Latest WebSphere 7 and .NET Benchmark Results Stir Debate

gregleak@microsoft.com — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:48:00 GMT

Well, if you have not noticed there are new benchmark results for the Trade application running as a Java application in WebSphere 7 and running as a .NET application, posted at http://msdn.microsoft.com/stocktrader. Also, Steven Martin, the head of my division, posted a really good blog post on these results, released last week, at: http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/archive/2009/04/30/websphere-loves-windows-who-knew.aspx.

Also, take a look at http://www.websphereloveswindows.com.

The thing that is new here, and sparking the usual debate that comes along with almost all benchmarks I do (including the infamous PetShop/MiddleWare/TheServerSide.com benchmarks I did in the past) is that we ran a WebSphere 7-version of IBM's trade application on a high-end IBM Power6 server--specifically a Power 570/AIX server that costs $215,000.00 even without any WebSphere licenses. We wanted to document the following:

How does WebSphere 7 running on Windows Server 2008 and an HP BladeSystem (using moderate scale out vs. a RISC scale-up approach on Power6) compare in performance and total cost to the Power 570 server? Hint: The HP BladeSystem costs about $51,000.00
How does the .NET implementation running on the same HP BladeSystem compare to both WebSphere 7 on Windows and WebSphere 7 on the high-end Power6/AIX system (both in performance and middle tier app server hardware + software costs)?

Checkout http://www.websphereloveswindows.com for summary, links to full benchmark paper, etc. You can use the provided Capacity Planner tool to test other hardware configs, comparing for example, WebSphere on a mainframe to WebSphere on other platforms; or .NET on a Windows Server 2008 platform or even Linux platform of your choosing.

As usual, my comparison has sparked some debate. In a thread below I re-post the latest rebuttal from an anonymous source that thinks the comparison is biased, along with my responses to the points brought up. I work hard on the benchmarks I run, and encourage this type of feedback. That is what full disclosure for such benchmarks, with published code, detailed tuning documents, test scripts, etc. is all about. So comment away!

Inside The Lab : .NET STockTradeTrader

Latest WebSphere 7 and .NET Benchmark Results Stir Debate