Comments on: Netezza is changing its hardware architecture and slashing prices accordingly http://www.dbms2.com/2009/07/30/netezza-new-product-family/ Choices in data management and analysis Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:12:57 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Interesting trends in database and analytic technology | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services http://www.dbms2.com/2009/07/30/netezza-new-product-family/comment-page-1/#comment-157770 Interesting trends in database and analytic technology | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:12:57 +0000 http://www.dbms2.com/?p=852#comment-157770 [...] ditched that in its latest generation [...] [...] ditched that in its latest generation [...]

]]> By: Sorting out Netezza and Oracle Exadata data warehouse appliance pricing | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services http://www.dbms2.com/2009/07/30/netezza-new-product-family/comment-page-1/#comment-134349 Sorting out Netezza and Oracle Exadata data warehouse appliance pricing | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services Sat, 08 Aug 2009 09:19:50 +0000 http://www.dbms2.com/?p=852#comment-134349 [...] Bence Arato estimates that the Oracle Exadata price is right around $4 million for 46 uncompressed terabytes of user data. I found Bence’s estimates excellent when he helped me work out then-current Exadata pricing last September. That’s a little under $100K/terabyte uncompressed, vs. Netezza’s figure of a little under $45K uncompressed. I would guess Oracle’s compression is a little better than Netezza’s, but only a little. I hope those Oracle figures take indexes into account (Netezza has no indexes, and the zone maps it substitutes for indexes take little space), but even if they do, there’s a considerable price difference now between Exadata and Netezza. Also, Netezza TwinFin seems to offer more processing power per terabyte of data than Oracle Exadata does — specifically via its FPGAs — giving hope it does more work as well. [...] [...] Bence Arato estimates that the Oracle Exadata price is right around $4 million for 46 uncompressed terabytes of user data. I found Bence’s estimates excellent when he helped me work out then-current Exadata pricing last September. That’s a little under $100K/terabyte uncompressed, vs. Netezza’s figure of a little under $45K uncompressed. I would guess Oracle’s compression is a little better than Netezza’s, but only a little. I hope those Oracle figures take indexes into account (Netezza has no indexes, and the zone maps it substitutes for indexes take little space), but even if they do, there’s a considerable price difference now between Exadata and Netezza. Also, Netezza TwinFin seems to offer more processing power per terabyte of data than Oracle Exadata does — specifically via its FPGAs — giving hope it does more work as well. [...]

]]> By: What does Netezza do in the FPGAs anyway, and other questions | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services http://www.dbms2.com/2009/07/30/netezza-new-product-family/comment-page-1/#comment-134347 What does Netezza do in the FPGAs anyway, and other questions | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services Sat, 08 Aug 2009 09:17:33 +0000 http://www.dbms2.com/?p=852#comment-134347 [...] news of Netezza’s new TwinFin product family has generated a lot of comments and questions, some pretty reasonable, some quite silly. E.g., [...] [...] news of Netezza’s new TwinFin product family has generated a lot of comments and questions, some pretty reasonable, some quite silly. E.g., [...]

]]> By: Curt Monash http://www.dbms2.com/2009/07/30/netezza-new-product-family/comment-page-1/#comment-134237 Curt Monash Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:14:43 +0000 http://www.dbms2.com/?p=852#comment-134237 By the way -- if I did the math right, both Netezza and Oracle have around a 1:1 ratio between cores and spindles. Netezza seems to be right at 2 gigs of RAM per spindle, while Oracle is slightly higher. Netezza also puts in a whole lot of FPGAs. Oracle probably does invest more in networking. So assuming Netezza is putting those FPGAs in there for a substantial purpose, to a first approximation one would assume its performance/TB was nicely higher than Oracle's. By the way — if I did the math right, both Netezza and Oracle have around a 1:1 ratio between cores and spindles. Netezza seems to be right at 2 gigs of RAM per spindle, while Oracle is slightly higher. Netezza also puts in a whole lot of FPGAs. Oracle probably does invest more in networking.

So assuming Netezza is putting those FPGAs in there for a substantial purpose, to a first approximation one would assume its performance/TB was nicely higher than Oracle’s.

]]> By: Curt Monash http://www.dbms2.com/2009/07/30/netezza-new-product-family/comment-page-1/#comment-134235 Curt Monash Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:03:40 +0000 http://www.dbms2.com/?p=852#comment-134235 Meanwhile, I'll be more convinced that Oracle's performance is competitive to Netezza's when I hear some stories of Oracle outperforming Netezza in head-to-head onsite POCs. Nobody should blame Oracle for the business practice of focusing their sales efforts on the deals that are easiest to win -- but people shouldn't also assume that they'd win competitions they actually don't bother to enter. Meanwhile, I’ll be more convinced that Oracle’s performance is competitive to Netezza’s when I hear some stories of Oracle outperforming Netezza in head-to-head onsite POCs.

Nobody should blame Oracle for the business practice of focusing their sales efforts on the deals that are easiest to win — but people shouldn’t also assume that they’d win competitions they actually don’t bother to enter.

]]> By: Curt Monash http://www.dbms2.com/2009/07/30/netezza-new-product-family/comment-page-1/#comment-134228 Curt Monash Fri, 07 Aug 2009 08:31:07 +0000 http://www.dbms2.com/?p=852#comment-134228 Last I checked, Bence had Oracle at somewhere north of $100K/TB uncompressed, while Netezza is sitting just under $45K/TB uncompressed. Oracle's compression seems somewhat more mature than Netezza's, so compression probably narrows the gap somewhat. On the other hand, Netezza uses less space for anything resembling indexes than Oracle does, so that widens it again. Greg is correct that if you keep your installation for, say, 6 years, Oracle's perpetual licenses could save you from buying the software twice. On the other hand, if you go with Oracle, you will over that time be paying higher total maintenance than you do with Netezza. Also, your DBA costs are higher with Oracle than Netezza. That's another factor affecting TCO. Last I checked, Bence had Oracle at somewhere north of $100K/TB uncompressed, while Netezza is sitting just under $45K/TB uncompressed. Oracle’s compression seems somewhat more mature than Netezza’s, so compression probably narrows the gap somewhat. On the other hand, Netezza uses less space for anything resembling indexes than Oracle does, so that widens it again.

Greg is correct that if you keep your installation for, say, 6 years, Oracle’s perpetual licenses could save you from buying the software twice. On the other hand, if you go with Oracle, you will over that time be paying higher total maintenance than you do with Netezza.

Also, your DBA costs are higher with Oracle than Netezza. That’s another factor affecting TCO.

]]> By: Greg Rahn http://www.dbms2.com/2009/07/30/netezza-new-product-family/comment-page-1/#comment-134213 Greg Rahn Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:23:08 +0000 http://www.dbms2.com/?p=852#comment-134213 The $50K/TB number Bence quotes for Exadata is for uncompressed user data where the $20K/TB Netezza number assumes 2.25x compression. The Netezza price per user data TB uncompressed would be $45K (2.25 * $20K). Seemingly the price per Netezza rack has changed only minimally. The TwinFin 12 price is around $1.44M and the NPS 10100 price with the compress engine was around $1.54M (based on the <a href="http://var.immixgroup.com/contracts/gsa70_pricing.cfm?client_id=78&contract=GS-35F-0330J" rel="nofollow">GSA Schedule 70 pricing</a>). The major influence on the reduction of Netezza's price per TB is the result of going from 400GB drives to 1000GB drives, a factor of 2.5x. The performance gains from the new hardware are being quoted around the 2.5x factor as well, so it seems that the TwinFin yields just slightly more performance per TB than the NPS lineup with the exception of compute intensive workloads which quote 10x. I think it is important to not only talk in terms of capacity ($ per TB) but to also include performance per TB as well. It's quite easy to half the price per TB simply by doubling the drive capacity but doing so yields zero gains in performance. Not to go into a pricing deep dive but I think the other notable is that Oracle gives perpetual software licenses and Netezza does not. This means that it will cost the Oracle customer much less on hardware upgrades. A current Netezza NPS 10100 customer upgrading to a TwinFin 12 will result in a $1.54M + $1.44M = $2.98M cost. A current Oracle Database Machine customer upgrading to the next generation hardware incurs only the hardware cost (assuming the same CPU and HDD count) which seems to me to make the cost more favorable toward Oracle even with the cost of the DB licenses. The $50K/TB number Bence quotes for Exadata is for uncompressed user data where the $20K/TB Netezza number assumes 2.25x compression. The Netezza price per user data TB uncompressed would be $45K (2.25 * $20K). Seemingly the price per Netezza rack has changed only minimally. The TwinFin 12 price is around $1.44M and the NPS 10100 price with the compress engine was around $1.54M (based on the GSA Schedule 70 pricing). The major influence on the reduction of Netezza’s price per TB is the result of going from 400GB drives to 1000GB drives, a factor of 2.5x. The performance gains from the new hardware are being quoted around the 2.5x factor as well, so it seems that the TwinFin yields just slightly more performance per TB than the NPS lineup with the exception of compute intensive workloads which quote 10x. I think it is important to not only talk in terms of capacity ($ per TB) but to also include performance per TB as well. It’s quite easy to half the price per TB simply by doubling the drive capacity but doing so yields zero gains in performance.

Not to go into a pricing deep dive but I think the other notable is that Oracle gives perpetual software licenses and Netezza does not. This means that it will cost the Oracle customer much less on hardware upgrades. A current Netezza NPS 10100 customer upgrading to a TwinFin 12 will result in a $1.54M + $1.44M = $2.98M cost. A current Oracle Database Machine customer upgrading to the next generation hardware incurs only the hardware cost (assuming the same CPU and HDD count) which seems to me to make the cost more favorable toward Oracle even with the cost of the DB licenses.

]]> By: Curt Monash http://www.dbms2.com/2009/07/30/netezza-new-product-family/comment-page-1/#comment-134212 Curt Monash Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:10:38 +0000 http://www.dbms2.com/?p=852#comment-134212 Bence, I don't hear much about anybody targeting non-Oracle accounts, except for web-only businesses. That's because there aren't all that many large non-Oracle accounts, again except for web-only businesses. :) Bence,

I don’t hear much about anybody targeting non-Oracle accounts, except for web-only businesses. That’s because there aren’t all that many large non-Oracle accounts, again except for web-only businesses. :)

]]> By: Bence Arató http://www.dbms2.com/2009/07/30/netezza-new-product-family/comment-page-1/#comment-134211 Bence Arató Fri, 07 Aug 2009 06:56:52 +0000 http://www.dbms2.com/?p=852#comment-134211 Curt, the hardware of the DB tier is included in the $650.000. The Database Machine is a full hardware package, including Exadata units, DB processing units, interconnets, etc. As I see it, Oracle pricing strategy makes sense for the first scenario (upgrade of an existing DW, when the DB licenses are already have been purchased). The $50.000/TB price point is in line with other vendors's pricing - or was before last week :-) - and the customer can keep the familiar, all-Oracle DW environment. No migrations, no new vendor, quite small technology change etc. Competing for and winning new DW business against the other MPP appliance vendors is another matter. I don't really think Oracle actively target this sector as of now. Do you hear news from the other vendors about Oracle competing with them in new accounts? Curt,

the hardware of the DB tier is included in the $650.000. The Database Machine is a full hardware package, including Exadata units, DB processing units, interconnets, etc.

As I see it, Oracle pricing strategy makes sense for the first scenario (upgrade of an existing DW, when the DB licenses are already have been purchased). The $50.000/TB price point is in line with other vendors’s pricing – or was before last week :-) – and the customer can keep the familiar, all-Oracle DW environment. No migrations, no new vendor, quite small technology change etc.

Competing for and winning new DW business against the other MPP appliance vendors is another matter. I don’t really think Oracle actively target this sector as of now. Do you hear news from the other vendors about Oracle competing with them in new accounts?

]]> By: Curt Monash http://www.dbms2.com/2009/07/30/netezza-new-product-family/comment-page-1/#comment-134174 Curt Monash Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:10:31 +0000 http://www.dbms2.com/?p=852#comment-134174 Bence, The higher figure makes a lot more sense, because a lot of the processing is being done on the DBMS tier. Indeed, the hardware on that tier is also a consideration. So basically, we're back in the territory of my post late last September. :) Thanks, CAM Bence,

The higher figure makes a lot more sense, because a lot of the processing is being done on the DBMS tier.

Indeed, the hardware on that tier is also a consideration.

So basically, we’re back in the territory of my post late last September. :)

Thanks,

CAM

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