Re: In-house Hosting Options

[Peter Bowen]

Josh Coates wrote:
L - O - L!
   

heh - you shouldn't laugh so loud - because i think you may be way off on
your perceptions about shared-nothing pc clusters.
first off, watts is watts, and the power bill on your shared-nothing cluster
is about the same as your smp.
 

I was pointing out that the super computers are overkill for my family 
server... the LOL was prefacing a joke!  Lighten up! 

Same thing - sure a cluster of 300 PCs is computationally faster, than an
   

E10K,but I stand by my statement... every job has a tool.
yep, every job has it's tool - but the point was that the shared-nothing
cluster continues to prove itself a better too than an SMP.  i bet the
reason you run an E10K is because it's much easier for your particular
application to run w/ shared memory - and i bet that's the only reason.  you
probably overpaid and overprovisioned and are now attached to a single
vendor because your app wasnt engineered to scale.
 

I'm not running an E10K - If I needed one, I would use one. (Although I 
don't anticipate that anytime soon)   If I needed a PC cluster, I would 
run one of those.  (I want to set one of tose up) Every job has a tool.  
Sometimes I run MySQL, sometimes I run Postgres, and sometimes I run 
Oracle.  Are you seeing a theme.  There is no magic bullet EVER - but 
after looking at your site, it looks like I'm preaching to the choir here.

I/O was my point not processing power.
   

TFLOPS is just an over-simplified way of measuring power - IOPS is another.
i assume you are thinking of network IO?  ever done benchmarks SUN vs PC w/
for an HTTP proxy?  think slashdot or google uses an E10K?  i assure you,
shared-nothing clusters open a can of whoop-you-know-what on SMPs for
embarrassingly parallel IO.
and if you are talking about disk IO, seeks are constant, and bus and memory
management kicks in, and smp v shared-nothing both have their pros & cons
there (but you should take a gander at SPECSFS benchmarks - you will note
that PCs dominate for disk IO as well...)
i suggest you do some homework - and consider the possibility that your big
iron is more akin to the dinosaurs than you think, or at least get educated
about shared-nothing pc clusters.  nothing personal, and i dont mean to be
obnoxious - i just want to keep the record straight.
 

A 2x sun box vs a 2x PC has in my experience gone to the sun box.  It's 
hard to compare a 4x sun box since it's hard to find a 4x PC.  There are 
no magic bullets and to say that one architecture is in every way better 
is absolutely wrong - - Unless of course,  you're talking to MS because 
they have documented proof of how much better and less expensive they 
are.  (Sarcasm)

I was objecting to the blanket statement the Sun is always wrong.  I was 
NOT saying that Sun is always right... and many times we all forget to 
perscope up and have a look around and make sure that we're really 
running on the right stuff.  It's like the start of this thread... Eric 
asked a great question, and we're all better off for it.

-Peter
Josh Coates
http://www.jcoates.org
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of
Peter Bowen
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 10:27 AM
To: Provo Linux Users Group Mailing List
Subject: Re: In-house Hosting Options
L - O - L  I wonder how many users my fam server would support with 70
Tflops of computing power.  I think with 32K procs I would have to
definately co-locate that baby.  I'll bet that the monthly power bill
would be more than any computer I'll ever own.  L - O - L!
   BTW - I/O was my point not processing power.  When I was a kid...
pre-pc we used to go to Radio Shack and load the cheapo computer with a
basic script that counted to 10K.  Well the cheapo computer could count
faster than the expensive computer.  So it was faster right.... well at
counting it was, but it wasn't as powerful with actual math and
calculation and it had a ton less memory.  Same thing - sure a cluster
of 300 PCs is computationally faster, than an E10K,but I stand by my
statement... every job has a tool.
-Peter
Josh Coates wrote:
 

Like Sun hardware - come now... High end sun hardware kills PCs
     

right - that's why there are so many high-end sun machines in the top500
supercomputers (top500.org).  oh wait, um...there are hardly any suns
listed.
hey - wait a second..what's this?  a whole bunch of PC clusters in the
top500?  gee, that's weird...  ;-)
</sarcasm>
the big-iron SMP vs shared-nothing cluster debate rages on, but high-end
   

sun
 

hardware, along with all the other monolithic smp machines have been
trailing on price/performance for quite a while now.  shared-nothing pc
clusters simply dominate raw performance as well as price/performance - not
to mention ease of provisioning.
Josh Coates
http://www.jcoates.org
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of
Peter Bowen
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 9:07 AM
To: Provo Linux Users Group Mailing List
Subject: Re: In-house Hosting Options
Sasha Pachev wrote:

   

So I take that's what the advantage of T1s are?  I never understood
       

that either as DSL can go faster then a T1 and significantly cheaper,
but I haven't seen a way to combine the bandwidth for one IP.  I've
also seen DC3 connections from a few ISPs that are up to 20,000 a
month.  But still at a very poor bandwidth.  I just don't understand
what makes these different connections so special.
Perceived value :-) Kind of like Sun hardware. Sometimes people feel
more comfortable when they have paid more, and the market is quite to
respond for the need for this warm and cozy feeling.
For the bandwidth solution - the first thing that comes to mind. If
collocation is too expensive, get as many cheap 1.5 MBit/s lines as
needed with different IP addresses and use iptables + round-robin DNS.
Near-perfect uptime is expensive, the closer you try to get to
perfect, and in many cases overvalued. I would venture to say that for
a regular web application, if your site beats the reliability of their
desktop , most of your clients will be satisfied. Once you reach a
certain point, it is wise to spend your resources on the things that
matter more especially when those resources are limited.

     

Like Sun hardware - come now... High end sun hardware kills PCs - On the
other hand who wants to run the family site on an E10K. :)  Every tool
has a job.
-Peter
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