News

Unisys Tests 64-bit Windows System on SAP Benchmark

Unisys used 64-bit Itanium 2 processors and a 16-processor server to push the performance envelope of Windows-based systems on SAP's Sales and Distribution benchmark by 250 percent, the company announced this week. When compared against larger Unix/RISC systems, however, the result ranks 10th overall and is 17 percent as scalable as the best result.

The benchmark involved is the two-tier SAP SD benchmark, which is controlled by the ERP giant SAP. It is widely used as a proving ground for different hardware and software vendors. A major limitation is that unlike the Transaction Processing Performance Council benchmarks, the SAP benchmark doesn't show system costs.

Unisys did a lot of tests of its 32-processor ES7000 on SAP's three-tier SD benchmark, but the new Itanium 2 result is the large server's first run against the two-tier version of the benchmark. The two-tier benchmark is designed to approximate the environment of a centralized Internet-based system.

The test configuration involved a Unisys ES7000 Aries 130 configured with 16 Intel Itanium 2 processors (1-GHz with 3 MB of L3 cache) and 64 GB of RAM. Microsoft 64-bit software included Windows .NET Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, and SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition.

Unisys achieved 1340 concurrent SAP standard application SD users. The company noted that the result was the best non-clustered showing for a Unix or Windows server with fewer than 24 processors.

The top result on this particular benchmark was published by Fujitsu Siemens in January. A 128-processor system running Solaris 8 and Oracle9i supported 7,800 users. The best Windows result, prior to the Unisys run, involved an 8-way IBM eServer xSeries 440, that hit 520 SAP users in March. IBM ran the benchmark with 1.6-GHz Xeon processors, Windows 2000 and DB2 Universal Database version 7.2.

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

Featured

  • Microsoft Appoints Althoff as New CEO for Commercial Business

    Microsoft CEO and chairman Satya Nadella on Wednesday announced the promotion of Judson Althoff to CEO of the company's commercial business, presenting the move as a response to the dramatic industrywide shifts caused by AI.

  • Broadcom Revamps VMware Partner Program Again

    Broadcom recently announced a significant update regarding its VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program, coinciding with the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, a key component in Broadcom’s private cloud strategy.

  • Closeup of the new Copilot keyboard key

    Microsoft Updates Copilot To Add Context-Sensitive Agents to Teams, SharePoint

    Microsoft has rolled out a new public preview for collaborative "always on" agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing enhanced, context-aware tools into Teams channels, meetings, SharePoint sites, Planner workstreams and Viva Engage communities.

  • Windows 365 Cloud Apps Now Available for Public Preview

    Microsoft announced this week that Windows 365 Cloud Apps are now available for public preview. This aims to allow IT administrators to stream individual Windows applications from the cloud, removing the need to assign Cloud PCs to every user.