Fitness for purpose - selecting the right platform for the job

[Liz Carroll]

Fitness for purpose - selecting the right platform for the job
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For a generation the engine room of the datacentre has been a general
purpose computer.

But increasingly the IT workload is being handled by dedicated or special
purpose computers performing work such as:

    - interactive desktop applications
    - i/o intensive work such as database management
    - computationally intensive work such as image rendering

not to mention the various network applications that have a mix of
workload characteristics.

And the systems administrator is faced with a wide variety of platforms to
run this work on. There are a variety of hardware platforms available
(including x86, x64, SPARC, PowerPC) each with it's own benefits and
characteristics. Add to this the various operating systems (both Open
Source and proprietary) and you can see that we are spoilt for choice. But
one thing is certain - there is no one single solution that meets the
needs of every organisation.

Given this huge choice, what are the best criteria to use to match a
workload with a platform? How can a system administrator balance the
requirement to select the best platform for the job, with the cost of
investing time and effort in the selection process.

Join us at the AUUG Systems Administration Symposium, where this will be
the topic of discussion at the panel session: "Fitness for purpose -
selecting the right platform for the job".

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Online registration is available at:
http://www.auug.org.au/events/2005/sysadmin/olr.html

The full symposium programme is available online at
http://www.auug.org.au/events/2005/sysadmin/

The symposium will be held in Sydney on Wednesday, 6 July, and Abe
Singer's tutorial, "Logging Infrastructure and Log Analysis" will be held
in Sydney on Tuesday 5 July and Melbourne on Tuesday 12 July.

Attendees of both the Logging Tutorial and the Systems Administration
Symposium receive a $100 discount.