SUN RaQs the Benchmark

SUN Microsysytems responds to benchmark claims by startup Xoasis.

[Response to Xoasis, A Refuge From The Sun from April 19, 2002.]

[April 30, 2002]

Dear Editors:

Your April 19 article titled "Xoasis, A Refuge from the Sun," contains a number of inaccuracies put forward by Xoasis concerning Sun Microsystems' Cobalt products that I feel compelled to correct.

The first major inaccuracy is the benchmark results reported. Their flagrantly misleading results deserve a response. We re-ran the benchmark on a standard and equivalent Sun Cobalt RaQ XTR, setting it up to Xoasis' stated specification. Here are our results:

• Server Software: Apache/1.3.12
• Document Length: 67 bytes
• Concurrency Level: 1
• Time taken for tests: 0.935 seconds
• Complete requests: 500
• Failed requests: 0
• Total transferred: 175,000 bytes
• HTML transferred: 33,500 bytes
• Requests per second: 534.76
• Transfer rate: 187.17 kb/s received
• Connection Times (ms) (min avg. max.) Total: 1 1 10

These results clearly show that we are not in fact slower by a factor of 40. We are very comparable in terms of performance. Now, why the discrepancy? Whether the answer is misconfiguration, Xoasis network problems or general competitive chicanery, one can only guess.

Comparing Sun Cobalt products to the Xoasis products is a bit like comparing apples to tomatoes. Both are small, round, and red, but they are used for entirely different things. We have consciously designed these products with ease-of-use in mind, in order to address a broader market. To do this, we have made our product more flexible. For example, a user can enable or disable Java technology and PHP from a simple Web-based interface, according to their needs. It is possible to build an inflexible, non-extensible Web server with a wall plug. We have consciously chosen a different path, which we believe delivers more value to a wider audience.

The second inaccuracy is that Sun is offering a "me-too" product with no discernible differentiators. I believe that our list of customers disproves this. Sun Cobalt has been dedicated to building server appliances since 1996. Sun Cobalt defined the server appliance market four years ago when launching the first generation of the Cobalt Qube in 1998. The Sun Cobalt RaQ is now a mature fourth-generation product used by thousands of ISPs worldwide. More than 100,000 Sun Cobalt server appliances are serving network and web applications today.

The third inaccuracy is that Xoasis is doing something novel by offering "high-quality" components where supposedly competitors do not. Sun Cobalt uses only top-shelf brand name hardware to build its server appliances. For example in the Sun Cobalt RaQ XTR, the processor is a Genuine Intel Pentium III 850 MHz or 1 GHz, the drives are from Seagate, the Memory is from Micron, the North Bridge and South Bridge are from ServerWorks, the IDE Ultra ATA controller is from HighPoint, the Ethernet controller is from National Semiconductors, and so on.

With our RaQ XTR starting at $2,499, we believe Sun offers the best value for a high-performance, easy-to-use server appliance pre-configured with all the applications and services required to deploy and managed network-based applications.

Thank you for the opportunity to set the record straight.

Sincerely,

Bill Roth
Group Marketing Manager
Sun Microsystems