How much does a SAP HANA appliance really cost? Part 2, IBM & Ivy Bridge

[Former Member]

The last blog I wrote, How much does a SAP HANA appliance really cost?, seemed to pique people's interest. However, there were two really big questions that came for me out of it: what about the world's best selling HANA appliance, the IBM X5, and what about the new SAP Certified Appliance Hardware for SAP HANAIvy Bridge appliances based on the IBM X6?

So, I painstakingly went through the IBM specification sheets for the IBM X5 appliance, and pieced together what precise IBM components would be required, and what the list price would be. Then, I went through the internet and found street prices for each component, which should give you a feeling for your negotiating power. Here's what it looks like for 256GB (2 Socket, Size S) and 521GB (4 Socket, Size M) appliances:

Description	Part	256GB List	256GB Street	512GB List	512GB Street
Base System	7143C3U	26699	17602.12	26699	17602.12
CPUs	69Y1899	0	0	16698	15611.98
RAM (16GB)	49Y1400	17184	4607.84	34368	9215.68
785GB Flash	46C9081	13499	6499	13499	6499
8x600GB Disk	49Y2003	6632	2120	6632	2120
M5015 RAID	46M0829	749	379.95	749	379.95
4x 1G Ethernet	49Y4240	529	285	529	285
SuSe Linux	00D8096	7250	6224	14499	12448.06
2x Emulext 10G	49Y7950	1258	483.84	1258	483.84
Total		$73800	$38201.75	$114931	$64645.63

So IBM list pricing is much higher than Dell - nearly double, but the discount you can expect is much heavier too. Note that this does not include GPFS licensing, but for a single node, I don't see what GPFS brings.

Figuring this out for IBM X6 was much harder, and I may have made some small mistakes - please correct me if you see any. Ivy Bridge appliances only require 500GB of flash, and 3x RAM for snapshot disk, so they should be relatively cheaper. Plus, the IBM X6 appliance uses the flash storage in DIMM slots, which is very innovative. It is a very cool looking appliance. Here's what the pricing looks like:

Description	Part	512GB List	512GB Street	1TB List	1TB Street
Base System	3837C4U	28349	25934.58	28349	25934.58
CPUs	44X3996	0	0	20918	20313.1
RAM (8GB)	00D5036	12736	7036.8	0	0
RAM (16GB)	46W0672	0	0	22720	12476.8
4x200GB Flash	00FE000	12316	12123	12316	12123
4x1.2TB	00AJ146	3956	3928.04	3956	3928.04
SuSe Linux	00D8096	7250	6224	14499	12448.06
Total		64607	55246.42	102758	87223.58

This is fascinating. At list price, a 256GB X5 system is the same price as a 512GB X6, and a 512GB X5 is even more expensive than the 1TB X6. This is notionally because the main cost in a system is the number of CPUs, and IvyBridge is 2x as powerful per CPU.

However, the discounts available for IvyBridge hardware are a fraction of what is available for Westmere hardware - whilst we can expect nearly a 50% discount off list for X5, I was seeing just a 15% discount for X6. I'm certain that this will change once the components are more readily available.

Conclusions

I took a few things away from this - first, you can buy a 512GB Westmere appliance from Dell online for $50k, whilst IBM's street price is $65k. This probably means that my street prices can be negotiated further down by a savvy buyer.

And second, the $50k 1TB system that I predicted this year is not here yet, at least from IBM. But, given the $100k list price from IBM, once components settle down, we should definitely expect $50k from other vendors in 2014 - this should be your price target as a buyer. Once Huawei properly enters the US and EMEA markets, things will get very interesting because their FusionCube is clearly a very innovative system and may be much lower cost to build.

My third point is that these prices are for Data Mart or BW on HANA appliances. For Business Suite on HANA, we are allowed up to 1.5TB RAM per CPU (3x more). I need to price these out but they will be very cost-effective for up to 6TB!

My last point I'd like to make is that most systems I'm working on with HANA are much bigger than this - multi-node, scale out systems with 5-20TB RAM. Please don't expect pricing to increase linearly for much bigger systems, because they require shared storage and much more expensive, 10-40GB/sec interconnects and networking.