I would love to see a performance test between a big x3850 intel machine running linux and a power machine in the same price range on AIX, I think the power machine is going to get a decent challenge. I even doubt it will win that race but there is more to a TSM server than raw performance as said before. The aix lvm, device drivers and great long lasting TSM support for each major release are amongst the big advantages. I am on my 5th sles version in i think 7 years of running TSM on sles and upgrades are a bit more of a hassel than with AIX. AIX 5.3 just now lost support with TSM 6.3! On Oct 12, 2011 5:54 PM, "Paul Zarnowski" <p...@cornell.edu> wrote:
> We have kept with Power, largely because we (1) have AIX skills in-house, > and (2) the effort to migrate to another platform would be great, because we > have significant archive data. > > Some thoughts (take them as you will): > > 1. You can scale power vertically, quite high. We have 10 very sizable > instances on two p750s. Each p750 has many FC HBAs on it, which are shared > by all instances on that server. If we used intel instead, we'd likely have > to purchase many more HBAs, or divide up our tape/disk resources so that > they are not all sharable. It is nice to be able to share everything with > everything. We can keep adding processors and RAM for some time. > Higher-end p7's scale even higher, but we found the 750 to be a nice fit > for our needs, giving us considerable head room. > > 2. I have two resource baskets to monitor/plan for instead of 10. When I > add RAM to a server, for example, it benefits all of the instances running > on it, not just 1. > > 3. Power 7 has 4 SMTs per core, vs 2 for Power 6, and 1 for Power 5 and > earlier. If you look at the SPEC ratings, you will see that this translates > to greater workload handling per core for Power 7 vs earlier Power, for the > same GHz. I am not sure what this looks like on Intel. I would look at an > appropriate SPEC benchmark when comparing platforms vs something simplistic > like processor speed (GHz). Speeds can be very misleading. > > 4. I am a fan of AIX's LVM and management suite. I admit I may be biased, > because I have lived with it for so long and know it, but as I have > considered Linux, I have become aware of some things that it does not yet > have, or doesn't have as nicely as AIX does. > > I will be interested in what others have to say, as I share Allen's > perspective on revisiting assumptions periodically. > > ..Paul > > > At 10:05 AM 10/12/2011, Stefan Folkerts wrote: > >I would like to see that as well, I find it impossible to believe without > >proof...and I love the power platform just not because it's 4x as fast (at > >least) per core as x86 for TSM because I don't think it is. :-) > > > >On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 10:36 AM, Gregor van den Boogaart < > >gregor.booga...@rz.uni-augsburg.de> wrote: > > > >> @Howard Coles: > >> > For every 1 proc or core > >> > of Power you would need 4 or more of x86 (even at their best level). > I > >> > have seen the numbers from Intel comparing Newer x86 processors to > >> > Power6 and they are just below the Power 6 (using 2x's the number of > >> > cores). > >> Do you have a reference, link, pdf, ... for this? > >> > >> > The problem is, You can get Power7 cheaper than Power6, and get > >> > twice the performance. > >> And for that? > >> > >> Thanks! > >> > >> Gregor van den Boogaart > >> > > > -- > Paul Zarnowski Ph: 607-255-4757 > Manager, Storage Services Fx: 607-255-8521 > 719 Rhodes Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-3801 Em: p...@cornell.edu >
