Announcing DemoEval – The better way to try enterprise hardware

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Patrick

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@Hank C you might look at your avatar for the answer :)

I'm guessing from "In September 2016 we quadrupled our capacity to multiple racks." you have sufficient compute power now to also time travel? :D:p
Not even close! We have just been housing a lot more gear. I also wanted to start being able to test clusters.
 

nickscott18

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Although its not something I'll be using in the near future , it'll definitely be one I'll be keeping an eye on.
One idea however (and I'm not sure how viable an idea this is - but is still worth throwing out there) is an up-voting system for certain bits of hardware that you are considering adding.
 

Patrick

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Although its not something I'll be using in the near future , it'll definitely be one I'll be keeping an eye on.
One idea however (and I'm not sure how viable an idea this is - but is still worth throwing out there) is an up-voting system for certain bits of hardware that you are considering adding.
My goal is to get as many machines online as possible. Of the next four reviews that are scheduled to be published on STH, two of the four we have the go-ahead to put into DemoEval. One is going into DemoEval except it has already been spoken for over the next month so we are not going to put it in the public program at this time.
 

Hank C

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@Hank C you might look at your avatar for the answer :)



Not even close! We have just been housing a lot more gear. I also wanted to start being able to test clusters.

lol ok...why though? no wonder i saw "WAN acceleration technology".
 

Blinky 42

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Congrats @Patrick ! Does is make more sense to say "One Machine One Week" instead of "One Machine One Day" on the main page there for the one-time option? Or is there to be a future ~24hr option as well ?
 

Patrick

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Congrats @Patrick ! Does is make more sense to say "One Machine One Week" instead of "One Machine One Day" on the main page there for the one-time option? Or is there to be a future ~24hr option as well ?
Still working on it.

The vision is really to have a bunch of cool hardware and have a subscription service where we can let people on hardware every month, for a set duration (1 day, 3 days 5 days.)

Think of it this way, work sponsored way to keep up with technology and make recommendations. It also helps support STH. If you can down-size or up-size machines, pick a different vendor, find the right SSD based on the service it is a very easy business case.

We are working on implementing a calendaring system which you might have seen yesterday/ today on the order page. The plan is to try a few different options out at the start. There should be a lot more on the page by Monday.

The fun bit is that we already have decent use and will be bringing up both individual boxes as well as a few small clusters over the coming weeks.

On the 24hr option, I do want to get there, but it is a bit hard. We need to wipe machines between each use. That takes considerable time, especially with hard drive nodes. I think we will have a 72 hour option in the not so distant future. That was in the pre-launch setup but it was pulled to make calendaring much easier. Starting at 12:01AM every day and ending at midnight would mean that after wiping time, 1 day essentially becomes 2 days of tying up a machine.

I am also thinking of having a few STH coupons online over the next week or so. Stay tuned.
 
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lmk

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Still working on it.

On the 24hr option, I do want to get there, but it is a bit hard. We need to wipe machines between each use. That takes considerable time, especially with hard drive nodes. I think we will have a 72 hour option in the not so distant future. That was in the pre-launch setup but it was pulled to make calendaring much easier. Starting at 12:01AM every day and ending at midnight would mean that after wiping time, 1 day essentially becomes 2 days of tying up a machine.
@Patrick why not use SED drives? A full secure wipe is a few seconds/minutes away.
 

Patrick

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@Patrick why not use SED drives? A full secure wipe is a few seconds/minutes away.
That is happening. Right now I am collecting data on how people use the service (e.g. what kind of machines are preferred, what duration, what else people may need) so I am building in some buffer in the meantime. SSDs are also helping. The other advantage with the current setup is that we can start/ end at midnight.
 
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