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List:       beowulf
Subject:    Re: [Beowulf] A bit OT - scientific workstations - recommendations
From:       Joe Landman <landman () scalableinformatics ! com>
Date:       2006-03-04 2:14:19
Message-ID: 4408F7FB.7050206 () scalableinformatics ! com
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Douglas Eadline wrote:
> > - 24/7/365 next day on site support
> 
> 
> Let's consider this idea in light of commodity hardware.
> (i.e. why I don't buy service contracts on light bulbs)
> 
> Assuming that you can ship a node back for no cost repair within a
> warranty period, the question to ask is how many spare nodes
> can I buy for the price of a service contract for all the nodes
> in my cluster?

We live in the era of disposable computing.

If your business case demands that you have no down time, then you 
engineer around that.  If it demands you minimize costs, you need to 
adjust your expectations on what you will get for those costs.

It all comes down to the major compromises that you need to engineer 
for.  Be it a supercomputer, a cluster, an SMP, a desktop.

-- 
Joseph Landman, Ph.D
Founder and CEO
Scalable Informatics LLC,
email: landman@scalableinformatics.com
web  : http://www.scalableinformatics.com
phone: +1 734 786 8423
fax  : +1 734 786 8452
cell : +1 734 612 4615
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