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HP Publishs First Linux TPC-C Benchmarks

Posted by chrisd on from the the-benchmark-with-a-shady-past dept.

The first ever official TPC-C benchmark on a Linux system has been published. This was run on a cluster of 32 HP servers with Intel Xeon CPUs, running Redhat Linux and Oracle RDBMS. The system had over 18 terabytes of storage, and cost over 2 million US dollars. Performance was higher than a similar system running on MS Windows.

10 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Windows or Oracle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    One wonders where the slowdown lies. It would be nice to find out if it lies withing the Win32 version of Oracle or within Windows. Seeing as Windows does have the top score in the Clustered TPC-C results, I'm leaning more towards Oracle being the slow one. (everyone else here would disagree no doubt)

  2. Still not the fastest price/performance.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you look at the top results in a price/performance comparison, Windows 2000/SQL server are still winning.
    http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_price_perf_re sults.asp?resulttype=cluster&version=5

    It's interesting, though, that Red Hat had the cheapest Oracle implementation.

    1. Re:Still not the fastest price/performance.... by Hater's+Leaving,+The · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Indeed. However, notice that numbers 5 and 6 on that $/tcp table are the two systems this story is about.

      It takes only a small leap of faith to believe that whatver HP did to their old #5 system to push it down into slot 6 could also be applied to their #s 1, 2 and 3 systems.

      For example, and _purely hypothetically_, assuming a 7.26% improvement for those systems too on migrating to Lunix would give results of
      $12.14, $13.09, $13.94

      Which would leave the table at
      Lunix $12.14
      Doze $13.02
      Lunix $13.09
      Lunix $13.94
      Doze $14.04
      Doze $14.96

      The majority of the rating improvement (>6%) was through diminished _cost_, which is pretty much guaranteed by migration to Lunix. Only a small part (1%) was through improved performance.

      So the leap of faith really isn't that huge.
      Maybe HP were hoping to convert their #5 Doze machine into a #4 machine, ousting IBM, but failed.They currently don't actually need to improve their #1 position.

      Only time will tell.

      THL.

      --
      Keeping /. cynic density high since the fscking Kwhores/trolls arrived.
  3. Off Topic? by _ganja_ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sorry that this might be off topic and cheerleading (right place though).

    GNU/Linux impresses me a great deal. I've been running it for a few years now, mainly at home and in some positions when I can get away with it and its easy to take it for granted. But its articles like this that make me step back and think about what as really been achived by a bunch of mainly unpaid developers who provide all their source code for free.

    Sure there a few places where Windows is more suitable but everyday, these few places get fewer.

    So to any Linux developers and supporters who read this, thank you all.

    --

    A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security

  4. Re:Comparable cost between windows and linux clust by jsse · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Of course, I'll get flamed for not bashing microsoft

    Don't be silly. :)

    From this FAQ you'll see:

    In general, TPC benchmarks are system-wide benchmarks, encompassing almost all cost dimensions of an entire system environment the user might purchase, including terminals, communications equipment, software (transaction monitors and database software), computer system or host, backup storage, and three years maintenance cost. Therefore, if the total system cost is $859,100 and the throughput is 1562 tpmC, the price/performance is derived by taking the price of the entire system ($859,100) divided by the performance (1562 tpmC), which equals $550 per tpmC.

    Most people would focus on the hardware cost, but in reality the highlighted maintenance cost took the precedence.

    Most midrange UNIX server has outragous maintenance cost. The maintenance cost of a UNIX server in the third year could be exceeding the cost of the hardware itself. It's due to the fact that older parts are difficult to find, thus make maintaining older servers more difficult. Besides, they really want to cut older production lines in favor of newer servers production.

    x86 platform is known to have flat and lower maintenance cost, due to the low cost hardware and high compability with older hardware, i.e. older parts can be found easily. That's why Microsoft could easily beat the TPC pissing races.

    Doomsday finally comes to Microsoft when Linux is entering the database market. Although at this moment big corps are still offering Linux maintenance with cost comparable to UNIX package, that's not surprising when Linux engineers are not as abandon as MCSE. However, it'll not be the case in the future. I think Microsoft would eventaully lose this pissing race in the long run.

  5. HP follup on lkml by awptic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There was a followup message on the lkml from hp discussing how these numbers can improved even further, you can see it at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=103 237327405644&w=2

    1. Re:HP follup on lkml by Quixote · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I read Andy's post, and it highlights one of Linux's strengths: the fact that an enduser was able to tweak the kernel parameters, take third-party patches (Ben's) and in general muck around the kernel to get the best performance. You will never see Microsoft give this kind of freedom to its customers ("we know best! just give us the money and we'll take care of it... sometime!").

  6. Price/Performance doesn't apply to many configs by RajivSLK · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In a 2+ million dollar system software cost is a very small percentage of the total cost.

    However, in reality, a lot companies have $10,000 or even $5,000 DB servers.

    When you factor the cost of Windows into these systems the difference in Price/Performance is much greater than 6 percent.

  7. Price/Performance was low by -ryan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As far as price/performance it was in the middle of the top ten. I think if they had used PostgreSQL (or maybe SapDB, dunno haven't used it) instead of Oracle it could have been higher in the results.

    1. Re:Price/Performance was low by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      You make a SERIOUSLY faulty assumption...

      That PostgreSQL will scale (like Oracle).

      OK. Take out Oracle, save a bundle. Put in PostgreSQL, now you cannot handle this transaction load. The result - Your price/performance is now worse.

      I would be interested in seeing PostgreSQL run simultaneously on more than one node and access the same files (ie RAC) or comprimise a single database (ie distributed).