custom cluster cabinets - cost of ownership...

[alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com]

hi  Josip...

yes.. cost of bulding and owernship includes at least
an almost endless list of stuff to keey the system up...
- costs of parts ( off the shelf )
- costs of customized parts - paid to vendors
- costs of internal designers - to specify what they want/getting
- power it up and see how long to get it going smoothly/reliably
- saving all work to another system in case the system loses
  its mind and starts erasing data 
	( if you have a bad sdram ... it cn erase data on disks )
- costs to admin the system instead of using the system for work
- costs of the building and space and rack
- costs of all the office admin and support staff...
.. blah .. blah ..

- all the hardware costs becomes a miniml fraction of the entire
  project costs

-- off the shelf... if number of servers is important and doing
   some predefined tasks... Transmeta cursoe seems to be a very good
   alternative as it supports 24 servers in 3U space..

have fun
alvin
http://www.Linux-1U.net


On Thu, 24 May 2001, Josip Loncaric wrote:

> Bari Ari wrote:
> > 
> > We don't envision very dense clusters being priced above the cost of off
> > the shelf built clusters. The cost of building one enclosure is less
> > than eight enclosures.
> 
> The cost of building an item is NOT the price charged for the item.  The
> manufacturer's development cost must also be recovered.  Dense packaging
> adds value not found in the mass market, so hardware vendors can price
> them higher even if the unit production cost is actually lower.  Some of
> the difference goes to their profit, but a lion's share covers their
> development costs.
> 
> I remain skeptical about your pricing projections.  Until the mass
> market for PCs drastically changes, I doubt that we'll see high
> performance dense packages selling for the same price as equally capable
> commodity alternatives.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Josip
> 
> -- 
> Dr. Josip Loncaric, Research Fellow               mailto:josip at icase.edu
> ICASE, Mail Stop 132C           PGP key at http://www.icase.edu./~josip/
> NASA Langley Research Center             mailto:j.loncaric at larc.nasa.gov
> Hampton, VA 23681-2199, USA    Tel. +1 757 864-2192  Fax +1 757 864-6134
> 
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