[SunRescue] Q on "optimal" OS for Sun4c machines, now that So laris 8 won't run

[nick at ns.snowman.netnick]

There are two sides to having a single server for a single task.  The good
side is that if they die it won't take anything else down.  (in theory)
They also don't require as big boxes, which can be a +.  The down side is
it's harder to maintain and work with.  It's another one of those
tradeoffs.
	Nick

On Thu, 13 Jul 2000, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Harry Regan [mailto:harry.regan at usa.net]
> > Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2000 6:22 AM
> > To: rescue at sunhelp.org
> > Subject: Re: [SunRescue] Q on "optimal" OS for Sun4c 
> > machines, now that
> > Solaris 8 won't run
> > 
> > Chris' comment strikes a nerve with me.  I'm an old dude-- 
> > I've been playing
> > with computers since 1967-- "Why, back in my day, we had to 
> > stoke the boilers
> > before we did a compile!"  At the risk of sounding like a 
> > geezer, I think the
> > way people are educated in technology these days is 
> > inadequate-- and a major
> > culprit is our buddy Microsoft.
> > 
> > As a mainframe assembler programmer, you had to have a deep 
> > understanding of
> > the physical limits of the machine, what its peripherals 
> > were, how to make
> > them function, and most important, how to restore the damned thing to
> > operating status when it blew up at 2 AM.
> 
> This is still required in a fairly large number of places.  The DBA groups
> at CNF (a big shipping company) spend almost all of their time figuring out
> how to use the hardware, and almost none desiging databases or anything like
> that.  Hardware upgrades where he works are expensive now, especially if
> they add another engine to an S/390 or some more processors to an UE 10000.
> Purchasing the processor is cheap.  The extra cost on software licensing is
> expensive.  So they tune things to death, and buy lots of fast "DASD".  This
> sort of knowledge isn't dead, but it's less important in smaller shops.  I
> could probably replace most of our P-II machines with SS20 or slower class
> machines, and not lose any performance, because I know how to tune, and how
> to NOT run NT (I know how to run it as well, but that's a different story).
> 
> > I get really stressed with new Microsoft Certified architects 
> > and programmers
> > who design applications that clearly have of understanding of 
> > a production
> > processing environment. "Dude! When it does that, just reboot 
> > it!"  Yeah, and
> > kill the other three apps running on the same server ("Oh! 
> > Should I only run
> > one app per server-- why, that would mean I'd have to run six 
> > hundred servers
> > to support the company...")
> 
> Unfortunately for me, I'm the "lower grade" admin, so I don't get a say in
> this.  But, in NT shops, ours included, it IS 1 app per server.  We've got a
> dedicated webserver, a dedicated mail server, a dedicated file server, a
> dedicated print server, and so on.  I suspect that most of these tasks could
> be better served by a single larger machine, but since we have to keep
> rebooting things, we can't put everything on the same server.  
> 	Grego
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