OSDev.org

Muazzam wrote:Could you answer the following simple questions:

0) does it have a custom bootloader or it uses GRUB?
1) does it have memory management or multitasking?
2) can it load simple files from the disk and what file systems does it support?
3) does it have a proper CLI?
4) how many device drivers do you currently have?

dseller wrote:You just described your IDE and build environment. Still haven't provided any information about your OS, or answered any question.

Nutterts wrote:You're only hope is to provide some "proof of life" for your OS.

Sorry about the "Cloud OS" def..

Yes the demo went well, thanks for reminding me.
The first investor is on board.
I have one years development money (wages), plus a development/server hut (I work from home), plus nice cash in hand (the entry fee for the investor), plus money to buy servers/equipment, and free flying money.
I hope to have it ready for the next investor(s) in three months time, but this depends on the features we will add.
The accountants and lawyers are drawing things up now, hopefully ready next week, although this does take some time.

I have just brought the first switch, a 48 port 10Gb SFP.
Just about to buy a laptop so we can develop on the move to show others, currently using a very cheap desktop as my development machine.
About to buy 20-30 servers, each with 2 x 10Gb NICs.

Then on to the next stage of development.

Parts of the project are processing packets fast, for example the cache OS can handle around 40 million per second, not ready for production, so the pps will drop.
The pps are a little lower than expected but the server I have has an old-ish PCI Bus, and I an not willing to spend money on a flash server just to test. But I hope to contact a server supplier and ask if I can borrow a server for 1/2 a day.

In the User-space OS I have increased the pps from 7 million to 9 million, with everything that needs to be done, and a slow-ish server this seems to be my limit, for now, things always pop into the head after a little time passes.
On the old servers I already have, Dell 1950, slow memory, PCI 1, 4 cores, I am processing around 4.5 million per second.

I would love to test some 40Gb NICs, but this would take time to write the drivers, which I am not willing to do right now.
But very much looking forward to the chance to do this one day.

Things are going very well for me, it is very exciting, and I get to program 24/7.
Just the best of fun.

All the best guys and gals, Ali.

tsdnz wrote:I have just brought the first switch, a 48 port 10Gb SFP.
Just about to buy a laptop so we can develop on the move to show others, currently using a very cheap desktop as my development machine.
About to buy 20-30 servers, each with 2 x 10Gb NICs.

Brendan wrote:Don't.

20 to 30 identical servers is a large amount of $$$ for nothing. It'd make more sense to buy an eclectic mixture of 10 very different servers so you can test how well the OS supports different hardware and how well it copes with different conditions. Don't forget that (for testing "many computers") you can always run your OS in virtual machines (e.g. 10 servers running 20 virtual machines each = network of 200 computers running your OS).

Also note that the cash you have now is probably going to have to last for many years, and in about 12 months you're going to have to explain to your investor that there's no hope of them ever getting any return on their investment.


Cheers,

Brendan

tsdnz wrote:Cheers for the feedback Brendan, the cash is for 12 months.
The servers are just to test the OS, it should cost around $ 500 - $750 New Zealand Dollar per server.

tsdnz wrote:I might start with 10 servers?
Still thinking about it.....

Brendan wrote:What sort of server do you get for $750?

Brendan wrote:For most "cloud" providers, the purchase price of the server is fairly irrelevant, and what matters is running costs (specifically, the power consumption and air conditioning costs), reliability (things like ECC), and the physical space consumed. They tend to go for more expensive servers with high "performance per watt", not your cheap $750 "fake servers" (that are often just consumer grade/desktop stuff in a different/rack mount case).

Brendan wrote:One thing you'd want to think about is; Intel will be releasing the next "Xeon Phi" some time in the next 6 months, and this is a chip that's almost ideal for cloud - it's a massive ~72 core chip, with MCDRAM and a huge amount of RAM bandwidth, which is probably capable of handling several hundred virtual machines in a small "blade server" configuration.

tsdnz wrote:

Brendan wrote:What sort of server do you get for $750?

* 2 x Intel Xeons 5160 Dual Core 3.0 GHz VT-x (4 cores total)

• were "end of lifed" 7 years ago, and because they're old (e.g. using a 64 nm manufacturing process) they're much much worse on the "performance/watt" scale than anything more recent.
• are based on Woodcrest/Core 2 where the memory controller was in the northbridge (and not built into the CPU) so RAM latencies are much higher than modern (Nehalem or later) Xeon; and with 2 of them sharing a memory controller (via. FSB) you'll have "RAM bandwidth bottleneck" issues (in addition to higher latency).
• don't support ECC, which means they're only for "fake servers" and not useful for cloud
• don't support hyper-threading

tsdnz wrote:Yes, I agree. For me I do have a dollar limit, so just to test I will buy cheaper models.

tsdnz wrote:I had a 10x blade server when I first started the project, this was a mistake.

Brendan wrote:Oh my...

These CPUs:

• were "end of lifed" 7 years ago, and because they're old (e.g. using a 64 nm manufacturing process) they're much much worse on the "performance/watt" scale than anything more recent.
• are based on Woodcrest/Core 2 where the memory controller was in the northbridge (and not built into the CPU) so RAM latencies are much higher than modern (Nehalem or later) Xeon; and with 2 of them sharing a memory controller (via. FSB) you'll have "RAM bandwidth bottleneck" issues (in addition to higher latency).
• don't support ECC, which means they're only for "fake servers" and not useful for cloud
• don't support hyper-threading

For all these reasons, they're fairly unsuitable for "cloud OS" development - anyone that is interested in your cloud OS (if/when it's finished) won't be interested in these systems. I also suspect that (for $750 each without any hard drives), they're over-priced, and for twice the price you can get something with 4 times better/more suitable.

Note that the "Dell Power Edge 1950" systems (from your second link) have most of the same problems - twice as many cores with twice as much power consumption and similar "performance/watt"; except that you'd have twice as many cores fighting for the same RAM bandwidth. They do have ECC though, so that's one thing in their favour.

• 4-8 cores
• Memory not an issue, minimum 8GB, quick-ish, ECC
• 64 Bit, SSE2+, would like AVX, PCIe 2+ 8xSlot
• 2.0 GHz +
• And cost efficient

Brendan wrote:To test what?

To test if the OS works efficiently on computers that cloud providers are likely to use you need computers that cloud providers are likely to use.

Brendan wrote:Blade servers are for "density" (cramming as much as possible into a limited space), which is why they're more likely to be used by cloud providers than larger individual systems. Excluding that; there's very little difference between blade servers and individual machines.