Re: Scaling noise

John Bradford
2003-09-03T06:57:40Z

> 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.

John.