An Intro to the Design of Warehouse Scale Machine 2

Chapter 3
WSM has three main hardware components: server, network fabrics, and storage hierarchy. The third chapter focused on how choices about server hardware are made.
1. benchmark to compare low end hardware and high-end shared memory system --> low end for cost efficient.
2. Too low end hardware will increase latency, increase software development overhead, slow down some parallel algorithms.
3. balanced design among components need to be considered at WSM level.

Chapter 4 Datacenter basics
Datacenter cooling and power system

Chapter 7 Dealing with Failures and Repairs
Failure is frequent with WSM.
1. relax on hardware self-correction. Use software to handle hardware failure.
2. don't relax hardware error detection. Too much burden for software to check correct execution.
Classify Cluster-level Failures
1. by severity
2. causes: configuration > software > hardware
Machine Level Failures
1. causes
2. prediction
3. repair