[nylug-talk] Comparing RISC with CICS processor

[Paul Robbins]

Well if the comparison is between multiple RISC 450 systems or one RISC
system with multiple 1.6G processors, I would say to definitely go with the
single RISC system, less space required and AIX does a good job of being
able to allocate each processor (and parts of each processor) to different
users/applications/etc. AIX (smit) allows for fairly easy administration.
What AIX lacks in limited software, it makes up in ease of administration.
If you are sure the database apps will run on AIX and don't foresee any
changes to the app, then the large RISC system seems like a winner.  On a
different note, you could slowly pull each of the current windows systems
off the network and configure them into a cluster to run these apps. The
admin and setup is much more complex, but no cost is involved.

If you are running on old Pentiums and want to switch to RISC 450's, you
will see little performance difference, especially if you have a good admin
that configures the processor usage correctly.  With them being free, that
gives you a good benefit.


On 1/12/07, Gary Mort <gmlug at saplings.us> wrote:
>
> Paul Robbins wrote:
> > Gary,
> > It really just comes down to what you are trying to do with the
> hardware. I
> > work for a retail chain which deploys 233MHz and 375MHz RISC systems.
> > Although this is some extremely antiquated hardware, it allows us the
> > performance we need.  The real key that we noticed with old RISC
> hardware
> > was upgrading RAM. The change in RAM makes a much more dramatic
> difference
> > for our application than a change in processor speed.
> >
> > On that same note, I am trying to convince them to move away from AIX on
> the
> > RISC to Linux on an x86 box. In my initial R&D work (with a 1.5GHz PIII,
> i
> > think) is that the applications run much faster, but it is hard to make
> a
> > direct comparison since it is two difference OS's running on different
> > platforms.  If you are running Linux on PPC and are looking to move to
> an
> > intel or AMD box running an x86 version of Linux, I think again you are
> > going to find it hard to compare since the setup is so different.
> >
> > I know this might just be random rambling, but if you want, i would be
> happy
> > to talk to you about the what I notice as the key difference in the
> > application processing for the two systems.
> >
>
>
> Mainly, I've got a lot of database driven apps that are currently
> running on Windows on old Pentiums.
> Also, keep in mind, I say databases, we're talking 10-20 databases
> mainly between 50MB and 250MB in size.  These things are small.
>
> The systems are crud, the operating system has been compromised six ways
> to sunday due to the poor decisions of the group(everyone logs on with
> the same admin userid) and they insist that this is the only way they
> can write their apps.
>
> We need to replace the system, and I'm looking to move them to a unix
> environment where they will be forced to start thinking about security
> just a bit.
>
> I'm somewhat limited due to the nature of available hardware and
> software to AIX on a RISC box.  There are a ton of virtually free
> systems with 450 processors that they can get(hardware that has been
> upgraded and is available within the company for the cost of transport
> from the location it's stored at to their location)- but without having
> one on hand I can't compare programs from one system to the other to see
> if we have performance issues.
>
> For a SMALL amount of money, they can get a monster RISC box with 16
> 1.6G processors.
>
>
> They also have an extremely small time window to do this upgrade in a
> reasonable manner.
>
> I'd rather get them to upgrade to the more expensive box because if it
> runs well than I can encourage them to move the rest of their cruddy
> code onto this server and do away with windows entirely.
>
>
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