Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 Server is the World's Fastest E-Mail Server

(As of Tuesday, 18 August 2009)

Oracle’s Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 server, powered by two 1.6GHz UltraSPARC T2 Plus processors and running Oracle Communications Messaging Exchange Server 6.3 on top of Oracle Solaris 10, established a new world record on SPECmail2009 benchmark.

SPECmail2009 is a new benchmark that replaces all previous versions and is designed to simulate real-world corporate e-mail environments and measure a system's ability to serve e-mail using industry-standard SMTP and IMAP4 protocols. The SPECmail2009 benchmark can generate e-mail server workloads of up to 40,000 corporate users and supports encrypted network connections via SSL v3.0 or TLS 1.0 technologies. SPECmail2009 sessions per hour is the main metric of the benchmark and it reflects the maximum number of sessions that the mail server can sustain while maintaining a specific Quality of Service (QoS).

• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 server achieved a new world record result of 57,758 SPECmail2009 sessions/hour, equivalent to 12,000 SPECmail_Ent2009 users.
• These records highlight the enterprise-class performance and significant infrastructure and management cost savings Oracle’s open network Sun systems with Oracle Solaris deliver through the convergence of compute, networking, and storage. The powerful combination of the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 server and Oracle’s StorageTek 2540 arrays demonstrate Oracle’s leadership position in e-mail serving using an off-the-shelf OS and software components on an industry-standard benchmark.
• The competing solution based on Apple Xserve, equipped with latest Intel Xeon processors (2 chips, 8 cores), and direct attached storage posted a result of 28,887 SPECmail2009 sessions/hour, equivalent to 6,000 SPECmail_Ent2009 users.
• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 server supported 2x more users while utilizing 10% less storage capacity than the Apple Xserve-based solution.
• Oracle’s solution was able to achieve these great results while consuming about 2.5kW of power. Power consumption measurements were taken during the benchmark run and the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 server had a measured average of 668 watts while six StorageTek 2540 arrays averaged 313 watts each.

This benchmark result demonstrates that the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 server, together with Oracle Communications Messaging Exchange Server, Oracle Solaris, and Oracle Solaris ZFS on StorageTek 2540 arrays supports a large, enterprise-level IMAP mail server environment. Additionally, Oracle’s solution offers a more reliable, lower cost and lower power alternative to competing solutions while delivering the best performance and maximizing data integrity with Oracle Solaris ZFS.

• Benchmark Results

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