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Altogether, with CapEx and OpEx totaled over a three-year period, a two-socket Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd server with 36 cores and 576 GB of memory provides up to 31 percent lower three-year TCO than a two-socket IBM Power System S924 server with 24 cores and 1,536 GB of memory (see Figure 3).4
The TCO comparison between systems running four-socket servers was also informative. A four-socket Dell EMC PowerEdge R940 with 72 cores and 1,152 GB of memory supplies up to 36 percent lower three-year TCO than a four- socket IBM Power System E950 with 48 cores and 3,072 GB of memory (see Figure 4).5
Figure 3. Normalized comparisons of three-year TCO for two-socket IBM® Power® Systems and Dell Technologies™ servers (lower is better)
Figure 4. Normalized comparisons of three-year TCO for four-socket IBM® Power® Systems and Dell Technologies™ servers (lower is better)
Prowess was also interested in whether a four-socket Dell Technologies server could provide lower TCO for enterprise businesses over a three-year period compared to a two-server, two-socket Dell Technologies cluster. As shown in Figure 5, the four-socket system offered nearly identical TCO, because the Oracle licensing cost outweighed hardware and other software expenses. That suggests, however, that the Dell EMC PowerEdge R940 offers a better long-term value, because it provides scale-up capabilities to support changing business needs over time. In addition, administrators would need to manage fewer servers with a four-socket system compared to a 2 x two-socket cluster.
Figure 5. Normalized three-year TCO comparison of a two-server cluster of two-socket Dell EMC™ PowerEdge™ servers and a single four-socket Dell EMC PowerEdge server
For organizations looking to achieve both scale-up and scale-out capabilities, the TCO gains for a 2 x four-socket Dell Technologies platform would essentially be the same as the single four-socket server comparison in Figure 1. This assumes that the hardware, software, and support costs would roughly double from the single-server scenario. A four-socket Dell Technologies cluster offers organizations the higher reliability of an Oracle RAC configuration at a much lower hardware, software, and Oracle licensing cost than a comparable IBM Power Systems four-socket cluster.
4 $158,079 for the IBM® Power® System S924 versus $28,024 for the Dell EMC™ PowerEdge™ R740xd. IBM price provided to Prowess Consulting May 6, 2020, and is for an IBM Power System S924 running 2 x 12-core IBM® POWER9™ processors and 6 x 64 GB DDR4 memory. Dell pricing provided to Prowess Consulting December 4, 2020, and is for 2 x 18-core Intel® Xeon® Gold 6240 processors and 12 x 16 GB plus 12 x 32 GB DRAM..
5 $608,422 for the IBM® Power® System E950 versus $57,619 for Dell EMC™ PowerEdge™ R940. IBM price provided to Prowess Consulting May 6, 2020, and is for an IBM Power System E950 running 4 x 12-core IBM® POWER9™ processors and 48 x 64 GB DDR4 memory. Dell pricing provided to Prowess Consulting December 4, 2020 and is for 4 x 24-core Intel® Xeon® Gold 6240 processors with 24 x 16 GB plus 24 x 32 GB DRAM.