From Chapter Two: The appliance computing culture

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*Standing Ovation*

I finally understand your "Centralization of processing and de-centralization of control" shpeel. I think we are in alignment with the latter, but not the former. I believe in an Autonomic Distributed Architecture - where every *NIX machine (client and server) share the same configuration, and tasks can be processed on any or all of them. This would save money and be more robust than your DumbRay solution - and allow for multiple vendors (buy the hardware that best works for you - not JUST Sun). SO I suppose that I believe in "Distribution of processing and de-centralization of control". The "How" is different, but the "What" is the same - De-centralization of control is essential for driving innovation and leading your market segment WRT IT, instead of playing catchup to your competitors.

Virtualization has been a boon to Windoze - since you can now have those 100 servers running in 25 boxes (or less). This gives the ILLUSION that you are "consolidating" - when in reality NOTHING has changed except the outward appearance of the hardware. The sysadmin costs are the same - although the hardware costs MIGHT go down (how many "hardware guys" are employed in an IT department? A couple at most I would say). If you were rebooting servers before - you are now rebooting VM images. WHAT AN IMPROVEMENT!?. (all punctuation including exclamation, question mark, and period belong to that sentence).

The only thing more stupid than virtualizing Windoze, is virtualizing *NIX. Taking 5 apps that run on a single *NIX instance and giving each of them their own VM makes things like memory management and CPU utilization a MANUAL configuration instead of automatic switching. How many sysadmins (remember 50% churn issues) will keep a close eye on these VMs and adjust those manual configs in a timely manner? WHo will check up on them? EXACTLY - it's fire and forget!

Thanks for a very nice (long) summation. It certainly woke me up (my eyes were already open). Touche'

Posted by: Roger Ramjet   Posted on: 10/24/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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