Comment CONSISTENCY!!! Was: Re:No (Score 2, Interesting) 1316
PC hardware is not consistent. Many distros of Linux are not consistent. (Save for maube Debian,
with some real package management.)
I define consistency related to computers as "A supportable method of reproducability."
Case in point. A year ago, we bought a small cluster of 12 linux machines. They were all iedentical, and managing all of them was easy. Now, a year later, the cheap commodity hardware is failing, and I cannot find the "old" hardware anymore. I now have a cluster of 12 machines that are of different configurations with hardware from different vendors. Every machine has something different, and different software configurations are producing different results, either by performance , or reliability, or both.
On our 10 year old cluster of SGI IRIX machines, all the hardware has been consistently the same. When something does break, SGI replaces it with the same part! it works the same way, nothing changes , and my life is much easier. I manage hundreds of machines. I don't need 12 linux machines taking up all my time because the commodity parts, and the OS can't be coordinated, or worse yet, dependency trees, and OS packages don't get managed well at all.
As with the SGI machines, Apple has done a good job of product consistency. In the PC arena, you have to go to the high end IBM, Dell, or HP servers to get any semblance of consistency,and then the price you pay for that "pc server hardware" completely negates any savings you might realize from going with a PC platform. You might as well buy something cheaper that is still consistent, like Apple, or go for the gusto, and get SGI, or Sun machines, while you are spending the money, and at least enjot some consistency,and supportability.
with some real package management.)
I define consistency related to computers as "A supportable method of reproducability."
Case in point. A year ago, we bought a small cluster of 12 linux machines. They were all iedentical, and managing all of them was easy. Now, a year later, the cheap commodity hardware is failing, and I cannot find the "old" hardware anymore. I now have a cluster of 12 machines that are of different configurations with hardware from different vendors. Every machine has something different, and different software configurations are producing different results, either by performance , or reliability, or both.
On our 10 year old cluster of SGI IRIX machines, all the hardware has been consistently the same. When something does break, SGI replaces it with the same part! it works the same way, nothing changes , and my life is much easier. I manage hundreds of machines. I don't need 12 linux machines taking up all my time because the commodity parts, and the OS can't be coordinated, or worse yet, dependency trees, and OS packages don't get managed well at all.
As with the SGI machines, Apple has done a good job of product consistency. In the PC arena, you have to go to the high end IBM, Dell, or HP servers to get any semblance of consistency,and then the price you pay for that "pc server hardware" completely negates any savings you might realize from going with a PC platform. You might as well buy something cheaper that is still consistent, like Apple, or go for the gusto, and get SGI, or Sun machines, while you are spending the money, and at least enjot some consistency,and supportability.
