Maybe I live in my own delusional world or something.
I received an email from a vendor offering to move Lotus Notes customers to the cloud. They showcased a case study which had a client move to cloud-based Google Apps, GMail, Google Calendar and GTalk.
The client originally had 32,000 users and 6,000
applications running on 250 servers. Two hundred and fifty servers! Is that what it's like in the x86-64 world? I'm honestly not being facetious...I just don't know.
That's 38,000 applications and mail files, so about 152 total per server. No wonder the client was looking for a simpler solution.
A few years ago, IBM released some benchmark tests using it's then-current low-end System i model 520 and 4 Lotus Domino 6.0.3 servers. Here's the details:
24,000 concurrent Lotus Notes mail and calendar users.
System i model 520-8966 (2 x 1.5 GHz POWER5 processors)
32 GB memory
53 x 35GB disk drives
4 partitioned Lotus Domino 6.0.3 servers. "Partitioned" Domino on IBM i means servers running in separate subsystems, not a separate instances of the operating system.
24,000 concurrent mail and calendar users? The average response time was 92 milliseconds.
In those benchmarks, there were bigger machines taking on 175,000 concurrent mail users but I'll compare at the low-end boxes because of the large SMB install base for IBM i.
Now tell me, do you think a modern low-end IBM Power 720 Express running IBM i 7.1 with a similar configuration could handle 38,000 users concurrently with similar response times? You'd have to use bigger drives (35GB aren't produced anymore) and I'd personally double the memory, but I think it would. In fact, I bet it would. I would just love IBM to come out with some new benchmark tests using Lotus Domino 8.5.3 and modern Power7 hardware. The combination of performance improvements in both IBM i and Lotus Domino plus the new blazingly fast Power7 systems would probably blow these results out of the water.
Am I delusional? Or am I just using a solid, working solution that can scale to unmatched heights? Migrate to Google Apps? Why the heck would I do something like that?
If you're looking to leverage your existing investment in IBM, simplify management, reduce overhead/costs and consolidate your servers then you need to take a look at IBM i on Power Systems running IBM Lotus Domino. There is no better combination.
If you're looking for a cloud-based solution, IBM has one! It's called IBM SmartCloud for Social Business.
You are assuming that all 250 servers are in a single location to compare to consolidating to a single physical server.
ReplyDeleteNot necessarily Chris. 250 servers spread out over 10 datacenters in 5 states? 250 in one state? 250 worldwide? The case study didn't mention that, as far as I read.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm getting at is the scalability of that one server.
250 SERVERS? Go figure the cost of purchasing them, setup, software, time, then you can check the same concept on a POwer system. I know what I would go for: POWER.
ReplyDeleteSteve, what are the criteria for notes bench to produce those numbers. If it based on the default of a user accessing email via notes webmail and reading email 4x per hour and sending 1 message every 90 minutes. It might be somewhat dated for the modern enterprise.
ReplyDeleteBy the way as someone who has tried to use notes webmail, give me google any day.
ReplyDelete