Re: Server shipments [was Re: Minutes from Feb 21 LSE Call]

Gerrit Huizenga
2003-02-25T22:57:31Z

On Mon, 24 Feb 2003 20:17:01 PST, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 08:11:21PM -0800, Martin J. Bligh wrote:
> > > What part of "all servers from all companies" did you not understand?
> >
> > Average price from Dell: $2495
> > Average price overall: $9347
> >
> > Conclusion ... Dell makes cheaper servers than average, presumably smaller.
>
> So how many CPUs do you think you get in a $9K server?

Did the numbers track add-on prices, as opposed to base server? Most
servers are sold with one CPU and lots of extra slots. Need to dig
down to the add-on data to find upgrades to more CPUs and more memory
in the field (and more disk drives).

> Better yet, since you work for IBM, how many servers do they ship in a year
> with 16 CPUs?

Proprietary data, unfortunately. And I'm not sure if even internally
the totals are rolled up as pSeries, xSeries, zSeries, iSeries, etc. and
broken down by linux/aix/NT/VM/etc. Nor do most big companies efficiently
track the size of a machine at a customer site after hardware upgrades
(I know for Sequent this in particular was a painful problem - sold a
two way and supported an 18-way machine later).

gerrit