From:	"Ojaste,James [NCR]" <James.Ojaste@**.GC.CA>
Subject:	Re: Server Prices (was Re: Hacking Security Tallies)
Date:	Tue, 26 May 1998 16:02:36 -0400

Mike Elkins wrote:
>>Depends. You can get a kick butt multi-cpu intel based system for what
>>$2000 or so. I think the Alpha 500 Mhz is probably in the $5000 range
>>(somebody check me on that), and IBM's SP-2's are considerably more
>>expensive (Into the 100,000's) depending on how much memory they
>>have and when you bought them.
>>As far as mainframes go, I have no idea.
>
>Well, you get what you pay for. $2000 gets you a PC. If you try to run
>server software on a PC it sort of works, but if you push the load on it
>up towards the maximum, it starts getting very flakey.

Sorry, but I think that you're off here - if you push anything too far,
it'll snap. A lot of that depends on the OS used - I'm getting into
sensitive territory here, but some OSes are much more stable than
others and I don't necessarily mean the expensive ones.

>Essentially there are 3 things that make a server a server, and not all
>servers have all three, but that it what to aim for:
>1) Reliability. You can expect a server to run 24 hours a day, 7 days a
>week, for months or years at a time. Expect to pay at least $10,000 for
>a PC with this kind of reliability.

Whoa! If I wanted a fast, SOTA server, I wouldn't expect to pay more
than C$5000! Granted, I wouldn't be paying for support from Compaq
or IBM, but I'd be getting a machine built on standards that I can
get parts for easily and inexpensively.

>2) Capacity: The ability to add lots and lots of disk space, RAM, CPUs
>etc. You can add these to a PC, but expect to hit limits.

A PC's limits nowadays are based more on the size of the case than on
the PC itself - a big tower with a set of 20G SCSI drives and hundreds
of megs of RAM will cover lots... Granted, PCs don't handle TB yet,
but that's far beyond what's required of most servers.

>3) Speed: The least important of these, in some ways. Similar to
>Capacity.

Most servers require IO speed much more than CPU speed.

>I haven't priced a mainframe lately, but my last company's mainframe
>cost $3.5 Mil, and it was a small one.

*Boggle*! What is it used for?

[prices snipped]
These are all pretty arbitrary and are relative to stuff we don't know
about, so I'm not going to comment on them...

>All of this is off the top of my head, and IMHO.
>
>Sanity Check: An Orange system for a small research group (25-50
>people), mission critical work: $40k*20*6 = $4.8 million. Yup, I can live
>with that.

What are they researching? That makes a *huge* difference in cost.
Basically, to get just a little more performance costs a lot more
money.

James Ojaste