an ominous comment

[Troy Benjegerdes]

So the interesting (and ominous?) question is which costs less:

1 mainframe

or:

10,000 distributed multi-terabyte hardrives to store 1 terabyte
of blockchain, and all the hashing power needed to secure the 
blockhain from attackers who can afford mainframes?


Second question:
Are you pricing in dollars or cryptocoins, cause it seems to
me you get divergent answers depending on which one you use.


Third question:
does the blockchain still work when it shuts down overnight
because the distributed power source sets? Or does control 
revert to the owners of the centralized power plants?

On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 09:01:05PM -0700, odinn wrote:
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> an ominous comment
> 
> On 07/19/2015 07:53 PM, Stephen Williams wrote:
> > On 7/19/15 7:13 PM, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
> >> On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 06:58:18PM -0700, Stephen Williams
> >> wrote:
> >>> .. If you are large and/or savvy enough, the thing to do is to
> >>> borrow cloud system methods and run a cloud for yourself.
> >>> Currently, that's not completely easy or turnkey.  At some
> >>> point, we should get to a clean utility computing model, but it
> >>> will take a few more generations of evolution.
> >>> 
> >>> sdw
> >>> 
> >> IBM would tell you the z13 is the best platform to run a cloud
> >> on. Claims are you get 8000 or so cloud servers per machine [1].
> >> I'm sure fujitsu or some other vendor will sell you something
> >> equally expensive in the same 'mainframe' class that can
> >> virtualize like that.
> >> 
> >> A lot of what I hear about 'cloud' and virtualization are things
> >> that were first deployed in 1970's-ish on mainframes.
> >> 
> >> Now, you're absolutely right that a 1TB hard drive that has been
> >>  qualified to work with that machine will cost about 10x what you
> >> can get at staples.
> > 
> > It's 10x for the drive, another 10x for the box to put it in,
> > another 10x for a license for the software to get to it, ...
> > (Roughly. ;-) ) You can be nickle and dimed up front or over time.
> > In the latter case, it will continue to get more competitive and
> > begin to have local systems with the same characteristics.
> > 
> > How much does an additional 4TB of storage for a z13 cost?
> > 
> >> But the point about mainframes is they are built to have lots of
> >>  *memory bandwidth*, and a 'compute minute' on a Z13 is going to
> >> process a lot more transactions and write them reliably to that
> >> overpriced disk than any cloud solution is ever going to do.
> > 
> > Most cloud systems fall into the embarrassingly parallel category.
> > Many smaller, cheaper, cooler units completely outclass, in price
> > and scalability, bigger, faster, higher bandwidth solutions, unless
> > those are built inexpensively with smaller, cheaper, cooler units.
> > We're finding out whether medium sized (Intel/AMD desktop / server
> > class CPUs) or small (ARM mobile chipsets) are going to scale
> > better, but either way, a many node system has an aggregate memory
> > bandwidth that dwarfs old-style mega CPU systems.  It's not clear,
> > but it appears that the z13 is just an integrated cloud-style
> > clustered system with a bunch of nice added features[2].  If so,
> > which is the only way it could compete on scale and cost, it is a
> > branded cloud system.  Would it really be less expensive to operate
> > than an Open Compute local cloud?  Probably only if you made a lot
> > of assumptions about overhead, etc.
> > 
> > The z13 looks cool, and has a lot of interesting features.  It will
> > be interesting to see how it does.
> > 
> >> You just have to be ready to write a check for a couple of
> >> million if you want one of these things on-site, and that's why
> >> the cloud exists, for the folks that either don't have that kind
> >> of money, or don't understand why they should spend it up-front,
> >> instead of getting nickel and dimed to death by cloud vendors and
> >> their hackers.
> > 
> > If you have the type of business where you know what you need and
> > how much of it you need, you can competitively provision a local
> > solution, although there are still plenty of ways to go wrong.  And
> > many do, IMHO.  Many businesses have relatively modest needs, don't
> > know what their growth will look like, etc.  Large up front costs
> > are bad in a lot of situations, as is committing to a certain scale
> > when there is a lot of uncertainty.
> > 
> > The number of businesses and organizations who fit that narrow
> > situation are few and dwindling.  Sales will be able to rope in
> > plenty more for a while, but for many it is not a sane choice.
> > Security breaks are mostly about passwords, trojans, spear
> > phishing, zombie machines, etc.  For every possible exploit of a
> > cloud system, which at the infrastructure level should have
> > well-funded security, I feel there are many more gaps in the
> > typical local alternative: Sloppy, old Windows systems with a 
> > sloppy network, open to everyone file servers, poor access
> > control, terrible custom programming, no significant physical
> > security, etc.  The best systems + networks + policies + personnel
> > are more secure, everyone else is just lucky not to be targeted.
> > 
> > This covers some of this territory: 
> > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2482123
> > 
> >> 
> >> [1]
> >> http://www.computerworld.com/article/2872096/ibm-s-z13-and-the-case-f
> or-the-mainframe-cloud.html
> >
> >> 
> > [2] https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/45808.wss
> > 
> > sdw
> > 
> 
> - -- 
> http://abis.io ~
> "a protocol concept to enable decentralization
> and expansion of a giving economy, and a new social good"
> https://keybase.io/odinn
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