Sun Fire Serves Up Greater Investment Protection than IBM pSeries

Sun Fire Serves Up Greater Investment Protection than IBM pSeries

By Shahin Khan, Chief Competitive Officer, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

22.Mar.02--I am encouraged that these columns are generating such passionate discussions around the Net. My last column was even called a "white paper" by some which was flattering. As before, this column is not just an opinion piece, but something that benefits from a lot of technical checks and balances. And I don't just go with the passionate and outspoken view but also with the quiet nods.

And so the topic here is investment protection. Simply put, investment protection is about how often you have to spend money toward the same goal. Obviously, if your investment is protected, chances are you are minimizing your total cost of ownership (TCO). TCO is the sum total of what you spend on a deployment over the lifetime of that deployment. The longer your time horizon and the more detailed your calculations, the more holistic your TCO. Sometimes you need look no further than your infrastructure's complexity to achieve enormous savings.

Needless to say, we think Sun systems have some serious advantages when it comes to investment protection. These advantages can be attributed to the following:

• The combination of binary compatibility and scalability -- one- to 106-CPU systems from $995 to several million dollars (1) that cross generations with the same system architecture and application behavior.
• A proven track record of allowing systems to be field-upgraded several times during their life.
• Common components across large portions of the product line.

Sun also offers Linux for the edge of the network solutions. Sun recently announced it will ship a full implementation of the Linux operating system, and will ship Linux on both its Sun Cobalt appliances and a new class of low-end single and multiprocessing x86-based servers. The Sun Cobalt line will be sold along side Sun's family of Sun Fire and Netra general purpose servers running the Solaris Operating Environment on the SPARC[R] platform. I will talk about Sun's Linux strategy and product offering in one of my future columns.

With that said, let's discuss why Sun Fire systems provide customers with superior investment protection and cost-savings advantages. To provide context, we'll compare Sun Fire systems to competing products from IBM's pSeries line.

1.Upgrading Sun Fire servers is up to 50% less expensive than upgrading IBM pSeries servers. (2)

Trade in. As a Sun Fire customer, you can inexpensively trade in your servers when it's appropriate by upgrading to a larger system and leveraging common components.

Shared Uniboards. Uniboard technology is a unique breakthrough that allows for shared CPU/memory boards across the Sun Fire data center server line. When you've maximized a Sun Fire Midframe or high-end system, you upgrade by simply replacing your chassis and adding more Uniboards, preserving your initial Uniboard investment. IBM pSeries customers cannot leverage common components and must start over with a completely new system.

Mixed-Speed CPU Support. Sun Fire data center servers feature mixed-speed CPU support while IBM pSeries servers do not. Any pSeries CPU upgrade requires all CPUs within a system to be upgraded. On the other hand, Sun Fire Midframe and high end systems allow you to upgrade only those processors you choose. Mixed speed CPU support does not appear to be high on IBM's list.

Processor Upgrade. If you're considering a Sun Fire 3800 -15K, you can easily add faster processors to your server line (3) . With Sun Fire, you can upgrade CPUs, service, and reconfigure resources online reducing customer downtime costs. However, with the IBM pSeries servers, a server must be taken down to perform a processor upgrade – costing you valuable resource time.

2.Sun Fire customers can apply Solaris system administration knowledge across an entire IT environment; IBM pSeries customers have to deal with multiple OS's which results in increased complexity and cost.

The "one Solaris system" vs. "many IBM operating systems" reality has resulted in greater software vendor enthusiasm for the Solaris Operating Environment. For instance, over 4,600 ISV and Sun applications are certified on Solaris 8 while AIX 5L 5.1 pales in comparison with only 319 certified applications (4). And, Oracle 9i is not yet ported to the IBM p690 AIX 5L environment.

With Sun Fire systems, there's only one OS to manage. With the IBM pSeries, there are multiple. And in a total data center environment, IBM may require as many as 14 different operating systems to manage. And unlike Sun, IBM requires added solutions (such as Intel NT) to the mix when you need a smaller system to handle a specific task or application.

To minimize administration costs, you can leverage Solaris system administration knowledge and experience across a wide range of Sun servers, such as IT skill set and IT process training expenses. You can also avoid having to learn new software applications every time you change OS's because with Sun, you won't have to change either. All of which can lead to lower lifecycle expenditures over time. Conversely, IBM solutions often involve multiple product lines and operating systems, resulting in more complex computing environments, and thus higher administration costs.

3.Sun Fire customers gain cross-generational compatibility; IBM pSeries customers do not.

The Solaris Application Compatibility Guarantee (5) gives customers confidence that applications developed on today's Sun servers will run on future Sun servers--as well as future versions of Solaris. Not true for Big Blue. Their "we take control of your infrastructure in a way that leaves you closed to choice" strategy means there's no compatibility guarantee for IBM servers. In fact, IBM customers must recompile 64-bit applications to run on AIX 5L that were initially developed on previous versions of AIX.

4.You can re-purpose Sun hardware, extending its utility.

You can easily re-purpose Sun servers when your infrastructure needs change. And because Sun is the development platform of choice among leading independent software vendors (ISVs), you can enjoy a 6-to-9-month time-to-market advantage over IBM's AIX 5L customers--as well as a wide pool of applications (4,600+) that successfully run on Solaris 8. The IBM pSeries servers seem to lack such flexibility. Case in point: business-critical ISV ports to AIX 5L, including Oracle, are lagging. Plus, according to IBM's website, there are only 319 applications available today running on IBM's AIX 5L, Version 5.1. (6)

Machine-to-machine comparisons can yield lower initial costs with Sun. Witness the Sun Fire V880 Volume Server, as compared to the IBM p620-6f1. Not only is the Sun Fire V880 about half the cost of the traditional entry level data center p620-6f1, it's comparable in performance to a midrange server. The Sun Fire V880 has demonstrated record-setting price/performance by supporting nearly twice the number of users per dollar as the p620-6f1. (7)

Easy upgrade path. One operating system. Cross-generational compatibility. The ability to re-purpose hardware. When compared to the IBM pSeries, the advantages of Sun Fire servers speak for themselves. Join the list of global customers, among them Secretaria de Educacion Publica in Mexico and FIZ Karlsruhe in Germany, who have chosen Sun Fire servers and are leveraging Sun's offering of industry leading Investment Protection and low Total Cost of Ownership.

Footnote data:

(1)Source: http://www.sun.com/

(2)"Investment Protection: Sun Fire Leads the Industry. CPU Upgrade Analysis." March 13, 2002

(3)Mixed-speed CPU support basically allows you to combine UltraSPARC III 900 MHz and above CPUs with tomorrow's faster processors in a single system -- without having to upgrade existing processors. All CPUs run at their rated speed; newer CPUs will not "clock down" to the lower-speed CPUs installed on the system.

(4) Information on IBM certified applications (as of 3/4/02):
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/aix/isv/availability.html and http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/ibmsw/list/

(5) The Solaris Application Guarantee program guarantees that existing customer developed applications, written to the Solaris Application Binary Interface (ABI), will run in the Solaris 8 Operating Environment. For SPARC platform customers, this means that existing SPARC binaries will run without modification on Sun's UltraSPARC III processor-based systems.

(6) According to: http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/aix/isv/availability.html (as of 3/4/02)

(7) "The first eight-way, all-UNIX iNotes results in January, 2001, proved that the Sun Fire V880 server and the Solaris Operating Environment surpassed the IBM/AIX solution by supporting 24% more iNotes users and demonstrating record-setting price/performance by supporting nearly twice the number of users per dollar." Source: Sun Microsystems Press Release, January 29, 2001. "Sun Fire V880 Server Sets World Record for Price/Performance and Best Performance on Lotus Domino Benchmarks. http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2002-01/sunflash.20020129.1.html

This document has been reviewed by SMI Marketing Legal and is approved for DISTRIBUTION WITHIN THE UNITED STATES (EXCLUDING ITS TERRITORIES) AND CANADA ONLY. For distribution outside these specific regions, an in-country legal opinion must be obtained.

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