RE: Trivia: Processor MHz -- MIDRANGE-L

Andrew, I just found your reply-

I'm in fundamental agreement with everything you say.  My point was more
about the fact that raw processor speed can be a bottleneck.  CGI, HTML,
Java for web presentation can require more raw processing than traditional
AS/400 RPG interactive and batch processing.  A relatively new two year old
AS/400 can have a processor bottleneck in these environments.  I did,
however, say:

"I don't, however, think you necessarily need to use an Intel screamer.
There are a great number of new Intel, HP, Apple, IBM iSeries/pSeries,
etc. processors that are fast enough to do the job.  You don't have to buy
the fastest if there are alternatives that more than meet your needs."

I've been in so many situations where the fastest solution was selected
without asking what would really be "fast enough".  In the world of Best of
Breed solutions you may be buying a fast processor that will spend most of
its time waiting on other systems, applications, or even its own disk.  If
"fast enough" meets or exceeds your needs, and the fastest server,
processor, etc. has a quantifiable cost in administration, knowledge,
usefulness or stability the cost should be factored into the decision.

-Jim


-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Borts [mailto:Andrewb@SETACORPORATION.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2001 4:24 PM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: RE: MIDRANGE-L digest, Vol 1 #1025 - 10 msgs


OK - Jim Here's the big picture...
1) AS/400's are damn good web servers - I've peaked @ 20,000 visitors a
day with a single 270.  Most of my problem was with Net.Commerce and
older  versions of it.
2) That same 270 can handle 800 simultaneous CGI requests, 2000
simultaneous Cached HTML requests... and I've come close to seeing those
peaks.
3) Load balancing is a fact of life in the web world.  IBM needs to make
it more lucrative for people to do it.  30 270's pointing to the same
back end RAIDED disk acting as web servers etc... is a great model to go
by - but is not possible with current OS/400 unless you write/buy
mirroring software between the boxes with mucho redundant disk.  Most of
the time with BIG web sites, they run out of bandwidth before they run
out of CPU - another fact of life...   Now a load balanced LPARed 840
with 32 processors pointing to a single chunk of disk - this I could
reach my hands around!!  I can send ALL of my Net.Data pointing to
another server, and compile all my RPG arounf the DDM files... but I
digress...
4) The AS/400 isn't the fastest kid on the block - but what the heck are
you serving?  Yahoo?  E-Bay?  When your back end server is AS/400 &
you're building a B2B - do it on an AS/400!  If you're trying to impress
someone with FLASH etc... you can STILL use an AS/400 - but these cheep
Linux boxes seem to do well (and the AS/400 is NOW doing linux!!)
5) E-commerce is a touchy subject with me - but look @
www.palmbeachjewelry.com - that box pops up... all RPG CGI routines
running it & Net.Data... not too shabby...

Check out my home site - www.as400nut.com - that's a SMALL as/400 - the
Counter on the bottom is Net.Data - and I'm building some serious
examples of Net.Data code for people to play with.  That is an 18cpw
box.  When you talk WAS or Domino or ANY serious Unix based
functionality - that's when the SERIOUS hardware needs to be considered.
Java can bring a system w/out enough cylinders down!  Firing up the
Apache admin server on my system is like kicking it in the nuts, but the
AS/400 doesn't fall down & clutch 'em - it plows onward and limps for a
bit until all the Java has compiled & is in memory... then it levels
out.