Going to be One Of Those Days

Tue Sep 14 22:59:42 PDT 2004

On Sep 14, 2004, at 14:31, Roy S. Rapoport wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 14, 2004 at 03:53:45PM -0500, Jim Hickstein wrote:
>>> At which point, watching them, I say "you know ... I think I'd like 
>>> to
>>> check the VGA cable connection to the back of the monitor just ... 
>>> in ...
>>> case."
>>
>> But PCs are still crap.
>
> Bang-for-buck-wise, they ain't bad.

I'm not so sure.  I'd _love_ to see a real study done that takes into 
account all the relevant factors (or as close to that as is 
practical)--including extra HW required for remote reboot, and extra 
sysadmin time to assemble the ultra-cheap build-it-yourself boxes, and 
to replace cheap HW as it dies under stress, etc..

At $CURRENT_JOB, we "upgraded" from sturdy-but-old SPARC boxes to Intel 
HW from Sun.  The HW wasn't any cheaper than similar SPARC boxes 
(V60x's vs. V210's), and it has held up well under load so far, but 
also has required almost $1,000 extra in manageable power strips, the 
OS support ($BOSS requires OS support) fees are more than they were for 
Solaris, and I had to add the optional bits (second CPU, second disk, 
more RAM--stuff my VAR should have done, if I had a decent one; don't 
ask--we can't switch) to each one (a significant time cost for around 
40 boxes).

We originally went with much cheaper Intel HW, but it broke seriously 
under load, so decided that "you get what you pay for" is somewhat 
close to correct.  I have this uncomfortable feeling that that adage is 
deeper than typically interpreted, and that "cheap" HW ends up costing 
the same as or more than the "expensive" stuff in the long run.

-Guy