[Info-vax] Distributed Applications, Hashgraph, Automation

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-02-22 22:00:59 +0000, DaveFroble said:

> Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2018-02-21, DaveFroble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>> But, when talking about being able to "spin up" additional resources on 
>>> demand, I have to ask first, what is the problem, and what type and 
>>> amount of resources should be thrown at the problem.
>> 
>> An example problem is when your website load has a normal base load but 
>> which can also vary dramatically depending on the season (eg: 
>> Christmas) or marketing days (eg: Black Friday), etc.
>> 
>> Simon.
> 
> Not a problem, here ..
> 
> Frankly, for some needs, one can not purchase a system small/weak 
> enough to exactly fit the needs.  So, one might have excess capability, 
> but if that is the smallest available, so what?
> 
> Today's HW can be extremely capable.  Maybe not for everyone.
> 
> It all comes back to, who needs certain things, and who doesn't.  It's 
> that breakdown that seems to be totally absent in these discussions.

What's also missing is that over-building server configurations is 
normal on OpenVMS; there's just no entry-level server available, and 
there really hasn't been one for a decade or two.   Of how capable or 
over-capable some of that hardware really is.   What's also missing is 
that not spinning up new servers for testing or for prototyping is 
normal on OpenVMS.   That even installing and configuring a new server 
is an involved task on OpenVMS.  That clustering has been an 
exceedingly expensive approach to license on OpenVMS.  That clustering 
itself hasn't been further integrated and updated in OpenVMS.   That 
you can't gain access to a guest or a slice or a private server at a 
hosting provider fully online and within minutes, with OpenVMS.  Folks 
that are used to other platforms aren't used to these assumptions and 
these limits and these requirements; the whole 
runs-on-commodity-hardware discussion is soon in play for everybody.   
OpenVMS and its apps are headed into a completely different world.   
With actual entry-level hardware.  Whether any business takes 
profitable advantage of this?   I know of a number of folks running 
lightly-loaded rx2800 boxes that may well end up replacing them with 
servers that are a fraction of the size (toaster-sized or cartridges or 
otherwise), and at a fraction of the hardware prices of the Integrity 
boxes that they'll be replacing.   Or where you can spin up and run a 
test system for tens of dollars a month, and somebody else deals with 
the hardware and the network and the rest of that.

These sorts of differences in costs and revenues and availabilities 
won't interest some accounting departments and some managers and some 
developers...

For folks with under-loaded Integrity boxes, I'd be looking at a range 
with some of the following at the low-end...

https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/Mini-ITX/SYS-E300-8D.cfm
https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/midtower/5028/SYS-5028L-TN2.cfm
https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/midtower/5028/SYS-5028D-TN4T.cfm

This all also depends heavily on which processors, chipsets and I/O 
widgets gets supported by VSI, and what sorts of local and served 
storage and storage interconnects and protocols will be available and 
supported and necessary, of course.  FC, maybe SCS over DTLS, iSCSI and 
maybe iSER, maybe FCIP, SMB, etc.

At the middle-range of OpenVMS usage, I know of data centers running 
racks of OpenVMS servers that might well end up with the whole 
environment replaced by a few 3U/6U-class boxes; blades and SSDs and 
all.

And I'd be surprised to not see a number of OpenVMS systems running 
hosted.  Some in production.  Some for testing.  Though this definitely 
hinges on the VSI pricing and packaging practices for x86-64.






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