At 11:22 AM 4/16/2007, Peter St. John wrote:
While looking around for a laptop I discovered that MS is paying
Google for the keyword "linux" to point to a "Get the Facts!" page
(reminds me of TheTruth.com) with testomonials about why MS is
better than Linux for clustering (!). What struck me was that I
wasn't googling "linux cluster" but just "linux notebook", yet the
page is about MS cluster installations at research facilitites.
The ad is
<http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/facts/default.mspx?R=cf>http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/facts/default.mspx?R=cf
The testamonials all seem to be equivalent to "I"m a PhD in Rocket
Science but setting up a Linux Cluster is too complex, so using MS
saves me time to do Rocket Science".
Well, as a rocket scientist of sorts (although not actually in
propulsion), I didn't see any rocket science folks.. I'd be willing
to bet that among those who actually DO rocket science Linux has a
fairly high penetration(at least here at JPL, it does).
But your point is well taken. And so is Microsoft's...
A more accurate model for this market would be "I'm a rocket
scientist with a Windows desktop application that provides me with a
familiar interface to a back end that might be a cluster or might
not. I don't want to have to care what's running back there in the
closet, because I'm a rocket scientist, not a sysadmin. *I* don't
much care who provides me with a turnkey solution, I'll be happy,
independent of what's under the hood. But I'll be darned if I'm going
to download ISOs off the web, burn them and build my own
cluster. Talk to the computing infrastructure people and stop
bothering me. And if you're selling something they don't like,
you're doomed.".
None of them mention if their MS clusters were in any way subsidized by MS.
The U Va one is probably the Apple Mac cluster, no?
Also, I assume that essentially they are paying their vendor to do
the setup & support, and they don't say if that compares
economically to, say, paying Joe to do that, only that it saves them
time themselves. Sure, if I had that budget, I'd pay Joe and RGB to
come and work for me and I would have more time for other things.
Institutional budgets are a funny thing. Many things get done that
don't make a heck of a lot of sense from the end user, but make
perfect sense from another viewpoint. This is especially true with
the parts of the "life cycle cost" that aren't in the original
capital investment.
James Lux, P.E.
Spacecraft Radio Frequency Subsystems Group
Flight Communications Systems Section
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mail Stop 161-213
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena CA 91109
tel: (818)354-2075
fax: (818)393-6875
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