Linux waddles from obscurity to the big time (USA Today) [LWN.net]

Yahoo!News has picked up this USA Today article which looks at how Linux is being used at banks, in goverments, and elsewhere. "Then Dresdner discovered a bonus: Linux, the upstart open-source operating system, was not only cheaper -- but also faster. The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes." (Thanks to Richard Storey)

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Linux waddles from obscurity to the big time (USA Today)

Posted Aug 9, 2002 14:18 UTC (Fri) by gojuka (guest, #3185) [Link]

17 hours to 11 minutes?! Come on ... anytime I see these kinds of
numbers I know I am not getting the whole story. Unfortunately the
actual article does not describe the Linux boxen or the machines
they replaced. What kind of systems were replaced? What were they
replaced with? What apps are they running? Does the app scale better
horizontally or vertically?

Guaranteed they replaced 32 ancient *nix systems with shiny new
PeeCees. Gee, could _40_ new P-III or Athlon XP boxes running Linux
beat the pants off _32_ clunky SPARCStation 5's running an app that
lends itself to horizontal scaling? Duh! New processors, probably
more RAM, faster disks and interconnects, more systems to scale
across ... and gee, look, it goes faster too.

Of course I have no idea what the *nix boxes were but to go from 17
hours to 11 minutes is a pretty clear indication of the vintage of
those *nix systems.

Other possibilities:

- Consolidate the 32 old systems onto fewer more powerful systems
... assuming the old boxes are single CPU, replace them with 2 new
folly loaded Sun Fire V880 boxes (I use Sun systems as examples
because those are the *nix system I am most familiar with ... insert
equivalent IBM/HP systems as you see fit)

Why replace your 32 system headache with a larger 40 system headache?

I'll boost a Linux solution just as fast as anyone else but this
kind of so-called "reporting" is just FUD. Where are the details?