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White Paper

Better Performance, Lower Costs

The Advantages of IBM PowerLinux

7R2 with PowerVM versus HP DL380p

G8 with vSphere 5.1

May 2013

This report was developed by Edison Group, Inc. with IBM assistance and funding. This

report may utilize information, including publicly available data, provided by various

companies and sources, including IBM. The opinions are those of Edison Group, Inc.

and do not necessarily represent IBM’s position.

Printed in the United States of America.

expressed or implied on the information contained herein and shall be held harmless for

errors resulting from its use.

All products are trademarks of their respective owners.

First Publication: May 2013

Produced by: Samuel Neis, Analyst; Harold Kreitzman, Analyst; Barry Cohen, Chief

Analyst and Editor-in-Chief; Manny Frishberg, Editor

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ..................................................................................................................... 1

Performance Comparison ........................................................................................................... 3

Competing Systems .................................................................................................................. 3

Benchmark Methodology ........................................................................................................ 4

TPoX and DB2 ....................................................................................................................... 4

Benchmarking Strategy ........................................................................................................ 4

Performance Conclusions ........................................................................................................ 6

TCA and TCO Analyses ............................................................................................................. 7

Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 7

TCA and TCO Cost Component Treatment .......................................................................... 8

TCA Results ............................................................................................................................... 9

Five-year TCO Results ............................................................................................................ 10

Conclusions ................................................................................................................................. 14

Edison: The Advantages of IBM PowerLinux 7R2 with PowerVM vs. HP DL380p G8 with vSphere 5.1 Page 1

Executive Summary

IBM Power Systems, running with IBM PowerVM virtualization, are powerful Linux

server hardware platforms designed for industry standard Linux distributions, such as

Red Hat and SUSE, as well as independent software vendors’ and open source

applications. The performance advantages of Power Systems over their competition

allow programs to access data more rapidly. An IBM PowerLinux 7R2 System, with

eight cores and per-physical-core licensed PowerVM, is as much as 47 percent more cost

effective than a competing x86-based system from HP (which requires 16 cores to match

the PowerLinux 7R2 performance).

As shown in Figure 1 below, a PowerLinux 7R2 system performs roughly twice as many

transactions per second as an x86-based system with the same number of physical cores,

when the number of hosted virtual machines (VM) is selected to maximize utilization. In

fact, an x86-based system cannot match the performance of a PowerLinux 7R2 system

with a half as many physical cores in a virtualized environment. This white paper

examines these relationships to establish a basis for cost calculations, which compare

systems of equivalent real-world processing power.

Figure 1: Benchmark Performance Comparison: HP ProLiant DL380p and IBM Power 7R2

The Total Cost of Acquisition (TCA) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analyses show

the dependency of real-world costs on the processor count of a server solution.


This white paper targets IT decision makers considering a business-level selection from

among various virtualized architectures and platforms for their Linux server. The first

section of this paper uses benchmark data to establish the relative performance levels of

IBM PowerLinux 7R2 servers and HP ProLiant DL380p servers with varying numbers of

physical cores. The second section presents the results of TCO and TCA analyses

comparing systems of similar performance levels.

PowerLinux systems from IBM bring the proven performance of IBM Power hardware

to the Linux market at a superior price point. PowerLinux systems are virtualized with

IBM’s PowerVM technology, increasing processor utilization in virtualized systems

while improving the reliability and security of the systems. Though high performance is

commonly associated with high cost, PowerLinux systems benefit from virtualization,

workload and resource management through PowerVM. The resulting performance

makes them cost-effective and affordable.


Performance Comparison

Competing Systems

The table below shows the configurations of the competing systems. The systems are of

equivalent size in terms of CPU core count, RAM, storage and other peripherals. All 16

cores were licensed during performance testing to measure a range of performance test

points. Configuring the two systems for equivalent performance results in less RAM and

physical cores than in the more powerful system.

System HW

Component

IBM PowerLinux 7R2 with

PowerVM

HP ProLiant DL380p with

VMware vSphere 5.1

Chassis IBM PowerLinux 7R2 ProLiant DL380p Gen8

Processor 16 cores (2 x 8-core 4.2 GHz

POWER7+ Processor Module)

16 cores (2 x 8 core 2.9Ghz Intel

Xeon E5-2650 processor)

RAM 384GB (12 x 32GB DIMMs,

1066MHz)

384GB (24 x 16GB Dual Rank x4

PC3L-10600R)

Storage:

Magnetic

2 x 146GB 15K RPM SFF SAS Disk

Drive

2 x 146GB SAS 15K SFF hot-plug

Smart Drive SC Enterprise disk

drive (2.5")

Fibre Channel PCIe LP 8Gb 2-Port Fibre Channel

Adapter

HP 82E Emulex 8Gb 2-port PCIe

Fiber Channel Host Bus Adapter

Network

Adapter PCIe2 LP 4-port 1GbE Adapter

HP Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 331FLR

Adaptor

Power Supply System AC Power Supply, 1925 W 750W Common Slot Gold Hot Plug

Power Supply

Table 1: Hardware Configurations

System Software

IBM PowerLinux 7R2

with PowerVM

HP ProLiant DL380p

with VMware vSphere 5.1

Virtualization IBM PowerVM for IBM PowerLinux VMware vSphere 5.1 Enterprise

OS SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2

Database IBM DB2 v9.7fp5 (16 x 70 PVU) IBM DB2 v9.7fp5 (16 x 70 PVU)

Table 2: System Software Configuration


For the purposes of benchmark testing, all 16 physical cores on both systems were

available. Administrator utilities of the virtualization software were used to control the

number of physical cores actually used during each benchmark run.

Benchmark Methodology

TPoX and DB2

TPoX (Transaction Processing over XML) is an application-level “XML database”

benchmark based on a financial application scenario. It simulates actual application-

level access to a DB2 database and performs queries, inserts, updates, and deletes in a

concurrent multi-user workload. It is an XML OLTP benchmark using data-oriented

XML structures, very large numbers of relatively small XML documents (1 kb to 20 kb),

short read/write transactions, and a high degree of concurrency. It models a security-

trading scenario that uses a real-world XML Schema (FIXML).

TPoX is an open-source benchmark developed by IBM in collaboration with Intel and

others. It is available at: http://tpox.sourceforge.net/tpoxresults.htm. This study used

TPoX version 2.1, accessing an IBM DB2 version 9.7-backend database.

Benchmarking Strategy

Tests were run with two, four, eight, 12 and 16 physical cores available to multiple

virtual machines running TPoX. For each core-count test run, the ratio of Virtual

Machines to physical cores was 15:2. Three gigabytes of RAM was allocated to each VM,

with eight gigabytes allocated to the Virtual In/Out System. Thus, the number of virtual

machines in the five tests were 15 (two cores and 53GB RAM allocated), 30 (four cores

and 98GB RAM allocated), 60 (eight cores and 188GB RAM allocated), 90 (12 cores and

278GB RAM allocated) and 120 (16 cores and 368GB RAM allocated). The number of

available cores for each test was controlled by modifying the shared pool in PowerVM

or by setting schedule affinities in VMware vSphere.

http://tpox.sourceforge.net/tpoxresults.htm


Benchmark Results

The benchmark findings are charted below:

Figure 2: PowerLinux 7R2 vs. ProLiant DL380p Benchmark Results

The PowerLinux 7R2 system has a performance advantage of nearly two to one at

each test point.

Overall the performance results for the PowerLinux 7R2 with PowerVM are more

than twice the results for the ProLiant DL380p with vSphere v5.1, when running

with all 16 physical cores, is no larger than the result when running with only eight

cores.

The exact values are tabulated below:

Available

Cores

Virtual

Machines

RAM

Used

Transactions per Second PowerLinux 7R2

Performance

Advantage

PowerLinux

7R2

ProLiant

DL380p

2 15 53GB 1260 736 71% better

4 30 98GB 2766 1453 90% better

8 60 188GB 5650 2646 114% better

12 90 278GB 8914 4017 122% better

16 120 368GB 12029 5332 126% better

Average 105% better

Table 3: PowerLinux 7R2 vs. ProLiant DL380p Benchmark Results


Averaged across the test points, the PowerLinux 7R2 results are 105 percent greater than

the competing system, and the advantage increases with increased utilization. With both

systems at maximum utilization the PowerLinux 7R2’s results are 126 percent better. In

fact, the competitor system’s maximum result (5332 transactions per second with 16

cores) is slightly below the PowerLinux 7R2’s result with only eight processors. It is also

important to note that as the test scaled RAM usage with VM count, the PowerLinux

7R2 system achieved these results while using not quite half as much RAM.

Available

Cores

Virtual

Machines

RAM

Used

Transactions per second

PowerLinux 7R2

Performance Advantage

PowerLinux

7R2

ProLiant

DL380p

8 60 188GB 5650 6% better

16 120 368GB 5332

Table 4: PowerLinux 7R2 vs. ProLiant DL380p Performance Points for TCO/TCA System Selection

Performance Conclusions

In terms of performance, a PowerLinux 7R2 system can out-perform an x86-based

system equipped with twice as many physical cores and almost twice as much RAM.

Given two systems whose hardware specifications are equivalent, in terms of physical

processor count, quantity of RAM, quantity of storage, and technology of peripheral

devices, an IBM PowerLinux 7R2 system with PowerVM virtualization demonstrated

that it can significantly outperform an HP ProLiant DL380p system with VMware

vSphere 5.1 virtualization. The cost benefits of the smaller size of the PowerLinux 7R2

system are explored in the TCA and TCO Analyses section.


TCA and TCO Analyses

Introduction

TCA (Total Cost of Acquisition) analysis captures the out-of-pocket costs incurred at the

time of purchase. TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) Analysis reviews all of the costs

involved in the acquisition, installation, licensing, maintenance and bricks-and-mortar

infrastructure needs of a server solution, for a fixed period of time.

These TCA and TCO analyses compare an IBM PowerLinux 7R2 server with IBM

PowerVM virtualization to an HP ProLiant DL380p server with VMware vSphere 5.1

virtualization.1 As documented in the Performance Comparison section of this

document, the HP ProLiant DL380p uses twice as many physical cores and almost twice

as much RAM.

The specifications of the ProLiant DL380p system in the TCA and TCO are unchanged

from those listed in Tables I and II in the Performance Comparison section of this

document. To create systems with roughly equivalent performance the PowerLinux 7R2

system’s size was modified as follows:

The PowerLinux 7R2 system has two eight-core processor modules, with per core-

licensed PowerVM on only one of the modules.

The PowerLinux 7R2 system has 200GB of RAM (to accommodate the 198GB

allocated during the eight-core benchmark).

The PowerLinux 7R2 system is licensed for 8 x 70PVU of IBM DB2 v9.7fp5.

The reduced physical core licensing, and resulting database software licensing, impact

the cost of the PowerLinux 7R2 system. IBM’s per-core licensing cost for PowerVM

uniquely complements the relative performance advantage of each Power7+ core,

creating a powerful and cost-effective system. VMware vSphere 5.1 licensing is only

available per socketed processor, rather than per core. Additionally, the top-end

performance of the 7R2 can be increased when needed simply by licensing the

remaining cores in the system.

1 A fifteen percent discount was applied across all costs except those associated with daily

operations and facility equipment.


TCA and TCO Cost Component Treatment

With the TCA, there is no accounting treatment and therefore no need to differentiate

the cost components into capital and/or operating categories. In the case of three-year

maintenance agreements, the full cost of the contract has to be paid up front, so it is

included as a part of the TCA. Rents, power, and personnel are not included, as they are

paid as a part of daily operations, not upfront.

For the TCO analysis, a five-year horizon was chosen. Any multi-year contracts are

accrued on a yearly basis. In other words, three-year contract costs are broken down into

one-year increments, and those increments are used to compare five years of

maintenance for both. This avoids comparing a five-year maintenance cost with the cost

of two three-year maintenance contracts. Hardware refresh costs are not included.

A summary of cost component treatment affecting the TCO and the TCA are presented

in the following table:

Cost Component TCA2 TCO3

Operating System Included Capital Cost

Operating System Maintenance Included Operating Cost

Database Included Capital Cost

Database Maintenance Included Operating Cost

Virtualization Included Capital Cost

Virtualization Maintenance Included Operating Cost

Hardware Included Capital Cost

Hardware Maintenance Included Operating Cost

Facility Equipment Included Capital Cost

Facility Power N/A Operating Cost

Facility Space N/A Operating Cost

Personnel N/A Operating Cost

Table 5: TCA and TCO Cost Component Treatment

2 Three-year maintenance costs have to be paid up front, so they are included as a part of the TCA. 3 In the TCO analysis, three-year maintenance costs are broken down into one-year increments,

and those increments are used to avoid comparing a five-year maintenance cost with the cost of

two three-year maintenance contracts.


For this research, capital costs for network supplies, and one-time installation consulting

were also examined, but were not found to be a significant portion of the costs. Annual

network and facility maintenance were similarly small.

TCA Results

This TCA uses any Day One out-of-pocket costs. It does not include any costs associated

with daily operations.

IBM PowerLinux 7R2

with PowerVM


VMware vSphere 5.1

Operating System $42.50 $ -

Operating System Maintenance $1,812.10 $2,285.65

Database $173,264.00 $346,528.00

Database Maintenance $41,412.00 $82,824.00

Virtualization $1,904.00 $4,887.50

Virtualization Maintenance $1,530.00 $3,080.40

Hardware $19,795.15 $19,051.90

Hardware Maintenance $2,369.80 $1,061.00

Facility Equipment $95.24 $95.24

Total Cost of Acquisition $242,224.79 $459,813.69

Table 6: Total Cost of Acquisition

Total Cost of Acquisition for an IBM PowerLinux 7R2 server with IBM PowerVM is

$217,588 lower than for an HP ProLiant DL380p server with VMware vSphere 5.1, or

47.3 percent lower.


Five-year TCO Results

The five-year TCO figure includes capital and operating costs.

IBM PowerLinux 7R2

with PowerVM


VMware vSphere 5.1

Capital Costs

Operating System $42.50 $ -

Database $173,264.00 $346,528.00

Virtualization $1,904.00 $4,887.50

Hardware $19,795.15 $19,051.90

Facility Equipment $95.24 $95.24

Subtotal Capital Costs $195,100.89 $370,562.64

Annual Costs

Operating System

Maintenance $1,812.10 $761.88

Database Maintenance $41,412.00 $82,824.00

VM Maintenance $510.00 $1,026.80

Hardware Maintenance $1,667.13 $353.67

Facility Power $1,000.28 $366.17

Facility Space $617.19 $617.19

Personnel $4,440.00 $4,560.00

Subtotal Operating Costs $51,458.70 $90,509.71

Subtotal of Cumulative OC $257,293.51 $452,548.55

Total Cost of Ownership $452,394.40 $823,111.19

Table 7: Five-Year Cost Comparison

Total cost of ownership for an IBM PowerLinux 7R2 server with IBM PowerVM on a

five-year basis is $370,716.79 less than for an HP ProLiant DL380p server with VMware

vSphere 5.1, or 45.0 percent lower.


Figure 3: Five-year TCO

The cost comparisons in Tables V and VI show that these savings most closely match the

price differential in two categories: costs related to software, and virtualization licensing

and maintenance. IBM’s cost advantage in these areas are made possible by the

PowerLinux 7R2’s processing speed, which requires roughly half as many physical cores

for a given workload. Also, there is the availability of sub-capacity licensing on the IBM

system. Software, such as the DB2 software used in this study, is licensed per core, as is

virtualization software for IBM Power systems. Because IBM PowerLinux 7R2 systems

can provide more processing power per core, they can provide equivalent performance

to competing systems at a fraction of the cost, both in terms of acquisition and

ownership.

POL03161-USEN-01


Conclusions

On a per-physical-core basis, the PowerLinux 7R2 system can be more than twice as fast

as a competing system, such as the HP ProLiant DL380p with VMware vSphere 5.1.

Because of the flexibility of IBM’s per-core licensing system for PowerVM and the per-

core licensing schemes for database software, IT Administrators can leverage the IBM

performance advantage to tailor a system to fit their needs. These systems carry

acquisition and ownership costs which are nearly half those of the competition. The

potential savings in both capital expense (CAPEX) and operational expense (OPEX)

demand consideration from IT decision makers and purchasing managers in the entry-

level market.

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