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Solaris 9: Sticker Shock
sysadmn writes "With the release of Solaris 9 , Sun has bundled many goodies, including an LDAP directory server and a J2EE application server. At the same time, while a single CPU license is still free, they've begun charging for multiprocessor systems. As a kicker, purchasers of used systems may find that they have to pay Sun an OS licensing fee. (Curiously, the 2 CPU server version seems to be $249, while the 4 CPU desktop is $199. In some cases it's the same motherboard, power supply and memory!). At the upper end, that million dollar machine from Ebay may require a $400,000 fee :-) I like Solaris for many reasons, but I have to wonder: will this pay off? " Solaris is certainly a capable os, but sheeze that seems like an awful lot of money.
The 2 CPU for $249 is for a server, while the 4 CPU at $199 is for just a desktop. Nice desktop, methinks.
Now the question is whether Sun still doing the old 2-user Right-To-Use license from the old days or not, although, unlike some vendors, I don't recall them ever having enforced it at the software level.
Thankfully many other companies have kept a single price for their OS regardless of system size. IBM AIX is still that way, as is SGI's IRIX. In fact, the only real IRIX cost when buying a new machine from SGI is the (oddly) required media fee of about $200. I've been pretty happy with IRIX, it gets a pretty decent update each quarter, as does the SGI freeware archive (http://freeware.sgi.com) -- I wish sunfreeware.com was.
But then again, if a person buys a brand new 512 CPU SGI Origin 3800 with 1 TB of RAM and and 25 TB of disk, SGI outta toss in a free car. Or house. In the swiss alps.
Like their names imply, Lunix is the Moon, and Solaris is the Sun. Lunix is merely reflected light while Solaris is the real furnace. Something to think about.
I can imagine.
SGI big iron supports a fancy new flavor of HIPPI that can do 800 MB/sec (that's 6.4 gigabit for the myrinet folks) per link. Up to several links per machine.
So... if you needed such a beast, you could buy several dozen 512 CPU Origin 3800 machines, plus several dozen what-ever-this-new-flavor-of-hippi-is-called cards... boom, fifty gazillion CPUs.
Of course, you'd also a need a fifty acre warehouse and a nuclear power plant...
I wonder if even Bill Gates could afford that.
:)
Hardware: 1.7 billion
Software: 150 million
Nuclear Power Plant: 4 billion
Cracking RC5 in under 10 seconds: Priceless
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