Given this is post accident, I doubt they go anywhere without a teletector or similar. I am also sure they carry a more mundane rate meter such as an RO-2 or similar.

You want to slow it down and run it by me again how a GM tube is a better rate meter than an ion chamber? You are kidding, right? If you were to say a GM is better at detecting then I would agree. Quantifying, not so much. I would take a semi-proportional range device for the purpose any day over a GM.

Small quibble, RO-2 survey meters are the most common that I have seen in the commercial plants in the US. The top range of an RO-2 is 5 R/hr. The 6150 Teletector w/ ratemeter option is the most common high radiation survey instrument that I have seen and it is limited to 1 SV which is 100 R shy of the needed range in this case. Other than that I agree wholeheartedly.

I suspect you haven't really worked with the technology much. Correctly configured KVM runs a Win200X server just fine. Hint - use LVM for storage instead of a container file if I/O is high on the machine. Also use virtio drivers for best performance. Most people don't go for LVM because of the added complexity moving VMs from one host to another.

I believe that the OP is.

I spoke of Proxmox earlier and I still think it would work for you. Most of the solutions (Proxmox included) will use ISCSI if available. Freenas could fit that bill nicely. Storage replication is a nice bonus to taking this route. NFS is also usable for virtual machine disks. LVM can be used also provided you are willing to setup replication where you need HA capabilities (ala DRBD).

Another happy Proxmox user here. I have been using it in production here for the last 2 years. Prior to that I had tried most of the hypervisors out there. Xen was glitchy in the networking end of things. Xen also seemed to have disk I/O performance issues. Plain jane KVM worked well but suffered on the management side of things.

    Proxmox's real strength is the combination of openvz (as close to the metal as you get in VM) and the flexibility to fully virtualize any OS you care to (KVM). Add to that the fact that Proxmox handles HA and it is getting to the point that it handles distributed file systems (ceph and sheepdog). General maintenance is a breeze.

I wish that I could speak to how well it scales out but I haven't had to setup a large cluster with 100's of VM's . I imagine it does well though.

I am interested in others experience with large installs.

Marine windage formula windspeed X Range divded by C = MOA range is in hondreds of yards so 500 yards is 5. Assuming 15 knot winds (pretty brisk for most places) 15*5=75 C is different based on the round (I am assuming 308 M118 round since we are talking 500yds) the M118 has a C value of 15 out to 500 yards. So windage is 5 MOA at 500yards. That would 25 inches. Rephrasing what I said above being off 20% would not be significant at 500 yards. Again 15 knots is pretty windy at ground level. If you are shooting across canyons or from a building I take your point.

Look up lidar wind speed detection. Basically light reflected off of airborne aerosols. I would suppose that it could sample by time of flight to determine distance and develop a usable solution very rapidly. Out to 500 yards being off 1 MOA is not significant enough to miss the killing shot. Let's not forget that laser precision isn't necessary just somewhere inside the pie pan. (For those who don't shoot, I am saying that holding a pie pan over center mass of your target. As long as it hits the pan, it is probably a killing shot).

Waitta minnit! i AM the phb where I work. The same PHB that kicked MS into the corner. The same PHB that brought Proxmox into the datacenter. The same PHB that switched from Ciscos offerings to Asterisk. The only two MS servers one virtualized (because an app vendor won't wise up and use a SQL product that is platform agnostic) and one aging DC. The old bucket of bolts will be exiting as soon as my gateway distribution of choice works the last of the kinks out of their Samba4 integration. We aren't very big with only 150 employees so the conversion should go very smooth.

I stand corrected then. By the term IFB, can I assume Canadian? Really? You guys just let anyone in with the spent fuel? Do you take pizza delivery in containment then? ;-)

I can assume that you have not been in a commercial plant. The spent fuel pool is a locked room inside the vital area and is key card access controlled. The fuel is not being kept there because it is too radioactive. It is being stored there until decay heat becomes manageable. The area is typically monitored by area radiation monitors (ARM) and you will typically have a self reading dosimeter (MG,SAIC, or similar ) as well as a TLD (thermo-luminescent dosimeter) for record purposes. You may or may not use a frisker when you leave the immediate area depending on what work is being performed at the time. You will do a full body frisk when you leave the RCA (radiation controlled area). These terms and procedures are US ones but the rest of the world has basically the same setup that I describe assuming that we are talking about a PWR type reactor.

Your "Buying a $2000 safe for a couple thousand dollars worth" comment got my attention. One rifle with scope in my collection adds up to that value. While not every rifle is worth that money, they are more expensive than you think. Ammunition is $300-$400 a case which is the cheapest way to purchase it. I have trained my kids about gun safety and will happily let them handle them when asked. They will ask. We will go through the safety check drill and we will still treat them like they are loaded. This plan is to reduce the "mystery" associated with them. My kids don't pay any attention to my weapons now. Gun safety the open source way ;-).

No, not a god. A sysadmin for a small quasi government facility that has rules about responsible spending. Equivalent pricing for Intel based servers was 3X as much. Both platforms would do the job function so it really came down to price. BTW don't you competitively bid out things? Oh, and why post anonymously?

Tell that to my two servers with two 8 core Magny Cours 6128s per machine. Linux+KVM+fast RAID on these machines equals lots of responsive virtual machines at a price point way below what Intel could deliver. Is virtualisation a niche market? Really?