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There are also similar products being introduced by HPE, Dell, Supermicro, etc... Posted here since it's pretty surprising how far commodity x86 servers have c

There are also similar products being introduced by HPE, Dell, Supermicro, etc... Posted here since it's pretty surprising how far commodity x86 servers have come. For example, there are very few scenarios I can think of where even large startups would need more then 32TB of DDR5-4800 RAM or more then a few 400G Ethernet links on a single system.

jeffbee 3y ago
As the marketing states, this isn't targeted to startups of any size, or any other organization capable of writing software. It has exactly one application: SAP HANA. SAP is a large and valuable company with many users of their terrible program, reputed to be among the worst programs ever perpetrated, which is nevertheless quite widespread.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  It's very likely there will be some customers not running HANA shops. But anyways, whomever buys them, it probably has a small overlap with the average HN reader. So it's meant as an illustrative example in a familiar context. EDIT: Then again it's possible someone might buy it for personal use, e.g. if someone has multiple terabytes of spreadsheets that they need to work on simultaneously.
  - doublerabbit 3y ago
    I'd buy one just for bragging rights. Why not have 32TB? I can think of many ways, use it as a ramdisk NAS, minecraft game servers..
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      That's a good point. Also, 32TB of memory is just barely enough for customers who want to surf online with half a million chrome tabs open.
      - hulitu 3y ago
        You should see Teams.
    - imtringued 3y ago
      Nothing like running a single threaded game on 480 cores.
      - hulitu 3y ago
        To run your game, Windows has to run about 200 instances of svchost.exe.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- housemusicfan 3y ago
  > many users of their terrible program, reputed to be among the worst programs ever perpetrated And yet, no one has produced something better. Everyone complains Concur is dogshit but no one has presented a worthy competitor. Where is the "SAP killer" startup? I'm sure someone will publish one to GitHub any day now. Just like Threads, the "Twitter killer", dead on arrival.
  - zamadatix 3y ago
    Pretty much every expense system I've ever used was better than Concur. When the business is using SAP for everything else it doesn't really matter what minor stuff like that is best of breed though.
    - SmellTheGlove 3y ago
      I work with internal systems for a living. As an end user, you’re not the primary customer - finance is. Concur is by no stretch amazing, but it works fairly well on the back end where your expenses come in, route for approval, get paid, get accounted for, etc. I’m not trying to be dismissive. I absolutely try for the best internal user experience across the board, and it’s led me to try a lot of the shinier startup T&E systems. But Concur works well for finance and accounting, and frankly, it’s also cheap - something you also have to factor in G&A tooling. Those two factors together have overcome my desire to rip it out at a couple of different employers. And given the price sensitivity for a tool that does not generate revenue for its customers, it remains a tough space for new entrants to disrupt. It’s not enough to make it good, you also gotta make it cheap. When I’m done with the startup carousel, I might try my hand at this - but you should bet against me!
  - acomjean 3y ago
    I made a SAP killer in lotus Notes. Ok maybe not exactly, but at IBM the choice was to wait for SAP to come in and do the project management with that, or have me (intern) port existing non Y2K compliant green screen project management program to Lotus Notes. It wouldn’t be as feature rich as SAP but it would do what was needed. Because I cost many orders of magnitude less and my Boss kinda figured rightly the SAP project would be really late, they ended up with my database application which the users liked because I added features to make their lives easier. Custom tailored apps really can be an amazing thing. I wonder why more companies never really got on board with the Notes/FileMaker databases. My lab currently has a pretty custom management system that tracks everything, prints labels and just really is a force multiplier.
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  Nothing is more exemplary of Oracle's incompetence than the #1 database company being unable to produce competitive ERP systems that are nothing but databases with front ends. ERP is also something that should technically be achievable with a large industry-sponsored open source project but it never happens.
  - xxpor 3y ago
    This completely misses what the SAP business actually entails. No one runs "SAP". They run "SAP as customized for business X". That customization costs millions of dollars. It encodes every little specific thing about the business. Companies run their entire operation on top of it. It's impossible to replace, because it can't go down. Ever. An open source version would be only step one, and not that useful by itself. You'd still need to create the entire consultant ecosystem SAP has on top.
    - unethical_ban 3y ago
      I'd pay for HN premium to double upvote this.
  - kobalsky 3y ago
    > ERP systems that are nothing but databases with front ends. I’d love to see the face of anyone operating under this belief when they get to the tax code of any country that is not the US.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  God damnit, SAP... Somehow I forgot about them. Having been exposed to their Job for five weeks 16 years ago, I can attedt that they are horrible.
- hulitu 3y ago
  > is a large and valuable company with many users of their terrible program, reputed to be among the worst programs ever perpetrated, which is nevertheless quite widespread. A very good description of Microsoft or Google (and Apple getting there soon).
- riku_iki 3y ago
  > It has exactly one application: SAP HANA it says "and SAP HANA", there are lots of database cases for system like that.
linuxlizard 3y ago
I need one of these machines for Yocto. Actually, maybe two of them.

jeffbee 3y ago

As the marketing states, this isn't targeted to startups of any size, or any other organization capable of writing software. It has exactly one application: SAP HANA. SAP is a large and valuable company with many users of their terrible program, reputed to be among the worst programs ever perpetrated, which is nevertheless quite widespread.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
It's very likely there will be some customers not running HANA shops. But anyways, whomever buys them, it probably has a small overlap with the average HN reader. So it's meant as an illustrative example in a familiar context. EDIT: Then again it's possible someone might buy it for personal use, e.g. if someone has multiple terabytes of spreadsheets that they need to work on simultaneously.
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  I'd buy one just for bragging rights. Why not have 32TB? I can think of many ways, use it as a ramdisk NAS, minecraft game servers..
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    That's a good point. Also, 32TB of memory is just barely enough for customers who want to surf online with half a million chrome tabs open.
    - hulitu 3y ago
      You should see Teams.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    Nothing like running a single threaded game on 480 cores.
    - hulitu 3y ago
      To run your game, Windows has to run about 200 instances of svchost.exe.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
housemusicfan 3y ago
> many users of their terrible program, reputed to be among the worst programs ever perpetrated And yet, no one has produced something better. Everyone complains Concur is dogshit but no one has presented a worthy competitor. Where is the "SAP killer" startup? I'm sure someone will publish one to GitHub any day now. Just like Threads, the "Twitter killer", dead on arrival.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  Pretty much every expense system I've ever used was better than Concur. When the business is using SAP for everything else it doesn't really matter what minor stuff like that is best of breed though.
  - SmellTheGlove 3y ago
    I work with internal systems for a living. As an end user, you’re not the primary customer - finance is. Concur is by no stretch amazing, but it works fairly well on the back end where your expenses come in, route for approval, get paid, get accounted for, etc. I’m not trying to be dismissive. I absolutely try for the best internal user experience across the board, and it’s led me to try a lot of the shinier startup T&E systems. But Concur works well for finance and accounting, and frankly, it’s also cheap - something you also have to factor in G&A tooling. Those two factors together have overcome my desire to rip it out at a couple of different employers. And given the price sensitivity for a tool that does not generate revenue for its customers, it remains a tough space for new entrants to disrupt. It’s not enough to make it good, you also gotta make it cheap. When I’m done with the startup carousel, I might try my hand at this - but you should bet against me!
- acomjean 3y ago
  I made a SAP killer in lotus Notes. Ok maybe not exactly, but at IBM the choice was to wait for SAP to come in and do the project management with that, or have me (intern) port existing non Y2K compliant green screen project management program to Lotus Notes. It wouldn’t be as feature rich as SAP but it would do what was needed. Because I cost many orders of magnitude less and my Boss kinda figured rightly the SAP project would be really late, they ended up with my database application which the users liked because I added features to make their lives easier. Custom tailored apps really can be an amazing thing. I wonder why more companies never really got on board with the Notes/FileMaker databases. My lab currently has a pretty custom management system that tracks everything, prints labels and just really is a force multiplier.
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Nothing is more exemplary of Oracle's incompetence than the #1 database company being unable to produce competitive ERP systems that are nothing but databases with front ends. ERP is also something that should technically be achievable with a large industry-sponsored open source project but it never happens.
- xxpor 3y ago
  This completely misses what the SAP business actually entails. No one runs "SAP". They run "SAP as customized for business X". That customization costs millions of dollars. It encodes every little specific thing about the business. Companies run their entire operation on top of it. It's impossible to replace, because it can't go down. Ever. An open source version would be only step one, and not that useful by itself. You'd still need to create the entire consultant ecosystem SAP has on top.
  - unethical_ban 3y ago
    I'd pay for HN premium to double upvote this.
- kobalsky 3y ago
  > ERP systems that are nothing but databases with front ends. I’d love to see the face of anyone operating under this belief when they get to the tax code of any country that is not the US.
unethical_ban 3y ago
God damnit, SAP... Somehow I forgot about them. Having been exposed to their Job for five weeks 16 years ago, I can attedt that they are horrible.
hulitu 3y ago
> is a large and valuable company with many users of their terrible program, reputed to be among the worst programs ever perpetrated, which is nevertheless quite widespread. A very good description of Microsoft or Google (and Apple getting there soon).
riku_iki 3y ago
> It has exactly one application: SAP HANA it says "and SAP HANA", there are lots of database cases for system like that.

linuxlizard 3y ago

I need one of these machines for Yocto. Actually, maybe two of them.