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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!paladin.american.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!swrinde!sgigate.sgi.com!news1.best.com!shellx.best.com!shellx.best.com!not-for-mail From: rcarter@shellx.best.com (Russell Carter) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.aix Subject: Re: ISP hardware/software choices (performance comparison) Date: 8 Jan 1996 20:55:32 -0800 Organization: Best Internet Communications Lines: 40 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <4cssg4$irf@shellx.best.com> References: <4cmopu$d35@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <cnordin.821050414@news.vni.net> <4crliv$smk@olympus.nwnet.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: shellx.best.com Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:1757 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:1888 comp.unix.solaris:56016 comp.unix.aix:67703 In article <4crliv$smk@olympus.nwnet.net>, Anthony D'Atri <aad@nwnet.net> wrote: >>BSDI is going to run around SunOS, Solaris, and AIX . It is faaaaast. >>The Sparc20s are very nice and some of them might actually be an >>improvement -- but why move yourself off of the commodity prices of >>Intel sub-systems ? > >Because commodity-priced Intel-architecture stuff doesn't run reliably or >cheaply. In order to configure such a box to run a Unix decently, you don't >use a flinky $25 mass-market enclosure -- you pay more for one with a decent >power supply and cooling. You pay more if you want a halfway-usable keyboard, >for any machines that need one. In the end, though, memory and disk costs >for this sort of application are going to dwarf the CPU costs anyway, which >kinda makes the argument moot. > >>If this is the company money, think about what you can do to >>give them (and yourself) the least headache -- since your time >>is far more expensive than the equipment or software. > >IMHO, the Unix-on-MSDOS-hardware route can be by far the most time-consuming >and headache-prone. Hardware and software vendor support can be even worse >than that of Unix-hardware vendors. It can take a week to get a machine to >simply recognize two SCSI controllers. Nobody expects you to put two into a >machine, so nobody tells you the convolutions needed to do so. Essential >utilities like a disk analysis tool can be missing, and lots of tools may not >build at all on the platform -- eg., lsof. > Interesting. I regularly install systems with various NCR 53C8xx, AIC7xxx (Adaptec 2940/2940W/2940UW/3940/3940W) controllers, singly, in pairs, triples, what have you. All on heavy duty P5/P6 systems, with quality power supplies, etc. It takes about 30s to recognize the controller. Aggregate throughput through the file system exceeds 16 MB/s. Costs are ~PC mail order. Reliability is becoming quite well known. Best regards, Russell Carter http://www.geli.com Pentium Workstation Clusters