that this configuration was nowhere in the price/performance category. All of the configurations in the price/performance categort are an order of magnitude less in terms of price and transactions/per unit time. The configurations in the pure performance category are all state-of-the-art computers in which money is no object.

So if you are going to debate, please try to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. First you were saying that Microsoft beat Unix totally, but then you back-pedaled and restricted yourself to the lower end computers.

The Dell PowerEdge 2500 is a dual 1Gz and 6GB memory machine. The price for the test machine came to about $50,000 total. These Dells are good machines, and I actually recommend them in my job. However, for other things I recommend the Sun 280 series which is similar, with Sparc CPUs (900Mhz) and up to 8GB RAM. This computer comes in more than $50,000, but not that much more. The real factor is what are the needs of the customer.

Clustered configurations don't always "kick the crap" as you so glibly put it, out of non-clustered ones. There are other issues with this set up, like more points of failure, even floor space.

I get the feeling you are looking at these charts and saying one is better than the other, but I do not get the impression you have no experience actually having to choose one over the other. Especially saying things like this:

This is the reason that Sun and Oracle guys are having a tough time explaining to their customers why they should pay twice as much and get half the performance.

This shows me you don't know what you're talking about. I'll say that again, because it bears repeating: I don't have a hard time justifying an expensive computer, my customers know why they are buying. You are just blowing off steam. Bravado. Insulting bravado. The cost of these machines does not end with the purchase price. There are many other factors involved with a major purchase in the multi millions of dollars. Have you actually signed a deal for a multimillion dollar computer, then had to set it up and operate it? I have, being in the oil industry. I also spec out the midrange computers, too. The cost does not end with the purchase price. It never has. There are support contracts, maintenence, what is the expected life of the equipment, who at your company has the skills to make the beast worth the money, has your company committed to a particular platform already, etc.

So in the end, it doesn't come down to that number on the TPC webpage. I don't have a hard time justifying unix to my customers. And you, sir, are full of yourself and full of it. Shape up or ship out.