[lug] Fast workstation recommendations?

[Dan Ferris]

Actually you do in fact have to worry very much about hardware failures 
in Amazon.  If the server your instance runs on crashes it goes buh 
bye.  You have to snapshot your instances to S3 to have a prayer of 
recovery.

On 8/6/2012 9:49 PM, Bear Giles wrote:
> Amazon.
>
> *High-CPU Extra Large Instance*
>
> 7 GB of memory
> 20 EC2 Compute Units (8 virtual cores with 2.5 EC2 Compute Units each)
> 1690 GB of instance storage
> 64-bit platform
> I/O Performance: High
> EBS-Optimized Available: No
> API name: c1.xlarge
>
> It's $.66/hour but you can shut it off on evenings and weekends if you 
> don't need it. That works out to $40/week (with 12 hour days M-F) or 
> <$200 /month. There's an even bigger bang if you can parallelize your 
> work.
>
> What about owning the hardware? The cost of renting a server at Amazon 
> (or Rackspace or whatever) for a year is the cost of buying a server 
> outright, in loose terms, so that's a fair question. There are several 
> points to be made:
>
> 1) you don't have to worry about hardware failures with a virtual 
> host. That means, e.g., you don't have to worry about backups beyond 
> what you need for business purposes. The hosting companies keep 
> multiple copies at widely distributed locations - you aren't going to 
> be losing data.
>
> 2) you can be up and running in about 5 minutes.
>
> 3) you can be up and running on a second system in about 5 minutes. 
> This can't be overstated - once you have the ability to create add'l 
> systems at lost cost you'll find solutions to problems you never knew 
> you had. You need a clone for training purposes? To demonstrate to 
> potential clients? To try out new software? This is a real pain with 
> real hardware but trivial with virtual servers. And if you don't need 
> it you can either nuke it or just leave it sitting for a trivial cost.
>
> On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 6:34 PM, Steve Sullivan <sullivan at mathcom.com 
> <mailto:sullivan at mathcom.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     Do you have recommendations for a fast workstation for
>     numeric and statistical use?  I'm looking for ...
>
>       Quiet
>       Mem >= 16 GB
>       Processors >= 8
>       Fast CPU and memory
>       Reasonable support.
>       If possible, no custom drivers as I install my own debian
>         and would rather not fight driver battles.
>       I don't care much about video cards.  Whatever's quiet.
>
>     Any concerns on Intel vs Amd?
>
>     Some possibilities I've dug up ...
>     dell.com <http://dell.com> precision
>     system76.com <http://system76.com>
>     zareason.com <http://zareason.com>
>     pogolinux.com <http://pogolinux.com>
>
>     Any suggestions?
>
>     Many thanks,
>
>     Steve
>
>     --
>
>     ========================================
>     Steve Sullivan sullivan at mathcom.com <mailto:sullivan at mathcom.com>
>     720-587-7498 <tel:720-587-7498> http://www.mathcom.com
>     ========================================
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