On Wed, 19 May 2010 18:18:28 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> Even today, I see people selling "servers" which are really like
>>> "desktops". (1.2 GHz Intel Celeron with 512 MB RAM? I don't think
>>> so...)
>> 
>> Depends on what the server is doing.  If it's just serving files up,
>> that's more than adequate; hell, I used to do file & print on an 80286
>> with 16 MB of memory.
> 
> Depends on how many files, of what size, to how many users.

Generally not, because file/print is I/O intensive, not CPU intensive.

Unless you start adding things like compression, encryption, block 
suballocation, and the like to the picture.

> Now the Domain Controller? *That* requires almost no hardware at all...

I can remember running 8 DCs (Windows 2000) on a Dual processor P2 
Proliant 6000.  Not for production, of course, but for testing an AD 
design.  VMware was pretty good for that setup. :-)

CPU becomes important when the server does actual processing tasks; 
memory when the server is doing other things as well - for example, 
running Apache, or using memory as a disk cache.

Jim

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On 19/05/2010 6:57 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 19 May 2010 18:16:27 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>
>>>>>> But hey, who gives a fig what *I* think?
>>>>>
>>>>> Well it is up to you to make suggestions that are worth listening to.
>>>>
>>>> I doubt that's going to work.
>>>
>>> That's your problem. ;-)
>>
>> As with so much in life, it seems...
>
> Well, as I've said up here before, you can either let life happen to you,
> or you can do something about it.
>
> Took me a long time to learn that lesson myself.
>
> Jim

Words of wisdom, James. Words of wisdom.

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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On 19/05/2010 6:17 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>
> Dealing with *one* ISP is quite hard enough... (And then there's the
> fact that in the UK there is only one IP carrier. Unless you happen to
> live in London.)

Or Hull, or Manchester, or Birmingham or Glasgow or Edinburgh or ...

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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On Wed, 19 May 2010 20:06:01 +0100, Stephen wrote:

>> Well, as I've said up here before, you can either let life happen to
>> you, or you can do something about it.
> 
> Words of wisdom, James. Words of wisdom.

One of these days I'll follow it more than I do now - I still have a lot 
of areas where I actively engage in avoidance where I shouldn't, and I 
just let things happen rather than directing them.

It's something I've been reading a lot about recently as I look at my own 
career development path.

Jim

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>>>> Even today, I see people selling "servers" which are really like
>>>> "desktops". (1.2 GHz Intel Celeron with 512 MB RAM? I don't think
>>>> so...)
>>> Depends on what the server is doing.  If it's just serving files up,
>>> that's more than adequate; hell, I used to do file & print on an 80286
>>> with 16 MB of memory.
>> Depends on how many files, of what size, to how many users.
> 
> Generally not, because file/print is I/O intensive, not CPU intensive.

I was thinking more that you'd need more RAM, not CPU power.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 19/05/2010 8:26 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 19 May 2010 20:06:01 +0100, Stephen wrote:
>
>>> Well, as I've said up here before, you can either let life happen to
>>> you, or you can do something about it.
>>
>> Words of wisdom, James. Words of wisdom.
>
> One of these days I'll follow it more than I do now - I still have a lot
> of areas where I actively engage in avoidance where I shouldn't, and I
> just let things happen rather than directing them.
>

That is the human condition.

> It's something I've been reading a lot about recently as I look at my own
> career development path.
>

Don't read, act. Or rather think then act.
See you in Edinburgh soon. :-)

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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On 18-5-2010 22:31, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> 1980, except that it was the next day and not six months later.
> 
> To be clear, they pretty much stopped making that sort of machine in the 
> late 70s, but many of them lasted into the 90s before they ahd to be 
> retired, often for lack of parts.
> 

What I actually meant that when I started at uni (1982) we could still 
hand over a deck of cards at a front office and collect our results next 
day. It was also the first year we could also do it using terminals, 
though we still had to collect our output ourselves. The machine the 
programs were run on was, IIRC, a Cyber 205 in the central super 
computing facility.

At the medical physics department we had a VAX, this was retired in 
about 85 after running against an IBM compatible. Although the VAX won 
by 60% there was a small difference in cost. The IBM compatible costed 
about $2000 or so whereas the VAX consumed a couple of $100000 just in 
electricity and maintenance per year. (forgot the actual numbers but the 
difference was a factor in that ballpark).

We also had a VAX in the experimental cardiology department, where I am 
working now. That one was retired around 1998, after a colleague and me 
wrote a program that could finally do on a PC what the VAX had been 
doing until then. Although it is even now hard to duplicate the 4000 by 
4000 resolution we had on our display monitor.

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On Wed, 19 May 2010 20:31:28 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 19/05/2010 8:26 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Wed, 19 May 2010 20:06:01 +0100, Stephen wrote:
>>
>>>> Well, as I've said up here before, you can either let life happen to
>>>> you, or you can do something about it.
>>>
>>> Words of wisdom, James. Words of wisdom.
>>
>> One of these days I'll follow it more than I do now - I still have a
>> lot of areas where I actively engage in avoidance where I shouldn't,
>> and I just let things happen rather than directing them.
>>
>>
> That is the human condition.

Yeah, that's true enough.  Passivity is easy; activity is hard.  People 
tend for the easy.

>> It's something I've been reading a lot about recently as I look at my
>> own career development path.
>>
>>
> Don't read, act. Or rather think then act. See you in Edinburgh soon.
> :-)

Maybe a holiday this year, the way the dollar is comparing against the 
pound, it's looking like this could actually happen this year. :-)

Jim

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On Wed, 19 May 2010 20:27:45 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>>>> Even today, I see people selling "servers" which are really like
>>>>> "desktops". (1.2 GHz Intel Celeron with 512 MB RAM? I don't think
>>>>> so...)
>>>> Depends on what the server is doing.  If it's just serving files up,
>>>> that's more than adequate; hell, I used to do file & print on an
>>>> 80286 with 16 MB of memory.
>>> Depends on how many files, of what size, to how many users.
>> 
>> Generally not, because file/print is I/O intensive, not CPU intensive.
> 
> I was thinking more that you'd need more RAM, not CPU power.

There again, it depends.  If you're doing multi-gigabyte file 
distribution for system imaging, there isn't enough RAM available to 
cache the file sizes we're talking about, so it's better to fully 
optimize the I/O channels from end to end.

Jim

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>> separate words for 10e9 and 10e12, so there is no such confusion.
>
> And chinese uses steps of 10e5 or so, rather than 10e3.  My wife always 
> has to spend several seconds mentally adjusting any number over 1000 she 
> heard about, because (for example) 10,000 and 100,000 have their own words 
> in chinese.

Yep that happens here with all my Japanese colleagues (I think they have 
words for 10e4 and 10e8 there).  At first I just thought they were really 
dumb because it took them 10 seconds to translate a number!  Our Japanese 
teacher (who is not technical at all) usually just gave up with big numbers!

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