Dell axes high-end server
Posted by NTUsEr on 21 July 2003 - 13:28 · 6 comments & 918 views
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(1 reply)
#1 Posted by danbalsh on 21 Jul 2003 - 13:31
maybe they caught wind of the Apples new XServes 
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#2 Posted by MadDog on 21 Jul 2003 - 13:53
- If they're anything like the G4-based server they put out a couple years ago consulting firms will be making a bundle... migrating people off of them and onto an Intel-based server. I had a client that dumped six of them because they were about as reliable as a Russian-built toaster.
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#3 Posted by Know Won on 21 Jul 2003 - 14:01
- Most companies that I have worked with prefer bigger machines instead of several smaller ones for web server needs.
Datacenter Hosting costs are paid according to the space occupied by the server.
Therfore, in the long run, it costs less to have single big server than having smaller ones liked together.
Lesser bigger servers also means that maintenance is simpler and cheaper in terms of man hours.
All of these customers will now go to other companies like HP if Dell can't deliver.
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#4 Posted by ripgut on 22 Jul 2003 - 00:27
- APPLE still sucks
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#5 Posted by reddsoda on 22 Jul 2003 - 04:02
- Scaling up is nice for many types of databases and applications but scaling out has advantages as well. Yes, datacenter hosting does cost more, but load balancing over four servers is nice when one goes down, it's pretty easy and cheap to put up another one. Yet some high powered servers are more reliable than quadroupling the possibility of hardware and software failure. And yet, some 8 way servers aren't as cost effective than two four way servers. So I'm arguing from both sides, guess my point is that both systems will have their market.
Dell had been funding Intel to build a chipset to yoke together as many as eight Intel Xeon processors for larger servers that are used for such demanding tasks as housing sales databases. But improvements in smaller two- and four-processor systems outpaced that of eight-processor systems during the "extended time" it took to develop the larger machine, said Neil Hand, a director of product marketing at Dell. "The performance of two- and four-way systems went up at a faster rate than anything else," Hand said. "We don't plan to bring an eight-way Xeon system to market."
Dell isn't abandoning the high-end server market to established server competitors such as Sun Microsystems, IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Instead, it's regrouping by trying to advance the idea of linking smaller machines into the equivalent of a larger multiprocessor machine. In an effort to reach annual revenue of $60 billion, Dell has been expanding into new product areas, and higher-end "enterprise" server and storage equipment has led that plan. But the end of the eight-processor system illustrates the difficulties Dell faces when that effort carries the company beyond its areas of expertise.
"The stuff you can buy that's really a commodity, that doesn't need much vendor support, Dell is great at," said Insight64 analyst Nathan Brookwood. But large servers are a different matter, he added. "I don't think people want to buy systems in that price class from Dell. Maybe someday they will, but right now Dell's strength is in the one-way, two-way, four-way (market), and it drops off really quickly from that."
Sexual thrills
Chat rooms are the fastest rising cause of relationship breakdowns, according to counselling groups in the US. The problem would get worse as the number of people online continued to rise, said Ms Mileham. For the study, the researcher interviewed men and women who used chat rooms specifically aimed at married couples. She found that most people said they loved their partner. But the anonymity of the net provided an outlet for those seeking an erotic encounter.
"All I have to do is turn on my computer and I have thousands of women to choose from," said one of the men questioned for the study. "It can't get any easier than that."
Most people ventured into the chat rooms because of boredom, a partner's lack of sexual interest, or a desire for variety and fun.
"The number one complaint from men was lack of sex in the marriage," said Ms Mileham. "Many of them said their wife was so involved in child-rearing that she wasn't interested in having sex."
From virtual to real
The study found that what often started out as just friendly chat turned into something much more serious. Almost a third of people taking part in the study went on to meet the person with whom they had made contact. All but two ended up having a real-life affair. In one case, a man had 13 affairs with women he had met over the internet.
"We are hearing from therapists around the country reporting online sexual activity to be a major cause of marital problems," said Al Cooper, author of the book, Sex And The Internet: A Guidebook For Clinicians.
"We need to better understand the contributing factors if we are going to be able to warn people about the slippery slope that starts with online flirting and too often ends in divorce."
For the study, Ms Mileham interviewed with 76 men and 10 women, aged between 25 and 66, who used Yahoo's Married And Flirting or Microsoft's Married But Flirting internet chat rooms.