Yeah, like the other responders have mentioned. Sounds like you're doing it horribly wrong.
I don't know much about SPSS, but if you need to present the data in such a flat format, you can always store the data the proper way and create a view when you need to import it into SPSS.
I'm not sure if there is some sort of limit on the number of columns in Oracle views or not.
If I was migrating away from Oracle, MS SQL Server wouldn't be my first choice. Postgresql would. Given the choice between a free version that is similar to the original vs a product that is very different that I need to pay for it's a no brainer. Also take into consideration that for some database applications you're going to need some serious horsepower. You're limited in the number of procs you can have in a Windows system. Last time I checked, once you get past 8 processors Windows doesn't scale as well. Even linux doesn't do as well as Solaris, AIX or HPUX past a certain number of procs.
Oracle's RAC seems to be a better solution than MSSQL's approach. PostgreSQL (and EnterpriseDB) are working on a more RAC-like approach.
This is a good story about a company that successfully moved from Oracle to Postgresql. Basically, they had 2 database systems running Oracle, a data warehouse and an OLTP system. They moved their data warehouse over to Postgresql running on Solaris 10, then they used the licenses they no longer need for the data warehouse to boost the computing power of the OLTP system.
I'm constantly having to compromise with the physical limitations of my database, such as having to pick and choose which attributes to delete, as the tables in my Oracle database reached it's 1000 column limit a long time ago. You do know you can create more than one table right? You don't have to normalize every schema so much:)
Seriously though, I'm curious what type of application would need and actually benefit from such a design.
So which one is right? Is anyone really seeing numbers like that? I looked at the stats of two non-computer related sites. One had firefox at about 6-7% per month. The other was up to 44% but that is only because it's new and not getting a lot of traffic. If I subtract my hits from it, FF drops down to around 10%.
Ever tried to do that? Unless you are a life critical operation like an intensive care unit they aren't likely to be all that interested and anything they might agree to is non-binding. I don't know how hard it is in Texas but around here, if you want to have a fire engine standing by on-site for a day you just have to fork over a couple grand.
Once a quarter when they claim they test their backup systems they should have a fire engine standing by and have an inspector or chief there too and walk them through what's happening. That way if there's a real disaster, the fire dept either payed attention and knows you're backup system is isolated from the main power system or you've showed them some sort of competence during your drills that they believe you if they didn't pay attention.
As for running on backup generators, as long as they are willing to sustain that long enough to replace the transformer, what's the problem? They have demonstrated the ability and willingness to provide power in the event that the transformer and power room are blown to bits. The problem is they didn't have a fully redundant power system without a single point of failure like they claim. It took them more than 40 hours to start powering systems up. This is not what most people would expect from a "world class data center" that's capable of reliably handling your IT infrastructure.
Given that they shut down under orders from the fire department and that an explosion that knocked 3 walls down didn't damage the batteries, I'd guess they have more than one power room. They have a fair portion of machines powered up now. Since it would take longer than that clean up after an exploded transformer and install a new one in it's place, that room must not have been a single point of failure. They are running on backup generators last I read. Everything they put out talked about one power room.
Honestly, it doesn't matter how well isolated your power systems are from each other, if there is a fire, particularly one with explosions, the fire department WILL order all power shut down. That's my point. They should have had the local fire authorities involved in their disaster recovery plan so that the fire dept would know that it was safe to turn on the backup generators sooner.
In that case, it cannot be advertised at all. Go ahead and install your 1024N power system and nuclear powered UPS and put it in a nuclear bunker. Fill the room with argon to make fires impossible. But if you can't promise that an asteroid will never ever strike the bunker, you better not advertise 100% uptime. I should have said when you can't reasonably back it up.
One power room doesn't seem to qualify as "fully redundant power system" or a "complete redundant power management system" that "assures 100% uptime".
With only one power room, you have to wonder how thoroughly and how often they perform maintenance on that equipment.
While a transformer explosion might be rare it is not uncommon. I don't think it's too much to expect for a data center that talks about "100% uptime", "fully redundant power systems" without "a single point of failure" to go offline because of a fire in the power room.
Disaster recovery does NOT mean 100% uptime Then don't put out marketing that claims 100% uptime, when you can't back it up.
I'm not sure what level of experience you have, but this means nothing. 2 power rooms does not in anyway imply a 2N power design. I don't see where I said anything about 2N anything. I don't even know enough about data centers to comment on that. All I know from shopping around, is that other data centers claim to have the ability to keep going if one of their power rooms go down.
Ahh, I see now, you're somehow affiliated with Net Access Corporation (in NJ, and you're njcoder) My only affiliation is in considering their services and so far I haven't made a decision one way or another but I was very impressed by what they provide and the comments others have provided about them. If you're in this area you know who NAC is. Equinox is harder to generalize because they have multiple locations and I've only been to one.
Other data centers I've been to have been smaller and primarily designed to host mainframes for large corporations. Multiple power coming in to two different rooms, multiple backup generators, adequate ups, etc.
I'm no expert in data centers, but like I previously mentioned, if someone is making claims of 100% uptime I would expect them to have some reasonable way of backing that up. They didn't. Their power room caught on fire. They didn't have a second power room that could be used and they couldn't bring backup power online.
Electrical systems fail, and sometimes catastrophically. There was a transformer that blew up on a utility pole directly across the street from me. The whole house shook. If that was in an enclosed room I can picture walls being blown down. There was also an underground fire in the wiring at one point. In both cases power was brought back online relatively fast.
I don't care what anyone says. This is poor performance compared to their marketing claims. It looks like they couldn't bring up their back-up systems because they didn't work with the local authorities when they came up with that plan.
I'm not saying ThePlanet sucks. But I wouldn't call it "world Class" and I doubt anyone's "100% uptime" claims.
There is simply no amount of security / redundancy that can be done at a single location that will provide 100% uptime Someone should tell ThePlanet to stop marketing something that is so impossible then.
Part of my point that you apparently missed was that even a full 2N power system end-to-end doesn't guarantee uptime. There are very few - and I'd even go so far as to say "if any" - datacenters in the world that could handle an explosion / fire without going down. The dc didn't explode, just the power room. It seems there was just one power room. I've been to data centers around here, even small ones that have 2 power rooms.
While it may be the fire dept that is erroneously preventing them from bringing up their back-up power, it's part of a poor disaster recovery plan to not engage with the fire dept, electric co, etc. before a disaster happens, so that everyone is on-board with your disaster recovery plans and that you have the ability to implement that plan.
The explosion was isolated to the power room. The servers are fine, the backup generators and batteries are fine. The servers should have been back online if they had a good disaster recovery plan. The whole point of disaster recovery is being able to handle a disaster. You can't say "oh there was a disaster, you can't help that". This is exactly what their plan should have been able to handle. The power room goes offline. It shouldn't matter if it was because of an explosion, a fire, equipment failure or being beamed into outer space.
It also shouldn't matter who is telling them to keep the power off. Part of the disaster recovery plan should have been making sure local authorities allowed them to carry it out. Fine, they have to shut off all power when firemen are in there with hoses. I understand that. But once the fire is out your plan should allow you to bring up backup power. It didn't. So I don't see how they can call themselves a "World Class Data Center". Part of what they sell and what customers expect is disaster recovery. And there are data centers that can provide this.
ThePlanet is pretty cheap compared to datacenters like NAC that have more redundancy and security. But ThePlanet wants to advertise that they are just as good. Now they were caught with their pants down when there was actually a disaster and their disaster recovery plan failed.
I assure you issuing a one-day pro-rated credit to all your customers is cheaper. But not cheaper than losing 7500 accounts to another DC that can handle this type of event gracefully. The fact that it's complex doesn't mean you shouldn't expect it in a data center that claims to be "World Class"
In related news, I was wondering why I wasn't getting much spam today and my sites didn't have strange spiders hitting them.
Collaborative programming has been around for a while. It's just now that components are being developed, computers can handle it and the networking bandwidth is accessible, so that users can do it remotely.
You used to take a chair, plop it next to one guys computer and swap the keyboard back and force when someone got stuck, tired, bored or needed to piss out the 10 liters of jolt he just chugged. It's called pair programming. I guess people never envisioned that you could get more than 2 people looking at a 14" crt in a reasonable way.
Times have changed but the principles are basically the same. Multiple people looking at the code as it's being written helps in a lot of situations. Senior developer working with junior developer to help asses his abilities and to familiarize him with the specific api's, coding styles, etc.
My best experience was working with another developer in a marathon coding session. We were both working with something very new to us. We had two computers side by side and if either one of us had an issue we would focus on that one pc. Even though we were working on different parts we were both knowledgeable enough about what the other was doing so that if one of us passed out for a couple of hours the other could take over if necessary, or just swap if we got bored.
When I was managing a group of developers I tried to sit down with individual developers and go over code together when there was a problem. What I found is that I may not always have had the answer but by working together the answer was easier to find. Someone could say something that triggers something in the other person. Plus sitting there and showing how I went through to find the relevant API docs and doing google searches, even when I knew the answer, shows them how to do it themselves later. This was back when google, im, etc were all new.
Now, with more collaborative tools people can do the same thing remotely. And it can be a help or a hindrance depending on the people involved. IM is good for sending code fragments, phone or skype is good for communication, but it's better to be there in person. A lot of complicated problems don't get solved at the keyboard. They get solved through weird hand motions, scribbles on a notepad or whiteboard.
I've seen more than my share of traditionally big iron applicatoins (databases, data warehousing etc..) being moved off of specialized hardware (ibm p595s, sun e15k, HPSuperdomes etc..) being moved onto (or attempted to) commodity hardware. I'm honestly curious. How well does this really work out for databases and data warehousing?
One of the benefits I understand from going with one big-ass server is that the memory to pipelines between cpu and memory are much better than the ethernet/myrinet/infiband/whatever connections between cluster nodes.
Depending how you're going to be doing the clustering, you're either going to have some type of cluster fs or you're going to be using a shared NAS rather than SAN for the data. This is also going to be slower than local disks or a dedicated iSCSI connection.
From my understanding, the clustering technologies for databases aren't very good when you have a lot of writes to the db. Data warehousing is different, but I would think that something like an e15k or M9000 would be better for really big databases.
Things like 3d rendering and certain types of data analysis and modeling can be clustered easier. For these companies that need this type of service, it's probably better and cheaper to use a utility computing provider like Sun's Grid. Why pay the electric/cooling/sqft costs for running a supercomputer when you're only running reports quarterly/annually or if you're rendering on a per job basis that gets billed to the client. Easier and probably cheaper to bill for a service than to try and factor in your overhead for you're own rendering engine.
Add to that, you're now maintaining 10 racks of servers vs the equivalent of 1. Assume 40 nodes per rack with 2u for switches. That's about 40-80 amps of power per rack. Times 10 racks that's a lot of power, as well as heat that will work the AC harder. If I remember correctly an e15k is going to be somewhere around 50-80amps. All the extra power consumption and cooling is going to add up. Not to mention the space, cost of wiring up and testing all those nodes.
With 400 servers in 10 racks, even at 1k per server, between the racks and the labor to set it all up you got to be in the $750K-$1M ballpark. Even if you only really need 200 servers to get similar performance to an M9000 that's still not a huge savings compared to the operating costs, setup costs and simplicity.
In the long run does it really make sense?
I remember reading a comment about how PayPal is setup. They have a large number of linux servers as their front and middle tiers. In the back are 3 big Sun boxes that handle the databases. That to me seems like the right type of setup.
As for virtualization. A lot of people are just plain doing it wrong.
I tried VirtualBox 1.6 with the Kalyway iso I found. Couldn't get it to boot. I wanted to play around with OSX because I heard a lot of good things about apple's laptops.
It comes with Emacs and VI too. Who really cares about another editor (NetBeans). People that like things like integrated debugers and profiles, to name a couple of benefits. There's a big difference between an IDE and an editor.
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... for one, welcomes our new self-replicating copy machine overlods. Just remember, if you can't outsmart them, get the stupid people to defeat them.Never! When satan skates to work! What rock have you been hiding under?
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Yeah, like the other responders have mentioned. Sounds like you're doing it horribly wrong.
I don't know much about SPSS, but if you need to present the data in such a flat format, you can always store the data the proper way and create a view when you need to import it into SPSS.
I'm not sure if there is some sort of limit on the number of columns in Oracle views or not.
If I was migrating away from Oracle, MS SQL Server wouldn't be my first choice. Postgresql would. Given the choice between a free version that is similar to the original vs a product that is very different that I need to pay for it's a no brainer. Also take into consideration that for some database applications you're going to need some serious horsepower. You're limited in the number of procs you can have in a Windows system. Last time I checked, once you get past 8 processors Windows doesn't scale as well. Even linux doesn't do as well as Solaris, AIX or HPUX past a certain number of procs.
Oracle's RAC seems to be a better solution than MSSQL's approach. PostgreSQL (and EnterpriseDB) are working on a more RAC-like approach.
This is a good story about a company that successfully moved from Oracle to Postgresql. Basically, they had 2 database systems running Oracle, a data warehouse and an OLTP system. They moved their data warehouse over to Postgresql running on Solaris 10, then they used the licenses they no longer need for the data warehouse to boost the computing power of the OLTP system.
Seriously though, I'm curious what type of application would need and actually benefit from such a design.
SOA = Shit-Outta-Acronyms
Firefox @ 18%
Firefox @ 40%
So which one is right? Is anyone really seeing numbers like that? I looked at the stats of two non-computer related sites. One had firefox at about 6-7% per month. The other was up to 44% but that is only because it's new and not getting a lot of traffic. If I subtract my hits from it, FF drops down to around 10%.
Once a quarter when they claim they test their backup systems they should have a fire engine standing by and have an inspector or chief there too and walk them through what's happening. That way if there's a real disaster, the fire dept either payed attention and knows you're backup system is isolated from the main power system or you've showed them some sort of competence during your drills that they believe you if they didn't pay attention. As for running on backup generators, as long as they are willing to sustain that long enough to replace the transformer, what's the problem? They have demonstrated the ability and willingness to provide power in the event that the transformer and power room are blown to bits. The problem is they didn't have a fully redundant power system without a single point of failure like they claim. It took them more than 40 hours to start powering systems up. This is not what most people would expect from a "world class data center" that's capable of reliably handling your IT infrastructure.
Try this one.
http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20080516-hoax-cctv-video-get-out-clause-clip
One power room doesn't seem to qualify as "fully redundant power system" or a "complete redundant power management system" that "assures 100% uptime".
With only one power room, you have to wonder how thoroughly and how often they perform maintenance on that equipment.
While a transformer explosion might be rare it is not uncommon. I don't think it's too much to expect for a data center that talks about "100% uptime", "fully redundant power systems" without "a single point of failure" to go offline because of a fire in the power room.
Other data centers I've been to have been smaller and primarily designed to host mainframes for large corporations. Multiple power coming in to two different rooms, multiple backup generators, adequate ups, etc.
I'm no expert in data centers, but like I previously mentioned, if someone is making claims of 100% uptime I would expect them to have some reasonable way of backing that up. They didn't. Their power room caught on fire. They didn't have a second power room that could be used and they couldn't bring backup power online.
Electrical systems fail, and sometimes catastrophically. There was a transformer that blew up on a utility pole directly across the street from me. The whole house shook. If that was in an enclosed room I can picture walls being blown down. There was also an underground fire in the wiring at one point. In both cases power was brought back online relatively fast.
I don't care what anyone says. This is poor performance compared to their marketing claims. It looks like they couldn't bring up their back-up systems because they didn't work with the local authorities when they came up with that plan.
I'm not saying ThePlanet sucks. But I wouldn't call it "world Class" and I doubt anyone's "100% uptime" claims. There is simply no amount of security / redundancy that can be done at a single location that will provide 100% uptime Someone should tell ThePlanet to stop marketing something that is so impossible then.
While it may be the fire dept that is erroneously preventing them from bringing up their back-up power, it's part of a poor disaster recovery plan to not engage with the fire dept, electric co, etc. before a disaster happens, so that everyone is on-board with your disaster recovery plans and that you have the ability to implement that plan.
The explosion was isolated to the power room. The servers are fine, the backup generators and batteries are fine. The servers should have been back online if they had a good disaster recovery plan. The whole point of disaster recovery is being able to handle a disaster. You can't say "oh there was a disaster, you can't help that". This is exactly what their plan should have been able to handle. The power room goes offline. It shouldn't matter if it was because of an explosion, a fire, equipment failure or being beamed into outer space.
It also shouldn't matter who is telling them to keep the power off. Part of the disaster recovery plan should have been making sure local authorities allowed them to carry it out. Fine, they have to shut off all power when firemen are in there with hoses. I understand that. But once the fire is out your plan should allow you to bring up backup power. It didn't. So I don't see how they can call themselves a "World Class Data Center". Part of what they sell and what customers expect is disaster recovery. And there are data centers that can provide this.
ThePlanet is pretty cheap compared to datacenters like NAC that have more redundancy and security. But ThePlanet wants to advertise that they are just as good. Now they were caught with their pants down when there was actually a disaster and their disaster recovery plan failed.
In related news, I was wondering why I wasn't getting much spam today and my sites didn't have strange spiders hitting them.
Rumor has it Prince invited Youtube and Radiohead over for pancakes to discuss the matter.
Collaborative programming has been around for a while. It's just now that components are being developed, computers can handle it and the networking bandwidth is accessible, so that users can do it remotely.
You used to take a chair, plop it next to one guys computer and swap the keyboard back and force when someone got stuck, tired, bored or needed to piss out the 10 liters of jolt he just chugged. It's called pair programming. I guess people never envisioned that you could get more than 2 people looking at a 14" crt in a reasonable way.
Times have changed but the principles are basically the same. Multiple people looking at the code as it's being written helps in a lot of situations. Senior developer working with junior developer to help asses his abilities and to familiarize him with the specific api's, coding styles, etc.
My best experience was working with another developer in a marathon coding session. We were both working with something very new to us. We had two computers side by side and if either one of us had an issue we would focus on that one pc. Even though we were working on different parts we were both knowledgeable enough about what the other was doing so that if one of us passed out for a couple of hours the other could take over if necessary, or just swap if we got bored.
When I was managing a group of developers I tried to sit down with individual developers and go over code together when there was a problem. What I found is that I may not always have had the answer but by working together the answer was easier to find. Someone could say something that triggers something in the other person. Plus sitting there and showing how I went through to find the relevant API docs and doing google searches, even when I knew the answer, shows them how to do it themselves later. This was back when google, im, etc were all new.
Now, with more collaborative tools people can do the same thing remotely. And it can be a help or a hindrance depending on the people involved. IM is good for sending code fragments, phone or skype is good for communication, but it's better to be there in person. A lot of complicated problems don't get solved at the keyboard. They get solved through weird hand motions, scribbles on a notepad or whiteboard.
Why don't small animation studios ditch the render farm and use a utility computing service? Sun's Grid digipede 3Tera
One of the benefits I understand from going with one big-ass server is that the memory to pipelines between cpu and memory are much better than the ethernet/myrinet/infiband/whatever connections between cluster nodes.
Depending how you're going to be doing the clustering, you're either going to have some type of cluster fs or you're going to be using a shared NAS rather than SAN for the data. This is also going to be slower than local disks or a dedicated iSCSI connection.
From my understanding, the clustering technologies for databases aren't very good when you have a lot of writes to the db. Data warehousing is different, but I would think that something like an e15k or M9000 would be better for really big databases.
Things like 3d rendering and certain types of data analysis and modeling can be clustered easier. For these companies that need this type of service, it's probably better and cheaper to use a utility computing provider like Sun's Grid. Why pay the electric/cooling/sqft costs for running a supercomputer when you're only running reports quarterly/annually or if you're rendering on a per job basis that gets billed to the client. Easier and probably cheaper to bill for a service than to try and factor in your overhead for you're own rendering engine.
Add to that, you're now maintaining 10 racks of servers vs the equivalent of 1. Assume 40 nodes per rack with 2u for switches. That's about 40-80 amps of power per rack. Times 10 racks that's a lot of power, as well as heat that will work the AC harder. If I remember correctly an e15k is going to be somewhere around 50-80amps. All the extra power consumption and cooling is going to add up. Not to mention the space, cost of wiring up and testing all those nodes.
With 400 servers in 10 racks, even at 1k per server, between the racks and the labor to set it all up you got to be in the $750K-$1M ballpark. Even if you only really need 200 servers to get similar performance to an M9000 that's still not a huge savings compared to the operating costs, setup costs and simplicity.
In the long run does it really make sense?
I remember reading a comment about how PayPal is setup. They have a large number of linux servers as their front and middle tiers. In the back are 3 big Sun boxes that handle the databases. That to me seems like the right type of setup.
As for virtualization. A lot of people are just plain doing it wrong.
I tried VirtualBox 1.6 with the Kalyway iso I found. Couldn't get it to boot. I wanted to play around with OSX because I heard a lot of good things about apple's laptops.
Ha, that's too funny!
Well, most people could probably care less about faces. As long as stuff like this shows up from time to time.
Yeah, forgot about that. Was actually last year they stopped selling them though according to their website.