[CentOS] CentOS on Compaq Proliant Rackmount Servers

Tue Jul 19 00:42:30 UTC 2005
Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org>

On Mon, 2005-07-18 at 19:34 -0400, John Hinton wrote:
> I mean spending 5 to 40g on a server that will get a 5% load, is just a 
> waste of money.

Don't confuse CPU load with interconnect and I/O load.  I/O load is very
difficult to measure in Linux, and interconnect is virtually impossible.
You can literally have less than 2% CPU load and your I/O cards are not
only starving for bandwidth, but contending for it (even worse).

> I guess we all forget the other man's situation. Yeah, some networks 
> have huge throughput... and then others are just struggling for more 
> bandwidth for less money....

My point is that 9 times out of 10, I can design a higher performing
set of servers and network for _lower_cost_ than what people think is a
modest server at a much higher cost.

I don't know how many times I walk into a company and they put a
$200-300 server mainboard with $15,000 of storage and other hardware.
Not only could I give them 3x the performance with a $700 mainboard, but
I probably could have architect a storage solution that is more faster,
reliable and uses far less power, for less than 1/3rd the price.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                     b.j.smith at ieee.org 
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 
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