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Novell announced outstanding performance results on a benchmark using Novell SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 and IBM POWER5 processor-based hardware. The industry standard TPC-H benchmark tests were designed to test a system's ability to handle complex business intelligence processing for clients. One IBM/Novell configuration achieved the world record for the best non-clustered result in the TPC-H 100GB benchmark test. Another IBM/Novell configuration in the TPC-H 300GB benchmark test demonstrated the ability to handle larger databases with clustering the same basic building blocks. The world record was achieved with a Linux based system configuration comparable to real-world client installations. One test included SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 and IBM DB2 Universal Database v8.2 on the IBM eServer OpenPower 720, which performs at $42.00 per QphH@100GB and is now the highest performing system in the non-clustered 100GB database group with a Composite Query-per-Hour metric of 6,357 QphH@100GB. The test on a clustered configuration of two OpenPower 720 systems SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 and IBM DB2 Universal Database v8.2 performs at $40.00 per QphH@300GB and is now the highest performing 8-processor cluster 300GB database group with a Composite Query-per-Hour metric of 12,006 QphH@300GB. This result is 3.88 times the QphH performance of the leading 300GB Sun UltraSPARC result at the same price/performance. The TPC-H benchmark is one of the industry's most respected measures of business intelligence performance. This benchmark ranks systems that examine large volumes of data, execute queries with a high degree of complexity, and give answers to critical business questions. "With this benchmark result we once again see that Linux has matured into a world-class enterprise operating system, delivering faster performance compared to other operating systems -- particularly for business intelligence capabilities measured by TPC-H benchmark," said Markus Rex, vice president of SUSE LINUX at Novell. "The IBM eServer OpenPower system and SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9, together with IBM DB2 Universal Database, deliver a compelling value to businesses who want to reduce their IT complexity, lower their total cost of ownership and benefit from the exceptional stability, performance and security of Linux." These benchmark results demonstrate the ability of OpenPower systems and SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server to handle the ad-hoc query processing so important to on-demand businesses that rely on data-intensive transactions for applications such as e-commerce, banking and securities trading. This level of performance also proves the industry-leading performance of SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server's 2.6 Linux kernel. OpenPower 720 is a POWER5 microprocessor-based system tuned for Linux which offers clients enterprise-class reliability, availability and serviceability features which were previously found only in higher-end systems. Starting at only $5,000, the OpenPower 720 is available with either 1.5 GHz or 1.65 GHz POWER5 microprocessors with a maximum memory of 64GB. The Advance OpenPower Virtualization option, a component of the IBM Virtualization Engine, is designed to allow clients to use fewer systems and lower deployment costs. "OpenPower systems continue to show true client benefit and performance advantages through the 64-bit POWER5 processor platform," said Brian Connors, vice president of Linux on POWER at IBM. "IBM eServer OpenPower systems, combined with SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server and IBM DB2 Universal Database, help meet the requirements of datacenter clients today by delivering the performance, reliability features, high availability and computing power that businesses expect from higher-end systems at very attractive price points."