Oracle’s latest trash-talking Wall Street Journal ad offers “Cash for Clunkers”. With no more than a typical 50% price reduction off their own products, the true clunkers here are the Oracle M8000/M9000 systems, considering the following very relevant facts:
HP Integrity Superdome 2 | Oracle/Sun M8000 and M9000s |
Superdome 2 systems are significantly less expensive to acquire and support. Example: A 32 processor Superdome 2 with 512 GB of memory with HP-UX and 3 years basic HW and SW support lists for $1,722,390. | M8000/M9000 servers are significantly more expensive to acquire and support. Example: A 32 processor M9000 with 512 GB of memory with Solaris and 3 years basic HW and SW support lists for $4,169,998. CLUNKER |
On a core, a processor or system basis, Superdome 2 delivers better performance than M8000/M9000 servers. | The M-series servers are outperformed by Integrity servers (as demonstrated on industry standard benchmarks) and the M-series roadmap shows no more SPARC64 processor upgrades coming in the future. CLUNKER |
With a new modern modular design that will support several generations of Itanium processors on the Intel processor roadmap, Superdome 2 is a platform that customers can invest in for years to come. | Based on publicly available roadmaps the M8000/M9000 servers appear to be DEAD-END products, with no future upgrades planned. CLUNKER |
Superdome 2 systems leverage the advanced capabilities of HP-UX to deliver enterprise features and functionality, integrated under management control via Insight Dynamics-VSE along with Serviceguard high availability and Global Workload Management to deliver a superior enterprise solution. | M8000/M9000 servers offer no equivalent to vPars, Integrity VM, Insight Dynamics VSE or Global Workload Management. In fact, M8000/M9000 servers, with Solaris, continue to lack many enterprise features found in HP-UX.  CLUNKER |
Superdome 2 is more eco-friendly, taking up less space in the datacenter and offering sophisticated technologies to reduce power consumption and improve energy efficiency. | The M8000/M9000 require more data center real estate and lack the sophisticated technologies used by SD 2 to better manage energy consumption (The M-series was designed way back in the (mid) 90s when electricity consumption and carbon footprint had not risen to the critical importance they now have with datacenter managers). CLUNKER |
With a more modern design and many advanced hardware features, Superdome 2 hardware fault recovery is transparent to applications – the system does not have to reboot to recover. | M8000/M9000 servers, introduced in April, 2007, rely heavily on hardware replication and rebooting to recover from key hardware faults. CLUNKER |
Superdome 2 with HP-UX is a key component of HP’s Converged Infrastructure. | Oracle does not have anything to match the capabilities of HP’s Converged Infrastructure. The focus of Oracle’s strategy is on scale-out appliances based primarily on x86 servers and lots of very expensive Oracle software. Scale-up enterprise M-series servers are not part of that strategy. This was a product line inherited from their Sun acquisition. CLUNKER |
Someone should tell Mr. Ellison that he fails basic math; the facts don’t add up! With 50% discounts on dead-end products, the only “clunkers” here are Oracle’s own M8000/ M9000 Enterprise Servers. Misguided marketing campaigns like this will only further annoy and aggravate customers because they are savvy enough to know what the real deal is.
