> On 10/29/18 1:55 AM, Simon Matter wrote: >> To me it seems like, if they are smart, they will try to push IBM POWER >> and RedHat Linux together to establish real competition in the hardware >> market again (and of course don't forget to keep Fedora/CentOS alive)! > > Er, RHEL has been running on Power for a very long time. The fastest > supercomputer in the world is Power9 + RHEL.What I meant is that POWER could become a competitor for Intel/AMD based servers. We're now running AMD EPYC servers with 64Cores/128Threads and we didn't find any POWER system which could compete in this area. Also, looking at TOP500 list there are not so many POWER systems anymore. IBM could change this now. Regards, Simon
On 10/30/18 2:46 AM, Simon Matter wrote:>> On 10/29/18 1:55 AM, Simon Matter wrote: >>> To me it seems like, if they are smart, they will try to push IBM POWER >>> and RedHat Linux together to establish real competition in the hardware >>> market again (and of course don't forget to keep Fedora/CentOS alive)! >> Er, RHEL has been running on Power for a very long time. The fastest >> supercomputer in the world is Power9 + RHEL. > What I meant is that POWER could become a competitor for Intel/AMD based > servers. We're now running AMD EPYC servers with 64Cores/128Threads and we > didn't find any POWER system which could compete in this area. > > Also, looking at TOP500 list there are not so many POWER systems anymore. > IBM could change this now. > > Regards, > Simon > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centosYeah.....I guess that's one way to look at it. My biggest worry? Is I've placed so much time and effort "getting to know" Fedora and its intricacies, idiosyncrasies, its ins and outs...dealt with ridicule on this very same list when I first started, have "cut my teeth" on learning VERY hard lessons about certain syntax in the Terminal and what NOT to type.......only to have that all "taken" away from me at the whim of IBM. It just seems unfair. I'm hoping like H3LL that the developers @ Fedora are seriously thinking about forking "Just In Case"!? I mean they could still use the .RPM extensions, and possibly even still pull their code from RHEL, but at least they would be autonomous and wouldn't have to rely on IBM's good will in order to keep on churning out what....to me...is the best Linux distro on the planet! As I write this....I'm eyeballing the spare ThinkPad T-410 that I've neglected since I have Fedora running on a Dell XPS, and I'm thinking its time to get "back to my roots" and to find a distro I can put on that device and run without concern....I've heard some decent things about this "Pop-OS" which comes with System76's hardware. Maybe I'll give that a spin......then like I had said before...there's always Debian plain vanilla...with maybe MATE or Cinnamon?.....or else its going to have to be where I buckle down and finally learn all there is to know about LFS and Arch Linux and then move on to one of those...(God!.....at 47!?....its like how can I POSSIBLY start over again!?...) and THIS is the kind of turmoil that ensues when a corporation buys a fully functioning open course company! EGO II
On 30/10/18 20:06, Eddie G. O'Connor Jr. wrote:> > On 10/30/18 2:46 AM, Simon Matter wrote: >>> On 10/29/18 1:55 AM, Simon Matter wrote: >>>> To me it seems like, if they are smart, they will try to push IBM >>>> POWER >>>> and RedHat Linux together to establish real competition in the >>>> hardware >>>> market again (and of course don't forget to keep Fedora/CentOS alive)! >>> Er, RHEL has been running on Power for a very long time.? The fastest >>> supercomputer in the world is Power9 + RHEL. >> What I meant is that POWER could become a competitor for Intel/AMD based >> servers. We're now running AMD EPYC servers with 64Cores/128Threads >> and we >> didn't find any POWER system which could compete in this area. >> >> Also, looking at TOP500 list there are not so many POWER systems >> anymore. >> IBM could change this now. >> >> Regards, >> Simon >> >> _______________________________________________ >> CentOS mailing list >> CentOS at centos.org >> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > > > Yeah.....I guess that's one way to look at it. > > My biggest worry? Is I've placed so much time and effort "getting to > know" Fedora and its intricacies, idiosyncrasies, its ins and > outs...dealt with ridicule on this very same list when I first > started, have "cut my teeth" on learning VERY hard lessons about > certain syntax in the Terminal and what NOT to type.......only to have > that all "taken" away from me at the whim of IBM. It just seems > unfair. I'm hoping like H3LL that the developers @ Fedora are > seriously thinking about forking "Just In Case"!? I mean they could > still use the .RPM extensions, and possibly even still pull their code > from RHEL, but at least they would be autonomous and wouldn't have to > rely on IBM's good will in order to keep on churning out what....to > me...is the best Linux distro on the planet! As I write this....I'm > eyeballing the spare ThinkPad T-410 that I've neglected since I have > Fedora running on a Dell XPS, and I'm thinking its time to get "back > to my roots" and to find a distro I can put on that device and run > without concern....I've heard some decent things about this "Pop-OS" > which comes with System76's hardware. Maybe I'll give that a > spin......then like I had said before...there's always Debian plain > vanilla...with maybe MATE or Cinnamon?.....or else its going to have > to be where I buckle down and finally learn all there is to know about > LFS and Arch Linux and then move on to one of those...(God!.....at > 47!?....its like how can I POSSIBLY start over again!?...) and THIS is > the kind of turmoil that ensues when a corporation buys a fully > functioning open course company! >wow, I am just 62 and looking forward to the next round of CentOS? - version 8 coming up? - must be due soon .... Love learning new stuff, it never gets old (pun intended). sorry for the noise, but couldn't resist, must be the age ....> > > EGO II > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Am 2018-10-30 08:06, schrieb Eddie G. O'Connor Jr.:> > Yeah.....I guess that's one way to look at it. > > My biggest worry? Is I've placed so much time and effort "getting to > know" Fedora and its intricacies, idiosyncrasies, its ins and > outs...dealt with ridicule on this very same list when I first > started, have "cut my teeth" on learning VERY hard lessons about > certain syntax in the Terminal and what NOT to type.......only to have > that all "taken" away from me at the whim of IBM. It just seems > unfair. I'm hoping like H3LL that the developers @ Fedora are > seriously thinking about forking "Just In Case"!? I mean they could > still use the .RPM extensions, and possibly even still pull their code > from RHEL, but at least they would be autonomous and wouldn't have to > rely on IBM's good will in order to keep on churning out what....to > me...is the best Linux distro on the planet! As I write this....I'm > eyeballing the spare ThinkPad T-410 that I've neglected since I have > Fedora running on a Dell XPS, and I'm thinking its time to get "back > to my roots" and to find a distro I can put on that device and run > without concern....I've heard some decent things about this "Pop-OS" > which comes with System76's hardware. Maybe I'll give that a > spin......then like I had said before...there's always Debian plain > vanilla...with maybe MATE or Cinnamon?.....or else its going to have > to be where I buckle down and finally learn all there is to know about > LFS and Arch Linux and then move on to one of those...(God!.....at > 47!?....its like how can I POSSIBLY start over again!?...) and THIS is > the kind of turmoil that ensues when a corporation buys a fully > functioning open course company!I think you seriously underestimate the amount of influence and sheer man-power RedHat brings to Linux - and IBM, too. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/2017/10/2017-linux-kernel-report-highlights-developers-roles-accelerating-pace-change/ There's a reason RHEL is an enterprise-distribution - and Debian et.al. aren't (and never will, outside their niches). RedHat writes ton of code that is needed for Linux to be truly "Enterprise" and that exists nowhere else. The above statistics is only the kernel - but Enterprise Linux is so much more than a kernel. That code isn't going to write itself, nor is somebody else going to pick up unless someone will pay the bill. Maybe somebody can fork all the code and maintain it for a while - but to stay relevant, there must be further development, a roadmap ... Sure, there's Google and a couple of other companies - but they really only write for themselves and as much as people try cargo-culting them, most companies aren't Google and their use-case hardly matches anyone else's. I still remember when SAP announced that their engineers had ported their ERP to Linux - a sparetime-project at the beginning - and they were making it a tier 1 platform. That was over 20 years ago. Linux has come a long way.
On 30/10/2018 06:46, Simon Matter wrote:>> On 10/29/18 1:55 AM, Simon Matter wrote: >>> To me it seems like, if they are smart, they will try to push IBM POWER >>> and RedHat Linux together to establish real competition in the hardware >>> market again (and of course don't forget to keep Fedora/CentOS alive)! >> Er, RHEL has been running on Power for a very long time. The fastest >> supercomputer in the world is Power9 + RHEL. > What I meant is that POWER could become a competitor for Intel/AMD based > servers. We're now running AMD EPYC servers with 64Cores/128Threads and we > didn't find any POWER system which could compete in this area.As a matter of interest, did you look at IBM's own Power Systems (IBM System i, AS/400, System p, as was)? They promote some of these models as having very powerful processing capabilities but I wonder how they compare in practice with Epyc or Xeon systems. -- Mark Rousell
On 2018-10-30 02:46, Simon Matter wrote:>> On 10/29/18 1:55 AM, Simon Matter wrote: >>> To me it seems like, if they are smart, they will try to push IBM >>> POWER >>> and RedHat Linux together to establish real competition in the >>> hardware >>> market again (and of course don't forget to keep Fedora/CentOS >>> alive)! >> >> Er, RHEL has been running on Power for a very long time. The fastest >> supercomputer in the world is Power9 + RHEL. > > What I meant is that POWER could become a competitor for Intel/AMD > based > servers. We're now running AMD EPYC servers with 64Cores/128Threads and > we > didn't find any POWER system which could compete in this area. > > Also, looking at TOP500 list there are not so many POWER systems > anymore. > IBM could change this now.IBM's Power8 and Power9 servers run 8 threads per core, so a 24 core Power 8 server runs 192 threads, as long as the operating system can handle it, you should be fine. And if you're looking for major operations running on Power, look no farther than Google...they're a huge part of the Power consortium and run a huge farm of Power systems on Tyan boards. -- Mike Burger http://www.bubbanfriends.org "It's always suicide-mission this, save-the-planet that. No one ever just stops by to say 'hi' anymore." --Colonel Jack O'Neill, SG1
> On 30/10/2018 06:46, Simon Matter wrote: >>> On 10/29/18 1:55 AM, Simon Matter wrote: >>>> To me it seems like, if they are smart, they will try to push IBM >>>> POWER >>>> and RedHat Linux together to establish real competition in the >>>> hardware >>>> market again (and of course don't forget to keep Fedora/CentOS alive)! >>> Er, RHEL has been running on Power for a very long time. The fastest >>> supercomputer in the world is Power9 + RHEL. >> What I meant is that POWER could become a competitor for Intel/AMD based >> servers. We're now running AMD EPYC servers with 64Cores/128Threads and >> we >> didn't find any POWER system which could compete in this area. > > As a matter of interest, did you look at IBM's own Power Systems (IBM > System i, AS/400, System p, as was)? They promote some of these models > as having very powerful processing capabilities but I wonder how they > compare in practice with Epyc or Xeon systems.I always had the impression that those IBM systems were priced in a different range from what we were interested in. And I know that I didn't find any price listed online when looking for POWER servers from IBM last time - and I know what that means :-) If they came back now with something like their deprecated X86 servers (Netfinity, System x) but on POWER, that could be interesting. Regards, Simon
> On 2018-10-30 02:46, Simon Matter wrote: >>> On 10/29/18 1:55 AM, Simon Matter wrote: >>>> To me it seems like, if they are smart, they will try to push IBM >>>> POWER >>>> and RedHat Linux together to establish real competition in the >>>> hardware >>>> market again (and of course don't forget to keep Fedora/CentOS >>>> alive)! >>> >>> Er, RHEL has been running on Power for a very long time. The fastest >>> supercomputer in the world is Power9 + RHEL. >> >> What I meant is that POWER could become a competitor for Intel/AMD >> based >> servers. We're now running AMD EPYC servers with 64Cores/128Threads and >> we >> didn't find any POWER system which could compete in this area. >> >> Also, looking at TOP500 list there are not so many POWER systems >> anymore. >> IBM could change this now. > > IBM's Power8 and Power9 servers run 8 threads per core, so a 24 core > Power 8 server runs 192 threads, as long as the operating system can > handle it, you should be fine. > > And if you're looking for major operations running on Power, look no > farther than Google...they're a huge part of the Power consortium and > run a huge farm of Power systems on Tyan boards.Well, Google is in a different situation. They can even request their own modified motherboards and customize so they get exactly what they want. We can not do that in the SME market. What was looking very interesting was this Raptor server: https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TL2SV1/intro.html However, the bigger POWER9 CPUs were not available at the time we were looking at it - this has changed now. Still I wasn't sure how to compare the real life speed of POWER9 compared to something like the AMD EPYC 7601. And then, will everything work smooth on POWER the same way it does on the AMD? POWER seems still not a first preference arch for CentOS, so how would it impact us? Is it smart to add another CPU arch if we still have to run some X86 code, like in our case SAP MaxDB (which is also available for AIX on POWER but not Linux on POWER)? In the end we decided for AMD EPYC but kept the POWER thing in mind. Now that IBM announces the purchase of RedHat it just reminded me that this could become interesting again in the future. Let's see how it goes. Regards, Simon