roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) (12/13/90)
We're thinking about future directions of scientific computing here
at the PHRI. Currently we've got an aged Vax running Unix driving ascii
terminals, a bunch of Sun-3/50s (still good machines but also starting to
show their age), and an ever growing flock of Macs and to a lesser extent,
PCs. The Vax is basically on its way out, and the decision about what to
replace it with is really the same as deciding how computing should be done
for the next 5 years or so.
So, what I'm interested in, is how do things work in other places?
Is the whole concept of a "central computing facility" outdated? If such a
facility should exist, what form should it take? If not, should there still
be some sort of central service department that supports individual personal
machines, and provides a network to connect them to each other and the
outside world? Provide shared peripherals like printers? Centralized
backups? File servers? User consulting?
Obviously the right answers for our situation may not be the right
answers for yours, but I'd still be interested to hear how other places have
dealt with this issue.
--
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy
"Arcane? Did you say arcane? It wouldn't be Unix if it wasn't arcane!"JS05STAF@MIAMIU.BITNET (Joe Simpson) (12/18/90)
Concerning the questions about directions for scientific computing centers, I think the answers tend to site specific. Some services that I personally believe can be profitably provided include: Network access, planning, evolution. This is as much a software issue as a hardware issue. Centralized "mainframe" service. For most purposes it is no longer cost justifiable to provide access to computing cycles. There is a justification for some centralized computer services. Access to and maintanence of sharable software. Backup. Shared information pool. Avoidance of maintanence burdens by "end users". Share expensive peripherals such as vector processors, very large disk store. Tape drives. If you provide a VAX replacement centralized computer, it seems to me that what to provide is primarily driven by the software needs of your client base, including both network services and application services.