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Ask Slashdot: Little Boxes Around the Edge of the Data Center?

Posted by timothy on from the gee-look-at-all-the-little-black-dots dept.

First time accepted submitter spaceyhackerlady writes "We're looking at some new development, and a big question mark is the little boxes around the edge of the data center — the NTP servers, the monitoring boxes, the stuff that supports and interfaces with the Big Iron that does the real work. The last time I visited a hosting farm I saw shelves of Mac Minis, but that was five years ago. What do people like now for their little support boxes?"

9 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. VMs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    put them in VMs!

    1. Re:VMs by Nutria · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Call me old school, but Unix/Linux are multi-tasking. Why not just run multiple services on one OS directly on the metal?

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      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    2. Re:VMs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Uhhh. because the "little boxes" and individual servers run on unicorn farts and angel tears?

  2. Re:virtualization is the game now by Zaelath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Virtualized NTP is about the dumbest thing I've read on /.

    Yes, worse than various conspiracy theories and fanboi wars.

  3. Previous gen hardware by trandles · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Last generation's compute nodes. We keep some around for utility functions after decommissioning a large cluster.

  4. Re:virtualization is the game now by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To be fair, if someone cares enough about time accuracy to understand why that's a dumb idea, they should probably be using a GPS receiver instead of a PC.

  5. performance? by Chirs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    NTP server is all about consistency. If it's running in a VM and can be delayed at the whim of the host, do you think it's going to be a very good source of time?

  6. SOLVED: Little Boxes by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Answer: VMware VMs.
     

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
    1. Re:SOLVED: Little Boxes by philip.paradis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I use KVM on Debian hosts for all my production stuff, but yeah, my first thought was "those servers are all virtualized now."

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      Write failed: Broken pipe