<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2009/3/19 Jeff Lightner <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jlightner@water.com">jlightner@water.com</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
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<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;">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.</span></font></p></div></div></blockquote></div><br>I'm sort of going from HP's own marketing materials. The only adjustment I'd say is I said "on the low<b>er </b>end" and included the caveat "superdome notwithstanding". Think about it, if you think in terms of:<br>
<br>Cluster->Mainframe -> Micro -> Midrange -> Server<br><br><br>some folks would argue my placement of Micro there, but I'm thinking AS400, Alpha, [insert proprietary server here]. <br><br>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.<br>
<br>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]<br>
<br>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)<br>
<br>In this day and age... </shakes head><br><br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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)<br>
<br><br>--j<br><br>(sorry... I'm a little long-winded today. This works better over a beer and a few hours)<br><br>