The Four Hundred--Gartner Updates Server Platform Rankings

Analysts at Gartner have put out an updated application server evaluation model that any prospective server buyer should take a gander at. Back in January, I went through the prior Gartner server comparison and lamented that Gartner had not yet added Linux systems to the comparison. With the latest model, a Linux is ranked next to big SMP boxes like the iSeries.

First, you should get a copy of the model yourself while it is still available online. Hewlett-Packard, which is gleeful that its Superdome servers are ranked second only to IBM's zSeries mainframe servers and are just ahead of IBM's pSeries Unix and iSeries OS/400 servers (which were ranked third and fourth respectively), has been pointing to a reprint of the server report on the Gartner site.

The server evaluation model is a more formal version of a spreadsheet-based ranking that Gartner's server analysts built for their own internal use starting in 1999, to help gauge the relative strengths and weaknesses of various server platforms. The company has published seven updates of that server model, the past several of which have been available to the public and to Gartner customers, provided they know where to look for them.

The most recent Gartner server evaluation model is dated September 8, 2003, and is comprised of raw server rankings in 26 categories that are grouped into four major areas. For each server running a specific operating system, such as an iSeries running OS/400 V5 or an Intel-based server running Windows 2000, each category is given a raw rating of between 1 and 10. The total raw best rating that any server could have is 260 points. However, since different technology factors, market dynamics, and vendor/channel business practices are more or less important, depending on how a server platform is used, this raw data is weighted by Gartner analysts to rank servers for different workloads. Gartner has created rankings for OLTP, ERP, and data warehousing workloads, and it could easily create one for various infrastructure workloads as well. This Gartner server evaluation model, and the one that we cited for the January story in this newsletter, were both generated for OLTP workloads, the very kind that are the bread-and-butter jobs done at OS/400 shops.

Because comparing all the different servers from all of the vendors would be time-consuming, the Gartner server comparison model looks only at the flagship machine available in each category from each vendor. With the HP-Compaq merger, Gartner knocked out the Compaq AlphaServer running its Tru64 Unix from the comparisons, for instance. There's nothing wrong with this machine, except that HP has sunsetted the product and will stop selling it in a few years. In the past, Gartner kept proprietary midrange and mainframe servers and Unix servers in one section of the report, and discussed generic Intel platforms and 32-way Intel-based boxes from Unisys separately, using slightly different criteria. This time around, all the servers are put side by side and can be cross-examined. This is exactly the kind of comparison that vendors love when they are winning and hate when they are losing, but IT managers have to make these assessments no matter how the vendors feel, so Gartner is sticking its neck out a bit here.

The three broad areas that Gartner ranked servers by in the prior server rankings were related to technology, market momentum, and business practices. With this study, Gartner added manageability as a fourth category.

The key differentiator on OLTP workloads, says Gartner, is support, where there were some differences, which explains why the ratings for OLTP workloads vary significantly across the platforms, even though the business practices category did not have much variance across those seven categories.

When the raw Gartner server model was adapted for OLTP workloads, IBM's zSeries 900 mainframe got a rating of 205 on technology, 220 on manageability, 193 on market momentum, and 194 on business practices, giving it an overall score of 812. The zSeries had the top ranking in the technology and manageability categories among the dozen machines compared in the model, and was third behind its own pSeries 690 and iSeries 890 "Regatta" machines when it came to business practices. When it came to market momentum, the zSeries did not do as well as Windows or Unix platforms.

The number-two overall machine was the HP Superdome, which had a respectable market momentum and business practices ratings of 245 and 183, fell quite a bit short of the IBM zSeries in technology and manageability, with ratings of 159 and 169 in those categories. Nonetheless, Superdome ranked second among all the servers, with a total score of 756.

The IBM Power platforms, the pSeries and iSeries, were ranked third and fourth respectively, with composite ratings of 745 and 741. Oddly enough--or at least to people not familiar with OS/400 and the iSeries--the Model 890 server had much higher technology and manageability ratings than the pSeries 690 platform that is based on the same basic server iron. A server is more than its hardware, and OS/400 shops know that. However, the pSeries 690 had a very high market momentum rating, which more than made up for its shortcomings as a platform in this Gartner ranking. IBM's business practice rankings for the two platforms were essentially the same.

Number five in the Gartner ranking this time around, with a score of 721, was the Fujitsu-Siemens PrimePower 2500 server, which is a 128-way RISC/Unix box that has one of the fastest processors in the world and which runs the Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 operating systems. Sun Microsystems' own 72-way Sun Fire 15000 servers came in sixth, with a composite ranking of 687. The Sun Fire server was given higher marks than the Fujitsu-Siemens box in terms of market momentum, but it came up short compared with the clone machines in the other areas, particular in the technology and business practices area. Sun's UltraSparc-III processor came to market 18 to 24 months late, and it shows in these numbers and in the company's financial results. HP's NonStop 86000 fault-tolerant Unix server cluster line, which was sold under the Tandem brand name before that company was eaten by the former Compaq, in 1996, was just behind Sun's "StarCat" 15K server, with a ranking of 677. The NonStop servers have the second-best ranking when it comes to technology, with a score of 201. The machines are ranked acceptably in terms of manageability and HP's business practices concerning these servers, but it is the lack of market momentum that pulls them down. The NonStops, at a rating of 127, have the lowest market momentum among the 12 machines compared by Gartner.

Among the Windows-based servers, IBM's xSeries 440 servers had a composite score of 644, narrowly beating out HP's ProLiant platform, which had a score of 636. HP got higher scores than IBM for manageability and market momentum, but IBM got higher scores for technology and business practices. The Unisys ES7000 Orion servers had a score of 609, and had marks in some areas that were akin to those of much more expensive RISC/Unix servers in the comparison. But the Dell PowerEdge platform, which didn't score so well when it came to technology and manageability, inched out ahead of the Unisys ES7000, with a score of 611, thanks to a rating of 265 on market momentum.

Last and apparently least, that brings us to a Linux cluster running Red Hat's Enterprise Linux AS and Oracle's Oracle9i Real Application Cluster parallel and cluster-enabled database. This is the first time Gartner has added a Linux-based machine to the server comparison model, and it says that the relative immaturity of this Linux-RAC combo and the dearth of management tools for Linux clusters (at least compared with what is available with mainframe, OS/400, and Unix servers) are what give such a Linux cluster a poor score of 459. The Linux cluster ranked worst in three out of four categories, in fact: 84 on technology, 83 on manageability, and 124 on business practices. And with a market momentum of 168, it was barely ahead of the HP NonStop machines. It would be foolish to think that Linux will stay at the rear in the rankings, especially as Oracle 10G, and improved versions of Linux, with the 2.6 kernel release, come to market. As customers gain experience with clustered relational databases and Linux and the technology matures, you'll see Linux rise through the rankings. That said, Linux has a long way to go to beat the top-end iSeries, even if an entry Linux server can beat the tar out of an entry iSeries server on most measures.

And that brings me to my final point: the biggest server in any product line or platform choice is not always the best way to rank machines against one another. If Gartner really wanted to do something useful, it would create different server evaluation models for entry, midrange, and high-end servers to show how different platforms stack up in different parts of the market.

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