[Beowulf] SGI to offer Windows on clusters

[Joe Landman]

Mikhail Kuzminsky wrote:
> In message from Mikael Fredriksson <mike at etek.chalmers.se> (Mon, 15 Jan 
> 2007 20:00:17 +0100):
>> This article: "SGI to offer Windows on clusters" might be worth 
>> reading...
>>
>> http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9007859&source=NLT_PM&nlid=8 
>>
>> Any comments?
>   In any case it's bad news :-( SGI has solid reputation in HPC and 
> university world, and may be somebody will be tempted. But it's 
> interesting, w/which prices SGI will sell their clusters ? Hope that the 
> price will be much more higher than for SGI Linux clusters ;-)

My understanding of pricing (for the windows portion) is that it adds 
(as an OS) $500USD to each node.  So for a 32 node machine, this is an 
extra $16k USD "tax" added on.  Doesn't include the absolutely necessary 
antivirus, anti-spyware, ...  Calling all that roughly $4k USD (roughly 
$125/node), we are looking at something closer to $20k extra per 32 
nodes.  So for 128 nodes, this adds $80k USD.  For 1024 nodes, this adds 
$640k USD.

My question has been on the CBA side.  What do you get for that extra 
tax that you don't get now?

Microsoft could simply be subsidizing this for SGI.  Others have (cough 
cough) for them.

Joe

(former SGI person)

-- 

Joseph Landman, Ph.D
Founder and CEO
Scalable Informatics LLC,
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