On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 09:29:57PM -0600, Gordon Klok wrote: > On 18-Mar-08, at 5:14 AM, bofh wrote: > >On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 2:52 AM, Johan Mson Lindman > ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >
> >I think the key here is that not everything needs to be a 4 cpu quad > >core > >with 128Gigs of ram, and not that it was running freebsd or openbsd. > Why the hell not? > Running old hardware is a hobby not something you should depend on, > one $700 dell server can replace dozens of crappy 5 year old machines > using a tiny fraction of the power and generating a fraction of the > heat. Of course its not as much fun hunting for spare parts in the > trash or on ebay but you will have more time to get real work done. True, but I think the issue is that, economies of scale to keep the Exchange users happy aside, CPU power is the least of the worries for just handling email. The job could be done by a modern I/O design with a cheap older CPU just fine. Then again, the CPU itself is probably the chapest component in the box but has the most marketing value. I use old boxes for odd jobs but I don't have clusters of old boxes doing the work that would be better done by one new box. After all, OBSD has the an anti-virtualization slant. If a job should be segrgated onto a separate box, it doesn't have to be a $700 Dell server if an almost-free generic P-133 will do just fine. If you want new hardware for the perceived reliability issue, or perhaps for the better bus bandwidth, it would be nice to have something between the lowest horsepower new server and a Soekris. For many, many jobs, that $700 Dell server is overkill. Doug.
