[TriLUG] OT: wcpss technology purchases

[Magnus]

On 5/7/06, Jim Wright <wrightjim at gmail.com> wrote:

> While, I'm sure that
> wcpss pumps a lot of data through their data center, 1.7 million for a
> server upgrade and some database licenses seems a bit large.



Sunfire E25K is indeed a very extravagant piece of hardware.  I've worked
with some big database servers, but I don't think we've ever needed anything
quite that extraordinary.

What are they doing that they need that kind of horsepower?  Without some
real justification, this just sounds like someone trying to fulfill their
own technical fantasies.


3.PURCHASE OF ADDITIONAL ORACLE LICENSES


This could be the point of some major debate, but I think the vast majority
of database apps do not need the things that Oracle provides above and
beyond open source RDBMS's like PostgreSQL or Oracle.

The Oracle licenses are only so much $$$ because of the hardware they want
to run it on.  Sun processors are slow.  Very very slow.  This is more true
now than ever.  If Oracle were running on Opteron or Power5 architecture, it
could do the same work with fewer processors.  Fewer processors means lower
licensing costs.

Frankly I would be very very skeptical of this, and strongly suggest
bringing in a disinterested but qualified 3rd party to go over the hardware
specs and try to justify it against the software that will be run against
it.  And also get competetive bids from IBM & HP for similar hardware
(different architectures, but Oracle runs everywhere).  If nothing else, it
would at least bring Sun's pricing down more.

I'm still really struggling with what the hell a school district needs such
big iron for.