*BSD News Article 92327


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From: "Russell L. Carter" <rcarter@consys.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc
Subject: Re: no such thing as a "general user community"
Date: 30 Mar 1997 10:34:01 -0700
Organization: Conceptual Systems & Software
Lines: 61
Message-ID: <333EA3EF.41C67EA6@consys.com>
References: <331BB7DD.28EC@net5.net> <5g9hjp$api@flea.best.net> <5gmb58$6jd$1@news.clinet.fi> <5gn3ig$83d@flea.best.net> <5goqrq$5ak$1@news.clinet.fi> <5hd29s$e7t@fido.asd.sgi.com> <333C1614.ABD@sgi01.grn.aera.com> <5hhv1k$jh9@fido.asd.sgi.com> <333E3530.794B@sgi01.grn.aera.com>
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Lee Ward wrote:
> 
> Larry McVoy wrote:
> 

[...]

> >
> > Example configurations with performance results
> > -----------------------------------------------
> >
> >     The following configurations used IBM 2GB drives, BDSpro 1.0, and
> >     Hippi.  There were 3 disks per controller (fast&wide 20MB/sec SCIP
> >     card SCSI controllers), the transfer sizes were exactly the stripe
> >     width, and the results are in MB/sec.  A MB here is the size type,
> >     i.e., 1024*1024; all numbers are 4% too small if you like the 10^6
> >     definition of a MB.  Expect much lower results if you use sizes
> >     smaller than the stripe width, slightly lower results if you use
> >     transfer sizes that are unaligned with respect to the stripe
> >     width.  The BDS writes are slower than XFS largely because of the
> >     synchronous nature of BDS writes.
> >
> >     All numbers were measured with lmdd, a part of lmbench.
> >
> >   Disks  stripe  stripe          XFS              BDS
> >            unit   width    read    write     read    write
> >      27    128k   3456k      99       64       72       35
> >
> > And I can do that on a uniprocessor R10K system.  I dunno what our disk
> > prices are today, I'm sure they are too high in everyone except SGI's
> > opinion, but suppose a disk costs $3K.  That's about $90K in disks and
> > mebbe $40K in system (should be cheaper but you need a hippi board and
> > we charge for those).  Hardly hundreds of thousands of dollars.
> >
> 
> So, what you are saying is that $130,000 isn't in the "hundreds"? Since
> you don't seem to take a hint well, I'll say it plainly: you are
> comparing a one-hundred thousand dollar machine to a 20,000 dollar
> machine. You are using figures from that 100,000 dollar machine to argue
> that someone should buy it or a cousin as a news server? Why?
> 

In Larry's phrasing, about $12K in disks and mebbe $8K in system
(actually, Gold Plated System, must be a 24x7 1hr hardware component
replacement service contract buried in there somewhere), for say 4-6 way 
striping if you happened to be running FreeBSD.  

Seems like this technique of using faster hardware to 
"demonstrate" better software performance has been wielded 
before... at Usenix, maybe?  ;-)

> > --
> > ---
> > Larry McVoy     lm@sgi.com     http://reality.sgi.com/lm     (415) 933-1804

-- 
Russell L. Carter

Voice:(520) 636-2600 FAX:(520) 636-2888          rcarter@consys.com
Conceptual Systems & Software,  P.O. Box 1129 Chino Valley AZ 86323
"Before sitting down, always look for ferrets."