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Sun no Longer the "dot" in .com
An anonymous reader writes: "Sun's claim to fame, namely being the "dot" in .com in all their TV spots, has been snatched by IBM. Their E10000 which was serving as the A.Root server has been replaced by an IBM RS/6000 S80. " OK, it's not the most significant news, but it was just funny to see that title. ;)
...involving the phrase "Getting the dot, but missing the point."
I just can't think of it.
Damn.
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"
One Server to rule them
One Server to find them
One Server to bring them
And in the DNS BIND them
Say hello to zMac.
Looks like after that they've decided to change to the "doh" in
[drum hit]
Hotnutz.com - Funny
The root servers are root-servers.net, so IBM can be called the dot in .net and Sun can still claim to be the dot in .com.
You can't put 'just' 4 processors in an S80, it comes in multiples of 6 up to 24.
The biggest advantage to an S80 is the price/performance ratio. The big disadvantage is that it has to be shut down when a CPU or a memory card fails. E10K's can hot swap CPUs and memory, but E450's can't...
Just clarifying.
Last time i checked, RFC 882 put the dot in .com
Known as the A.Root server, the big black IBM computer holds the authoritve files for matching domain names--such as www.marthastewart.com or www.yahoo.com--...
/. readers that are new to network hierarchy should get the facts.
Actually, this is not true. This server only translates the field directly before the TLD extension. That is, only yahoo.com and marthastewart.com are served. The www part is supplied by yahoo and martha's respective root servers.
I realize that the author of the article probably knows this, but did not include it in his article so my mother would understand, but I feel
Sludgie
and what's up with my tags being removed in the editing field when I preview? That's annoying.
Cheap! Slightly used Sun Ultra Enterprise 10000 for sale. Like-new condition. Every home network needs one of these.
If you look at the Fortune 100 corporate web sites, 52% of them are running Solaris with various web servers. Now this is certainly flamebait to most /.ers, the runner up was Windows NT (2000) with 29%. Interesting fact: Linux only runs one of the Fortune 100 web sites.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Well, there's A.root-servers.net through M.root-servers.net, which are hosted all over the world. Usually only DNS servers contact them, and there's already built in "round robin" and retries. So, if A.root-servers.net was to go down, at worst, 1 out of 14 queries to domains that hadn't previously been queried would get delayed by a short period of time. (IOW, if you do a lookup on foo.domain.com, your DNS server would cache domain.com's NS info and your query for bob.domain.com would use that instead of hitting the root nameservers.) However, I think the DNS servers would cache the information about the failure talking to a.root-servers.net and stop asking it things for a while.
In other words, DNS has failover built in.
However, if the server stayed down for an extended period of time, it would probably cause updates not to happen. I suspect they could get a new server in place for that purpose within a reasonably short period of time, though.
*One* Server holds the master file?
One server hold the master file, yes. That master file is mirrored among many other servers which are not only located in different parts of the country but also in different parts of the world.
No load balancing/[obligatory beowulf]/Round Robin? I would like to think there is some redundancy in there...
{sigh} Spoken like a true PC server user.
I've got four S70s which are almost identical to the S80 but max at 12 processors instead of the S80's 24.
When you think server, you see a tower or maybe even a rack-mount PC. The S80 is no such beast. It is literally the size of an industrial refridgerator. And that's just for the processors. Right next to it is another cabinet of a similar size which has the IO drawers, drives and else.
The only parts of the S80 that are not redundant are the processors and memory. Since both are non-moving, non-mechanical parts, they have an ultra long MTBF. If either fries, the machine takes itself down, 'deconfigures' the failed item and then brings itself back online. Try to get any PC server out there to do that.
(Our S70 lost one of 12 processors three weeks ago at threeish in the morning. It was down and up so quickly no one even noticed it. A few days later, I was reviewing some logs and noticed that I was short a processor.)
Yes, no system is failure-proof. However, the mindset that the S80 suffers from the same problems as a PC server is as silly as thinking a Piper Cub is in the same league as Air Force One (the president's plane).
Internally, the S80 is redundant and can support an amazing load, externally, the DNS system will out-live us all.
InitZero
(April 20, 2000) Up to recently, Network Solutions Inc. (NSI) used a Sun E10000, one of the powerhouses of the computer world. But recently, they've moved to a brand new IBM RS/6000 S80. What brought on this startling change? The Dali Lama caught up with someone from NSI recently and here's what went on.
"Well, it all started with Comdex last year." says J.R. Bob Dobbs, VP of Sales at NSI. "Sally over in Marketing talked to this really cool guy at the IBM exihibit. Anyway, he said he could get this really great deal on this new equipment they had coming out. and she said to me 'Wow, think of the free publicity...' and we just knew we had to move. Besides, the old E10000 allows you to do maintance while part of it isn't working, and I'd rather it just stop working while someone is fixing it! I mean, when you blow a tire on your car, do you want it to actually keep driving instead of forcing you to pull over! Come on, that's dumb!"
But what of the costs of migrating to an entirely new Unix platform? and the support costs? Dobbs commented "Well, the migration wasn't very easy, but after calling IBM technical support every day for the past month, hiring IBM global services to come out and fix it repeatedly, and firing our entire Solaris loving admin staff, we're through the migration already! I don't care if the new Sun processors and new 128 processor machine is coming out in six months, I want to spam the domain owners now! Besides, IBM assured us that he would install this great tool called 'smit' on the machine. Hell, I'm the Systems Engineer now! I don't even know what it's doing, I just point and click and it does stuff! Think about the huge amounts of savings with Administrative staff! Besides, IBM assures me I won't need anything but smit! I'm even IBM certified!"
And what of the older processes still in place, like mail forms for registration names, and sending 'CRYPT-PW' via mail? Bob quickly snarled back with "Oh, you want security? wah, go cry in your milk, you linux pussy. I got the root server, fuck off."
Obviously, great things are instore for NSI in the future.
[note: Sorry if I'm a little biased, but how probable is this scenerio? Anyone else ever dealt NSI or IBM on a 'professional' level? And yes, it's all a joke. J.R. Bob Dobbs is entirely too cool to talk to the Dali Lama.]
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Scary, huh?
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"