[Info-vax] The Future of Server Hardware?

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> On 12-10-02 18:53, David Froble wrote:

>> For the disks, the MicroVAX 3100 systems had a rather stupid 50 pin SCSI 
>> controller, and the speed was, well, "not speed".  Now, not that I was a 
>> fan of the BI bus, but the 6000 class systems had much better 
>> capabilities at moving data.  CPU speed is not everything in a system.

> But today, does an IBM mainframe use a bus that is faster than
> PCI-Express ?

> In terms of disks, wouldn't mainframes and commodity servers use the
> same type of disk array interfaces ?

> Or is this a case of modern mainframes using the same types of
> interfaces, but surporting multiple instances whereas comodity servers
> only have one PCI-Express and one interface card to FC or whatever type
> of interface to a disk array ?

I don't know so well what they are selling today, but traditionally
an important difference is the number of disks. Now, there are large
disk arrays available for many server class systems today, reasonably
priced, but not in the same price class as home machines.

Still, with today's disk and RAM prices, you can build a pretty amazing
machine for an affordable price. 

-- glen