Niagara2 (UltraSPARC T2) Information

[Nehemoth]

Hello people.

First I was looking the IT forums of Anandtech but I couldn't find it.

Anyway, here in our company are planing to buy a new server which came with this processor, Niagara2 (UltraSPARC T2) which I know have very poor single threaded performance but I also had read a lot of things against it.

So in this case this server will be use for a Oracle 11g database (ASM include ) with Solaris 10, actually this db is handled by an old Sunfire v880.

So my question are as follows :

First, what things about our db I should know to see if the T2 can handle it.

and second anyway I guess that as the db is currently being handled by a v880, the assumption that a T2 would handle the load much better is accurate, right?.

Thank you

 

[klocwerk]

Probably better off finding a Sun related forum, Anandtech's not terribly useful for enterprise IT questions. Oracle's got strong ties to Sun/Solaris architecture, so you may be better off with the UltraSPARC in that instance than you would for, say, an MSSQL DB server.

I'd check out forums.sun.com, Spiceworks' Sun forum, etc. and see what you can find on that.

 

[soccerballtux]

Hello people.

First I was looking the IT forums of Anandtech but I couldn't find it.

Anyway, here in our company are planing to buy a new server which came with this processor, Niagara2 (UltraSPARC T2) which I know have very poor single threaded performance but I also had read a lot of things against it.

So in this case this server will be use for a Oracle 11g database (ASM include ) with Solaris 10, actually this db is handled by an old Sunfire v880.

So my question are as follows :

First, what things about our db I should know to see if the T2 can handle it.

and second anyway I guess that as the db is currently being handled by a v880, the assumption that a T2 would handle the load much better is accurate, right?.

Thank you

What do they pay DBAs 100k+ for if they don't know their own trade?

 

[Nehemoth]

Probably better off finding a Sun related forum, Anandtech's not terribly useful for enterprise IT questions. Oracle's got strong ties to Sun/Solaris architecture, so you may be better off with the UltraSPARC in that instance than you would for, say, an MSSQL DB server.

I'd check out forums.sun.com, Spiceworks' Sun forum, etc. and see what you can find on that.

Thank you for the answer.

 

[Nehemoth]

What do they pay DBAs 100k+ for if they don't know their own trade?

Thank you my friend but that isn't our reality.

First I'm not a DBA, I'm just like hardware and like to give the extra mile investigating when I hear something that will change in our department.

Second I live in a Third World country so actually our salary is far from a 100K+ but thank you for the desire.

:-D

And please excuse my poor English which isn't actually my main language.

 

[soccerballtux]

Thank you my friend but that isn't our reality.

First I'm not a DBA, I'm just like hardware and like to give the extra mile investigating when I hear something that will change in our department.

Second I live in a Third World country so actually our salary is far from a 100K+ but thank you for the desire.

:-D

And please excuse my poor English which isn't actually my main language.

gotcha

 

[Phynaz]

You don't know enough about the application properties to make any decisions about how it would run on any particular hardware.

I'm assuming you don't have any third party analysis tools?

 

[aigomorla]

The extent of our forum and Enterprise gear would be limited to Xeon's and Opterons.

Things like Cray, Sun, and Itaniums are just to rare to begin with.

Id listen to Kloc's advice and find a forum for Sun.

 

[heyheybooboo]

SUN White Paper (PDF file)

Reference arch on page 9.
Best practices start on page 22.





--

 

[Markfw]

Then there is always IBM. We have a P595 with 32 processors, and 1 TB ram. It handles our 60 TB database (Oracle) just fine. Nice to have 800 gig in the SGA.....

 

[atari030]

Anyway, here in our company are planing to buy a new server which came with this processor, Niagara2 (UltraSPARC T2) which I know have very poor single threaded performance but I also had read a lot of things against it.

So in this case this server will be use for a Oracle 11g database (ASM include ) with Solaris 10, actually this db is handled by an old Sunfire v880.

So my question are as follows :

First, what things about our db I should know to see if the T2 can handle it.

and second anyway I guess that as the db is currently being handled by a v880, the assumption that a T2 would handle the load much better is accurate, right?.

I'm a UNIX admin and manage all manner of IBM POWER and Sun SPARC gear. The question would be, what are the specs of your current V880 (# processors/speed, memory) and what are the specs of the new T-series machine you're looking at buying (which model machine, what config)?

For a database which requires a large number of concurrent transactions going on, which doesn't mandate the quickest response times, the UltraSPARC T2/T2+ would actually be a great fit. For something that requires fast performance/response with lower thread count, not so much.

Considering the fact (with the largest T-series machien) that you can get a 4-way, 8-core/CPU system with each core handling 8 threads....that's 256 parallel threads that can be handled at once. To the operating system, this actually appears as 256 individual CPUs (psrinfo -v). In a 4U box, pretty nice.

The question comes down to your database and app. Does it require a consistently moving 12-lane highway at 55mph, or a couple express lanes at 155 mph? The T-class processors are designed with high-volume traffic, internet/web type of applications in mind where large throughput is seen and needs to be handled. It also works well for certain databases, depending on the type of processing going on.

Regardless, yes, other forums that this are best for discussion of this type of hardware.