Oracle OPS moving from rp7400 to rp4440

[Joseph Salzer_3]

Hi all,

I have a customer that is looking to move from their existing rp7400 to newer technology. They currently have (4) rp7400s, configured as (2) 2 node OPS clusters. The rp7400s have (8) x 550MHz CPUs. Based on TPM ratings we are planning to propose rp4440-4way 1000MHz to replace the rp7400s. Even with only (2) dual core CPUs the rp4440's TPM rating is much higher than the rp7400.

The problem I have is that the customer is questioning whether the smaller number of CPUs on the rp4440 will hurt their performance. I am searching for a document or information which can confirm whether or not OPS performance will be worse on the rp4440s than it currently is.

Anyone has any feedback?

Thanks

[Steven E. Protter]

The Dual Core CPU's will probably help negate the issue of having less CPU's. That and the fact that rp4400 CPU's have a faster internal clock speed.

Note: At HP World 2004, I asked an Oracle Rep in public if a dual core CPU counts as one CPU for oracle licensing or two. He/She said two.

Last I checked and unlimited user oracle database server license ran $40,000 per CPU and Oracle's equivalent application server license ran $20,000/CPU.

Now with npar/vpar configuration, you can slave two CPU's to Oracle and let the other two perform other functions, but there are significatn license issues to be dealt with.

Note that TPM scores are not necessarily realistic tests. They are tests designed to make the marketing department happy. You might want to check with Oracle and see what they think about the performance situation.

You might also want to take an Ignite Golden image fo the current system into an HP Performance Center and see how the current application and data perform on an rp4440 server. In order to move hardware, your HP rep should be able to arrange an performance center visit.

SEP

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

This is one of those classic "it depends" situations. The very first thing you need to do is get some metrics on the current performance. In almost every case, Oracle applications are I/O bound, then memory bound, and finally CPU bound. In many cases, I've seen boxes with comparable i/o subsystems and memory but vastly different CPU's (in number and clock speed) perform almost exactly the same because the CPU was such a small portion of the database load. If at present, the CPU only accounts for perhaps 10-15% of the total application real time then even a 2X CPU shift in either direction won't make that much of a difference. I suspect you are going to see rather comparable performance as long as the underlying i/o subsystems are comparable.