RE: [cobalt-users] [Qube 2] Restore CD

["Jeff Newman" <mjeffn@xxxxxxxx>]

I have a hard time classifying the Cobalt products as appliances, rather,
they are appliance like in that the functionality is streamlined somewhat
and manageable via a GUI.  True appliances, such as the Network Appliance
and Procom Technology 'filers' run highly optimized to the purpose
micro-kernels that can only do storage.  The whole OS on these boxes
measures roughly a couple hundred thousand lines of code rather than 10s of
millions of line of code as is the case with Linux and NT.

The difference being that Cobalt servers still run general purpose OSs that
can run many different services and applications.  They are not
significantly different than any other general purpose server.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cobalt-users-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:cobalt-users-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Kris Dahl
> Sent: Monday, August 07, 2000 4:39 PM
> To: cobalt-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [cobalt-users] [Qube 2] Restore CD
>
>
>
> > What Costs?
> > I can Understand Colocation at someisp
> > A Charge for bandwidth.
> > maybe paying for a fsck?  oh ya gotta run....
> >
> > What other costs are there?
>
> Those costs are your reoccurring network costs.  I am talking
> about the
> costs of actually running the machine.
>
> Costs include:
> Downtime is obviously one of the biggest expenses.  If you
> are down you are
> losing money. How much depends on the priority your business
> places on the
> web site and information services.  It can add up pretty
> quickly, especially
> if you don't have a contingency plan.  One way to reduce the
> cost is to have
> a source of replacement hardware and a systems engineer
> handy.  So say that
> your server goes down (and it probably will at some point),
> and it costs you
> losses of revenue equal to $1000/per hour.  If you bring in a $100/hr
> engineer and he gets you up and running in 2 hours, you have
> lost $2200.  If
> you are down and don't have an SE handy, and it takes you 6
> hours (or hell,
> 24), to get a response from Cobalt Standard support + 2 hours
> of your actual
> labor, you lost $6200. $5000 difference--the 'free' route
> sure is expensive.
>
> Further, downtime can severely damage your reputation.  That
> cost is tough
> to calculate, but it can be devastating.
>
> Maintainance is another cost.  To keep your machine up and
> running one must
> spend a significant amount of time tweaking or whatever.
> Count up your time
> spent and multiply it by your hourly rate.  Then multiply it
> times two.
> Cause not only are you having to outlay your time but are
> *losing* money as
> well because you aren't billing.
>
> Security costs are pretty expensive.  Obviously a hack is
> going to be very
> expensive.  How many people are able to spend the time to secure a box
> properly?  That costs money to do right.  Its a pay me now or
> pay me later.
> Either you lock down the machine significantly and make an up-front
> investment.  Or you wait until you get hacked, and then
> amortize it over the
> time that you didn't get hacked to find out your per month
> cost.  Then add
> the expense to you reputation.
>
> Basically its going to cost you time & more downtime or less
> downtime and
> money to operate.
>
> > I guess from what your saying we should pay the manufactur
> our blood money
> > so we might get upgrades that prevent our boxes from getting hacked.
>
> I'm just saying: be smart.  Take into account all expenses--including
> maintenance, potential downtime, security concerns, as well as initial
> outlay.  Running a server is the sort of thing that requires immediate
> response.  If you don't have the necessary resources in-house
> there is going
> to be monetary costs involved with running a 24x7 operation.
> And it isn't
> included in the cost of the server.
>
> This is another thing.  When you buy an appliance--a toaster,
> or even a
> stove--you aren't going to be loosing money if it doesn't
> work quite right
> or it breaks.  But you will if its your web site.  THis is
> why restaurants
> purchase high-end equipment (toasters in the restaurant
> industry routinely
> cost > $1000, just as servers can be exponentially more expensive than
> desktops) from restaurant supply companies.  If a grill is
> down, they are
> losing money.  For this reason they also have mechanics that
> all they do is
> fix restaurant equipment.  Its a cost of doing business.  The
> restaurant
> manager could chose to not fix the equipment or wait for
> factory support but
> often they'd rather stay in business.
>
> I should write a paper: "Why server appliances aren't
> 'appliances'". :) I've
> come up with some interesting breaks in the analogy.
>
> >> If you need the priority support, you should be prepared
> to pay for it, as
> >> you would with *any* hardware/software vendor.  Luckily
> there are several
> >> ways to do this: purchasing from a VAR that offers support
> services or
> >> purchasing priority support from Cobalt.
> >
> > priority support is a diffrent issue.
>
> Well I think isn't this what we are talking about?  Nobody is really
> claiming that Cobalt support sucks, rather that they can be
> slow to respond,
> etc.  So I think isn't priority service (i.e. can't wait til
> tomorrow) at
> the heart of the issue?
>
> -k
>
>
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