Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!npeer01.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!post01.iad.highwinds-media.com!newsfe29.iad.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Arved Sandstrom User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130105 Thunderbird/17.0.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.databases.oracle.server,comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: The Revenge of the Geeks References: <50ff7620$0$80163$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net> <90OLs.55298$Ep5.21372@newsfe08.iad> <51008bba$0$294$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <51015c23$0$289$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 64 Message-ID: X-Complaints-To: abuse@newsgroups-download.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2013 23:31:22 UTC Organization: Public Usenet Newsgroup Access Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:31:21 -0400 X-Received-Bytes: 4361 Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.advocacy:159789 comp.sys.mac.advocacy:48924 comp.databases.oracle.server:4137 comp.lang.java.programmer:21676 On 01/24/2013 06:10 PM, BGB wrote: [ SNIP ] > > errm, so you can't just copy all the files over to ones' servers? and/or > recompile the code for ones' servers?... > > granted, dunno much about business systems, but I was under the > understanding that most were some combination of: > > rack mounts running Linux, typically with x86 CPUs, and with Gigabit > Ethernet or 10GbE or similar linking them all together. > > one or more server computers in a desktop-like form factor, sometimes > with multi-CPU boards, Xeon or Opteron chips, and craploads of RAM > installed, and sometimes also in a LAN. AFAIK, Linux is also popular > here. (though I guess Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Server, > also make an appearance). > > something more strange, like IBM mainframes or similar, where everyone > uses them via funky multi colored textual interfaces inside of a > terminal emulator, ... pretty much everything I have read about them > sounds strange. > > as for data sharing (between lots of networked servers), I am less sure, > I would think maybe something like NFS or SAMBA, but then thinking of > it, NFS or Samba might not scale well if the number of servers becomes > sufficiently large (like, people would probably want to locally cache > files, rather than always doing IO over the network, ...). > > I guess alternatively, an option could be a sort of centralized > batch-push or batch-pull, where a daemon or similar is used to update > all the servers, or something... (say, on a schedule, they pull from a > Git or Hg repository or something...). > > but, in any case, people have probably figured out all this stuff already. > > otherwise, not entirely sure why developing for these would be all that > much different than dealing with a normal PC or Linux box. > "Server" - sometimes the actual computer/OS (real or virtual) running the "serving" application(s), sometimes the "serving" applications, sometimes the combination, sometimes a cluster of one or more of the above etc - is a role, not a technical specification. A "server" performs a function for client applications, that's basically all there is to it. What particular hardware/OS/application software configurations are the right ones depends entirely on performance requirements, reliability and necessary quality of service etc. These days you can have pretty sizeable user bases served off a consumer tower or laptop, granted best running a "server"-variant OS, and this is often acceptable. A consumer-level computer these days blows away servers of not so long ago, so the kinds of things you mention above aren't what define "server" - it's the function, not the form. As to the technical, these days we're moving away from direct access to physical servers and storage, it's all VMs and private/public clouds. If you're administering VMs you'll certainly be aware where your physical CPUs/cores are, and what real devices have your storage, but everything gets pooled and divvied up from there. AHS