Re:IBM z14 Microprocessor and System Control Design
by derefr on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @04:14PM
(#18497792)
> A Kubernetes cluster is not a computer, it is a cluster of computers.
That statement is true, but the thing it implies isn't. A cluster of computers on a common backplane can certainly present itself as a single (NUMA) computer, with one process scheduler, one filesystem, etc. Most HPC systems are built this way.
As well, when your workloads are, themselves, VMs, there isn't much of a difference between having a Z-series machine as a hypervisor and, say, a vSphere cluster as a hypervisor. Either way, you get a pool of CPU, a pool of RAM, a pool of storage, etc. And either way, you get VM workloads with transparent migration on node hotplug/node failure, etc.
Re:IBM z14 Microprocessor and System Control Design
by msla on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @06:08PM
(#18498718)
> A Kubernetes cluster is not a computer, it is a cluster of computers.
Well, when you tot up all of the channel processors and LPARs and so on...
A mainframe isn't a computer, it is a cluster of computers.
The end result (computations being done) may be the same but the way you get there is radically different between those two setups and you're going to have to do a lot more work on your application on a cluster vs a very large computer with some awesome hardware capabilities thrown in. Not cheap, but for some applications well worth it.