Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
* James Salsman wrote: Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance? Related: https://twitter.com/DellCares/status/417812096072818688. -- Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjo...@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de 25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
Oh man --- The trolling here is amazing!!! First off, you can't just plug a fiber cable into an ethernet socket. You need at least SFP+'s for 10G fiber connections, plus the cost of fiber itself -- it's way more expensive than a 100mbit connection. That said, we do use SFP+ based 10G for our varnish layer -- the amount of traffic pushed by those boxes compared to the amount it would cost to buy a bunch of additional machines makes the extra cost of the interfaces (and don't forget the switch ports! 10G switches cost more than 100mbit switches) make perfect financial sense. Leslie PS - someone technical may point out that DAC (which is copper! gasp!) is cheaper than two SFP+'s and a fiber cable. That's true! However we have had major issues with DAC compatibility on the switch side, and some issues on the hardware side. SFP+'s rarely (albeit occasionally) have that issue. Plus we can keep a spare inventory that is usable in multiple places, making our sparing easier and life easier on the DC techs when we need to scramble for an unexpected 10G need. On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 10:10 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Maximum 100 Mbps ethernet connection We should be using fiber, which also costs less power and is orders of magnitude faster. If the words enterprise-class actually mean something more than much larger markup than purchasing components then go with something like http://www.marvell.com/company/news/pressDetail.do?releaseID=3576 For example, maybe the http://www.mitac.com/business/gfx_servers.html people have benchmarks representative of our DB/cache usage patterns. It's not like we have anything special (or x86-specific, Jasper!) other than very high bandwidth. At least put out an RFP, please. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Leslie Carr Wikimedia Foundation AS 14907, 43821 http://as14907.peeringdb.com/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
As a non-technical person on this list, I have no idea what you just said Lesile (and Tim, earlier in this thread) but I greatly enjoyed reading it! Keep up the good work :-) -Liam / Wittylama On Tuesday, 31 December 2013, Leslie Carr wrote: Oh man --- The trolling here is amazing!!! First off, you can't just plug a fiber cable into an ethernet socket. You need at least SFP+'s for 10G fiber connections, plus the cost of fiber itself -- it's way more expensive than a 100mbit connection. That said, we do use SFP+ based 10G for our varnish layer -- the amount of traffic pushed by those boxes compared to the amount it would cost to buy a bunch of additional machines makes the extra cost of the interfaces (and don't forget the switch ports! 10G switches cost more than 100mbit switches) make perfect financial sense. Leslie PS - someone technical may point out that DAC (which is copper! gasp!) is cheaper than two SFP+'s and a fiber cable. That's true! However we have had major issues with DAC compatibility on the switch side, and some issues on the hardware side. SFP+'s rarely (albeit occasionally) have that issue. Plus we can keep a spare inventory that is usable in multiple places, making our sparing easier and life easier on the DC techs when we need to scramble for an unexpected 10G need. On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 10:10 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.comjavascript:; wrote: Maximum 100 Mbps ethernet connection We should be using fiber, which also costs less power and is orders of magnitude faster. If the words enterprise-class actually mean something more than much larger markup than purchasing components then go with something like http://www.marvell.com/company/news/pressDetail.do?releaseID=3576 For example, maybe the http://www.mitac.com/business/gfx_servers.html people have benchmarks representative of our DB/cache usage patterns. It's not like we have anything special (or x86-specific, Jasper!) other than very high bandwidth. At least put out an RFP, please. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; ?subject=unsubscribe -- Leslie Carr Wikimedia Foundation AS 14907, 43821 http://as14907.peeringdb.com/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; ?subject=unsubscribe -- wittylama.com Peace, love metadata ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
On 29 December 2013 12:55, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes The WMF doesn't. and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance? Ref.: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html Best regards, James Using non standard data center equipment is a great way to add costs. As for security given the limited resources the WMF has whenever GCHQ, FSB and MSS have wanted to get in they have and there is nothing we can do about this. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 5:17 AM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 29 December 2013 12:55, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes The WMF doesn't. and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance? Ref.: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html Best regards, James Using non standard data center equipment is a great way to add costs. Naw, it's a great idea. Let's switch to building our own ARM-based servers (by the way, which have already been a flop commercially), using only unproven, low-volume available motherboards and having to buy and assemble all of the rest of the components. And then of course, we need to design our own cases... and since these have such a low performance, we'll need to have a lot more rack and datacenter space, of course which comes with a cost... and we'll have to figure out how to run our caching layers which require large amounts of memory... and our storage layers which require large amounts of disk space. At that point we'll probably need to redesign those boards which are incapable of doing these things, so we'll need a team of hardware engineers, plus a deal with a manufacturing plant. So... I think with about a 100 million dollar per year research budget we can do this. Who's ponying up? ;) As for security given the limited resources the WMF has whenever GCHQ, FSB and MSS have wanted to get in they have and there is nothing we can do about this. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Leslie Carr Wikimedia Foundation AS 14907, 43821 http://as14907.peeringdb.com/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 4:55 AM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance? Ref.: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html Cubie are not credible enterprise-grade hardware; having made the suggestion indicates you don't understand what large server farm design and operations are all about. One can see signs of a movement towards enterprise-grade lower power CPU systems such as Atom, ARM, and Via chip mini-servers. It's not there yet. Both hardware and OS issues with the ARMs, and hardware with the others. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
2013/12/29 Leslie Carr lc...@wikimedia.org On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 5:17 AM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 29 December 2013 12:55, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes The WMF doesn't. and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance? Ref.: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html Best regards, James Using non standard data center equipment is a great way to add costs. Naw, it's a great idea. Let's switch to building our own ARM-based servers (by the way, which have already been a flop commercially), using only unproven, low-volume available motherboards and having to buy and assemble all of the rest of the components. And then of course, we need to design our own cases... and since these have such a low performance, we'll need to have a lot more rack and datacenter space, of course which comes with a cost... and we'll have to figure out how to run our caching layers which require large amounts of memory... and our storage layers which require large amounts of disk space. At that point we'll probably need to redesign those boards which are incapable of doing these things, so we'll need a team of hardware engineers, plus a deal with a manufacturing plant. So... I think with about a 100 million dollar per year research budget we can do this. Who's ponying up? ;) Funny huh? If we use free software, I don't see why we can't move to open-source hardware ASAP. As for security given the limited resources the WMF has whenever GCHQ, FSB and MSS have wanted to get in they have and there is nothing we can do about this. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Leslie Carr Wikimedia Foundation AS 14907, 43821 http://as14907.peeringdb.com/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada emi...@gmail.com wrote: Naw, it's a great idea. Let's switch to building our own ARM-based servers (by the way, which have already been a flop commercially), using only unproven, low-volume available motherboards and having to buy and assemble all of the rest of the components. And then of course, we need to design our own cases... and since these have such a low performance, we'll need to have a lot more rack and datacenter space, of course which comes with a cost... and we'll have to figure out how to run our caching layers which require large amounts of memory... and our storage layers which require large amounts of disk space. At that point we'll probably need to redesign those boards which are incapable of doing these things, so we'll need a team of hardware engineers, plus a deal with a manufacturing plant. So... I think with about a 100 million dollar per year research budget we can do this. Who's ponying up? ;) Funny huh? If we use free software, I don't see why we can't move to open-source hardware ASAP. Well, I think Leslie just listed a few, but I'll recap: - low-availability - Requires in house assembly - Requires in house design capacity - Substantially more rack and datacenter space required - Insufficient for caching and storage layers - Cost of manufacturing. pb ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
On 29/12/2013 22:41, Philippe Beaudette wrote: On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada emi...@gmail.com wrote: Naw, it's a great idea. Let's switch to building our own ARM-based servers (by the way, which have already been a flop commercially), using only unproven, low-volume available motherboards and having to buy and assemble all of the rest of the components. And then of course, we need to design our own cases... and since these have such a low performance, we'll need to have a lot more rack and datacenter space, of course which comes with a cost... and we'll have to figure out how to run our caching layers which require large amounts of memory... and our storage layers which require large amounts of disk space. At that point we'll probably need to redesign those boards which are incapable of doing these things, so we'll need a team of hardware engineers, plus a deal with a manufacturing plant. So... I think with about a 100 million dollar per year research budget we can do this. Who's ponying up? ;) Funny huh? If we use free software, I don't see why we can't move to open-source hardware ASAP. Well, I think Leslie just listed a few, but I'll recap: - low-availability - Requires in house assembly - Requires in house design capacity - Substantially more rack and datacenter space required - Insufficient for caching and storage layers - Cost of manufacturing. Add to the list people that know what they are doing. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
On 29/12/13 23:55, James Salsman wrote: Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance? Ref.: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html That article doesn't say Dell equipment has a back door, it just says that there is surveillance software or hardware designed to work with Dell equipment. It doesn't even say that Dell equipment is especially vulnerable. There is no information in the documents seen by SPIEGEL to suggest that the companies whose products are mentioned in the catalog provided any support to the NSA or even had any knowledge of the intelligence solutions. -- Tim Starling ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
The WMF's servers have nothing to do with Microsoft. There do exist alternative processor architectures, not even just ARM (Itanium (probably too expensive), Tilera (massively parallel)), but I don't think migrating our software (particularly Labs' virtualization-related software) to them is trivial. One should also ask whether the NSA is snooping on our transit links and our peering IXPs (Google is encrypting their own fiber, as well as their transit links, for that reason). On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 4:55 AM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance? Ref.: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html Best regards, James ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
When this came up last time, it turned out that there was some kind of a deal in place, and certainly many if not most published pictures of the Wikimedia data center feature rows of shiny Dell logos. But Dell does support Microsoft and the NSA, obviously, and also supports some very creative accounting methods to avoid paying taxes with tax havens. Dell's corporate structure adventures are not the sort of corporate behavior concordant with a mission to empower anyone other than Dell stockholders. If you don't like Cubietrucks, then how about RADXA? At least with http://dl.radxa.com/rock/docs/hw/RADXA_ROCK_schematic_20130903.pdf you know exactly what you're getting and it doesn't cost a huge power bill. We still failover when machines go out of service, and sure the caches would have different RAM configurations, but the fact is it doesn't cost more money to switch to ARM, and you jettison a bunch of legacy x86 crap that nobody uses but take millions of transistors which need to be powered. Why ask our donors to keep all those useless transistors warm? And as much as I personally appreciate Wikimedia staff, I am inclined to agree with the sentiment that perhaps we should hire more staff until we get some who believe that it wouldn't cost $100,000 to transition to less expensive hardware. And maybe some people who know how to order chassis? Best regards, James ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
*And as much as I personally appreciate Wikimedia staff, I am inclined* *to agree with the sentiment that perhaps we should hire more staff until we get some who believe that it wouldn't cost $100,000 totransition to less expensive hardware. And maybe some people who know how to order chassis?* What makes you think they don't? Dan Rosenthal On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 10:55 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: When this came up last time, it turned out that there was some kind of a deal in place, and certainly many if not most published pictures of the Wikimedia data center feature rows of shiny Dell logos. But Dell does support Microsoft and the NSA, obviously, and also supports some very creative accounting methods to avoid paying taxes with tax havens. Dell's corporate structure adventures are not the sort of corporate behavior concordant with a mission to empower anyone other than Dell stockholders. If you don't like Cubietrucks, then how about RADXA? At least with http://dl.radxa.com/rock/docs/hw/RADXA_ROCK_schematic_20130903.pdf you know exactly what you're getting and it doesn't cost a huge power bill. We still failover when machines go out of service, and sure the caches would have different RAM configurations, but the fact is it doesn't cost more money to switch to ARM, and you jettison a bunch of legacy x86 crap that nobody uses but take millions of transistors which need to be powered. Why ask our donors to keep all those useless transistors warm? And as much as I personally appreciate Wikimedia staff, I am inclined to agree with the sentiment that perhaps we should hire more staff until we get some who believe that it wouldn't cost $100,000 to transition to less expensive hardware. And maybe some people who know how to order chassis? Best regards, James ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
but the fact is it doesn't cost more money to switch to ARM, and you jettison a bunch of legacy x86 crap that nobody uses but take millions of transistors which need to be powered. ARM is not compatible with a lot of our software, and besides if we really wanted power efficiency we could instead buy Intel's 14nm chips. Virtualization also helps. New servers always cost a lot, and it's not trivial to switch over hundreds of boxes. That's because you're not going to make ARM CPUs work as drop-in replacements. On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 7:55 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: When this came up last time, it turned out that there was some kind of a deal in place, and certainly many if not most published pictures of the Wikimedia data center feature rows of shiny Dell logos. But Dell does support Microsoft and the NSA, obviously, and also supports some very creative accounting methods to avoid paying taxes with tax havens. Dell's corporate structure adventures are not the sort of corporate behavior concordant with a mission to empower anyone other than Dell stockholders. If you don't like Cubietrucks, then how about RADXA? At least with http://dl.radxa.com/rock/docs/hw/RADXA_ROCK_schematic_20130903.pdf you know exactly what you're getting and it doesn't cost a huge power bill. We still failover when machines go out of service, and sure the caches would have different RAM configurations, but the fact is it doesn't cost more money to switch to ARM, and you jettison a bunch of legacy x86 crap that nobody uses but take millions of transistors which need to be powered. Why ask our donors to keep all those useless transistors warm? And as much as I personally appreciate Wikimedia staff, I am inclined to agree with the sentiment that perhaps we should hire more staff until we get some who believe that it wouldn't cost $100,000 to transition to less expensive hardware. And maybe some people who know how to order chassis? Best regards, James ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
On 30/12/13 14:55, James Salsman wrote: If you don't like Cubietrucks, then how about RADXA? At least with http://dl.radxa.com/rock/docs/hw/RADXA_ROCK_schematic_20130903.pdf you know exactly what you're getting and it doesn't cost a huge power bill. Maximum 100 Mbps ethernet connection. Also, it doesn't exist yet. We still failover when machines go out of service, and sure the caches would have different RAM configurations, but the fact is it doesn't cost more money to switch to ARM, and you jettison a bunch of legacy x86 crap that nobody uses but take millions of transistors which need to be powered. Why ask our donors to keep all those useless transistors warm? Are there some benchmarks which support this idea? I read http://armservers.com/2012/06/18/apache-benchmarks-for-calxedas-5-watt-web-server/ But it was full of distortions, like comparing the actual power usage of the ARM system with the TDP of the Intel system, and then using a workload which saturated the network link of the Intel system versus the CPU of the ARM system. Maybe this sort of fluff is part of the reason why Calxeda went bust. Marketing materials on Calxeda's website indicated that the system was priced such that it would be more expensive than Intel on a per-MIPS basis, but that you'd win in the long run through reduced power bills. It didn't sound like a cheap solution to me. I read this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/13/facebook_arm_chips/ But it was clear that it was only at a prototype stage -- the benchmarks are not in yet because the development work needs to be done first. I read this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/16/google_intel_arm_analysis/ which speculated that Xeon may still be better for CPU-intensive tasks, and ARM chips may be useful for storage control. But a Cubieboard or Radxa can't be used for storage, since they lack the necessary high-bandwidth connections. Leslie Carr wrote: At that point we'll probably need to redesign those boards which are incapable of doing these things, so we'll need a team of hardware engineers, plus a deal with a manufacturing plant. Google and Facebook are apparently taking that route. Maybe some day, this technology will be available for anyone to buy. -- Tim Starling ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
On Dec 29, 2013, at 9:11 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: Leslie Carr wrote: At that point we'll probably need to redesign those boards which are incapable of doing these things, so we'll need a team of hardware engineers, plus a deal with a manufacturing plant. Google and Facebook are apparently taking that route. Maybe some day, this technology will be available for anyone to buy. -- Tim Starling One hears rumors of enterprise grade hardware manufacturers floating product ideas to customers (cough) but rumors persist that paying customers actually calculate bandwidth issues for their applications and generally say no. The ones who say yes tend to be academics in strange corners of the money / compute cluster CPU vs IO trade space, and are ok with building their own. -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com Sent from Kangphone ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
It's not like we have anything special (or x86-specific, Jasper!) other than very high bandwidth. Wikimedia Labs uses x86 hardware virtualization (just one example). We already have transit linkages that include fiber, and new fiber is far from cheap. You persist in ignoring the costs of buying equipment. In terms of orders of magnitude, ~500 servers * $200 per server = $100,000 already. That is a conservative $200/server estimate that also doesn't take into account labor and other costs. To the level we'd want it, it's at least one more order of magnitude more expensive (no, we're not going to recover the costs by selling our existing servers). On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 10:10 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Maximum 100 Mbps ethernet connection We should be using fiber, which also costs less power and is orders of magnitude faster. If the words enterprise-class actually mean something more than much larger markup than purchasing components then go with something like http://www.marvell.com/company/news/pressDetail.do?releaseID=3576 For example, maybe the http://www.mitac.com/business/gfx_servers.html people have benchmarks representative of our DB/cache usage patterns. It's not like we have anything special (or x86-specific, Jasper!) other than very high bandwidth. At least put out an RFP, please. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
... Wikimedia Labs uses x86 hardware virtualization (just one example) How does that tie us to x86? http://www.eweek.com/servers/arm-server-chips-get-xen-virtualization-support/ ... a conservative $200/server estimate I have been recommending hardware which costs closer to $70 per server depending on storage and cache architecture options. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
How does that tie us to x86? We don't use Xen, nor is that guaranteed to give us acceptable performance. closer to $70 Please justify that claim (that would be the cost of the CPU or hard disk alone). You haven't even given us a compelling reason to spend any money at all on this. On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 10:25 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: ... Wikimedia Labs uses x86 hardware virtualization (just one example) How does that tie us to x86? http://www.eweek.com/servers/arm-server-chips-get-xen-virtualization-support/ ... a conservative $200/server estimate I have been recommending hardware which costs closer to $70 per server depending on storage and cache architecture options. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored
Putting aside the 'tax' aspect, whether or not there is a backdoor in the shipped product is not the point of the article you linked to James. NSA is intercepting hardware deliveries and adding backdoors while it is enroute from supplier to customer. Buying new equipment gives NSA a new opportunity to inject backdoors unless WMF has staff watching the entire manufacturing and delivery process. The latest revelations give details of only a few of NSAs capabilities. Eliminating the now known threats, and all the other possible vectors is not feasible. A more sensible strategy is to put perimeters around sets of private data, and watch your own equipment for unusual activity, with more focus on outbound than was previously thought necessary by most organisations. The extreme end is using trusted operating systems, tagging all data and network interfaces software preventing unapproved data transits. WMF already has serious network traffic analytics and monitoring. Maybe some more rules and alerts are needed, but everyone is reviewing how suspicious they should be of their 'own' internal equipment now. On Dec 29, 2013 7:56 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance? Ref.: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html Best regards, James ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
