Hey Todd,
> I don't think "commodity hardware" is a joke at all, it's
> just a different definition of commodity.
Yes, this is why I said:
> > The "commodity hardware" talk around MR and BigTable
> > is a bit of a joke --
I tend to think of "commodity" as < USD$6000 or so. Really, standard server
class hardware with decent CPU, RAM, and disk, but no expensive RAID
controller, nor FC card, nor external RAID array, nor SSD, etc.
But it is indeed a bit of a joke because many coming to Hadoop (and HBase) have
a definition of commodity that is a lot further along the continuum toward
cheap. I've had many, many conversations where this mention of "commodity" has
lead to a surprise later. So internally I always say something like "basic
server class hardware with plenty of memory".
- Andy
