Question

A company operates on two types of servers: 3 large servers (L) and 2 smaller servers (S), with a combined total of 96GB RAM. The other day a large server and a small server blew out reducing the total RAM to 60GB. How much RAM does each large server (L), and each small server (S) have?

Answer 1

• large: 24 GB
• small: 12 GB

Explanation:

The problem statement gives two relations between numbers of servers and their total RAM. Those can be used to find the RAM each size server has.

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setup

Let L and S represent the number of GB of ram held by a large server and a small server, respectively.

3L +2S = 96 . . . . . . total RAM when all are on-line

2L +1S = 60 . . . . . . after loss of one server of each type

solution

Subtracting the first equation from twice the second, we have ...

2(2L +S) -(3L +2S) = 2(60) -(96)

L = 24 . . . . . . . simplify

S = 60 -2L = 60 -48 = 12 . . . . use the second equation to find S

A large server has 24GB of RAM; a small server has 12GB.