Re: HP announces new Integrity servers


Main, Kerry wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Todd [mailto:billtodd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: September 14, 2006 7:03 PM
To: Info-VAX@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: HP announces new Integrity servers

Main, Kerry wrote:

...

Imho, consolidating HW is one small piece, but unless you can
consolidate OS instances, you are not addressing the real issues of
FTE counts - the biggest slice of the IT budget pie.

You're still stuck in Buzzword Heaven, Kerry. I keep asking exactly
*how* Itanic differs in this regard from x86-64 (since their
hardware features are comparable and the available software,
including OSs, is pretty much the same on each of them -
except that there's so much
*more* software available on x86), and you keep dancing
around that question and waving your hands vigorously.


The difference is the overall package. With the Wintel on any platform,
you have many FTE`s maintaining many OS instances, so even with
consolidation using VMware or Virtual Server, you still have a very high
FTE counts - the biggest sclice of the IT budget.

Yes, there are more aplications on Windows, but you can not run more
than one in any single instance (technical, culture and ISV support
issues), hence high OS instances and high FTE counts to maintain these.
Just think of the monthly security patches and all of the associated
pain these have on all of these many OS instances.


This may be so but we are seing large VMWARE deployments with largish
x86 servers hosting a number of Windows XXXX instances using VMWARE.
While this may not be that efficient works and in some cases plays well
with the org structure in the account with individual Business
Units/Projects having their own Windows XXXX instances.

Having a techie discussion about the merits of application
stacking/consolidation is fine but in many organisations this cannot be
imposed by the IT groups on the business units because IT does not own
the equipment and if push comes to shove the BU will simply tell IT
where to stick their consolidation strategy.

I am still at a loss to understand how x86-64 differs at all from
Itanium in this respect anyway.

On Itanium you can run Windows, Linux, HP-UX and OpenVMS on x86-64 you
can run Windows, Linux and Solaris.

So if your app is Windows only there is no difference in support costs
Itanium and x86-64 are the same ish. In reality x86-64 is cheaper
because you will not have had to jump through hoops to get the app
supported on x86-64 something that may not be true for Itanium.

Ditto for Linux, again there is no Itanium secret sauce that spirits
away the FTE's you need to support a Linux App and Linux instance on
Itanium.

Ditto for Solaris on x86-64 vs HP-UX on Itanium.

With App stacking on OS`s like OpenVMS, you can get away with much
reduced FTE counts from an Operations perspective.


Swings and roundabouts, OpenVMS costs more to buy and software support
costs are higher. The platforms that OpenVMS runs on are more expensive
than commodity x86 servers. Trying to sell the concept of buying much
more expensive systems with higher services costs to someone who is
goaled on reducing these costs is a tough concept particularly when the
FTE/internal support costs are much harder to quantify.

You can of course App stack with Solaris anyway thats what Zones are
for.

C'mon: surely you can come up with *something* significant
(other than VMS per se, which is only an unfortunate quirk of
fate that the article you directed us to pay heed to
considers irrelevant in today's IT
climate) that Itanic can offer and x86-64 platforms cannot.


The point of the article was emphasizing looking at IT from a business
perspective and not low level HW.

Because there are plenty of things that x86-64 offers that Itanic
cannot: support from all the tier-1 server vendors rather
than only one of them, *far* wider support from lower-tier
vendors, processor competition that stimulates development,
pricing that reflects this breadth and depth of competition
at both the processor manufacturer and OEM levels,
desktop-to-datacenter range, far more applications than all
other platforms combined (not that most of those applications
are all that significant to servers, but if you want to
consolidate around a single platform all the way down to the
desktop level they are)...

- bill


No Customer I have ever talked to has ever mentioned they want their
server standard to be based on their desktop standard. What Customers
have you been talking to?

They may not want this but the inevitable consequence of choosing
Windows on the desktop and MS Office/Outlook is that you end up with a
significant chunk of your server infrastructure being a Wintel estate
regardless of preference.

Outlook breeds Exchange, Active Directory and CIFS servers. Other
Office products breed SharePoint and a whole load of other server side
MS products.

Why do you think Sun is so anti MS desktops? Its not because they
dislike the user interface they are much more concerned about the viral
nature of Windows when used as a desktop OS.


Ok, simple question - If a Customer chooses Windows or Linux on whatever
platform you want to pick, how do you propose they reduce their FTE
counts which is by far the biggest slice of their IT budget?


Why restrict your choices to Linux and Windows, there are other OS's
available for X86-64 which have significantly lower support costs. Dare
I mention Solaris again.

Perhaps to illustrate this one of the biggest european investment banks
now has a Solaris x86 x86 server strategy. They have moved from Windows
and Linux simply because Solaris costs less to manage than Windows or
Linux and because they have a large internal Solaris skills base
currently supporting Solaris on SPARC.

Regards
Andrew Harrison
Regards

Kerry Main
Senior Consultant
HP Services Canada
Voice: 613-592-4660
Fax: 613-591-4477
kerryDOTmainAThpDOTcom
(remove the DOT's and AT)

OpenVMS - the secure, multi-site OS that just works.

.

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