Fast Servers at Robert Pogson

Some foolish young men enjoy fast women or fast cars. I am long past that. I enjoy fast servers.

Today, my eye was caught by a story about SUN/Oracle combining for a product involving fast servers, storage and database management software. The story mentioned the possibility of using SUN T5440 servers in combination with SSD storage and Oracle database. For fun, I thought I would look up the specs of such a server:

$54 – $156 K CAD
1 to 4 – 8-core Sparc T2+ CPUs
32 – 128 gB
4.5 KW supply

That would run more than 1000 simultaneous desktops for $100+ each. That is more expensive than my typical x86 solution per user but it is still far less expensive than the usual thick client solution with one hard drive and one or more software licences per seat.

Sigh. Anyone have $100 K they can donate?

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.