z11

There are rumors that z11 mainframe announcement is due this month.

Same rumors hint that there will be CPUs running x86/Power mode.

Sun Fire X4800 vs IBM x3850 X5

Oracle has recently announced their Nehalem EX product line and I quickly drew up a comparison with IBM's x86 flagship x3850 eX5. Both use up to 8 Intel Xeon 7500 CPUs so they're direct competitors. HP's DL980 G7 is there too but I haven't had the time to include it yet.

quick look -

	IBM x3850 X5	Sun Fire X4800
# CPU	2/3/4/8	4/8
CPUs	8c X7560/X7550/L7555 6c X7542/E7540/E7530/L7545 4c E7520	X7560 8c/X7550 8c/E7540 6c
# memory	1TB (1-node), 1.5TB (MAX5) 2TB (2-node)	1 TB max, 128 DIMM, 2/4/8GB
PCI	7xPCIe 2 hot-plug / node	8 PCIe hot-swap
NIC	10Gbit Converged + 2 x GbE	8x10GbE + 8x1GbE
HDD	8x2.5" SAS / 16x1.8" SSD	8x2.5" SAS
Size	4RU/8RU	5RU

now let's get into details

- CPU#

IBM's box can work with 2, 3 or 4 CPU and a 2-node server is only available with 8 CPUs. X4800 is less flexible and only 4 or 8 CPU configurations are supported. I don't think a lot of customers will order a less-than 4 CPU configs anyway but we'll give IBM half a point for flexibility anyway. In x3850 CPUs are installed directly into the chassis while X4800 uses so-called CMODs which are blade/uniboard-type boards housing 2 CPU/32 DIMM each.

- CPU types

As redbook says, x3850 X5 supports all of 7500's: the 8-core X7560 and X7550, low-voltage L7555 and L7545, the 2.66Ghz X7542 and smaller E7540,30 and 20. Configurator however limits us to models that end in zero. Oracle sells only X7560, X7550 and E7540 which is really not much to choose from. Some people will miss the fast 6-core X7542 here. Point IBM.

- RAM

Both systems use DDR3 DIMMs running at 1066 MHz. As the systems' packaging differs so does the amount of DIMM slots. IBM supports up to eight 8-DIMM memory cards per chassis which adds up to 1TB/node maximum memory when using 16Gig DIMMs. With additional MAX5 1U memory expansion you can fit 0.5 TB more into 1-node server. A 2-node x3850 will have 2 TB maximum RAM. MAX5 is not currently supported in a two-node configuration. X4800 has some differences in terms of memory - it has 32 DIMM slots on each of 4 CMODs but only allows 8Gb DIMMs at the moment. Multiply the numbers above and you'll have 1TB memory tops. Point IBM.

- PCIe slots

8 PCIe slots in X4800. All hot-swap, PCIe 2.0 x8. Easy-peasy.

IBM's more complex - 7 slots per chassis, 2 of them hot-plug, slot 7 is used by a pre-installed Emulex 10Gb Ethernet adapter, 5 slots are x8, 1 is x4 electrical / x8 mechanical meaning that you can insert an x8 card but it'll work at x4, and 1 slot is x16.

I'd say point Oracle. Seems less complicated and more flexible to me. IBM's x16 slot and 14 slots total might make a difference for some disk I/O-intensive applications but on the other hand Sun's superior on-board Ethernet capacity means that none of the 8 PCIe slots will ever be needed for NICs.

- NICs

IBM has 2 onboard 1GbE NICs and the 10Gig Emulex in PCIe slot 7. If that's not enough you can choose from a range of optional PCIe Ethernet adapters. That will probably be the case as x3850 is a likely box for some heavy VMware consolidation which tends to be network-intensive.

Oracle doesn't really let you choose. You have to order the chassis with 2 Network Expansion Modules (NEMs) installed. Not only each of them provides 4x1GbE and 4x10GbE interfaces, it also serves as the SAS backplane. 8 GbE + 8 10GbE out of the box, that's right. Point Oracle? Yes. At a cost? Yes.

- Internal storage

8 2.5" hot-swap SAS2 drive bays in X4800 chassis. Same per x3850 node. 8 CPU 3850 will have 16 drive bays.

SSD support - IBM: yes; ORACLE - no. IBM supports either 2.5" 50GB SATA SSDs or 2 8-disk eXFlash units per chassis. Meaning if you're rich you can have up to 32 50GB solid-state disks in a two-node x3850. Will probably cost you three times more than the server itself. Still point IBM for SSD support which is nice for RDBMS and for having more bays in two-node configs.

Edit: Oracle does have the Sun Flash Accelerator F20 PCIe card which does bring SSD support for X4800

- Size

Point Oracle. 5 Rack Units vs IBM's 8 in case of 8CPU configs. And you don't have to use additional cables (not free) to get to 8 CPUs.

- Price

I won't say. Not sure I have the right to. Let's say I'm a bit surprised at how Oracle handled that - not only they make you pay for CPUs which is obvious but they also charge as much for CMODs - system boards that house the CPUs and memory. This drives the system cost up and it's significant difference.

Hope it helps.

Links:

X4800: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/x86/sun-fire-x4800-server-077287.html

x3850 X5: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/hardware/enterprise/x3850x5/index.html

Introduction

Hi, I'm Greg. One more warrior in the army of nerd blogs. This is going to be about enterprise computing, mainly from hardware perspective. Most of the info will probably be about IBM as it's my current area of interest but you're also likely to see something about Sun (Oracle now ;\), HDS and Brocade because this is my background.

let's get started...