By: Paul A. Clayton (paaronclayton.delete@this.gmail.com), February 6, 2013 6:40 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Michael S (already5chosen.delete@this.yahoo.com) on February 6, 2013 3:43 am wrote:
> bakaneko (nyan.delete@this.hyan.wan) on February 6, 2013 2:37 am wrote:
[snip]
> > gem from viridis:
> >
> > "However, along with energy savings of up to 90% over traditional x86 platforms, the Viridis
> > also brings large space savings. For example, it would take 400 traditional x86 servers to
> > fill five complete industry-standard racks – whereas you can fit the same amount of servers
> > in just ½ a rack using the Viridis. Offering a staggering 10x space savings!"
> >
> > the fuck...
>
> As long as BS like that is sold to Wall Street and to VCs,
> I am o.k. with it. That what they deserve to be fed with.
>
> But when the same balloons are readily accepted by likes of Facebook and Microsoft, which, at least in theory,
> should know better, I am starting worry. Is technical competence in IT world degraded that much?
Such might be targeted at pointy-haired bosses rather than IT staff. Or maybe somebody has a workload that cannot be run on a virtualized system (perhaps someone in the chain of command does not trust virtualization--or more bizarrely the license of some PHP code [so no ISA porting issues] prohibits virtualization) where each instance has modest performance demands? :- (A regular smiley is not appropriate because such madness is not entirely incredible.)
As for Facebook accepting such, one of Facebook's workloads might be a better fit to that type of hardware, they might be trying to pressure Intel (and/or AMD) to lower prices or provide more fitting products, they might be hoping that ARM vendors will be more willing to specialize the hardware for Facebook's workloads, or they might have some other "reasonable" motive.
Microsoft would certainly benefit from lower server prices and might benefit from wimpy cores (where software is licensed per core [This can be either a direct gain in multiplying licenses or a competitive advantage if they are the first to fit license "core" closely to performance.]). Such might also disadvantage VMWare by encouraging "physicalization" (a zillion microservers running CentOS might be perceived as less of a threat) or by increasing pressure on licensing cost for virtualization software. Such motives do not seem entirely "unreasonable".
Or perhaps I am just being a babbling (slightly paranoid) madman?
> bakaneko (nyan.delete@this.hyan.wan) on February 6, 2013 2:37 am wrote:
[snip]
> > gem from viridis:
> >
> > "However, along with energy savings of up to 90% over traditional x86 platforms, the Viridis
> > also brings large space savings. For example, it would take 400 traditional x86 servers to
> > fill five complete industry-standard racks – whereas you can fit the same amount of servers
> > in just ½ a rack using the Viridis. Offering a staggering 10x space savings!"
> >
> > the fuck...
>
> As long as BS like that is sold to Wall Street and to VCs,
> I am o.k. with it. That what they deserve to be fed with.
>
> But when the same balloons are readily accepted by likes of Facebook and Microsoft, which, at least in theory,
> should know better, I am starting worry. Is technical competence in IT world degraded that much?
Such might be targeted at pointy-haired bosses rather than IT staff. Or maybe somebody has a workload that cannot be run on a virtualized system (perhaps someone in the chain of command does not trust virtualization--or more bizarrely the license of some PHP code [so no ISA porting issues] prohibits virtualization) where each instance has modest performance demands? :- (A regular smiley is not appropriate because such madness is not entirely incredible.)
As for Facebook accepting such, one of Facebook's workloads might be a better fit to that type of hardware, they might be trying to pressure Intel (and/or AMD) to lower prices or provide more fitting products, they might be hoping that ARM vendors will be more willing to specialize the hardware for Facebook's workloads, or they might have some other "reasonable" motive.
Microsoft would certainly benefit from lower server prices and might benefit from wimpy cores (where software is licensed per core [This can be either a direct gain in multiplying licenses or a competitive advantage if they are the first to fit license "core" closely to performance.]). Such might also disadvantage VMWare by encouraging "physicalization" (a zillion microservers running CentOS might be perceived as less of a threat) or by increasing pressure on licensing cost for virtualization software. Such motives do not seem entirely "unreasonable".
Or perhaps I am just being a babbling (slightly paranoid) madman?
