Guest Blogger: John Fruehe, Director of Product Marketing for Server/Workstation prod

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Microsoft and AMD – Delivering Enhanced Value to SQL Server Customers

Congratulations to Microsoft on the RTM of Microsoft® SQL Server 2008 R2! Matched with our new AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series platform we have a combination that delivers real value to the database market.

I remember a time when “value” meant “cheap” and that as a marketing person “value” was a word that you used with consumers and not with commercial customers. Then the latest economic crisis happened 2008 - 2009.

Suddenly, with the market plunging and significant business challenges all around, people started looking for value. They wanted more for their money – especially when saving budget dollars on hardware might mean that they were able to keep more heads on their staff to keep business critical applications running.

When we introduced the new AMD Opteron™ 6100 series processor (codenamed “Magny-Cours”), we brought a new level of value to the market. By making our 2P capable processors also capable of supporting 4P systems, we eliminated the “4P tax,” and everyone assumed that when we talked about value, we were speaking only to the 4P space. In fact, you might have read my blog detailing the concept of the value 4P. But in reality, the 2P market has plenty of new value being delivered as well.

A great example of this value is the new HP ProLiant DL385 G7, a 2U powerhouse that provides superior price/performance for On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) with Microsoft SQL Server. In fact, HP recently posted an industry leading TPC-E benchmark, which is commonly used to evaluate performance for OLTP environments:

• System: HP ProLiant DL385G7
• Throughput: 887.38
• Price/Performance: $296 USD per tpsE
• Total System Cost: $262,023USD (as tested)
• Database Software: Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition
• Operating System: Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition
• Server Processors: 2/AMD /AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6176 SE

These results highlight a significant value as the cost per tpsE for this configuration is currently the best in the industry. This result demonstrates the strength of the HP platform when combined with the AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.

The key here is not the raw performance, but price/performance. Customers today aren’t always buying exclusively raw performance. Often the real decision vectors are price, power consumption and performance. And if you ask most customers (as I have) you find that price and power are often the key metrics with raw performance often being a very distant third.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 is a great example of software that can easily use the 12 core capability and large memory footprint of the AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform. The latest version of Microsoft SQL Server offers a complete approach to managing, accessing and delivering information across the organization along with leveraging the advanced power management features of Windows Server 2008 R2.

AMD is working with Microsoft to change the value equation for databases. We are proud to be a platinum sponsor of the SQL Server 2008 R2 Digital tour – make sure you check it out for information about a launch event coming to a city near you.

John Fruehe is the Director of Product Marketing for Server/Workstation products at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.





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