yasirabbasi
asked on
Which hardware platform is suitable for mission critical application???????
Hi all
I need to make some comparison b/w different available platform to come up with a solution for an application.
It will be a data management application which would invlove very huge amount of data to be read from tape devices.
Therefore , I/O should be of much much consideration, as well as powerful CPU, Bus speed etc.
Now my first question is that,
Which avialable platform could be suitable for such sort of application?? I have example of platforms like, IBM RS 6000, IBM AS/400, OR Intell based machine Sun/Solaris etc.
Second question is that,
once we come up with some hardware platform, What operating system would bae suitable for this type of application?? for example, Linux or AIX 5.2 or Solaris??
It would be great if any body mention some resource/paper/success story, that could make a comparison between these hardware and software platforms for such type of mission critical applications? describing Pros and Cons of avialable options.
thanks in advance
I need to make some comparison b/w different available platform to come up with a solution for an application.
It will be a data management application which would invlove very huge amount of data to be read from tape devices.
Therefore , I/O should be of much much consideration, as well as powerful CPU, Bus speed etc.
Now my first question is that,
Which avialable platform could be suitable for such sort of application?? I have example of platforms like, IBM RS 6000, IBM AS/400, OR Intell based machine Sun/Solaris etc.
Second question is that,
once we come up with some hardware platform, What operating system would bae suitable for this type of application?? for example, Linux or AIX 5.2 or Solaris??
It would be great if any body mention some resource/paper/success story, that could make a comparison between these hardware and software platforms for such type of mission critical applications? describing Pros and Cons of avialable options.
thanks in advance
ASKER
Well tape device is not an issue
It wil be SCSI based tape devices, that means it can attached to any hardware platform provided it has specific SCSI card/adapter.
It can be any tape device of any brand, like Fujitsu or IBM or Exabytes etc. There I/O transfer speeds are independent from hardware platform.
So question level is above from tape devices, and is related to hardware I/O speed and performence provided by different operating systems.
My question is related to specific areas; like,
Which combinition of Hardware + Operating system could provide best performance for very large I/O processing applications and Why?
It wil be SCSI based tape devices, that means it can attached to any hardware platform provided it has specific SCSI card/adapter.
It can be any tape device of any brand, like Fujitsu or IBM or Exabytes etc. There I/O transfer speeds are independent from hardware platform.
So question level is above from tape devices, and is related to hardware I/O speed and performence provided by different operating systems.
My question is related to specific areas; like,
Which combinition of Hardware + Operating system could provide best performance for very large I/O processing applications and Why?
May i ask exactly what this solution is supposed to do?
Well take a look at the drivers, If WindowsXP supports it then i would suggest just using a desktop computer with WinXP installed, and a HDD with a NTFS partition.
if you are wanting a more something more exact then get( more for a desktop PC):
1) either a pentium 4, celeron, or AMD processor that is rated 3Ghz speed or above,
2) a motherboard that supports your selected processor with at least 4 PCI slots
3) 1GB of ram
4) 160GB or 250GB Hard Drive
5) Video card(if it needs one, some motherboards have their own video card built in)
6) 1Gb lan card(or 100Mb lan card)
7) one scsi adapter External: http://store.yahoo.com/directron/2120s.html
Well take a look at the drivers, If WindowsXP supports it then i would suggest just using a desktop computer with WinXP installed, and a HDD with a NTFS partition.
if you are wanting a more something more exact then get( more for a desktop PC):
1) either a pentium 4, celeron, or AMD processor that is rated 3Ghz speed or above,
2) a motherboard that supports your selected processor with at least 4 PCI slots
3) 1GB of ram
4) 160GB or 250GB Hard Drive
5) Video card(if it needs one, some motherboards have their own video card built in)
6) 1Gb lan card(or 100Mb lan card)
7) one scsi adapter External: http://store.yahoo.com/directron/2120s.html
For very large IO processing performance you simply cannot do better than one of these:-
http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/pdf/806-3507-12.pdf
The sun 15K is the fastest thing I've ever seen one of our customers uses one with 24 CPU's and it out performs ANYTHING . We are pure data processing on a very large oracle DB
Stick solaris 9.0 on it and you should outperform anything. ( P.S. you didn't mention anything about price limit !)
Best Regadrs
logicbod :o)
http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/pdf/806-3507-12.pdf
The sun 15K is the fastest thing I've ever seen one of our customers uses one with 24 CPU's and it out performs ANYTHING . We are pure data processing on a very large oracle DB
Stick solaris 9.0 on it and you should outperform anything. ( P.S. you didn't mention anything about price limit !)
Best Regadrs
logicbod :o)
Think I'd better back that last statement up with some common sense ;-)
For pure performance you're looking at either a SUN server or an IBM server, the top end of these servers allow for massive arrays of CPU's .....so if it's starting to crumble under the load you can just throw a few more CPU's , with a couple of buckets of RAM, and add a few more tape drives to your raid array .............and you should be able to keep up with anything thrown at it.
I'm presuming that you'll be using a RAIT array? This should be set in striping mode +1 to get the MAX IO rate.
As far as OS is concerned your only real choices are Solaris or AIX, these are truly multitasking , and have been for many many years, they also have a proven track record for driving large data-mining enterprise level machines.
My biggest concern here is that if you're looking for max I/O why oh why use tape devices? It would make far more sense to buy a decent RAID controller and build yourself a 16 disk striping +1 array .....using overnight backups onto tape if absolutely necessary.
Hope this helps
Best Regards
Logicbod :o(
For pure performance you're looking at either a SUN server or an IBM server, the top end of these servers allow for massive arrays of CPU's .....so if it's starting to crumble under the load you can just throw a few more CPU's , with a couple of buckets of RAM, and add a few more tape drives to your raid array .............and you should be able to keep up with anything thrown at it.
I'm presuming that you'll be using a RAIT array? This should be set in striping mode +1 to get the MAX IO rate.
As far as OS is concerned your only real choices are Solaris or AIX, these are truly multitasking , and have been for many many years, they also have a proven track record for driving large data-mining enterprise level machines.
My biggest concern here is that if you're looking for max I/O why oh why use tape devices? It would make far more sense to buy a decent RAID controller and build yourself a 16 disk striping +1 array .....using overnight backups onto tape if absolutely necessary.
Hope this helps
Best Regards
Logicbod :o(
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Right now, i belive your biggest problem is not finding a platfore. but rather a device that can read the tape in a meaningful way. Once you find that device(s) check to see what operating systems they support and then ask "What platformes do these devises support"
Using tapes as a data storage media is farily old, I know there are still deviceses out there that work but finding them...