Re: Casino switches to AIX

From: Lukas Beeler
This is exactly the kind of FUD that doesn't help anyone.

Ouch. That's my first time to be accused of FUD on a mailing list. I thought it was CW [conventional wisdom] that complex workloads destabilized Windows ;-)


You make a good point about an application like Facebook, which is mostly static content for millions of users. There's no pressing need for a centralized application / database server for static content.

Dynamic database content is another story. IBM i has the advantage of scaling vertically for that type of workload. For example, someone could deploy my Web portal on a 64-way server in the exact same manner as a single-cpu server deployment; copy the program and database files to a library. About the only difference might be running a script on the 64-way server to launch multiple instances of the application instead of one. Native task dispatching would automatically balance workloads across multiple CPUs. You handle a lot more users with minimal footprint, and without increasing your operations staff.

Contrast that with an application like Microsoft Dynamics CRM. I recall an expert recommending a minimum of 5 servers in a typical deployment, with each server performing a discrete role. The installation procedures may allow you to deploy all the components on a single server, but even the installation guide advises that up-time will be increased by going with a multiple-server configuration. And we're not talking about backup clusters. Just distributing the components across multiple servers.

Nathan.