:)
I am just saying what MS uses to sell this (and their other) product(s). If it is true or not is simply not relevant; their
way of getting market works like this and it works well, because a lot of people are ignorant to what they buy. Even if the
costs is $millions; we see it happening every day in a significantly large company.
I don't work in PR; I am a programmer working mostly on with Java, Ruby and PHP. My background is C and in university I did
program a Unix HPC environment (based on Solaris at that time); we had to implement several algorithms in C to run on that
cluster. It was difficult, that is exactly why I think the MS arguments will actually work with managers.
Thing is; 'most' programmers wouldn't know what HPC, let online how to program for it. MS wants companies to believe that
this kind of programmer (or admin) can set-up, program against and run HPC clusters with little training other than
Win2003 & VS.NET 2003/2005. If this is true or not is irrelevant; as long as company CTO's/CIO's/CEO's believe it, no one cares
about the real technical merit of the statement.
And they do, because they are usually managers who use Word and PPT sometimes and play golf with one of Ballmers' boys; dunno if this is true worldwide, but it is here in the Netherlands. And yes I know this from experience, not from reading it in a blog.
The MS marketing story to managers that are not indept technical is a very strong one; choose Windows, you'll pay, for instance
20 times $500 and use your current Win2003 admins for installing/running and your current devvers or *any* Indian $3/hour company to write your software, versus; pay nothing for the licenses, hire new, hard to get Linux admins for $3000/month, hire even more hard to get HPC / C programmer (also hard to come by when outsourcing...) for the Linux variety. Bottom line; pay, as company, Windows; 10k + 20k computers one time extra for your environment, Linux: pay 20k computers + 40k/year + x * 100k for development.
True or not, this is a strong salespitch which does work on the golfcourse and a lot of companies needing this will go for it, as they have done for other MS technologies which make no sense (embedded? webservers? datacenters? databases? storage software?... Linux is 'better' than Windows in most cases, but still those markets grow for MS...).
How is this comment relevant for HPC ; you're not going to expose anything on the web directly and you are not going to
browse (pr0n) sites on those machines or read mail etc? It will likely be an enclose development / OTAP environment which
makes the chance for viruses very small.
Also (slightly offtopic, but still relevant) ; we run most servers on Linux, most desktops on Windows in our company and all of this since 2001 with > 150 people; we have not had ONE virus on either desktop or server. If you are a bit smart you have all
incoming/outgoing virusscanned, on mail, smb and webdav. If your Win admin has half a brain, you can work with Windows fine
without encountering any problems, ever.
What I forgot; ofcourse, getting linux admins to support the cluster is difficult also; Windows admins (although quite bad usually) are growing on trees; they can install and 'maintain' it. When stuff goes bad they usually cannot solve anything, but
the company you're workign for will not think that far ahead. Setting up a WinHPC cluster is easy if you have the right hardware prepared; I guess the fact that it is 'just another Win2003' is reason for IT directors to call it 'cheaper' than Linux, considering the fact that maintanance is always an order of magnitude more costly than buying software.
The idea behind Windows clusters being 'cheaper' has nothing to do with the individual price of the OS (versus, for
instance, free Linux); the named price is low, not free, but that is not the point of your savings with a Windows
HPC cluster. The point is that most programmers work on a Windows platform and have experience with it. And if you
program with/for Windows and, for instance VS 2005, MS counts on the effort of building programs that run on HPC
to be considerably less effort than it is on a Linux (or Xgrid) cluster. Making existing Windows 'hits' clusterable
(i heard mention somewhere of image, movie and 3d processing software) is easier because of this too; making it work
on other clusters is a pain because there you would have to work in an environment you are not used too. Like all
things with MS; they count on the familiarity and ease of use to make this all run. That is what makes it cheaper;
you cannot get a Linux HPC programmer and if you find him/her he will be godawful expensive; for WinHPC it will just
be 'another VS programmer' of which there are a lot.
Look for MS to add testing, debugging and development aids for HPC in the upcoming versions of VS.
Slashdot Mirror
:)
I am just saying what MS uses to sell this (and their other) product(s). If it is true or not is simply not relevant; their way of getting market works like this and it works well, because a lot of people are ignorant to what they buy. Even if the costs is $millions; we see it happening every day in a significantly large company.
I don't work in PR; I am a programmer working mostly on with Java, Ruby and PHP. My background is C and in university I did program a Unix HPC environment (based on Solaris at that time); we had to implement several algorithms in C to run on that cluster. It was difficult, that is exactly why I think the MS arguments will actually work with managers.
Thing is; 'most' programmers wouldn't know what HPC, let online how to program for it. MS wants companies to believe that this kind of programmer (or admin) can set-up, program against and run HPC clusters with little training other than Win2003 & VS.NET 2003/2005. If this is true or not is irrelevant; as long as company CTO's/CIO's/CEO's believe it, no one cares about the real technical merit of the statement. ... Linux is 'better' than Windows in most cases, but still those markets grow for MS...).
And they do, because they are usually managers who use Word and PPT sometimes and play golf with one of Ballmers' boys; dunno if this is true worldwide, but it is here in the Netherlands. And yes I know this from experience, not from reading it in a blog.
The MS marketing story to managers that are not indept technical is a very strong one; choose Windows, you'll pay, for instance 20 times $500 and use your current Win2003 admins for installing/running and your current devvers or *any* Indian $3/hour company to write your software, versus; pay nothing for the licenses, hire new, hard to get Linux admins for $3000/month, hire even more hard to get HPC / C programmer (also hard to come by when outsourcing...) for the Linux variety. Bottom line; pay, as company, Windows; 10k + 20k computers one time extra for your environment, Linux: pay 20k computers + 40k/year + x * 100k for development.
True or not, this is a strong salespitch which does work on the golfcourse and a lot of companies needing this will go for it, as they have done for other MS technologies which make no sense (embedded? webservers? datacenters? databases? storage software?
How is this comment relevant for HPC ; you're not going to expose anything on the web directly and you are not going to browse (pr0n) sites on those machines or read mail etc? It will likely be an enclose development / OTAP environment which makes the chance for viruses very small.
Also (slightly offtopic, but still relevant) ; we run most servers on Linux, most desktops on Windows in our company and all of this since 2001 with > 150 people; we have not had ONE virus on either desktop or server. If you are a bit smart you have all incoming/outgoing virusscanned, on mail, smb and webdav. If your Win admin has half a brain, you can work with Windows fine without encountering any problems, ever.
What I forgot; ofcourse, getting linux admins to support the cluster is difficult also; Windows admins (although quite bad usually) are growing on trees; they can install and 'maintain' it. When stuff goes bad they usually cannot solve anything, but the company you're workign for will not think that far ahead. Setting up a WinHPC cluster is easy if you have the right hardware prepared; I guess the fact that it is 'just another Win2003' is reason for IT directors to call it 'cheaper' than Linux, considering the fact that maintanance is always an order of magnitude more costly than buying software.
The idea behind Windows clusters being 'cheaper' has nothing to do with the individual price of the OS (versus, for instance, free Linux); the named price is low, not free, but that is not the point of your savings with a Windows HPC cluster. The point is that most programmers work on a Windows platform and have experience with it. And if you program with/for Windows and, for instance VS 2005, MS counts on the effort of building programs that run on HPC to be considerably less effort than it is on a Linux (or Xgrid) cluster. Making existing Windows 'hits' clusterable (i heard mention somewhere of image, movie and 3d processing software) is easier because of this too; making it work on other clusters is a pain because there you would have to work in an environment you are not used too. Like all things with MS; they count on the familiarity and ease of use to make this all run. That is what makes it cheaper; you cannot get a Linux HPC programmer and if you find him/her he will be godawful expensive; for WinHPC it will just be 'another VS programmer' of which there are a lot. Look for MS to add testing, debugging and development aids for HPC in the upcoming versions of VS.