Re: A Customer's Request For Open Source Software

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@attbi.com>]

Ludovic Brenta wrote:

> In fact, mainframes have had this kind of capability for quite some
> time now.  And the people who use them take hot-swapped CPUs for
> granted.  The only reason why they don't convey an image of futurism
> is that they still program in COBOL :) Yes, mainframe-class hardware
> costs more than commodity PCs, but there are situations where this is
> economically sensible because racks upon racks of small independent
> computers mean huge sysadmin costs.  I have been personally involved
> in managing several racks of 32 Linux blade servers and I can tell you
> that this kind of approach simply does not scale from a human
> perspective.

That's why I, and apparently IBM are so enamored of the new (AMD) 
Opteron-based servers from Newisys (just acquired by SCI-Sanmina).  The 
(dual or quad) processor servers have an additional smaller processor 
with its own Ethernet port.  You can connect all these server processors 
to a PC (or to several) on sysadmins desks, and they can do all the 
typical system adminstration type stuff from their desks in addition to 
the normal remote functions like checking loads--shutdown, restart, kill 
a particular memory DIMM, boot in an alternate mode for file backup and 
all that, even run some hardware diagnostics.  It doesn't make running 
an array of servers painless, but it does take away a lot of the pain. 
And, yes, you can kill one CPU if necessary.  You do lose the memory 
connected to that CPU though.  (The RAM in an Opteron system connects 
directly to the CPU without going through a Northbridge.)

-- 
                                          Robert I. Eachus

"As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure." -- Jacques Chirac, 
President of France
"As far as France is concerned, you're right." -- Rush Limbaugh