Duke, >I'm just guessing here and I really don't know but I think part of the demonstration was scalability. I don't think you have to start with 32 NetFinity Four-ways. I think you might be able to start with 2 and add more as you need them. If so, that would be pretty cool for a growing company.
Good point. Or as Barrett or Craig said at the stockholders meeting, the different size servers can be used for different applications, for example at a web hosting service:
2-way as web servers
4-way as application servers
8-way as database servers.
The 8-ways (or any of the others) can be replicated and scaled up in clusters, for added RAS, all the way to machines like IBM demoed. If any of the servers in a cluster fails, its workload fails over to the others in the cluster, usually with no recognizable downtime. It might just be possible that, with IBM, Compaq and HP competing with very similar Intel based servers, cluster technology and database applications, the combined effort could surpass what Sun is doing in the same area with their all proprietary solutions. That's just because of the fierce competition in a hot area among 3 very capable companies, something like Intel and AMD are pushing each other on the desktop front. Sun has their overall clustered systems development to themselves, which can be good, or bad.
Just another hairbrained thought.
Tony |
