Sun, Open-Source Partner Herald New Storage Appliance

Sun Microsystems and open-source database maker Greenplum, July 26 introduced a data warehouse appliance built from open-source software and general purpose systems that the companies claim is much faster and cheaper than comparable proprietary systems, a Sun executive told eWEEK.

Called simply the Data Warehouse Appliance, the new product is powered by Greenplums own distribution of the open-source PostgreSQL database, Bizgres MPP and Suns open-source Solaris 10 operating system.

It is housed in Suns new "Thumper" Sun Fire X4500 data server, which itself is a powerful (48 disk drive) unit that utilizes dual-core, 64-bit AMD Opteron processors.

"Were calling this the iPod for DW appliances," Suns CIO for business intelligence and data warehousing Cyrus Golkar told eWEEK.

Resource Library:

"It is 10 times faster and 10 times cheaper than other proprietary systems like it on the market, and we think were being conservative when we say that," Golkar added.

The appliance will be available later this quarter, Golkar said. Initial configurations will deliver usable database capacities of 10, 40 and 100TB. Pricing for the 40TB and 100TB configurations begins at $15,000 per terabyte, and pricing for the 10TB configuration starts at $25,000 per usable terabyte.

Ideal industries for this appliance include telecommunications, financial services, retail and Internet services, a Sun spokesperson said.

"Other more expensive systems have pipes like water hoses, for example," Golkar said. "This one has a lot more stamina—its more like Niagara Falls."

As for pricing, Greenplum CEO Scott Yara said there will be basically no comparison to other competitors.

"Right now, its costing companies anywhere from $350,000 to $1 million per usable terabyte of data storage," Yara told eWEEK.

"Because of the way this appliance is designed and built [using non-proprietary database and operating systems] and because it scales so well [10TB up to 100TB], we have gotten the price down to about $20,000 per usuable terabyte. Actually, some of the configurations start out at less than that."

Whats under the hood

The Data Warehouse Appliances operating system, Solaris 10, includes Suns new file system, ZFS 1.0. Solaris ZFS is based on a transactional object model that removes most of the traditional constraints associated to I/O operations, resulting in performance gains, Golkar said.

Sun puts Opteron into blade servers. Click here to read more.

In addition, the appliance offers the following key features, according to Sun and Greenplum:

Support: Sun includes global support operations.

The appliances software is capable of scanning 1TB of data in 60 seconds and can scale to hundreds of terabytes of usable database capacity. The data warehouse system is also energy efficient, using only 90W per terabyte, Golkar said.

"Greenplums 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 Yara. "Sun is the perfect company to revolutionize the data warehouse appliance market and finally deliver on the promise of business intelligence in the enterprise."

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