ACADEMIA
Sun & Greenplum Launch Open Source Data Warehouse Appliance for BI
Sun Microsystems and Greenplum today unveiled a data warehouse appliance built from open source software and general purpose systems. Powered by the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) and PostgreSQL, both the mature product of open source development, this breakthrough solution aims to deliver two orders of magnitude better price-performance over the competition. As one of the first data warehouse appliances from a major systems vendor, the solution combines Sun's new "Thumper" Sun Fire X4500 data server powered by Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors with Greenplum's massively parallel distribution of PostgreSQL, Bizgres MPP, in a single turnkey appliance capable of analyzing hundreds of terabytes of business data at a better price-performance than virtually any product on the market. The data warehouse appliance capitalizes on the incredibly high data throughput and storage density of the Sun Fire X4500 x64 server with AMD Opteron processors and Greenplum's Scale-Everything parallel database architecture to move processing near the storage, dramatically boosting performance 10 to 50 times over existing systems. With its unique Query-In-Storage design, the solution is capable of scanning 1 terabyte of data in 60 seconds and can easily scale to hundreds of terabytes of usable database capacity. The data warehouse system is also one of the most energy efficient solutions in the industry, at only 90W per terabyte. 
"This data warehouse appliance demonstrates the power of open source and general purpose computing, truly driving new economics for data analysis. It will definitely make our customers and competitors sit up and take notice," said John Fowler, executive vice president of the Systems Group at Sun Microsystems. "The lightning-fast performance of this solution also makes it a snap for companies to manage ever-increasing amounts of data on their networks." "Greenplum's mission is to enable companies to manage massive amounts of information, and to make it all useful. This is the first appliance in the industry that can actually help to make that possible," said Scott Yara, president of Greenplum. "We are excited to be working with Sun. As the leading systems company in the world, they are the perfect company to revolutionize the data warehouse appliance market and finally deliver on the promise of Business Intelligence in the enterprise." "MLB.com has consistently pushed the limits of technology, in order to support our diverse fan base worldwide. As we collect data about every single pitch, over the course of 2430 games each year, the power necessary to analyze and make available that data has become incredibly important," said Justin Shaffer, SVP of New Media, MLB Advanced Media. "The new data warehouse appliance from Sun and Greenplum is incredibly exciting and has the potential to open up new ways in which MLB.com can share information with our customers and partners." The system is powered by Solaris 10, the most advanced operating system on the planet, taking full advantage of Solaris(TM) ZFS 1.0, the world's most advanced file system. Solaris ZFS is based on a transactional object model that removes most of the traditional constraints associated to I/O operations, resulting in huge performance gains. In addition, the solution offers the following key benefits: -- Performance -- Massively parallel processing, made possible by the performance advantages of the AMD Opteron processor with Direct Connect Architecture, leverages a high-performance interconnect and moves processing to where the data resides. 10-50x the performance over traditional data warehouse solutions in both query and data loading. -- Openness -- Powered by best-in-class open source software including the Solaris Operating System, PostgreSQL, and Solaris ZFS. Supports industry standards and interfaces (SQL, ODBC, JDBC). -- Value -- One of the lowest acquisition and ongoing administration costs in the market at less than $20,000 per usable terabyte. Smaller footprint (up to 50 TB per rack) and lower power requirements (4.5kW per rack) reduce operating costs. -- Ease-of-use -- Integrated and turnkey appliance dramatically reduces system complexity, for easy implementation and maintenance. -- Reliability and Scalability -- Robust failover and mirroring capabilities deliver continuous uptime. Dynamically provision additional nodes to easily scale to hundreds of terabytes. -- Support -- Leverages Sun's global support operations to help ensure 24x7 operational uptime. "As O'Reilly continues to harness the collective intelligence of the web to better understand the technology industry and where it's headed, the ability to quickly and cost-effectively analyze large volumes of data is critical," said Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly Media. "We are enthusiastic about this data warehouse appliance, as it can transform the way companies think about handling big data. In the new era of Web 2.0, data will become the next Intel Inside. Together, Sun and Greenplum are creating exciting technologies based on open source that will help power the next generation of companies and services." Availability The Data Warehouse Appliance will be available later this quarter. Initial configurations will deliver usable database capacities of 10, 40 and 100TB. Pricing for the 40TB and 100TB configurations begins at $15,000 per usable terabyte, and pricing for the 10TB configuration starts at $25,000 per usable terabyte. Ideal industries for this solution include telecommunications, financial services, retail and Internet services. For more information, go to: its Web site. For more information on the Sun Fire X4500 data server, please visit: http://www.sun.com/x4500. For more information on Greenplum's Bizgres MPP, go to: its Web site.
"This data warehouse appliance demonstrates the power of open source and general purpose computing, truly driving new economics for data analysis. It will definitely make our customers and competitors sit up and take notice," said John Fowler, executive vice president of the Systems Group at Sun Microsystems. "The lightning-fast performance of this solution also makes it a snap for companies to manage ever-increasing amounts of data on their networks." "Greenplum's mission is to enable companies to manage massive amounts of information, and to make it all useful. This is the first appliance in the industry that can actually help to make that possible," said Scott Yara, president of Greenplum. "We are excited to be working with Sun. As the leading systems company in the world, they are the perfect company to revolutionize the data warehouse appliance market and finally deliver on the promise of Business Intelligence in the enterprise." "MLB.com has consistently pushed the limits of technology, in order to support our diverse fan base worldwide. As we collect data about every single pitch, over the course of 2430 games each year, the power necessary to analyze and make available that data has become incredibly important," said Justin Shaffer, SVP of New Media, MLB Advanced Media. "The new data warehouse appliance from Sun and Greenplum is incredibly exciting and has the potential to open up new ways in which MLB.com can share information with our customers and partners." The system is powered by Solaris 10, the most advanced operating system on the planet, taking full advantage of Solaris(TM) ZFS 1.0, the world's most advanced file system. Solaris ZFS is based on a transactional object model that removes most of the traditional constraints associated to I/O operations, resulting in huge performance gains. In addition, the solution offers the following key benefits: -- Performance -- Massively parallel processing, made possible by the performance advantages of the AMD Opteron processor with Direct Connect Architecture, leverages a high-performance interconnect and moves processing to where the data resides. 10-50x the performance over traditional data warehouse solutions in both query and data loading. -- Openness -- Powered by best-in-class open source software including the Solaris Operating System, PostgreSQL, and Solaris ZFS. Supports industry standards and interfaces (SQL, ODBC, JDBC). -- Value -- One of the lowest acquisition and ongoing administration costs in the market at less than $20,000 per usable terabyte. Smaller footprint (up to 50 TB per rack) and lower power requirements (4.5kW per rack) reduce operating costs. -- Ease-of-use -- Integrated and turnkey appliance dramatically reduces system complexity, for easy implementation and maintenance. -- Reliability and Scalability -- Robust failover and mirroring capabilities deliver continuous uptime. Dynamically provision additional nodes to easily scale to hundreds of terabytes. -- Support -- Leverages Sun's global support operations to help ensure 24x7 operational uptime. "As O'Reilly continues to harness the collective intelligence of the web to better understand the technology industry and where it's headed, the ability to quickly and cost-effectively analyze large volumes of data is critical," said Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly Media. "We are enthusiastic about this data warehouse appliance, as it can transform the way companies think about handling big data. In the new era of Web 2.0, data will become the next Intel Inside. Together, Sun and Greenplum are creating exciting technologies based on open source that will help power the next generation of companies and services." Availability The Data Warehouse Appliance will be available later this quarter. Initial configurations will deliver usable database capacities of 10, 40 and 100TB. Pricing for the 40TB and 100TB configurations begins at $15,000 per usable terabyte, and pricing for the 10TB configuration starts at $25,000 per usable terabyte. Ideal industries for this solution include telecommunications, financial services, retail and Internet services. For more information, go to: its Web site. For more information on the Sun Fire X4500 data server, please visit: http://www.sun.com/x4500. For more information on Greenplum's Bizgres MPP, go to: its Web site.