Ever since they first announced Niagara processors on the Sun, I am excited. Niagara may change my business? Who would not want tons of physical cores combined with tons of virtual model? Each technology conference, I tried to obtain data on the number of people Sun booths. The MySQL user conference they hyping up MySQL, for example - there is a huge mistake MySQL, which processors with more humiliating, so obviously not a big target for us (yet). However, the geek in me, I still wonder, for many years believed that the expansion of # processors, and not just the speed of the CPU, it was the future. One of the main parts of my job is that I can play with new toys and new technologies such as Amazon S3 and Niagara that our business can improve or modify it so. And each is focused on computer wants to dream that some "hot new CPU on the horizon that will solve all their problems, right? Sun has big day Try and Buy program. They do this mostly painless as clicking on the server want, and a few days later his arrival. Very cool. Unfortunately, I have not used the device Sun since 1994, when I was with SunOS 4 (SunOS remember when you were on BSD?) so it is probably time to try out the new equipment and new software. No thanks, I am busy guy. Enter Jonathan Schwartz and his famous blog. Jonathan may not remember, but when I was 12 years old, I would have room for NeXT every second I understood and crashed NeXTWorld annually. I remember it. It was the most important NeXT developer, and my father was a thankless task buffering Steve Jobs and Jonathan. Both are needed other, but they could not each other. Fun Fun. I sense in contact with Jonathan and see how he is doing on his new job, and see if smaller Internet companies like ours, can shed light on the direction of the Sun. I think it is very tough to try it, he in turn massive company with great momentum around compete in the new year. For more than a decade, computer information has been shifting more and more rapidly in the direction of free operating systems, along with commodity equipment, Sun and almost missed the boat. Now they are scrambling to catch up. I think Jonthan "received, but we have to see if he has the time and energy to actually do it. On June 16th, Jonathan posted a blog post, where he announced that Linux runs on Ubuntu Niagara, and that everyone who writes a detailed review are kept under question. Fantastic idea, I can run Linux, which I know like the back of my hand, play in some of the hot new technology, and I can keep the equipment for its time. Sold! So here we are, 60 days later, with careful consideration. UPDATE : Jonathan is a new blog entry this morning near Niagara conserve energy. Pretty cool that you can get a discount for using less power servers, but this does not materially affect the conclusions of the review. UPDATE # 2 : comment on digg very clear-you want to see the results of Solaris. Me too. That open call for assistance from the Sun. GOAL SmugMug many different tasks at beginning of image manipulation (heavy CPU and math), DB operations (chain and heavy RAM) serving on the dynamic pages (many quick and easy CPU requests). Obviously mature fruit something like Niagara, which is much slower kernel will serve light dynamic content. Specifically, we do most of the picture. We can download Apache processes so each piece is a nice load. As you can imagine, Our "All picture" interface greatly optimized for fast it basically just checks to make sure that allowing a photo copy it from our storage infrastructure is (or Amazon S3, depending) and push it down the network pipes. We serve millions and millions of their day. I often wondered if many small boxes with slower processors can be more effective at the service, as a relatively small number of really fast processors we do now. Niagara provides an excellent opportunity to find out. Our aim is quite simple, and any new hardware we checked. Now is the right time to test this thing, we need to buy a bunch of additional servers. We always want that the low cost of processing units per watt. $ / CPU / Vt. Here it is simple. Not to Niagara? SERVERS In the far corner, in red shorts, is the advocate for the protection of basic cluster SmugMug-member Olde Faithful : Rackable C1000. Weight 1U half-depth, two nuclei with two Opteron 270HE processors 2.0GHz, 4GB RAM, or drive, and Gigabit Ethernet. Her contract svelte $ 3,595 for officers. Olde loyalty, and its precursor, we must work to SmugMug years. In the near corner, wearing the blue shorts, is the upstart contender for the Sun CoolThreads : Sun Fire T1000, with a single eight core Niagara processor 1.0GHz with 4 virtual coverage on the basic physical, 4GB RAM, by SATA HDD or four Gigabit Ethernet. Her contract enormous $ 8395 *. CoolThreads is in keeping with its sleek 1U, depth 2/3rds metal, but it can deliver the goods? Note we actually are testing T1000 with 16GB of RAM, as Sun has sent us, but in this particular case, use, we are not only going to use a maximum of 1.5GB, so we buy the 4GB model. Price shows $ 8,395 for the version with 4GB drive by, which we do not need. Could probably save $ 100, if we could talk in the Sun dropping drive. HYPOTHESIS I am not a great believer in raw clock speed processors, especially after viewing our decision Happy clobber our 3GHz Xeons not Woodcrest,, but in this case I have to know the Sun benefit of the doubt and guess that they probably clock speed, "quality", as AMD. CoolThreads "cores x 8 = 1.0GHz 8GHz. Olde Believers in 4 samples x = 2.0GHz 8GHz. My hypothesis is how we will provide some similar features, when $ / CPU part of the equation. I think link load (that we care about most), but when not loaded, Olde Faithful will be photos faster. Based on the Sun literature and the fact that Sun also sells Opteron boxes (for less money), but continued to sell and promote the Niagara boxes, too, I think that there is probably something there with CPU / W part of the equation. I think CoolThreads benefit CPU / W compared, but it will not save nearly enough dollars to cover the basic cost of 2.3X. Remember, we care about the formula is $ / CPU / Vt. Power efficiency is not enough. If CoolThreads not win the $ / CPU / W Games, Sun can expect a lot of future orders with us.
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