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SQL Server Backend probably running on Win2K!!!

Oh well, it's never been quick.


Um, yeah, forget the fact Windows 2000 holds the TPC crown.

TPC Performance Results

Have a look at this, by the end of the list (Unisys hardware). We were and still are, the best performing OS for this benchmark on non-NUMA Intel based systems using Oracle as the RDBMS. I myself had to sweat a while in CA to get that score. Now, what the marketing people and the always unpredictable stock market made of it, is beyond my understanding.

These days, being good just is not enough, you also have to boast about your achievements in such a way that the speculators on Wall Street become aware that you're doing serious stuff.

This could have been posted anonymously but it isn't.

I sympathize with your having to deal with a tech staff throwing buzz words at you. Essentially, the advantage of the IX platforms is pure reliability. I initiated the purchasing of an RS/6000 running AIX as our primary database server about half a year ago, basing its cost efficiency upon the lack of downtime -- working for a sales driven company, an hour of downtime roughly equates to $22,000 worth of loss. The downtimes with IX platforms are much, much lower. This translates into less 'lost opportunity costs'. (The kind that you've probably sued your telco or ISP over at some stage when they violate their uptime guarantees)

I'd imagine your NT servers are being used primarily for user interaction -- possibly metaframes to allow for wide area networking, and possibly fileservers as well as particular application servers. You may even be running your primary domain controller off of windows NT. These are all fine and good uses of Windows NT, administration of which requires a middling skill set to pull it off without dropping bombs. The incredible number of MSCEs kicking about will keep the salaries low.

I would have to hypothesise that your database servers and core heavy applications (webservers, et al) are running on IX systems. IX systems don't tend to crash as much (when you have a good administrator), and they also provide much faster querying times for databases than NT based servers. Take a look at TPC.org for some benchmarks on the subject. Take note that, yes, NT solutions are cheaper than IX, but look also at the efficiency achieved. It all comes back to opportunity costs, in my mind.

The reason your admins can go snowboarding is probably because they're quite good, although I question the wisdom of letting every IX admin in the house go off snowboarding without leaving at least a skeleton crew. IX administrators do their work in a different way than NT administrators. NT administrators fight fires, whereas IX administrators primarily stop them from occurring.

Fewer people have the skills required to be an excellent IX administrator, and a top-notch one can make your system much more efficient than a middling one. That's why you pay so much money to them. This is also due, as you know, to the current labour shortage in highly responsible technical positions (it seems to be levelling off amongst junior staff and programmers).

Ultimately, the best choice for a mission critical application is an IX system. They don't go down as much, they support much more comprehensive data recovery operations and are much easier to diagnose for difficulties. As well, they scale (in my opinion) much easier than NT servers. When I want to add 60 gigs of storage space to my RS, it takes me somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 minutes, at least half of which is making certain that I'm mounting them appropriately.

Feel free to mail me (Drop the X's), as I'm a business oriented techie, so I may be able to shed some light. Of course, there are many more eminently qualified people who are doubtless right now critiquing my misuse of various terms. No time to proofread.

As for that unhelpful tech staff, I'd suggest that you tell them if they don't start justifying their expenses properly, they aren't going to be passed. It doesn't take /that/ much effort to word things in English. Everybody who has ever tendered a proposal has had to do it at some point.

Off on a bit of a tangent, but you should check on costs of upgrading those NT servers, keeping up on the latest Windows software, etc. You may find that they tally up. -l

• For File and Print services, according to independent tests conducted by PC Week Labs, the Windows NT 4.0 operating system delivers 52 percent better performance on a single processor system and 110 percent better performance on a 4-way system than similarly configured single processor and 4-way Linux/SAMBA systems.
• For Web servers, the same PC Week tests showed Windows NT 4.0 with Internet Information Server 4.0 delivers 41 percent better performance on a single processor system and 125 percent better performance on a 4-way system than Linux and Apache.
• For e-commerce workloads using secure sockets (SSL), recent PC Magazine tests showed Windows NT 4.0 with Internet Information Server 4.0 delivers approximately five times the performance provided by Linux and Stronghold.
• For transaction-orientated Line of Business applications, Windows NT 4.0 has achieved a result of 40,368 tpmC at a cost of $18.46 per transaction on a Compaq 8-Way Pentium III XEON processor-based system. This industry leading price/performance result from the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) clearly shows how Windows NT can deliver world-class performance for heavy duty transaction processing. It's interesting to note that there is not a single TPC result on any database running on Linux, and therefore Linux has yet to demonstrate their capabilities as a database server.
• Linux performance and scalability is architecturally limited in the 2.2 Kernel. Linux only supports 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM on the x86 architecture,1 compared to 4 GB for Windows NT 4.0. The largest file size Linux supports is 2 GB versus 16 terabytes (TB) for Windows NT 4.0. The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB. In addition, Linux does not support many of the modern operating system features that Windows NT 4.0 has pioneered such as asynchronous I/O, completion ports, and fine-grained kernel locks. These architecture constraints limit the ability of Linux to scale well past two processors.
• The Linux community continues to promise major SMP and performance improvements. They have been promising these since the development of the 2.0 Kernel in 1996. Delivering a scalable system is a complex task and it's not clear that the Linux community can solve these issues easily or quickly. As D. H. Brown Associates noted in a recent technical report,2 the Linux 2.2 Kernel remains in the early stages of providing a tuned SMP kernel.

• Windows NT 4.0 has been proven in demanding customer environments to be a reliable operating system. Customers such as Barnes and Noble, The Boeing Company, Chicago Stock Exchange, Dell Computer, Nasdaq and many others run mission-critical applications on Windows NT 4.0.
• Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System. This means that in the event of a system failure (such as a power outage) data loss or corruption is possible. In any event, the system must check the integrity of the file system during system restart, a process that will likely consume an extended amount of time, especially on large volumes and may require manual intervention to reconstruct the file system.
• There are no commercially proven clustering technologies to provide High Availability for Linux. The Linux community may point to numerous projects and small companies that are aiming to deliver High Availability functionality. D. H. Brown recently noted that these offerings remain immature and largely unproven in the demanding business world.
• There are no OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for Linux, unlike Windows NT where Compaq, Data General, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Unisys provide 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees for Windows NT-based servers.

• The cost of the operating system is only a small percentage of the overall total cost of ownership (TCO). In general Windows NT has proven to have a lower cost of ownership than UNIX. Previous studies have shown that Windows NT has 37 percent lower TCO than UNIX. There is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of UNIX when it comes to TCO.
• The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services. Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model.
• Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex to configure and manage. Existing UNIX users may find the transition to Linux easier but administrators for existing Windows®-based or Novell environments will find it more difficult to handle the complexity of Linux. This retraining will add significant costs to Linux deployments.
• Linux is a higher risk option than Windows NT. For example how many certified engineers are there for Linux? How easy is it to find skilled development and support people for Linux? Who performs end-to-end testing for Linux-based solutions? These factors and more need to be taken into account when choosing a platform for your business.

• Linux only provides access controls for files and directories. In contrast, every object in Windows NT, from files to operating system data structures, has an access control list and its use can be regulated as appropriate.
• Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges: a user who needs any administrative capability must be made a full administrator, which compromises best security practices. In contrast, Windows NT allows an administrator to delegate privileges at an exceptionally fine-grained level.
• Linux has not supported key security accreditation standards. Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process or at a C2-equivalent level under the British Government's ITSEC process. In contrast, no Linux products are listed on the U.S. Government's evaluated product list.
• Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to do about them. This is made complex due to the fact that there isn't a central location for security issues to be reported and fixed. In contrast Microsoft provides a single security repository for notification and fixes of security related issues.
• Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact. Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the system could be vulnerable to attack. Windows NT security is easy to set up and administer with tools such as the Security Configuration Editor.

• Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management
• The complexity of the Linux operating system and cumbersome nature of the existing GUIs would make retraining end-users a huge undertaking and would add significant cost
• Linux application support is very limited, meaning that customers end up having to build their own horizontal and vertical applications. A recent report from Forrester Research highlighted the fact that today 93 percent of enterprise ISVs develop applications for Windows NT, while only 13 percent develop for Linux.3

• Nasdaq
• Barnes & Noble
• Dell Computer Corp
• The Boeing Company
• Chicago Stock Exchange

• Will Linux Be Viable Competition for Windows Desktops?
  "While we do not view Linux as a serious competitor for Microsoft at the desktop, Linux will not disappear from the computing landscape through 2004."
• 1999 OS Forecast: The Linux Face-Off
  "While Linux will have important niche roles, it will not gain broad acceptance as a substitute for Unix and Windows in the enterprise in the near term."
• Red Hat's Future: Boxed In
  "We examine Red Hat's prospects for success in the Linux market and why its future success is not a foregone conclusion, despite the successful IPO."

• For File and Print services, according to independent tests conducted by PC Week Labs, the Windows NT 4.0 operating system delivers 52 percent better performance on a single processor system and 110 percent better performance on a 4-way system than similarly configured single processor and 4-way Linux/SAMBA systems.
• For Web servers, the same PC Week tests showed Windows NT 4.0 with Internet Information Server 4.0 delivers 41 percent better performance on a single processor system and 125 percent better performance on a 4-way system than Linux and Apache.
• For e-commerce workloads using secure sockets (SSL), recent PC Magazine tests showed Windows NT 4.0 with Internet Information Server 4.0 delivers approximately five times the performance provided by Linux and Stronghold.
• For transaction-orientated Line of Business applications, Windows NT 4.0 has achieved a result of 40,368 tpmC at a cost of $18.46 per transaction on a Compaq 8-Way Pentium III XEON processor-based system. This industry leading price/performance result from the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) clearly shows how Windows NT can deliver world-class performance for heavy duty transaction processing. It's interesting to note that there is not a single TPC result on any database running on Linux, and therefore Linux has yet to demonstrate their capabilities as a database server.
• Linux performance and scalability is architecturally limited in the 2.2 Kernel. Linux only supports 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM on the x86 architecture,1 compared to 4 GB for Windows NT 4.0. The largest file size Linux supports is 2 GB versus 16 terabytes (TB) for Windows NT 4.0. The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB. In addition, Linux does not support many of the modern operating system features that Windows NT 4.0 has pioneered such as asynchronous I/O, completion ports, and fine-grained kernel locks. These architecture constraints limit the ability of Linux to scale well past two processors.
• The Linux community continues to promise major SMP and performance improvements. They have been promising these since the development of the 2.0 Kernel in 1996. Delivering a scalable system is a complex task and it's not clear that the Linux community can solve these issues easily or quickly. As D. H. Brown Associates noted in a recent technical report,2 the Linux 2.2 Kernel remains in the early stages of providing a tuned SMP kernel.

• Windows NT 4.0 has been proven in demanding customer environments to be a reliable operating system. Customers such as Barnes and Noble, The Boeing Company, Chicago Stock Exchange, Dell Computer, Nasdaq and many others run mission-critical applications on Windows NT 4.0.
• Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System. This means that in the event of a system failure (such as a power outage) data loss or corruption is possible. In any event, the system must check the integrity of the file system during system restart, a process that will likely consume an extended amount of time, especially on large volumes and may require manual intervention to reconstruct the file system.
• There are no commercially proven clustering technologies to provide High Availability for Linux. The Linux community may point to numerous projects and small companies that are aiming to deliver High Availability functionality. D. H. Brown recently noted that these offerings remain immature and largely unproven in the demanding business world.
• There are no OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for Linux, unlike Windows NT where Compaq, Data General, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Unisys provide 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees for Windows NT-based servers.

• The cost of the operating system is only a small percentage of the overall total cost of ownership (TCO). In general Windows NT has proven to have a lower cost of ownership than UNIX. Previous studies have shown that Windows NT has 37 percent lower TCO than UNIX. There is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of UNIX when it comes to TCO.
• The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services. Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model.
• Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex to configure and manage. Existing UNIX users may find the transition to Linux easier but administrators for existing Windows®-based or Novell environments will find it more difficult to handle the complexity of Linux. This retraining will add significant costs to Linux deployments.
• Linux is a higher risk option than Windows NT. For example how many certified engineers are there for Linux? How easy is it to find skilled development and support people for Linux? Who performs end-to-end testing for Linux-based solutions? These factors and more need to be taken into account when choosing a platform for your business.

• Linux only provides access controls for files and directories. In contrast, every object in Windows NT, from files to operating system data structures, has an access control list and its use can be regulated as appropriate.
• Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges: a user who needs any administrative capability must be made a full administrator, which compromises best security practices. In contrast, Windows NT allows an administrator to delegate privileges at an exceptionally fine-grained level.
• Linux has not supported key security accreditation standards. Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process or at a C2-equivalent level under the British Government's ITSEC process. In contrast, no Linux products are listed on the U.S. Government's evaluated product list.
• Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to do about them. This is made complex due to the fact that there isn't a central location for security issues to be reported and fixed. In contrast Microsoft provides a single security repository for notification and fixes of security related issues.
• Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact. Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the system could be vulnerable to attack. Windows NT security is easy to set up and administer with tools such as the Security Configuration Editor.

• Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management
• The complexity of the Linux operating system and cumbersome nature of the existing GUIs would make retraining end-users a huge undertaking and would add significant cost
• Linux application support is very limited, meaning that customers end up having to build their own horizontal and vertical applications. A recent report from Forrester Research highlighted the fact that today 93 percent of enterprise ISVs develop applications for Windows NT, while only 13 percent develop for Linux.3

• Nasdaq
• Barnes & Noble
• Dell Computer Corp
• The Boeing Company
• Chicago Stock Exchange

• Will Linux Be Viable Competition for Windows Desktops?
  "While we do not view Linux as a serious competitor for Microsoft at the desktop, Linux will not disappear from the computing landscape through 2004."
• 1999 OS Forecast: The Linux Face-Off
  "While Linux will have important niche roles, it will not gain broad acceptance as a substitute for Unix and Windows in the enterprise in the near term."
• Red Hat's Future: Boxed In
  "We examine Red Hat's prospects for success in the Linux market and why its future success is not a foregone conclusion, despite the successful IPO."

• For File and Print services, according to independent tests conducted by PC Week Labs, the Windows NT 4.0 operating system delivers 52 percent better performance on a single processor system and 110 percent better performance on a 4-way system than similarly configured single processor and 4-way Linux/SAMBA systems.
• For Web servers, the same PC Week tests showed Windows NT 4.0 with Internet Information Server 4.0 delivers 41 percent better performance on a single processor system and 125 percent better performance on a 4-way system than Linux and Apache.
• For e-commerce workloads using secure sockets (SSL), recent PC Magazine tests showed Windows NT 4.0 with Internet Information Server 4.0 delivers approximately five times the performance provided by Linux and Stronghold.
• For transaction-orientated Line of Business applications, Windows NT 4.0 has achieved a result of 40,368 tpmC at a cost of $18.46 per transaction on a Compaq 8-Way Pentium III XEON processor-based system. This industry leading price/performance result from the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) clearly shows how Windows NT can deliver world-class performance for heavy duty transaction processing. It's interesting to note that there is not a single TPC result on any database running on Linux, and therefore Linux has yet to demonstrate their capabilities as a database server.
• Linux performance and scalability is architecturally limited in the 2.2 Kernel. Linux only supports 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM on the x86 architecture,1 compared to 4 GB for Windows NT 4.0. The largest file size Linux supports is 2 GB versus 16 terabytes (TB) for Windows NT 4.0. The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB. In addition, Linux does not support many of the modern operating system features that Windows NT 4.0 has pioneered such as asynchronous I/O, completion ports, and fine-grained kernel locks. These architecture constraints limit the ability of Linux to scale well past two processors.
• The Linux community continues to promise major SMP and performance improvements. They have been promising these since the development of the 2.0 Kernel in 1996. Delivering a scalable system is a complex task and it's not clear that the Linux community can solve these issues easily or quickly. As D. H. Brown Associates noted in a recent technical report,2 the Linux 2.2 Kernel remains in the early stages of providing a tuned SMP kernel.

• Windows NT 4.0 has been proven in demanding customer environments to be a reliable operating system. Customers such as Barnes and Noble, The Boeing Company, Chicago Stock Exchange, Dell Computer, Nasdaq and many others run mission-critical applications on Windows NT 4.0.
• Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System. This means that in the event of a system failure (such as a power outage) data loss or corruption is possible. In any event, the system must check the integrity of the file system during system restart, a process that will likely consume an extended amount of time, especially on large volumes and may require manual intervention to reconstruct the file system.
• There are no commercially proven clustering technologies to provide High Availability for Linux. The Linux community may point to numerous projects and small companies that are aiming to deliver High Availability functionality. D. H. Brown recently noted that these offerings remain immature and largely unproven in the demanding business world.
• There are no OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for Linux, unlike Windows NT where Compaq, Data General, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Unisys provide 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees for Windows NT-based servers.

• The cost of the operating system is only a small percentage of the overall total cost of ownership (TCO). In general Windows NT has proven to have a lower cost of ownership than UNIX. Previous studies have shown that Windows NT has 37 percent lower TCO than UNIX. There is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of UNIX when it comes to TCO.
• The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services. Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model.
• Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex to configure and manage. Existing UNIX users may find the transition to Linux easier but administrators for existing Windows®-based or Novell environments will find it more difficult to handle the complexity of Linux. This retraining will add significant costs to Linux deployments.
• Linux is a higher risk option than Windows NT. For example how many certified engineers are there for Linux? How easy is it to find skilled development and support people for Linux? Who performs end-to-end testing for Linux-based solutions? These factors and more need to be taken into account when choosing a platform for your business.

• Linux only provides access controls for files and directories. In contrast, every object in Windows NT, from files to operating system data structures, has an access control list and its use can be regulated as appropriate.
• Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges: a user who needs any administrative capability must be made a full administrator, which compromises best security practices. In contrast, Windows NT allows an administrator to delegate privileges at an exceptionally fine-grained level.
• Linux has not supported key security accreditation standards. Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process or at a C2-equivalent level under the British Government's ITSEC process. In contrast, no Linux products are listed on the U.S. Government's evaluated product list.
• Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to do about them. This is made complex due to the fact that there isn't a central location for security issues to be reported and fixed. In contrast Microsoft provides a single security repository for notification and fixes of security related issues.
• Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact. Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the system could be vulnerable to attack. Windows NT security is easy to set up and administer with tools such as the Security Configuration Editor.

• Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management
• The complexity of the Linux operating system and cumbersome nature of the existing GUIs would make retraining end-users a huge undertaking and would add significant cost
• Linux application support is very limited, meaning that customers end up having to build their own horizontal and vertical applications. A recent report from Forrester Research highlighted the fact that today 93 percent of enterprise ISVs develop applications for Windows NT, while only 13 percent develop for Linux.3

• Nasdaq
• Barnes & Noble
• Dell Computer Corp
• The Boeing Company
• Chicago Stock Exchange

• Will Linux Be Viable Competition for Windows Desktops?
  "While we do not view Linux as a serious competitor for Microsoft at the desktop, Linux will not disappear from the computing landscape through 2004."
• 1999 OS Forecast: The Linux Face-Off
  "While Linux will have important niche roles, it will not gain broad acceptance as a substitute for Unix and Windows in the enterprise in the near term."
• Red Hat's Future: Boxed In
  "We examine Red Hat's prospects for success in the Linux market and why its future success is not a foregone conclusion, despite the successful IPO."

> It's a price for performance... no linux system??

Actually, the link supplied isn't price/performance, it's flat performance. That's what makes it especially relevant. And if you'd care to look at the numbers, this $4mil Compaq/Microsoft box is chunking nearly two-thirds more transactions per minute than the drastically more expensive IBM and Sun servers located down the line. Oh, and this is an independent scientifically audited benchmarking site, so this ain't no FUD. And to specifically answer your question, if SMP under Linux and MySQL worked at all well, you'd see them on the other list, here where the list is not blanketed by performance, but rather by price. Eat your heart out.

Jake

I am surprised so many people haven't realised there is no such thing as a non-biased benchmark, and that, shock, horror, Linux is perfect (yet).

Benchmarks must reduce the scope of tests and make assumptions, which are not always true, so as to be possible. They also need to be done at a point in time, and not wait 'for the next version, which is so much better'. Doug Ledford of RedHat was there for the tests and has his spin on the tests, where he talks about the difficulty of getting a meaningful benchmark. The Tranaction Processing Council are continually revising their benchmarks to remain meaningful. The big guns, IBM, Sun, HP, Oracle, Sybase, Compaq and Microsoft all use different TPC benchmarks to try and gain ammunition for sales staff. At some point Linux people will need to do the same.

The Mindcraft benchmarks look to be as fair as any I've seen. The reaction to the benchmarks is far more informative than the results themselves.

Linux can still be improved, it isn't as strong as other operating systems in some areas. The fact there is development occuring proves this point.

If you don't like the results, find a benchmark and configuration that gets the results you do like! Where there is a real deficiency lend a hand and be part of the solution.

Read everthing you ever wanted to know about it at their web site http://www.tpc.org/

- Seth Finkelstein

While NT doesn't have the remote access features or stability of its unix brethren, it has a huge price advantage.

High-margin unix vendors need to get a reality check on pricing otherwise linux, NT, or both, are going to wipe them out.

While NT doesn't have the remote access features or stability of its unix brethren, it has a huge price advantage.

High-margin unix vendors need to get a reality check on pricing otherwise linux, NT, or both, are going to wipe them out.

I just noticed that the ProLiant 8000 8-way system quoted above was withdrawn from the active listings...must have been done today...maybe someone at compaq reads /. ;-)

The highest-performing Compaq AlphaServer gets >102k TpmC, as a cluster of 8 14-CPU servers (read 96 CPUs), with a total system cost of $14m. The new ProLiant 8000/8500 gets >40k TpmC, with a single server, and a total system cost of <$800k. Lower quality? Maybe. More money? Clearly not.

Unfortunately, it's not possible to compare the high-end Alphas on NT as the benchmarks submitted for them were almost always using Unix of some sort...at this point it's somewhat irrelevant.

The highest-performing Compaq AlphaServer gets >102k TpmC, as a cluster of 8 14-CPU servers (read 96 CPUs), with a total system cost of $14m. The new ProLiant 8000/8500 gets >40k TpmC, with a single server, and a total system cost of <$800k. Lower quality? Maybe. More money? Clearly not.

Unfortunately, it's not possible to compare the high-end Alphas on NT as the benchmarks submitted for them were almost always using Unix of some sort...at this point it's somewhat irrelevant.

The highest-performing Compaq AlphaServer gets >102k TpmC, as a cluster of 8 14-CPU servers (read 96 CPUs), with a total system cost of $14m. The new ProLiant 8000/8500 gets >40k TpmC, with a single server, and a total system cost of <$800k. Lower quality? Maybe. More money? Clearly not.

Unfortunately, it's not possible to compare the high-end Alphas on NT as the benchmarks submitted for them were almost always using Unix of some sort...at this point it's somewhat irrelevant.

all most of you seem interested in doing is trashing microsoft.

can't you even bother to go to TPC and look up the facts?

click here to read the summary report

that is, 50% improved performance on an online transaction processing benchmark when growing the number of processors by 100%:

Compaq ProLiant 8000-550-2M (Pentium III Xeon 4 CPU 550 MHz 2 MB cache NT4SP4 /MSSQL7.0) 26,560.40
Compaq ProLiant 8000-550-2M (Pentium III Xeon 8 CPU 550 MHz 2 MB cache NT4SP4 /MSSQL7.0) 40,013.30

Of course with TPC-C, systems are obscenely expensive since they configure them with so much disk that the system won't be I/O bound. But this looks likely to be an NT marketing bullet. Prepare your responses now!

--LinuxParanoid
(Hey, just because we're paranoid of Microsoft doesn't mean they're not out to get us...)

What is missing in all this -- and I'm afraid in ESR's rather sloppy summary as well -- is any sense of whether benchmarking is reliable in the least for analyzing application processing. Things are bad enough with processor benchmarking -- remember the tuning code in Quake?

In databases, things are much worse. The TPC has been wrestling with these issues for a decade now and still doesn't really have a good handle on it. It is too easy to put your thumb on the benchmarking scale without anyone noticing, and make the results go the way you want. This is true even if the vendors themselves do the tuning.

Even if you can equalize the platforms, it still gets down to issues like the mix of instructions in the test suite. The TPC has wrestled with that one for years, trying to avoid tipping the balance toward any given vendor.

Schematically, of course, Web servers are database servers (aside from the issue that they may request data from an actual database).

Frankly, I'm even more appalled at Mindcraft (and by extension, Microsoft) for pushing this "study" the way they did. It was at least borderline unethical, given their admittedly lame-if-you-are-being-kind-about-it effort to equalize tuning between the two systems.

of course they used pre-aggregation. that's how all of these vendors are getting such stellar marks in these queries.

i read the TPC-D FAQs page and TPC is 100% clear on this point:
------------------------------------------

3.10 Does TPC-D allow the definition of auxiliary objects such as views or indexes that represent pre-aggregated versions of the underlying table data?

There is no explicit discussion of specialized aggregation objects. However, like any other auxiliary data structure that is derived from the base table data, aggregation objects are a form of replication that must satisfy the requirements of Clause 1.5. Namely, they must be automatically managed by the SUT; the aggregation objects must be transparent to the query and may not be explicitly referenced; updates to the base table are reflected in the aggregation objects in the same transaction; and aggregation objects retain full ACID properties.
------------------------------------------

this is why this year's Sun/Oracle load times are so much longer than last years (for the same size data set). Oracle is pre-aggregating.

it's a level playing filed. M$ used pre-aggregation, Sun/Oracle used pre-aggregation.