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US Government Upgrades RAM
Deep Throat writes "Techworld has the scoop on a new super-sized RAM disk that the US government has just bought for a few million dollars in order to speed up searching through huge databases. It's 2.5TB! The VP of the company that made it says it is for Washington DC and searching databases but won't say who. Techworld explains why it reckons it's the Department of Homeland Security searching in the NSA and Pentagon databases for terrorists. And apparently the government is 'very happy' with the purchase and thinking about getting more."
Still not as fast as if they'd make the info public domain and use google :)
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
in order to speed up searching through huge database
Have they consulted Google?
Sounds like they're taking heed of Google's success in attaining blazing search speeds by holding all the data in RAM.
See here.
The list price of the system, which is made up from 40 RamSan 320 units, reviewed here, is $4.7million
Purchased from Dell's website that would have been....$12.5 million?
They're upgrading in time for Longhorns release you insensitive clod!
However, not that many departments could possibly want to run such vast queries regularly. It would also be extremely difficult to justify a $4.7 million investment unless that work was seen as vital and speed was a main consideration in that work. It is also peculiar that such a large purchase could be approved at a time of tightening belts.
Honestly, I wonder what the author was smoking?
* However, not that many departments could possibly want to run such vast queries regularly.
You don't think so? I think *every* DBA would like to have a few extra TB of RAM. Maybe the Department of Transportation just wants a more efficient way to keep track of US Highway routes?
* It would also be extremely difficult to justify a $4.7 million investment...
What country is this guy living in? If you're high up enough, it's trivially easy to justify $5 million. That's hardly enough to build one Interstate highway intersection.
* It is also peculiar that such a large purchase could be approved at a time of tightening belts.
Oh, now I know the problem. The author has been in a coma for the past 18 months. Wake up, dude, and smell the money!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
This was bought by the Internal Revenue Service in order to improve the auditing of tax returns. They say that the additional revenue brought in will easily pay for the device many times over.
If it was for the DHS or NSA you would not have heard about the purchase.
No comment needed.
After weeks of seeing overblown headlines on slashdot (IE, Bill Gates runs over a squirel on the way to work, headline reads "Bill Gates Murders Animals as part of his Job!!!"), it's good to see one that is, well, underblown. 2.5TB is a bit more than a 'RAM upgrade'
that's about 8KB for every person in the US, including the 'terrorist' bit. You can put a lot of personal data in 8KB.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
RTFA dude. "It also includes three independent internal UPS systems to ensure that no power loss or power supply failure will stop the RamSan from performing its internal backup procedures."
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
I just hope they didn't get it at Fry's. God help them if they've got to return it.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
This is supposed to be a caching system, not a long term archive. They also undoubtedly have both Uninteruptable Power Supplies (think racks full of car batteries) and generators to protect from power failure. The databases that it caches are more than likely mirrored at multiple locations, and backed up daily, if not in realtime to an autmated tape library system.
This cautionary tale is a USENET fable:
VAXen, My Children, Just Don't Belong In Some Places
Usenet Apocrypha
VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places. In my business, I am frequently called by small sites and startups having VAX problems. So when a friend of mine in an Extremely Large Financial Institution (ELFI) called me one day to ask for help, I was intrigued because this outfit is a really major VAX user--they have several large herds of VAXen--and plenty of sharp VAXherds to take care of them.
So I went to see what sort of an ELFI mess they had gotten into. It seems they had shoved a small 750 with two RA60's running a single application, PC style, into a data center with two IBM 3090's and just about all the rest of the disk drives in the world. The computer room was so big it had three street addresses. The operators had only IBM experience and, to quote my friend, they were having ``a little trouble adjusting to the VAX,'' were a bit hostile towards it and probably needed some help with system management. Hmmm, Hostility.... Sigh.
Well, I thought it was pretty ridiculous for an outfit with all that VAX muscle elsewhere to isolate a dinky old 750 in their Big Blue Country, and said so bluntly. But my friend patiently explained that although small, it was an ``extremely sensitive and confidential application.'' It seems that the 750 had originally been properly clustered with the rest of a herd and in the care of one of their best VAXherds. But the trouble started when the Chief User went to visit his computer and its VAXherd.
He came away visibly disturbed and immediately complained to the ELFI's Director of Data Processing that, ``There are some very strange people in there with the computers.'' Now since this user person was the Comptroller of this Extremely Large Financial Institution, the 750 had been promptly hustled over to the IBM data center which the Comptroller said, ``was a more suitable place.'' The people there wore shirts and ties and didn't wear head bands or cowboy hats.
So my friend introduced me to the Comptroller, who turned out to be five feet tall, 85 and a former gnome of Zurich. He had a young apprentice gnome who was about 65. The two gnomes interviewed me in whispers for about an hour before they decided my modes of dress and speech were suitable for managing their system and I got the assignment.
There was some confusion, understandably, when I explained that I would immediately establish a procedure for nightly backups. The senior gnome seemed to think I was going to put the computer in reverse, but the apprentice's son had an IBM PC and he quickly whispered that ``backup'' meant making a copy of a program borrowed from a friend and why was I doing that? Sigh.
I was shortly introduced to the manager of the IBM data center, who greeted me with joy and anything but hostility. And the operators really weren't hostile--it just seemed that way. It's like the driver of a Mack 18 wheeler, with a condo behind the cab, who was doing 75 when he ran over a moped doing it's best to get away at 45. He explained sadly, ``I really warn't mad at mopeds but to keep from runnin' over that'n, I'da had to slow down or change lanes!''
Now the only operation they had figured out how to do on the 750 was reboot it. This was their universal cure for any and all problems. After all it works on a PC, why not a VAX? Was there a difference? Sigh.
But I smiled and said, ``No sweat, I'll train you. The first command you learn is HELP'' and proceeded to type it in on the console terminal. So the data center manager, the shift supervisor and the eight day operators watched the LA100 buzz out the usual introductory text. When it finished they turned to me with expectant faces and I said in an avuncular manner, ``This is your most important command!''
The shift supervisor stepped forward and studied the text for about a minute. He then turned with a very puzzled expression on his face and asked, ``What do you use it
This is what's going through the mind of someone at redmond right now...
"With that much ram, I won't have to worry about fixing the memory leaks!"
Now checking 2,748,779,069.440 bytes of memory, please wait.....
Where can I buy a *small* ramdisk, on the cheap?
For example, I have about ten 128mb PC100 DIMMs lying around. I'd love to stick them on some kind of PCI card to make a ramdisk, but I have no idea where to go about getting such hardware... google's results are useless, they're all links to *SOFTWARE* ramdisks that use main memory =(
The unofficial
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!