Re: Difference between AS/400 and any normal web server

Hello Larry,

Am 22.08.2022 um 17:31 schrieb Larry DrFranken Bolhuis <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:

I recall one meeting at a customer site where management was "All In" on moving to Windows on VMware on big Cisco UCS chassis. They bragged up how 'simple' it was to add more VMs to handle more workload. "We have all the processing and memory already in place for this and would just need to add windows licensing, create the new servers and then add them to the load balancer and we can scale up."

I've also been confronted with such claims. My usual question then is: Why do I need to add the memory, CPU, and disk space overhead of extra VMs, pay for licenses (in case of Windows) when I easily can add more virtual CPUs and RAM to a given VM so the application itself can do more work in parallel within that one instance?

If *this* doesn't scale well, the software to be run is crap, seen from a modern PoV: For how long have hardware manufacturers resolved to not have one single (more or less) fast CPU, but many CPUs/cores?

My experience in the Linux world has shown that many implement a separate database server, a separate web server and whatnot, introducing network latency over purely local connections through unix domains sockets. Of course everything at least twice for redundancy! Because everybody does so.

In turn creating a complex, hard to administer tangle which can easily crumble down to ceasing to work completely because software bugs are always there and bite hard when you least expect it. Please don't get me started on maintenance and software updates with sometimes incompatible changes rendering any HA solution for obtaining premium availability moot. :-)

The IBM i team lead asked how long that will take and also do you need to do that at the HA site as well?

"Oh a day or so and yes of course."

IBM i team lead said: "OK so a day or so, minus two minutes, longer than it would take us today on the current systems."

Windows guy then asks: "So you've purchased all that processor and memory in advance and have it sitting there doing nothing now?"

IBM i guy for the win: "You just said you did too, and you aren't even running anything on it."

Ha! I like that! Well played!

:wq! PoC