[Info-vax] OpenVMS servers and clusters as a cloud service

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/31/2017 9:46 AM, Kerry Main wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com] On Behalf Of Arne
>> Vajhøj via Info-vax
>> On 12/30/2017 9:31 PM, DaveFroble wrote:
>>> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> There are a lot of commodity stuff in IT operations.
>>>>
>>>> Windows client PC's
>>>> MS Office
>>>> Windows file & print servers
>>>> Apache on Linux web servers
>>>> some database servers (like FaceBook running 1800 MYSQL servers)
>>>> Low end ERP systems (not SAP and Oracle)
>>>> Etc.
>>>>
>>>> Are all standardized and measured in hundreds or thousands.
>>>>
>>>> According to internet gossip then Google has one sysadm
>>>> per 28000 Linux servers.

>>> The IT of yesterday, today, and tomorrow is in many cases much more
>>> specialized.  Just because google has 28000 servers, I'm betting none of
>>> those servers can monitor and run many of today's jobs.  Industry.
>>> Power.  And such.  Does google's 28000 servers make the rest less
>>> important?  I think not.
>>
>> I wrote that Google (according to gossip) have one sysadm per 28000
>> servers.
>>
> 
> That’s crap and/or are following the age old misdirection whereby they do not count a whole lot of resources doing what people would consider sysadmin work.
> - Is that one sysadmin managing IP addresses for 28,000 servers?
> - is that one sysadmin monitoring backups for 28,000 servers?
> - is that one sysadmin monitoring security logs for 28,000 servers?

Tools, automation and self service.

> - is that one sysadmin working with firewall groups to address issues with firewall issues associated with 28,000 servers?

That is not a sysadm task.

But likely to be automated as well.

>> I did not write that Google has 28000 servers.
>>
>> They have a lot more servers.
>>
>> Internet gossip says that they have 900000 servers.
> 
> Huge numbers I have no doubt (likely 90% are VM's).

I assume physical servers with 10-20 times more VM's.

> A more impressive question to ask is "what is the average utilization of all these VM servers?"

Most likely much much higher than what the small shops can achieve.

> In case anyone doubts the costs of VM sprawl on an organization, here is a simple test:
> 
> Ask your IT provider to give you a quote of what their monthly
> support
> charges are for 10 physical servers and 10 OS instances. Then ask them
> what their monthly support charges are for 10 VM's running on one
> physical server. The latter estimate for 10 VM's will be approx. 70-80%
> of the former 10 physical servers.
> 
> Now you know what outsourcers / cloud providers really understand all
> to well - the real costs are associated with the management and
> support of the OS instance - not the server hardware.
And that is exactly why you are so wrong when you think IaaS cloud
means out-sourcing a lot of IT operations.

It is OS and up - especially the applications that generate
work - not the hardware.

Arne