[Catalyst] Re: two Catalyst flaws

[J. Shirley]

On Jan 3, 2008 7:42 AM, KH <khultman at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> I think you may be doing this person a disservice with that advice
> without first understanding more about what he is trying to
> accomplish.  I can off-hand think of several scenarios where it would
> be far most cost effective to optimize the memory usage of an
> application, rather than throwing more memory at the problem;
> Conversely there are times when it makes sense to just load up more
> memory.
>
> An example I'll throw out is the case of VPS hosting.  You have a
> server, wholly yours, but no physical way of adding RAM to it.
> Possibly to upgrade the amount of RAM you need to upgrade service
> (check slicehost.com - that is their business model).  So you could
> see a model of $40/hour or programming to solve for optimizing memory,
> VS. $40/month for more RAM, estimated 12 months run of project and 4
> hours spent on optimization =3D $160 of programming time to $480 ($40/mo
> * 12 months) of increased operational cost =3D $320 net savings.
>
> Anyway, I don't know how to fix for the original problem asked, but
> let's not spit out "throw more hardware at the problem", until we
> understand the problem.
>
>
How did you figure it was $40/month for RAM?  You could just need to bump
from 256 to 512, at a cost of $18 a month (linode is even cheaper).  Now
it's $216 a year, and the developer could spend 4 hours on something that
generates more revenue.

Strawman, I challenge you to a duel.

Really, every application is going to have limitations at minimum
requirements.  Unless you were working in an appliance environment, scale
the hardware until it matches the application.  If your application takes
150MB fully loaded, that's what it takes.  That is part of the specification
for running the application.

Trying to whittle down the memory footprint should only come at a time when
everything else is wrapped up in the application, because you're doing
premature optimization if you have open items and you're busy trying to save
a byte or two.  Unless you are talking about memory leaks, which is a
different matter.

If your project can't afford an extra $20-$40/mo, and it is a for-profit
venture, then a business plan needs reevaluated.  And if it costs you an
additional $40/mo to get enough RAM to run your app, maybe a VPS isn't for
you?  You can get 1U of space in the $30-$40/mo range, buy an eBay server
for $250 and slap more RAM in it and bring your operating cost to under
$70/mo with hardware you own and can upgrade as you see fit.

-J

-- =

J. Shirley :: jshirley at gmail.com :: Killing two stones with one bird...
http://www.toeat.com
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