Re: Larry Ellison comments on Microsoft's benchmark

"Garfield A. Lewis" <galewis_at_ca.ibm.com> wrote in message:
> >
> > Although IBM's result tops the charts, the IBM system as used
> > in the benchmark test may not be as reliable as some other vendor's
>
> Please..., let us know of any other TPC-C benchmark that includes HA...
>
> >
> > system which may be further down the TPC-C chart.
> >
> > Unlike in TPC-C, in real life availability is important, so the
> > position in the TPC-C chart is meaningless.
>
> We do not say that HA is not important but whatever costs are associated
 with
> it will be at least equally applied across any real world setup based on
 the
> benchmark costs.
>

Oracle Parallel Server is designed for high availability.

In Microsoft's and IBM's configuration, the database is split among many different machines. If any one of those machines fail the database becomes unavailable. This means a configuration that uses 12 machines is 12 times LESS reliable as a configuration that only uses one machine.

In Oracle Parallel Server, a configuration that uses 12 machines is 12 times MORE reliable than a configuration that only uses one machine. However it should be noted that the disk is still a single point of failure. But this is still 12 times more reliable than an IBM or Microsoft configuration consisting of 12 machines.

This is why I said that although IBM's result tops the charts, the IBM system as used in the benchmark test may not be as reliable as some other vendor's. Unlike Oracle, IBM's performance comes at the cost of reliability. (Unless additional hardware is used to improve reliability, which dramatically drives up costs.) Received on Thu Jul 06 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT