|
> ** Dell Reselling A 32-Way Unisys Server > Each ES7000 server, rebranded as Dell's PowerEdge, will support up > to 96 PCI channels and run multiple operating systems. It will > also run Intel's forthcoming 64-bit Itanium processors in concert > with 32-bit Pentium III Xeon chips. Dell did not disclose pricing. ".. run multiple operating systems .."? This is a vendor's wet dream, but doesn't impress many users. HDS floated the idea of "Hercules" earlier this year - a server that could adopt multiple 'personalities' (remember Workplace OS?) as the customer chose - but how would you price it? I'm reminded of the many pictures of Europe - the French organising things vs the French cooking things. One user said to me: "The hardware price of Intel, the software price of UNIX, and the reliability of System/390 - that I would buy. The price of System/390 and the reliability of Intel - THAT you could stick somewhere the sun doesn't shine." Which bodes ill, incidentally, for System/390 emulation on NUMA-Q. Who gets any benefit from multiple-personality servers? The vendor. Users don't care because if they ever DO want to change, competing vendors will fall over themselves to make it easy. > At a press conference in New York on Tuesday, Dell execs admitted > that the PowerEdge represents a failure to persuade some customers > that clusters of smaller four-way and eight-way servers, Dell's > bread and butter, are up to running big data-center apps. Scalability IS a problem, though. First of all no one will ever buy the biggest system in your range. NEVER. How many 16-way System/390s has IBM ever sold? Very likely none at all - almost all users would MUCH rather have 2 x 8-ways to leave plausible room for growth. No system is more scalability-challenged than Wintel - even billg is known to have actively considered using an implementation of the NT API set on AS/400 to obtain scalability for the top 0.05% of Windows users. -- Phil Payne http://www.isham-research.freeserve.co.uk Phone +44 7785 302803 Fax +44 7785 309674 +--- | This is the Midrange System Mailing List! | To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com. | To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com. | To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com. | Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com +---
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
This mailing list archive is Copyright 1997-2024 by midrange.com and David Gibbs as a compilation work. Use of the archive is restricted to research of a business or technical nature. Any other uses are prohibited. Full details are available on our policy page. If you have questions about this, please contact [javascript protected email address].
Operating expenses for this site are earned using the Amazon Associate program and Google Adsense.