[QUOTE=chalsall;379750]And, to reflect, I personally hate the fact that the effectively zero cost to reproduce "bits" (read: proprietary software) often costs more than the hard to reproduce "atoms" (read: hardware).

And yet the latter probably took more money to develop, and definitely more to produce, and they have to get it right at release, rather than the "upgrade treadmill" of the former.

/end_rant[/QUOTE]

I agree.

On the other hand, in the computer business, hardware gets made and sold on a larger scale than certain specialized programs. Still, I'm sure there's an aspect of greed where "we're the only ones who make something like this so we can safely make our customers pay through the nose."

My uncle works for the Canadian Government and they're still running Windows XP. He's got a head between his shoulders, but a lot of the people in his area don't and were pretty mad that XP support had stopped. Their reason for using Windows XP? The software they have licenses for costs $10,000 dollars per, and is not compatible with Windows 7, so they're sticking to XP.

My uncle actuall had to send a few dozen SSD's to be crushed and incinerated because the data on them can supposedly not be securely erased. They couldn't be given or sold to employees either because they already contained proprietary sensitive information. Otherwise, he said, he would have brought me as many SSD's as I had SATA ports because he knew I would appreciate them.

Said information was the fresh installation of Windows XP.


There's a bit of bureaucratic nonsense (I could tell stories about my dad at the car dealership, too) but it's surprising how much productivity is lost because of stuff like this. If the software was worth $1,000 per license instead, it would be cheap enough to warrant upgrading to the version with ten years worth of improvements and get a brand new computer to boot.

[QUOTE=chalsall;379750]And yet the latter [HARDWARE] probably took more money to develop, and definitely more to produce, and they have to get it right at release, rather than the "upgrade treadmill" of the former.

/end_rant[/QUOTE]

Well... I deal with HP servers primarily and I can personally attest that they do NOT get it right at release, all too often. :)

It's rare, but happens, that I'll get a brand new system and through an actual design flaw, "something bad" is occurring. Most recently it was a new DL380p Gen8 that kept showing the array controller supercap was charging even though it was charged. Resulted in disabling the write caching since it thought it didn't have a good charge on it. Bummer. Firmware update fixed.

Look at any HP server at least and right after the system comes out, there'll be anywhere from 2-5 firmware updates per year for the first couple years, then tapering down from there.

A lot of those BIOS updates are to fix Intel errata... yeah, problems at the CPU level are a hoot and a holler, but thankfully they're usually minor. But cast ye minds back to 1994 and the Intel Pentium, with the infamous FDIV bug.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug[/url]

Okay, but to the larger point, yeah, software is buggy. :)

FWIW, many current and former HP customers are annoyed at a recent change... used to be you could get BIOS updates at no cost, in perpetuity, for any machines you have. Just go to their website, find the thing you want, and download. Just this year they introduced a fun new concept of only offering BIOS updates to customers with valid support contracts, or a system still under warranty. Wheee!

So imagine if FDIV bug 2.0 comes out on some new CPU and too bad, you don't have an HP support contract, you can't get a BIOS that corrects for Intel errata.

Yeah, some folks are none too happy. Technically I'm not bothered since we have contracts where I work, but I still sympathize. :smile:

[QUOTE=Prime95;379583]Madpoo and I are are actively working through a plan to migrate to his new server. Don't expect anything quick. We are looking at how to copy all the software, 25GB of data, and test it before shipping to San Diego. The goal is to be sure the transition is as easy as possible once the hardware arrives in its new home.

The only issue I can see that would scuttle this is whether madpoo has a valid donatable license to Windows and SQLServer. You'd think that would be trivial to figure out but MS licensing is a labyrinth.[/QUOTE]

Isn't this then the ideal time to ditch the proprietary software and switch to open-source?

If there is a "lot of work" involved in migrating it why not do the job properly?

[QUOTE=Gordon;379786]Isn't this then the ideal time to ditch the proprietary software and switch to open-source?

If there is a "lot of work" involved in migrating it why not do the job properly?[/QUOTE]

Yes, but there are two problems.

The short term problem is antiquated hardware running Windows 2000. This is most easily fixed by replacing the hardware with less antiquated hardware. The madpoo hardware is almost loaded up with data and ready for testing.

The long-term problem is coming up with a solution where GIMPS does not own the hardware. LAMP makes perfect sense but will take a while to research properly and implement.

[QUOTE=Prime95;379789]Yes, but there are two problems.

The short term problem is antiquated hardware running Windows 2000. This is most easily fixed by replacing the hardware with less antiquated hardware. The madpoo hardware is almost loaded up with data and ready for testing.

The long-term problem is coming up with a solution where GIMPS does not own the hardware. LAMP makes perfect sense but will take a while to research properly and implement.[/QUOTE]

To what George is saying, it may seem like a baby step in terms of upgrading, but although Windows and MSSQL would still be the underlying bits and pieces, it's a pretty significant update in terms of performance, with relatively little effort (I think anyway) on the software side of things.

For testing things out, I setup a virtual machine that's roughly equivalent to the replacement hardware to see how all that code actually works when running under modern software. So far it seems like IIS 8.5 (Server 2012 R2) and the latest PHP (5.5) are doing fine. There's some database things to put together and try out (we're finally getting a backup of the mega database copied over right now) but the problems in dealing with an old system with very limited free drive space have been...interesting.

It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with the current setup from what I can tell, the hardware just hasn't kept up with the rising demands, plain and simple.

If we were to assume the end goal is to move to LAMP on a cloud-based machine, trust me, having all of this other migration done first will make that other migration much easier. :smile:

IIS -> Apache seems like it'd be a relatively simple thing in this case. There's nothing I saw that made me think it wouldn't migrate mostly cleanly. It's not .NET after all, it's PHP and unless there's anything Windows-centric, it seems like it'd be fine.

MSSQL -> MySQL would be the larger chore and George would know better than I since I've only had a very cursory look at the tables, sprocs, etc.

And hey, maybe George and y'all will love the new setup so much, we'll forget it's running Microsoft. :)

[QUOTE=Madpoo;379802]And hey, maybe George and y'all will love the new setup so much, we'll forget it's running Microsoft. :)[/QUOTE]

Just to say, I (and I expect, many) very much appreciate your very generous contribution of time, expertise and "kit" to our [STRIKE]addition[/STRIKE] hobby! :bow:

[QUOTE=chalsall;379933]our [STRIKE]addition[/STRIKE] hobby! :bow:[/QUOTE]

I thought it was more of a factoring than addition hobby ;)

[QUOTE=chalsall;379933]Just to say, I (and I expect, many) very much appreciate your very generous contribution of time, expertise and "kit" to our [STRIKE]addition[/STRIKE] hobby! :bow:[/QUOTE]

It's fun for me... you know the saying, do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life.

George and I are still working through some migration things like making sure the msieve thing runs when a client reports a factor found (that's on my todo list for today), but so far things are going pretty well.

I don't want to steal George's thunder but let's just say that the test machine we're using right now (roughly the same as the replacement hardware, but on a VM that George can access) is MUCH faster. Like... a LOT.

I think at this point it's down to just a handful of environmental related settings needing attention, and then some good old fashioned, hardcore testing.

Will you be deploying inside of a VM on a new machine? That would make future hardware migrations easier.

[QUOTE=Mark Rose;379951]Will you be deploying inside of a VM on a new machine? That would make future hardware migrations easier.[/QUOTE]

I've thought about it... Just straight Windows Hyper-V has very low overhead and I could copy over the VHDs of the test system and not worry about setting it all up again and matching all the tweaks.

And those VHD's can also be moved to a cloud server with little effort (whether it's Azure, Amazon, etc) besides the transfer of honkin' big VHD files itself. Or, as you say, future hardware migrations are simple as can be.

Having gone through years and years of painful hardware migrations, I'm a big fan of abstracting the purpose and function of a machine from the underlying hardware. Nobody wants to go through cloning drives, removing and installing drivers and whatever else. For a server, it makes total sense.

[QUOTE=Mark Rose;379935]I thought it was more of a factoring than addition hobby ;)[/QUOTE]
Hehe, nice one, this was more like those situation comedy, when you want to make a joke and another joke results instead... He wanted to write "addiction" most probably.