Re: Fibration questions

[mjt@nysv.org]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 03:57:32PM -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
>Cray is still in business? ;)

I got the name from clusterfs.com ;)

Cray and Cluster File Systems are preparing the Lustre file system for
deployment on the Red Storm supercomputer. 

Red Storm supercomputer.. hmm!

>Umm.. *would* they benefit?  Think it through - if the "best available
>filesystem" suddenly gets 30% faster, they end up selling 30% smaller servers -
>and there's more profit margin at the high end than at the low end.  So you
>can't really get much support from the hardware people (look at how rich Intel
>has gotten from Windows bloating every release, and think about it...)

Well, I think they would.

Guys like Dell deploy big-ass servers, if they shipped it with a super-fast
and advanced secure file system like Reiser4, I very much doubt anyone
would go "Gee, let's buy this smaller model which costs less but that
ships with a slower file system, which also happens to be less secure"

Intel won't stop selling fastest processors to Dell just because Dell ships
something with which they squeeze even more power out of the hardware.

It's all about marketing, I guess. If they had a slogan like "More for
a lesser price - Reiser4!" their sales would not at go down. Besides,
they control the market, they keep pushing out faster and sharper
PowerEdges and there's not a damned thing anyone can do about it,
and they don't want to either, even less if it has a good file system.

Customer companies allocate x currency units for hardware. 
That's what they always do, because x buys them a decent
machine, and decent machines tend to have a constant cost through the ages.
I mean the contemporary power versus money and an upgrade sequence
passing through every few years.

They will not allocate x-y because they want something less. People want 
a system they can trust, and when they buy from Dell, they trust Dell, 
and if Dell has covered its ass in Reiser4 development and ships it, it's
a total win-win situation.

That's my view on things.

-- 
mjt