[Ilugc] VMware as well as Virtual PC now free-as-in-free beer
- From: rajanvn@xxxxxxxxx (Natarajan V)
- Date: Fri Jul 14 21:05:36 2006
On 7/14/06, Sivasankar Chander <siva.ilugc@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yup, I'll second this. Somebody also needs to tell Elcot to drop
their IBM mainframe purchase for running Linux/S390 in VMs and
go with x86 server clusters running Linux/x86 guests in VMware
instead. They can even benchmark and test this inexpensively
with free licenses - a Dell SC430 dual-core at Rs.18k should be
enough to get started on the HW side.
I am not very sure, but here are my thoughts. IBM Z Series'
virtualization is, called as an
LPAR(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LPAR). Though the virtualization is
full virtualization, but, I personally found, through reports from
friends who actually did a performance analysis by deploying more than
1000 instances of Linux kernal, back in 2003, on a single Z/Server, in
addition to the Z/OS and other environments already running, that
IBM's virtualization is in fact, much better in terms of performances.
I think the packaging is what makes it more attractive. You can simply
go ahead and pull out two SMPS, 10 hard drives, one set of RAM and One
Air conditioning Unit out of the server and the server still runs
without a hitch (no restarting). This might sound familiar to those
who have attended Mr. Mark Dalton's session on SATA Hard disks, Blade
servers and Cray Super
computers(
http://www.chennailug.org/wiki/Mark_Daltons_talk_-_Cray_XD1%2C_SATA%2C_Volume_management%2C_filesystems).
For an enterprise server for the size of TamilNadu (entire database
and ALL applications of ALL departments), I will not buy your
suggestion. The servers for such huge applications with 24x7
availability should be stored in specialized data centers, with
specialized cooling equipments built into them. I don't think you can
get that kind of cooling for an array of servers, and that can run for
months, if not for years, without restarting, for a mere 18,000
rupees..... I doubt, if enterprises like Tamil Nadu (with so much of
bureaucracy), will be ready/able to do such experiments, and draw
conclusions from their own experiments. They will surely buy the
solution, if already made by others and published. Perhaps DELL
themselves should do the experiment and sell the solution to TN.
Please correct me where I have misunderstood the requirements.
Regards,
Natarajan.
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