In addition most work computers need to be left on at night as that is when all the system patches, scanning, etc is performed. If you turn it off, then when you come in and turn it on your system takes even longer to boot because all the patches that were missed over night will get applied as it is booting.
My Intel iMac at home actually sleeps and wakes up very nicely and quickly. The only thing I have had happen is have my ssh connections to other systems dropped. But, other then that press the space bar and its back up immediately. It slowed down a little (1-2 seconds) after I put an older USB hard drive on it, which that pig takes a moment to spin back up.
But, I have to agree on the PC's it is more of the PnP issue.. The iMac/OSX is very fast at booting, probably because it does not have to dork around with the hardware as much.
I would think you could tune your BIOS a bit to remove the auto-detection and such to improve things. Of course once you hit XP/Vista you are screwed. One thing I have noticed in the new Solaris 10 is they have multi-threaded the boot up processes by way of the service manager verses using the old fashion/etc/rc* style boot. Thrashes on the hard drive a bit, but allows for fast booting (once you are past hardware).
Except that I was referring to an IA64/x86 system since that is what the Altix is.. Sure I could potentially run Linux on a large SGI or SUN, but why would I when the OS written for those platforms out performs Linux on the same platform..
SGI is not looking for mass market I do not think. In general once you use an SGI for a HPC environment or hefty graphics you never look back. SGI sort of sells itself in that respect.
If your environment can handle a cluster, then yes you likely will not run an SGI. But, where you need a lot of CPU's one OS image then IMO SGI is kind of like the BMW (Cadillac, Mercedes, or Jag pick your poison) of Super Computing..
I can agree that third party support sometimes sucks for Irix.. But, I do not think that NASA is the only saving grace for SGI.. In the field I am working in SGI seems to be the leader in the R&D area, with Sun and AIX leading in the operational area..
Right now to get anything like a 128cpu or higher Linux server you have to go with the Altix. Sure IBM and HP can probably chain some servers together. Like the xSeries 455's we have here I believe can go up to 16 nodes on a single image. I am sure IBM could push that bar, but I do not think they will have the performance that the Altix has because SGI still has some cool technology they use. The Altix is basically like the 3900's except with IA64 and Linux..
Perhaps take some work in the Scientific or Defense area's so you can see SGI is a long time from going away. I am not saying they never will, but right now they have a lot of stuff in those areas'. We are getting ready to make another very large investment in SGI. Take a look at the latest NASA supercomputer that is number 2 in the TOP500, or IBM's BlueGene that is number 1 (www.top500.org/lists/2004/11/).
Being that I work on Irix, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, and AIX on a daily basis I can say that there are things you get with Irix that no other platforms have available to them (yet). Before I came here I never worked on Irix and I didn't like them. But, now when it comes to Supercomputing environments I would have to lean toward Irix because they have created their OS specifically for that purpose. Where all the rest have created a more general purpose OS. I will say this though; out of all the above platforms Linux tends to be our least reliable platform. Linux is great, but it has some maturing to do.
Linux though is FAR more reliable than anything Micro$oft puts out.. Shall we say probably 1000 times more reliable? Anyone?
There are still a very large number of situations where a "cluster" does not work. In some modeling and simulation area's they need a lot of CPU's on ONE OS image.. To make a blanket statement saying that clusters are the answer is either someone lacking experience or bias.. Before deciding what the solution is you have to figure out what you are trying to do..
In our shop we have many large SGI's (128CPU +), IBM Regatta's, Sunfire's, Linux Clusters, and Sun Clusters. They each solve the requirements for the task at hand. We have found that there are numerous areas' Linux is lacking, so for that on our infrastructure support servers we use Sun and HP.
But, here we have some graphically intense stuff we do and they have done all the tests on available x86, IA64, and MAC hardware out there and they just can't do what our current SGI's are doing.. Various vendors have thrown a lot of money in the studies to try and get a larger foothold over SGI.
Hate to be the barer of bad news, but even with a firewall you can still get spyware installed using IE. You might be able to setup a squid proxy with AV and some limited spy ware checks, but with a very large network you would need one hell of a box to pull that off..
NONE of the patches that MS supplies protects you from spyware being installed from some website. They claim SP2 helps prevent this, but it has yet to be perfect. Which coming from MS I suppose we never expect it to be done right.
So the only option is to lock down the systems so users do not have privs. Yes this can be a pain at first. But, in time things get worked out. Of course we are moving more users who do not need Windoze to Linux for the desktop. Being our network is full of engineers and programmers, it has a slightly higher IQ then the standard network.
Re:Why does everyone alwasy gotta knock sendmail??
on
Postfix 2.1 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Cause Postfix was built for people who do not understand how to properly configure a mailserver. It assumes you are new and keeps it locked down by default. Where sendmail is more customizable and faster (http://www.benchmarks.dmz.ro/article.php?story=20 02081221400018), although Qmail is faster, for standard configurations.. Sendmail is great for large high volume sites, where postfix is great for the home user or smaller sites. Although it can still be used in larger sites.. I personally have been using sendmail for years and cannot remember a security issue that applied to me. Mostly because I know how to configure sendmail and it is very well tuned. I worked with a company that sent stock notifications where we pushed over 5 million messages in under 30 minutes with 8 Sun Netra's with 440 mhz CPU's.. In case you do not get the math that is about 20,833 thousand messages per minute per machine! Running sendmail..
Slashdot Mirror
In addition most work computers need to be left on at night as that is when all the system patches, scanning, etc is performed. If you turn it off, then when you come in and turn it on your system takes even longer to boot because all the patches that were missed over night will get applied as it is booting.
/etc/rc* style boot. Thrashes on the hard drive a bit, but allows for fast booting (once you are past hardware).
My Intel iMac at home actually sleeps and wakes up very nicely and quickly. The only thing I have had happen is have my ssh connections to other systems dropped. But, other then that press the space bar and its back up immediately. It slowed down a little (1-2 seconds) after I put an older USB hard drive on it, which that pig takes a moment to spin back up.
But, I have to agree on the PC's it is more of the PnP issue.. The iMac/OSX is very fast at booting, probably because it does not have to dork around with the hardware as much.
I would think you could tune your BIOS a bit to remove the auto-detection and such to improve things. Of course once you hit XP/Vista you are screwed. One thing I have noticed in the new Solaris 10 is they have multi-threaded the boot up processes by way of the service manager verses using the old fashion
Except that I was referring to an IA64/x86 system since that is what the Altix is.. Sure I could potentially run Linux on a large SGI or SUN, but why would I when the OS written for those platforms out performs Linux on the same platform..
SGI is not looking for mass market I do not think. In general once you use an SGI for a HPC environment or hefty graphics you never look back. SGI sort of sells itself in that respect.
If your environment can handle a cluster, then yes you likely will not run an SGI. But, where you need a lot of CPU's one OS image then IMO SGI is kind of like the BMW (Cadillac, Mercedes, or Jag pick your poison) of Super Computing..
I can agree that third party support sometimes sucks for Irix.. But, I do not think that NASA is the only saving grace for SGI.. In the field I am working in SGI seems to be the leader in the R&D area, with Sun and AIX leading in the operational area..
Right now to get anything like a 128cpu or higher Linux server you have to go with the Altix. Sure IBM and HP can probably chain some servers together. Like the xSeries 455's we have here I believe can go up to 16 nodes on a single image. I am sure IBM could push that bar, but I do not think they will have the performance that the Altix has because SGI still has some cool technology they use. The Altix is basically like the 3900's except with IA64 and Linux..
Perhaps take some work in the Scientific or Defense area's so you can see SGI is a long time from going away. I am not saying they never will, but right now they have a lot of stuff in those areas'. We are getting ready to make another very large investment in SGI. Take a look at the latest NASA supercomputer that is number 2 in the TOP500, or IBM's BlueGene that is number 1 (www.top500.org/lists/2004/11/).
Being that I work on Irix, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, and AIX on a daily basis I can say that there are things you get with Irix that no other platforms have available to them (yet). Before I came here I never worked on Irix and I didn't like them. But, now when it comes to Supercomputing environments I would have to lean toward Irix because they have created their OS specifically for that purpose. Where all the rest have created a more general purpose OS. I will say this though; out of all the above platforms Linux tends to be our least reliable platform. Linux is great, but it has some maturing to do.
Linux though is FAR more reliable than anything Micro$oft puts out.. Shall we say probably 1000 times more reliable? Anyone?
There are still a very large number of situations where a "cluster" does not work. In some modeling and simulation area's they need a lot of CPU's on ONE OS image.. To make a blanket statement saying that clusters are the answer is either someone lacking experience or bias.. Before deciding what the solution is you have to figure out what you are trying to do..
In our shop we have many large SGI's (128CPU +), IBM Regatta's, Sunfire's, Linux Clusters, and Sun Clusters. They each solve the requirements for the task at hand. We have found that there are numerous areas' Linux is lacking, so for that on our infrastructure support servers we use Sun and HP.
But, here we have some graphically intense stuff we do and they have done all the tests on available x86, IA64, and MAC hardware out there and they just can't do what our current SGI's are doing.. Various vendors have thrown a lot of money in the studies to try and get a larger foothold over SGI.
Hate to be the barer of bad news, but even with a firewall you can still get spyware installed using IE. You might be able to setup a squid proxy with AV and some limited spy ware checks, but with a very large network you would need one hell of a box to pull that off.. NONE of the patches that MS supplies protects you from spyware being installed from some website. They claim SP2 helps prevent this, but it has yet to be perfect. Which coming from MS I suppose we never expect it to be done right. So the only option is to lock down the systems so users do not have privs. Yes this can be a pain at first. But, in time things get worked out. Of course we are moving more users who do not need Windoze to Linux for the desktop. Being our network is full of engineers and programmers, it has a slightly higher IQ then the standard network.
This mirror is already overloaded.. Try this one: http://mirror.unixheads.com/siggraph_movie.avi
Cause Postfix was built for people who do not understand how to properly configure a mailserver. It assumes you are new and keeps it locked down by default. Where sendmail is more customizable and faster (http://www.benchmarks.dmz.ro/article.php?story=20 02081221400018), although Qmail is faster, for standard configurations.. Sendmail is great for large high volume sites, where postfix is great for the home user or smaller sites. Although it can still be used in larger sites.. I personally have been using sendmail for years and cannot remember a security issue that applied to me. Mostly because I know how to configure sendmail and it is very well tuned. I worked with a company that sent stock notifications where we pushed over 5 million messages in under 30 minutes with 8 Sun Netra's with 440 mhz CPU's.. In case you do not get the math that is about 20,833 thousand messages per minute per machine! Running sendmail..