Comparing Price for Oracle Exadata and IBM Smart Analytics System
Curt Monash recently claimed that the only realistic metric for pricing data warehouse appliances is price-per-terabyte. Neither IBM (at the moment anyway; Netezza acquisition pending) or Oracle currently price-per-terabyte. However, I’d like to share some interesting capacity/pricing information for IBM and Oracle’s current data warehouse appliance-like products.
Below, you can see capacity/pricing information for three comparable configurations. I was struggling with labels for these three configurations. I’ve settled on big, bigger, and even bigger.
I think you’ll agree that the relative costs provide some food for thought. Probably the biggest factor in the gulf between the IBM and Oracle prices is the software license and maintenance costs—IBM InfoSphere Warehouse (which is powered by DB2) includes many of the software add-ons that must be purchased separately for the Oracle configurations.
I have highlighted the row indicating the uncompressed storage capacity for “user space” and the row indicating the list price. Of course, the list price does not reflect the considerable discounting that is typically offered by vendors like IBM and Oracle.
Big Configuration
| IBM Smart Analytics System 2050 | Oracle Exadata X2-2 | |
| Configuration Size | Medium | 1/4 Rack |
| Total Storage | 14.4TB | 21TB |
| Total Available Protected Storage | 12TB (RAID5) | 10.5TB (RAID1) |
| Total “User Space”* | 6.6TB Uncompressed | 6TB Uncompressed |
| List Price (1st YR) | $164,394** | $2,318,976*** |
| System Installation | Included | ADDITIONAL COST |
| OLAP | Included | ADDITIONAL COST |
| Ongoing storage software costs | None | $79,200 / year |
Bigger Configuration
| IBM Smart Analytics System 5600 | Oracle Exadata X2-2 | |
| Configuration Size | Small (4 data modules) | 1/2 Rack |
| Total Storage | 57.6TB | 50TB |
| Total Available Protected Storage | 35.2TB (RAID6) | 24TB (RAID1) |
| Total “User Space”* | 20TB Uncompressed | 14TB Uncompressed |
| List Price (1st YR) | $2.7M** | $4.7M*** |
| System Installation | Included | ADDITIONAL COST |
| OLAP, Data Mining, Text Mining | Included | ADDITIONAL COST |
| Ongoing storage software costs | None | $184,800 / year |
| PCIe Solid State Flash Memory | 3.2TB**** | 2.6TB |
Even Bigger Configuration
| IBM Smart Analytics System 7700 | Oracle Exadata X2-2 | |
| Configuration Size | Medium (3 data modules) | Full Rack |
| Total Storage | 86.4TB | 100TB |
| Total Available Protected Storage | 62.5TB (RAID6) | 50TB (RAID1) |
| Total “User Space”* | 34.4TB Uncompressed | 28TB Uncompressed |
| List Price (1st YR) | $4.7M** | $9.3M*** |
| System Installation | Included | ADDITIONAL COST |
| OLAP, Data Mining, Text Mining | Included | ADDITIONAL COST |
| Ongoing storage software costs | None | $370,000 / year |
| PCIe Solid State Flash Memory | 3.2TB**** | 5.3TB |
| Additional PCIe Solid State Devices | Optional | NOT AVAILABLE |
* Total “User Space” assumes 45% overhead for logs, temporary space, indexes, and so on.
** IBM prices include the appropriate edition of InfoSphere Warehouse. They also include 1 year of maintenance and support for all hardware and software.
*** Oracle prices includes Oracle Database, RAC, Partitioning, Advanced Compression, Tuning, Diagnostics, and Provisioning packs. They also include 1 year of maintenance and support for all hardware and software. Oracle prices are of 18 October 2010 on http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/exadata-pricelist-070598.pdf and http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list-070617.pdf.
**** PCIe Solid State Flash size excludes flash storage located in failover module.
Great comparsion between hardware and product price!
maclean
October 23, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Your last comparison with the Exadata rack isn’t really very fair is it? I mean, an Exadata rack has 8 westmere nodes (not including the processors in the Exadata servers) but only 3 Power7 nodes in the IBM solution? When you couple that with the fact that most companies (like mine) have enterprise license agreements with Oracle, making the Exadata rack more like $2-3 million and 75% discounts on SW…..what am I missing?
I do like the flash capabilities though. I didn’t know IBM was including that as an option now.
Rich
November 5, 2010 at 9:53 am
From a capacity standpoint, all comparisons are fair. From a performance standpoint, I believe the last configuration certainly is comparable.
For the last comparison, the IBM system has 64 POWER7 3.55 GHz (3 x 16 data, 16 admin) CPU cores, whereas the Oracle system has 96 Intel Westmere 2.93GHz CPU cores. I’m sure that most people will agree that these are indeed comparable. I sure that I can easily draw from several recent benchmark results to back this assertion up.
As regards the first two configurations, the Oracle configuration will likely be faster. In my opinion, it will not be more efficient, but it will likely be faster. How much faster is difficult to say, given the lack of industry benchmarks for these systems. And any speed difference will come at a huge premium. Whether the speed difference will be worth the significant extra cost is a question for each purchasing organization. Of course, you should get vendors like IBM and Oracle to prove their relative performance in a bake-off in your environment before shelling out the huge sums of money involved in these systems.
As regards the cost of the software, there are no free lunches
Here is an interesting blog post from a consultant with expertise in Oracle licensing: Forrester’s Latest on Unlimited License Agreements. He has a lot more blog posts that help you understand Oracle licensing and dealing with Oracle. While you personally may not have to worry about paying for the software when deploying an Exadata system, your company will invariably end up paying a considerable sum for that software.
Good point regarding software discounting. I considered putting “street prices” in this blog post. However, its very difficult to feel confident in the integrity of street pricing, as it is an estimate based upon private information and there are so many variables (a purchaser’s volume discounts, a purchaser’s ability to negotiate, etc.). So I thought the only defensible pricing I could put up there is list pricing, with the understanding that vendors typically offer deep discounts on software.
And list pricing can at least indicate the relative differences, assuming that the vendors offer similar levels of discounting, which they typically do.
Conor O'Mahony
November 5, 2010 at 11:10 am
Hi Conor – actually the 2nd configuration compares well with Oracle too – so I am not so sure Oracle would be faster. Each of the 4 Smart Analytics nodes here has 12 intel westmere 3.33GHz cores plus the admin/user node with another 12 cores. That’s 60 3.33 GHz westmere cores compared to 1/2 rack with Exadata 48 2.93GHz westmere cores at the database tier.
I think there is a typo though – the 2nd configuration looks like the IBM 5600 Smart Analytics Model – not the 2050.
By the way – the IBM system also has 192 drives compared to Exadata’s 84. And while Exadata claims peak 12.5 GB/sec disk bandwidth for a 1/2 rack system – the IBM system delivers sustained 12GB/sec disk bandwidth.
Finally the IBM system uses the Flash memory to offload disruptive writes to temp (for sorting and so on)- further enhancing performance on complex queries.
Glen Sheffield
November 5, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Thanks Glen. I corrected the cut and paste error.
Conor O'Mahony
November 6, 2010 at 11:19 am
Hi Conor – I understand your comments regarding comparing list and net prices. I think that most vendors look at it that way also, but obviously people out in customer land only deal with net.
On the performance area…we typically just use spec_int_rate to get a ballpark figure of the performance (we do run our own benchmarks for bakeoffs) and there is a pretty big difference between 3 740 servers and 8 westmere nodes. I’ll concede the fact that the westmere nodes are running Oracle, but they also have another 14 westmere nodes in the Exadata servers that apparently actually do contribute some database processing power (maybe not the full spec_int value though).
Thanks also for the links to the ELA information. Those were very insightful, however the powers that be are still of the opinion that the 8 database nodes in an Exadata are “free” due to the sunk cost nature of the licensing agreement. That puts the EX solution around $3M (list pricing for your analysis)
$1M for Exadata HW
$1.6M for Exadata SW licenses
$572K for maint (assuming 22%)
and you’ve got the IBM 7700 configuration at $4.7M. I was really happy to see this bundled pricing model that includes everything. In my limited IBM experience I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that from them before. So I tried to work out the configs but can’t get my numbers to match up with yours. I think your config has a foundation module, 3 data modules and a failover module.
$2M 3 data modules
$673K for data module bundle
~$20K for flash drive
$700K foundation module
~$673K for foundation module bundle
~$20K for flash drive
$360K failover module
~$337K for failover module bundle
~$20K for flash drive
~$600K maint (just my guess at a typical maint rate…sorry not familiar with IBM pricing)
Anyways, it comes out to around $3.6M vs. your $4.7M (so obviously my inexperience with IBM is showing). The point is that my organization looks at the $2.6M Exadata number vs the $3-4M+ IBM number.
Rich
November 11, 2010 at 10:52 am
We need to get your organization a ULA for DB2
Then we can compare apples-to-apples.
Conor O'Mahony
November 11, 2010 at 1:46 pm
hi…great insight, great blog. but how about doing a comparison between netezza and isas?
Calvink
August 15, 2011 at 3:08 pm
The IBM Smart Analytics System and Netezza are intended for different scenarios. The IBM Smart Analytics System is a system that is optimized for data warehouse workloads. However, it is a flexible system that you can configure to handle mixed or complex workloads. Netezza, on the other hand, is an appliance that is designed to handle analytic workloads in a very efficient and cost effective manner.
Another way of saying this is that the IBM Smart Analytics System is more comparable with Oracle Exadata from the standpoint of flexibility and configurability. Whereas, Netezza sacrifices some of this flexibility for dedicated performance and cost efficiency. The very nature of appliances means that Netezza will typically beat a flexible system like IBM Smart Analytics System and Oracle Exadata when it comes to cost.
But the most important thing to keep in mind is… first determine your needs, and then choose the best solution to meet those needs. Perhaps flexibility is more important to you, or perhaps simple operation and fast time-to-value are more important. Either way, you need to figure this out before determining what best suits your needs.
Conor O'Mahony
August 17, 2011 at 11:12 am
By the way, since I wrote the original post, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse (which is based on DB2) has added Terabyte-based pricing. When I get a few minutes, I’ll add a blog post with the details…
Conor O'Mahony
August 17, 2011 at 11:13 am
Well I work For Oracle And what can i say.. Those Oracle Prices hahahaha we never have sold any exadata with those prices.. The real way to compare is customer calling both parties and perform some Proof of concepts to see, which one resolve the performance issues.. That Is comparing apple with apples.
I can say we never have lost with IBM for PRICE. Once we test the environments, the results speak by them-self.
Fred
August 31, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Regarding people needing to perform a proof-of-concept, I agree 100%. Everyone, you have heard it from both IBM and Oracle, you should perform a proof-of-concept. And make sure the proof-of-concept is in your environment, with your data, and involves your team. Don’t accept it when a vendor tries to perform the proof-of-concept in their own labs. Otherwise, you may struggle to get the promised performance when it comes time to implement in your environment.
Conor O'Mahony
September 1, 2011 at 10:55 am
FYI, it looks like the Exadata hardware price increased as of 01 Sep 2011. Note that these are hardware-only prices. They do not include the database software, storage software, etc.
Conor O'Mahony
September 7, 2011 at 9:05 am
I’m an Oracle employee, too. So I find it interesting that you included ‘Advanced Compression, Tuning, Diagnostics, and Provisioning packs’ in your Exadata cost calculation. As you know, Advanced Compression is for OLTP compression. Since IBM Smart Analytics is a data warehouse only product, including Advanced Compression is not applicable. You run Advanced Compression on Exadata when you consolidate both OLTP and Data Warehouse applications on a single Exadata box – something you shouldn’t do on IBM Smart Analytics. For data warehouse workloads on Exadata, Hybrid Columnar Compression is used – which comes with Exadata at no cost. And if you calculate the 10X to 50X compression with Hybrid Columnar Compression, your cost per terabyte changes significantly. Then you also included Tuning, Diagnostics, and Provisioning packs in your costs – these are the Performance Packs for Enterprise Manager Grid Control and are not required to run Exadata, but we do recommend them. So why didn’t you include any of the Tivoli products in the IBM Smart Analytics costs? Do you not recommend them?
You do need to include the cores in the Exadata Storage Severs in your price per core calculations. Quite a bit of database processing happens in the Storage Server Cells. Also, Exadata uses 40 Gbit InfiniBand for the Database Servers interconnect and the communication between the Database Servers and the Storage Server Cells. Since data warehouse architecture is all about moving massive amounts of data, how does the internal IBM Smart Analytics networking compare to Exadata’s 40 Gbit InfiniBand?
Ron Mayfield
September 7, 2011 at 10:52 am
I will reply since I am the original source of the comparison.
I included 11g Advanced Compression because there are cases for data warehouse where the data is updated or added via SQL (e.g. an ODS or operational data warehouse). Smart Analytics compression handles this, while Exadata Hybrid columnar compression does not – this would require Oracle Advanced Compression. In fact, the recent Oracle press book “Achieving Extreme Performance with Oracle Exadata” (ISBN: 978-0-07-175260-2) states on page 100: “The OLTP designation in the name of this feature is somewhat misleading, as Advanced Compression is also used by many data warehouses, since compression is implemented for data added to the warehouse by many types of refresh operations”.
However Advanced Compression is optional, and if omitted would bring the calculated Oracle list price down for X2-2 full rack by $552,000 plus 22% annual maintenance ($121,449) for a total price of $8,690,511 (adjusted for 10% hardware increase of Sept 1) – still a lot.
I included the diagnostics and tuning pack because they are recommended by Oracle. Unlike Oracle, the Smart Analytics System includes the necessary system management tools such as DB2 Performance Optimization Feature, DB2 Performance Expert, Tivoli System Automation, Optim Database Administrator, Optim Development Studio, and more.
With regard to the networking components – the design of Smart Analytics System is different than Exadata – there is no need to move massive amounts of data between servers. Smart Analytics System is a shared nothing design where each server has its own dedicated storage which filters data through i/o reduction techniques and does as much processing as possible on the local server (joins, aggregations, group-by, etc). Where data does need to be moved (e.g. non-collocated joins) the 10 GBe network is sufficient.
Glen Sheffield
September 7, 2011 at 2:05 pm