Thinking Inside the Box

RE: "Netezza Underground" - NPS at your bookstore

dbirmingham — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:06:14 GMT

Hey, thanks for the feedback.

RE: Setting the Record Straight

karinakarina3 — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:15:59 GMT

Crodgers - great comment! I would encourage you to comment on Greg's blog too, like Mark did. Your points are very valid and they should be heard!

RE: Setting the Record Straight

crodgers — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:38:07 GMT

I see the point that the blogger is making, but he is not looking at it from a customer's perspective. I think most corporations look at it from the business case to upgrade. It is based on current in-house conditions (can't make batch load windows anymore, monthly sales analysis takes too long, customers are waiting for answers that should be quicker based on perception, etc). So, businesses will shop around for what fits their needs and the comparisons are against what they currently have. I think that is fair in the sense that it tells you what your new capability will be with the new hardware/software/whatever (lessened batch window by x hours, reports in x fewer days, etc). If Oracle doesn't want to benchmark and claim stats on systems they have replaced, then that is their (marketing) loss.

A much bigger point not mentioned by the blogger, but brought up in a response and here is cost. That is where you can show a whole other side to the comparisons. Go ahead and think of the challenge... get two systems that are a "fair comparison" on a hardware level. Can that be done? NZ has 1:1 cpu to disk store. Is that comparable to HP/O DM? Some could argue not, since there is not the same ratio in DM. But, let's get over that (otherwise there will never be a fair comparison).

If you could build out a comparable machine/system that could perform the same throughput as the NZ server, see how they perform. Spewing data is only a part of the process. Intelligently selecting the relevant data to deliver is a bigger part. Tools to help that part of the process can be costly on some systems (indexes, preaggregated tables, etc) - costly in both size/footprint and maintenance.

So, let's say we can build a comparable system that can hold the same amount of user data (let's say a 5 TB fact table - not too small, yet not the biggest out there), and perform queries at about the same rate, and deliver data at about the same rate. It would be everyone's "latest and greatest". IF you can get these great comparable systems together, what would the comparison be like in terms of

1) footprint (racks),

2) logistical cost (electric and cooling),

3) operational cost (number of experienced DBAs, time/bandwidth/cycles spend keeping the data in order, etc), and, oh yes

4) purchase cost (both initial and annual maintenance)?

Where would various vendors stand on these points? Would that be a fair comparison? Would it take IBM 8 times the footprint and 5-10 times the annual cost to perform the same as a comparable NPS? Would it take Oracle 4 times the footprint and 5 times the annual cost to produce the same performance as an NPS?

Food for thought...

RE: Setting the Record Straight

crodgers — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:59:25 GMT

Actually, "The Power to Question Everything"(TM) IS a slogan from Netezza. It is still on the splash screen of the NPS Admin Gui (4.5.2p4) and it is on literature from slide presentations to educational documentation. It looks like it was recently shortened to "Question Everything"(TM).

RE: "Netezza Underground" - NPS at your bookstore

shawn_ramsey — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:26:38 GMT

I was exited to order the book after reading your blog. I have been looking for a while for some 3rd party book that I could pass onto my colleagues when they wanted to know more about the Netezza. Unfortunately, I guess I am still looking for that book. After spending a week of commutes trying read the book and work through my issues with the ranting and author's humor I have given up on it. There are good and valid points and observations sprinkled through the book but they are they are lost in the other "stuff".

RE: Setting the Record Straight

jlowNZ — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:16:12 GMT

Speaking of things to question....For someone who claims to have done "investigative research" on Netezza, I would imagine a good, first place to go might have been Netezza.com. However, it's clear that didn't happen. Then Greg would have quickly seen our slogan is not "The Power to Question Everything," as he claims.

RE: Setting the Record Straight

mboyd — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:03:46 GMT

After reading this article and then the article from Greg, I felt compelled to add a comment to his blog. I believe that we could have gotten our "old" Oracle database to perform as well as our Netezza NPS 10100 now does (an average of 54x better than the "old" system) by upgrading our existing server to something MUCH bigger and tuning our Oracle database better. That, however, would have cost us at least 5x the money that the NPS did and that just didn't make sense to us. Thanks for pointing out Greg's article us - I think his article has some very valid points, but as a satisfied Netezza customer I felt compelled to provide insight into our rationale for moving from Oracle to Netezza. Thanks again.

RE: Oracle’s Entry to the DWA Community – just some of the Snarkalicious Commentary

ddas — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:15:13 GMT

How does EXADATA/Database Machine compare to Netezza DW Appliance on per terabyte pricing?

RE: Issue 19: The Compress Engine - The Netezza Philosophy

spotnis — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:41:49 GMT

To the admin,

It seems everytime I read a new announcement from Netezza I expect a paradigm shift and the compress engine lives up to the expectations.

On a separate note, having heard Kurt Vonnegut's audio collection, the quote at the top of the page cracked me up.

-Sandeep

RE: Issue 14: And then there were none...

William Jones — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:00:16 GMT

What of MicroStrategy? They appear to be playing up their independence in recent marketing.