ORACLENERD: Investing In Me

Investing In Me

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Today I finally received my new computer. I haven't purchased a desktop in...almost 10 years.

This one definitely goes beyond mere desktop though. I bought a ZU 4110 from ZaReason. It's billed as server class. Here are the specs:

Dual Xeon E5504 Quad-Core 2 GHz
24 GB ECC DDR3-1333 (Memory)
2 1 TB Hard Drives

Pretty sweet huh?

How about this?

Or this?

Probably, but I look at it as an investment in me. As I learn more and more about various Oracle tools, I want to install them and play around with them. If I want to be an architect, I should know and understand how they play together. Pretty easy decision, despite the cost. Oh yeah, that 24 GB RAM? Upgradeable to 96. Plenty of room to grow.

Now I should be able to easily fire up multiple VMs, say, one for the database that isn't underpowered. One for OBIEE on Linux. One for the OBIEE client tools on Windows. Perhaps my own WebLogic instance? Who knows.

Point is, I can play, without fear of hitting the limits of my computer. Of course having limits is good...sometimes. Teaches you how to conserve. No more conserving for me.

I'm now equipped with my own personal test lab...and a sauna to help me lose weight.

One last thing, I'll be offering up slices to help pay the bills. :)

Labels: oradb

¶ 11/17/2010 12:49:00 AM

Comments:

Hey, that rig will let you run EBS, too! Barely. ;-)

# posted by

jpiwowar : November 17, 2010 at 1:16 AM

No more conserving for me.

I give you time until Xmas - then you will lust for more (I assume memory and Disk-IOs will be the first)
;-)

# posted by

Martin Berger : November 17, 2010 at 1:20 AM

it's pretty rare CPU is your limiter, it's memory when virtualizing and Disk IO for performance. Hope you've got at least a few drives and an SSD for the very heavy IO stuff

# posted by

Jay Weinshenker : November 17, 2010 at 7:05 AM

Let's see you run a TPC-H test and see just how fast those 2 disks are :)

# posted by

hillbillyToad : November 17, 2010 at 7:52 AM

@jp

That was definitely a consideration. I'm actually slated to put together an EBS/OBIEE/OBIA/Informatica set-up...so that's the reason I bought it. :)

# posted by

oraclenerd : November 17, 2010 at 9:56 AM

@jay

These are the types of things that I want to learn about. Never been a systems admin so I'm pretty green on the hardware side. My hope is this will allow me to better explore those types of things because I'll be putting more stress on the system. Before, I would never try to do to much because of the smallish machines I was using. (Yes, that's a back-asswards way of looking at it...I know)

chet

# posted by

oraclenerd : November 17, 2010 at 9:58 AM

As my mother always used to say:

"You could buy a house for that much!"

Of course, she knew all about leveraging guilt :-)

Still, I paid $3K for my first computer - PDP 11/23 with dual 8" floppies. I also considered it an investment in me. It didn't pay off until I converted it to a 23+ with more memory and a hard drive. But you probably knew that since I said it before on theappslab and tkyte blogs.

Yes, I'm drooling over your new toy.

# posted by

Joel Garry : November 17, 2010 at 8:02 PM

Shut it off when you aren't using it though just because of the heat and electric cost :)

How many drives could you install in it?

# posted by

Tom : November 17, 2010 at 8:58 PM

A "sauna" which will help you remove the pounds of flesh to pay the utility bills.
Fun aside.... what about the noise level ?
I have two "normal" desktops at home, one Dual Core Opteron and a Quad Core Intel. No Xeons. I don't have issues with noise from the current servers.
But am wondering what the noise would be from a "server class" desktop.

# posted by

Hemant K Chitale : November 18, 2010 at 1:18 AM

@hermant

It feels loud...but it was absolutely quiet in here before. I tried to record the sound, but I don't know how easy it will be to discern without something else to compare to. You can find it here.

# posted by

oraclenerd : November 18, 2010 at 1:29 AM

@tom

Up to 8 drives. Should be fun. Now I can put all those ones I have laying around the office in there, move the data, and finally destroy them.

# posted by

oraclenerd : November 18, 2010 at 1:30 AM

@joel

It's been a long time coming. I'll probably have it for 10 years though, if my last "desktop" was any indication. Swap out the IDE/SATA drives for SSDs and I've taken a nice leap forward.

Flexibility was the ultimate selling point for me. I can (and will) upgrade many of the parts. 2 Years will cost me ~$100 a month. 4 years ~$50. Which isn't terrible...especially if it allows me to learn.

# posted by

oraclenerd : November 18, 2010 at 1:33 AM