Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 3 Sep 2003 08:10:33 +0100 | From | John Bradford <> | Subject | Re: Scaling noise |
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> Tell me again that it is a good idea to screw up uniprocessor performance > for 64 way machines. Great idea, that. Go Dinosaurs!
I suspect Larry is actually right that uniprocessor and $smallnum CPUs SMP performance will remain the most important, but I don't agree with his reasoning:
Once true virtualisation becomes part of a mainstream microprocessor architecture, we'll start to see a lot of small ISPs wanting to move 4 or so 1U servers on to a single, 1U SMP box. Server consolidation saves money in many ways - physical LAN cabling is replaced by virtual LANs, less network hardware such as switches is required, there is less hardware to break, you can add a new Linux image in seconds using spare capacity rather than going out and buying a new box.
Once the option of running a firewall, a hot spare firewall, a customer webserver, a hot spare customer webserver, mail server, backup mail server, and a few virtual machines for customers, all on a 1U box, why are you going to want to pay for seven or more Us in a datacentre, plus extra network hardware?
You can do this today on Z/Series, but you need to consolidate a lot of machines to make it financially viable. Once virtualisation is available on cheaper hardware, everybody will want $bignum way SMP boxes, but no Linux image will run on more than $smallnum virtual CPUs.
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