[ale] IBM to buy SUN?

[Jerald Sheets]

2009/3/19 Jeff Lightner <jlightner at water.com>

>  I think that is amusing to say “HP on the low end”.   HP’s big servers
> are used in large data centers (we use them here,  Cisco uses them,  and a
> phone company I used to work for uses them.
>

I'm sort of going from HP's own marketing materials.  The only adjustment
I'd say is I said "on the low*er *end" and included the caveat "superdome
notwithstanding".  Think about it, if you think in terms of:

Cluster->Mainframe -> Micro -> Midrange -> Server


some folks would argue my placement of Micro there, but I'm thinking AS400,
Alpha, [insert proprietary server here].

When you say Mainframe/Micros then Midrange becomes the lower end and server
class utilitarian pieces parts.  Sure.  The Superdome and the Regatta Class
and the E10k systems are all built to serve a higher-end market, but in the
heirarchy of things, I'd take a honkin' KLAT2 style cluster any day, but the
apps aren't written for them, and probably never will be.

Let me use Cerner for an example in my old hospital environment.  It ran on
a pair of S80's for prod and a pair of S70's for QA.  We took that (which
were both fully loaded and hammered constantly) and shoved prod onto a blade
in the P690 and dev onto another blade, divvy'ed up the rest of the machine
into about 20 AIX boxes and something like 100 Linux instances. Never
breathed hard once after that. I am of the understanding it is still running
this way today, 5 years later.  I consider that class of machine on the
higher end of mid-range.  [open to interpretation, just typing oout of my
head at the moment]

You're right, though, UNIX is UNIX.  What winds up happening in these big
companies, though, is things should be managed through their "tool" for the
job.  If you don't do it that way, support from the various companies will
get perturbed with you on the phone.  Literally, I had an HP rep on the
phone that was telling me I absolutely HAD to add my users through SAM and
doing it any other way was not something they were not going to be able to
support.  (until I had our rep go down there with a spiked bat to handle
that for me)

In this day and age... </shakes head>

I appreciate they make these tools for less experienced admins (SMIT, SAM,
etc.) but they should not be the primary way the support staff gets
trained.  i.e., you shouldn't have to wine and dine a support staff member
that knows his stuff to get someone on the phone that will solve your
problem quickly when you need them.  They're all guilty of it and need to
provide much more highly technical people to those of us on the end of the
phone line with a VP looking over your shoulder starting to get mad at you
because you didn't use SAM to add a user because he's listening to the same
call you're on via speaker.  HE doesn't know.  HE doesn't know UNIX.  He
just knows that he was just told you did things wrong.

Long and short, it's sort of like storage.  All the companies are doing the
same thing, they're just implementing it on different hardware and
originating from a different philosophy of administration when creating new
pieces or solutions for old problems.  i.e., if you don't think the "insert
company here" way, it can be a little tough to get your mind around "the
company way" if you haven't encountered it before.

Instead, a TON of commodity hardware, Linux installed, total expinditure
lower even if you make sure you have an experienced Linux guy on staff.  TCO
goes down because the hardware can be changed out at a whim with a few
thousand a node instead of huge million-dollar purchases every few years to
keep up with the line.

Just give me Linux.  I can make it do whatever it is you want it to do.
After all, that's why we're all in this group, right?  Linux Enthusiasm.  I
try to bring it everywhere it isn't and where it isn't, I try to do my best
sales job with the people who are reluctant to do things a different way
(but really want to so they can save money)


--j

(sorry...  I'm a little long-winded today.  This works better over a beer
and a few hours)
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