Last month I wrote about the customer traction and market share growth of our x86 PowerEdge server platforms. It gets even better. Dell has now achieved its highest 4-socket rack server market share in 10 years, with 27.6 percent share, according to IDC. The growth of the x86 market has come at the expense of proprietary RISC/UNIX architectures which customers are leaving behind in droves for a better TCO, improved efficiency and manageability, and better performance and reliability. If any naysayers or doubt still exists over the advantages of going with an x86 architecture consider these breakthrough performance numbers:
- In an independent study Dell PowerEdge R810 server can delivers up to 74% lower TCO than the SUN SPARC Enterprise T5240 servers.1
- A similar study also proved that 10 Dell PowerEdge R910 servers can provide the equivalent performance of 22 SUN SPARC Enterprise T5440 servers.2
Dell has invested heavily in building out its four socket PowerEdge server portfolio over the past two years with technical innovations to expand memory scalability, expand the resiliency and to make them easier to manage to provide customers with the performance and mission critical reliability needed to run their data centers. Today, we’re adding even more innovations for our customers by introducing Intel’s latest “Westmere-EX” Xeon E7 series processors in our “powerhouse” 4-socket PowerEdge servers; the M910, R910 and R810.
We’re excited about Intel’s upcoming Xeon E7 launch because it will significantly enhance x86 server performance and virtually eliminate any perceived advantage UNIX solutions have. As advances in chip processing technology occur, server power, performance and efficiency will follow suit. Some of these highlight include better performance with 10 cores/20 threads and 30MB of last level cache, advanced encryption with Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT), more expandable memory with support for 32GB DDR3 DIMMs and better energy efficiency. Here are a few of the performance improvements:
- Up to 38 percent improvement in Oracle application server and database performance over previous generation Xeon 7500 “Nehalem-EX” based servers.
- Up to 18:1 server consolidation ratio over four-socket dual-core processor based systems offering up to 93 percent lower operation costs resulting in a one year return on investment.
- Up to 34 percent improvement in SQL database virtualization performance and 49 percent higher performance per watt with the combination of Xeon E7 processors and new Low Voltage memory (LV RDIMM) offerings.
That’s just scratching the surface. It isn’t about one feature set or another, but delivering a solution that can handle mission critical applications while being available and secure at all times. These powerful PowerEdge systems offer world-class performance, reliability and scalability for the most business critical applications, while significantly lowering overall total cost of ownership compared to proprietary RISC based offerings.
It all adds up. Our 4-socket PowerEdge systems running Intel Xeon E7 break the mold. You simply can’t beat the economics around scalability, performance, reliability and data protection. When I speak with CIOs, I hear time and time again that they are looking for a highly-capable and efficient technology solutions with a low total cost of ownership that provide fast time to market for their applications or services. That’s where our line of PowerEdge servers comes in (especially our 4-socket systems) to provide IT with the headroom to handle database growth and peak demands.
This raw computing power and scalability enables IT to place an entire database in memory and run queries in real-time, speeding your path from data to decision while making mission critical workloads work more efficiently. It’s also why our Dell servers have won the most awards for design & engineering (10 for Dell, 5 for HP, 2 for IBM, 0 for Cisco) based on third party industry reviews. We look forward to working with Intel and our customers while we continue to provide open, capable and affordable enterprise solutions that provide value and extend IT possibilities.
1 Source: Principled Technologies®, Inc., “TCO Comparison: 2 Processor Dell and SUN Servers;” a March 2010 report commissioned by Dell. Actual performance will vary with configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.
2 Principled Technologies®, Inc., “DELL VS. SUN SERVERS: TCO Comparison: Four-Processor Dell and SUN Servers;” a March 2010 report commissioned by Dell. Actual results will vary with configuration and manufacturing variability.