[ale] KDE, Gnome, XFCE OT?

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 28 Mar 2016 13:47:52 +0000
"Beddingfield, Allen" <allen at ua.edu> wrote:

> It is not worth my time and effort to tune a VM to fit in a tiny
> amount of space.  VMware does an excellent job of "thin provisioning"
> the memory in use.  Ditto for our SAN with the storage. I know people
> who spend a lot of effort on "right sizing" virtual machines, but
> when the virtualization platform does a good enough job of it (as
> opposed to the old days where giving a VM was a hard allocation of
> 2G), it is not worth the effort.

But wait, there's more!

When your provisioning starts getting near the need, stuff happens.
Maybe it's swapping, maybe it's slowness, maybe it's subtle software
bugs that don't mess things up except in low RAM situations. And
whatever production you're doing falls way behind, or users pick a
competitor, or whatever.

Variation happens. If you're running too close to the edge, variation
leads to unacceptable business delays or stoppages. 

I suggest every English speaking person read "The Goal" by Eliyahu
Goldratt. When you read it, pay particular attention to chapter 23, in
which Alex makes a policy that employees sit right by the furnace,
doing absolutely nothing, so that they can unload and reload the
furnace the second it's ready. When something bottlenecks, the whole
system slows down unrecoverably. "Right-sizing" leads to problems:
excess capacity is good, not evil.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
March 2016 featured book: Quit Joblessness: Start Your Own Business
http://www.troubleshooters.com/startbiz