Sun Releases New Servers, Blades & More

desau writes "This Yahoo article gives some tidbits on Sun's new toys that are being released today. Looks like they're aiming their guns at intel based systems with many new blade offerings and several small to midrange servers. The article also points out that they're lowering their prices on other servers." Probably a lot more information will come out from the web view - that starts @ 12:30 PM EST - but I think it'll take more than blade servers to make a difference in the future.Removed the first part of the link - the DoubleClick part was my copying link location, and not checking it - it should be correct now.

Comments

New lower prices mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

I still can't afford one! Yeah!

Re:New lower prices mean...

[jobeus]

Hey, you can always buy used, if all you're wanting is a good play box. I got an Ultra 5 for $30 through the local "Bargain Finder" magazine. Go search ebay.

Re:New lower prices mean...

[ReidMaynard]

I got my sparc IPX for free, with monitor, mouse & keyboard!
( ) funny
( ) pityfull
( ) sad
(X) all of the above

Re:New lower prices mean...

[Uart]

Yup I got my SparcStation 20 for free too, K,V&M included, and i got a cool mouspad too...

If only I had a use for it.

Re:New lower prices mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a really cool Sun Microsystems polo shirt. You see, I was working in a mostly Microsoft shop and Sun wanted to win us over. They called up one day and asked how many techs we had, the next day that same number of Nipponese Kogal/race girls showed up! Mine let me do all my nasty hentai moves with her but most guys just got BJ's while they read somethingawful.com and the like.

Anyways. After it was all over my little kogal hottie gave me a Sun Microsystems polo shirt. Its a really good shirt. Sometimes I put on that shirt and nothing else but a pair of thigh-high stockings and high heals, then I parade around my house telling my little captives to "Put the lotion on the dog!!"

Re:New lower prices mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

> New lower prices mean... I still can't afford one! Yeah!

Wrong! After the price cuts now you can't afford 2 of them!

Doubleclick

[MCMLXXVI]

What's with the DoubleClick link? Are we not even bothering to have the illusion that the stories are really ads in disguise?

Re:Doubleclick

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think this is off topic. I also notice the doubleclick link, and I am not happy about this either.

Re:Doubleclick

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic ? Nope. Is this moderation made by the editor (again) ?

Having a product anouncement with a doubleclick link is waaay over the line.

Everybody suspected that thos post were disguised ads, but here, we are at another level of hyporcrisy.

Re:Doubleclick

[Prizm]

Yes, it's a shameless doubleclick advertisement. Coincidentally, Slashdot is also running a Sun banner advertisement proclaiming this new drop in prices. A bit odd to see a banner ad at the top of the page, followed promptly by a story about the same thing. Who would have thought...?

Re:Doubleclick

[desau]

Indeed! I was the one who posted the article, however the new bit on the end was NOT by me.. and I did NOT put a doubleclick link in my article.

Is someone at /. trying to make a few bucks?

Re:Doubleclick

[johann909]

This is an OUTRAGE! Slashdot you have LOST a reader. I encourage everyone who opposes shady business that subtract from the integrity of the stories to file a complaint in post as I have.

Re:Doubleclick

[Prizm]

It's fixed, and without an official update! It was up for approximately 9 minutes. Looks like somebody's clever ploy ended up in embarassment. oops.

Re:Doubleclick

[AKnightCowboy]

What's with the DoubleClick link? Are we not even bothering to have the illusion that the stories are really ads in disguise?

Shutup and get back to consuming you filthy drone. They don't pay for your ad impressions to hear your opinion. :-/

Re:Doubleclick

[zapfie]

You'll be back. They all come crawling back.

Re:Doubleclick

[Hemos]

See above: I removed the doubleclick, which was my fault for using the drag and drag URL thingie - and the update took longer to propogate.

Wish I could feed the conspiracy more, but...

Re:Doubleclick

[johann909]

i retract, won't jump to conclusions next time. sorry slashdot!

Forget it

[TerryAtWork]

They're screwed anyway.

Unless they can come up with some HUGE reason to not go Intel/Linux the server market is lost to them.

Re:Forget it

[jobeus]

Stability: tried, tested, and true. Also, the architecture is a lot more flexible, IMO. Intel's still got its problems.

Re:Forget it

[drinkypoo]

Any place where you use one low-end server, you usually use multiple low-end servers, for redundancy. A shitload of x86 systems is cheaper than a shitload of sun systems. This is why where I used to work we had ONE production solaris server and about thirty production linux servers (as web and chat servers.)

Also low-end solaris servers are crap anyway, they're built essentially like a PC from dell. Why bother? They have a supposedly better processor but they get spanked by an Athlon XP, let alone itanium or the rapidly upcoming sledgehammer.

Re:Forget it

[o1d5ch001]

Unless they can come up with some HUGE reason to not go Intel/Linux the server market is lost to them.

Huh?! What are you talking about! Sun is the largest producer of big unix boxes on the planet. Unless you are mom and pop shop, Sun has to be one of your finalists for new servers. Ever here of a little thing called TCO?! Solaris is way cheaper to administrate over a thousand servers than Linux/Winwhatever will ever be. Don't even get me started on managing multiple linux kernels!!

Re:Forget it

[Ami Ganguli]

They're not dead yet. Agreed they've got some work to do, but they've turned bad situations in the past.

Personally, I think they should get seriously into the server appliance business. They bought Cobalt, but they don't seem to want to do anything interesting with the company. Those little boxes were really handy and breeze to administer.

They might well have picked the right time for Linux desktops too. Imagine a shrink-wrapped workgroup including a nice Sun box with Cobalt admin tools and a bunch of easy-to-administer Linux desktops. Great for school labs or company call-centeres.

Re:Forget it

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I think they should get seriously into the server appliance business. They bought Cobalt, but they don't seem to want to do anything interesting with the company. Those little boxes were really handy and breeze to administer.

They are handy if you don't need to do anything really complex with the setup since then you need to break their automated config stuff. For instance, one of our users wanted http://theirsite.domain.com to automatically forward to https://theirsite.domain.com so their users didn't enter the wrong site. There doesn't appear to be any way to do that since the SSL config is just built by parsing the non-SSL virtual host setup on the fly. If you put a redirect in the non-SSL virtual server setup manually then the perl code that reads in the SSL config will also add that and you get a loop in the refresh.

Re:Forget it

[TerryAtWork]

It's only a matter of time until the GNU community catches up with admin tools too.

Also - When I said Linux I meant OpenBSD. Dunno what came over me.

Re:Forget it

[max cohen]

Where I work, I'm seeing Athlon based servers outperform UltraSPARC III servers (v480s to be exact) by a factor of 2+. Physical compile time for new chip designs has been cut by more than half since the Athlon boxes were brought online, and Athlon stability hasn't been an issue at all.

Sun has a major problem on their hands in the EDA world...and their actions and new product introductions aren't convincing me otherwise.

Re:Forget it

[Ami Ganguli]

Exactly. Simple little boxes that cost almost nothing in admin overhead. If you want complicated then go for a full-blown server.

It's a niche thing.

Re:Forget it

[secolactico]

It's only a matter of time until the GNU community catches up with admin tools too.

That's true. Unfortunately, "a matter of time" is as undefined as "someday".
In the meantime, those who can't wait have to put up with Sun.
Solaris, on the other hand, is an acquired taste depending on what your first exposure to Unix was.

Re:Forget it

[hackstraw]

I disagree. I personally feel as though Sun's low end Netra's and the v120's (and company) are excellent. They are not that expensive (I get an edu discount, but I don't think they list that high otherwise), and as far as server's go "They just work" (Tm) And keep in mind that I've seen very few (read almost none) servers that are CPU bound. Servers serve. Workstations (CAD, etc) process.

Re:Forget it

[Billly Gates]

Actually they do sell Linux x86 servers.

Sun will not sit back and let Linux and Intel eat up their market. I also have a friend of a friend who works for Sun and is beta testing Sun's new intel workstation line. Appearently they are noticing companies like Pixar and boeing switching to dell lintel and wintel boxes. They plan to make both 3d as well as software engineering workstations that both will run Linux. Wait until this summer or next fall for the announcment.

Since their own distro is tuned for their own hardware it will be rock solid and stable. This is something thats traditionally an advantage to Unix over Linux. Corporations will love this as well as users.

Re:Forget it

[oingoboingo]

They are not that expensive (I get an edu discount, but I don't think they list that high otherwise)

In Australia, you automatically get a 40% discount off the list price if you are an educational institution. Even at 40% off, most of the low end Sun stuff still suffers from a low price/performance ratio compared to just about any quality Intel server (especially considering that you also get discounts from the big Intel server manufacturers if you're an .edu too).

Re:Forget it

[_damnit_]

I had moderator points, but cannot in good conscience use them because this is a thread about my employer. Still, this has to be rated as flamebait. The parent post is so full of shit, that I can't believe anyone not viewing at -1 should see it.
The statement: "They're screwed anyway."
Why are we screwed? Is investing in a proven platform such a bad idea? Should we all just give up and make Linux the only OS? Would that make everybody here happy? No M$, no xBSD, no MacOS, no OS390 and no Plan9. Who the hell needs any of them when Linux is so obviously superior in every aspect?

The statement: "Unless they can come up with some HUGE reason to not go Intel/Linux the server market is lost to them."
Did you read the article? They have x86/Linux blades announced today. Can you pull your head out of your rectal cavity long enough to read the posted stories BEFORE you hand out your elegant two line quip stating the emminent demise of a billion dollar a year company?
Besides,isn't your two liner a lot like the hype about NT circa early 90's? Unix was dead back then. Look, I love Linux on my machines at home. I still have problems with it on my laptop, but that'll get fixed soon. It's great. It's free. Just remember, you don't always bring cost into the equation. My choice of surgeons has little to do with how much they charge. It's how well they can do the job.

Re:Forget it

[Blkdeath]

Any place where you use one low-end server, you usually use multiple low-end servers, for redundancy. A shitload of x86 systems is cheaper than a shitload of sun systems.

Therein lies the difference. Whereas a company would have to deploy "a shitload" of x86 servers, they would only require a small handful of Sun servers. This also reduces strain on the power feed, backup power systems, etc. and can significantly reduce the TCO. Initial purchase price isn't everything.

Sun equipment is also generally more powerful and scalable than its Intel bretheren, and I for one hope cheap, commodity hardware never replaces proven server-grade hardware. That's a world I'd hate to administer.

Re:Forget it

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you are so right on.

Man, like everyone keeps talking about 5 9s as if it was tough. Most Linux vendors I've seen offer $999.99 servers; its not that hard to find.

By the way, I'm thinking about running an experiment: Can one good admin be replaced by a cluster of idiots. Based on certain Slashdot posts, I have high hopes.

How the Stack Up

[Oculus Habent]

But how do the new Sun servers compare the to new Apple servers?!

And how many lick does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie-Pop?

The world may never know.

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

Re:How the Stack Up

[Anonymous Coward]

How many Sun Boxens does it take to stack up,
A cluster of Apple iPod servers

Yes'n how many SGI boxens will it take to stack up
against a farm of 64 CPU Sparcs

Yes'n how many Xeons does it take to compare
to a beowulf cluster of Alphas

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind
the answer is blooowiiiiiing in the wiiiiiiiiind.

Re:How the Stack Up

[j3110]

I don't know... You would think with all these fast new machine's out, we would be able to run an experiment and emulate to find out how many licks it would take...

See, and most people probably thought that was off topic.

Re:How the Stack Up

[FatherOfONe]

Sun has more servers to offer than apple.

Three.

Re:Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see Sun ever phasing out Solaris. I'm still surprised that they are using Linux to some small extent.

Re:Linux?

[Wakko Warner]

When will Sun come thru with there plan to phase-out Solaris in favor of Linux [as reported in a previous ./ article]?

When linux does all the things Solaris can do. Don't hold your breath.

- A.P.

Talk about flexibility!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we can choose which shape of fan blades to use on our servers? So cool!

Please REMOVE DoubleClick Redirect Link....

[Fallen Kell]

http://ad.doubleclick.net/click;h=v2|2f40|0|0|%2a| v;5176750;0-0;0;7859018;9323-728|90;2305354|230362 5|1;;%3fhttp://www.sun.com/bignews

You guys always yell at us when we do it, now we yell back :)

Re:Please REMOVE DoubleClick Redirect Link....

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, imagine the spike on the doubleclick banners click-through rate graph because of this.

From the article

[automag_6]

>>A high-end Sun[tm] XVR-4000 graphics accelerator, packaged with a workgroup Sun Fire[tm] system for high-performance visualization applications

Alright, my next game box will be a Sun! Cost effectiveness be damned, it'll make up for it in cool points.

Re:From the article

[Mr Foot]

Yeah, and with all the games you have to choose from your friends will be lining up at your door!

Re:From the article

[jobeus]

It's hard enough to find games for linux... I could just imagine finding games for Solaris... User: "Yay! I can play old LucasArts games!!"

Re:From the article

[pdp8]

Try lugging a V880 to LAN party though...

Re:From the article

[larien]

Unfortunately, visualisation != gaming...

That said, it's one heck of a card; up to 1GB of texture RAM (!!) and it's got great connectivity to the RAM as it plugs into the main system bus on a V880 rather than being limited to PCI bandwidth.

It's a niche item, but it'll do well in visualisation studios; for instance, we have a huge rendering server with real 3D capabilities (i.e. you need the glasses) running on an SGI; this might be able to replace that.

Re:From the article

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't have a chance.

It can't come close to touching a NVIDIA Quadro FX 2000 on performance and features (16x FSAA, 128bit color, 128 IEEE FP pipeline, full shader programmability) and there are a number of solutions that are here or coming that use COTS graphics cards like the Quadro in large clusters.

Re:From the article

[torqer]

Just so you know... AGP graphics cards (which pretty much everything in the x86 world uses) has it's own bus. Completely seperate from the PCI bus. In fact it's a pipe that is 100% devoted to graphics. The AGP pipe is also fatter and faster than the whole PCI bus. Here's some reading for you: http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall1998/cmsc411/proje cts/agp/pci_vs_agp.htm

Re:From the article

[MSBob]

There is only so much one can play shareware Doom in one's lifetime...

Re:From the article

[royalblue_tom]

They've got wheels - easy to move. However, try plugging it in - those three power supplies will overload your circuit easy ...

Re:From the article

[GunFodder]

The great thing is you only need one server for every four people! The V880z server can be configured with 6 CPUs and two XVR-4000 graphics modules, which can each support up to 4 monitors. Of course since each graphics module had 4 MAJC-5200 processors plus a bunch of ASICs and 3 different kinds of memory it probably costs a fortune. But what price is too high to pay for a great game of UT?

Re:From the article

[larien]

From your URL, AGP provides up to 533MB/sec. The backplane on a V880 gives over 4GB/sec, or 8 times as much bandwidth.

$30 dollars is expensive!

[stefanlasiewski]

I got an Ultra 5 for $30

Hey man, $30 is alot of money for a paperweight!

*ducks*

Re:$30 dollars is expensive!

[jobeus]

Er, sorry, Canadian dollars. Our money's worth crap all up here. ;) And hey, it does stuff... Almost as much as the SGI Indy I got for nothing!

Re:$30 dollars is expensive!

[DragonWyatt]

Hey man, $30 is alot of money for a paperweight!

If a full-blown 64-bit machine is a paperweight, what does that make your 32-bit peecee?

Re:$30 dollars is expensive!

[stefanlasiewski]

hey man, 64-bit is great, but it's the speed that counts in the end. I had an Ultra 5 workstation for 2 years (I think it was a 266-Mhz processor), and it was sloooow. My Celeron-366 was 10 times faster running certain applications (Mostly Gnome apps).

But in the end, it's a joke... laugh :)

Re:$30 dollars is expensive!

[andrewski]

So the Atari Jaguar is better than the latest P4? Because the P4 is 32-bit and the Jaguar was 128-bit.

At least by your logic it should be.

Re:$30 dollars is expensive!

[nosferatu-man]

Anywhere between five and fifteen times faster?

'jfb

Re:$30 dollars is expensive!

[Octorian]

Gnome is unusually slow on Solaris/Sparc, for some reason. Try KDE or any other WM and it will perform MUCH better.

Re:Linux?

[Khalid]

That was IBM, not Sun http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/20/125721 8&mode=thread

single-system-image blades

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Somebody needs to combine the high-density, inexpensive technology of blade servers with a scalable single-system-image design. I'd like to be able to take a single rack chassis, four units high or something, and put one CPU in it, or two, or fourteen, or whatever, but not have to dick around with clustering or load-balancing or something.

SGI kind of went that direction with their Origin series (2000 and 3000, and now Altix), but they're overbuilt. It costs a fortune to buy an empty system, and a fortune to put processors and slots in it.

Maybe somebody has done this already. I don't really keep up with the whole blade server thing very much. Anybody know?

Re:single-system-image blades

[bugzilla]

These guys do.

Re:single-system-image blades

[mikeee]

SGI kind of went that direction with their Origin series (2000 and 3000, and now Altix), but they're overbuilt. It costs a fortune to buy an empty system, and a fortune to put processors and slots in it.

This is a hard problem. As you say, it would be really nice, but what you end up with in practice is having to put high-end parts in low-end models and get killed on cost.

Re:single-system-image blades

[Wesley Felter]

No, they don't.

Re:single-system-image blades

[ksfacinelli]

Take a look at www.crystalpc.com

Re:single-system-image blades

[csb]

I've always wondered why there was no VMWare for SPARC... I think that Sun avoids the virtual-machine route in order to reinforce their high-end sales.

Want domains? You'll need to pay for something beefy, like a 6800 or 15K. The marketers have decided that anybody who needs this functionality probably needs lots of other things too, and can be convinced to pony up for the big servers.

I could be wrong; but, this market steering would go a long way toward answering why there's no single-system-image offering for these new entry-level servers.

Re:single-system-image blades

[swordgeek]

I agree entirely.

Two weeks ago, I saw a private announcement of this technology that they talked about today. (signed the NDA and everything! :-) At that time, the blade servers they announced led me to think of two things:

1) This heterogenous blade system is INCREDIBLY cool!!! You can have Intel blades, Sparc blades, encryption blades, network caching/acceleration blades, etc. etc. etc. all in one frame. The fact that Sun (late as they are) is the first out of the blocks with this idea is remarkable.

2) I WANT CC-NUMA ON BLADE SERVERS! With all the mysterious hype Sun has given N1 (learning from MS, anyone?), I really hope that this is part of their upcoming plans. One OS instance across "n" computers, where n is a variable. Time will tell, I guess.

Re:single-system-image blades

[Twirlip of the Mists]

With all the mysterious hype Sun has given N1...

You know, they announced it about 10 hours ago now, and I still have no fucking idea what it is. Pfeh.

Re:single-system-image blades

[swordgeek]

Actually, they announced it a few months ago. Now they've finally given it some substance, although it's hard to follow.

N1 is a low-administration, self-managing environment. It's a farm of servers and infrastructure that can dynamically reallocate themselves as needed for different loads, and do so intelligently. If your accounting server is getting hammered at month end, but so is your after-hours game server (hey, it's possible! :-) then the computers themselves will know to reallocate more resources to the accounting, as it's more mission critical than gaming. Similarly, it will allow for metered semi-automatic allocation of resources. Imagine being a CIO getting a page and an email one night: "Your webserver is running at 95% capacity, and serving 'x' pages per second. For $20,000, you can double your capacity. Please reply with "yes" or "no" in the subject line, to enable this feature or not as you want." Neat plan, eh? It's something that Sun talks about at any rate. It's feasible, with some work.

DISCLAIMER: Since most of this is extrapolation from what I heard, I can't imagine that anything here violates my NDA, but in the off chance that it does, it's a lucky guess. :-)

Re:single-system-image blades

[flawed]

1) This heterogenous blade system is INCREDIBLY cool!!! You can have Intel blades, Sparc blades, encryption blades, network caching/acceleration, blades, etc. etc. etc. all in one frame. The fact that Sun (late as they are) is the first out of the blocks with this idea is remarkable.

They aren't, HP was first. You can have x86 blades and PA-RISC blades in the same chassis.
What I'd find REALLY INCREDIBLY cool would be if the hardware vendors would standardize on a common blade platform. x86, SPARC, PA blades in a chassis with features like the one from IBM, that would be cool.

That said, I also find it a bit lacking that there is no word about what tech acually is in the load balancing and SSL accel blades.

Re:single-system-image blades

[swordgeek]

"They aren't, HP was first. You can have x86 blades and PA-RISC blades in the same chassis."

Are you sure about this? The only HP blades I can find are the proliants, which means Compaq, which means intel. I've also been told repeatedly that while both HP and IBM COULD have had non-x96 blades, they don't yet.

I'd love to see it. And your idea of a generic blade frame is something I've thought about too. What a nice idea that would be, but I don't see it happening.

Dude...Sun Blades are $1500...

[Fallen Kell]

I would say that is affordable.

Re:Dude...Sun Blades are $1500...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe for someone with $1500.

Re:Dude...Sun Blades are $1500...

[carpe_noctem]

For a 450Mhz box with no monitor?
I like the blades, but they're gonna have to come down in price a bit more for me to wanna buy one.

Re:Dude...Sun Blades are $1500...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it's worse than you state.

That's $1500 for a 450 Mhz machine with no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse, tiny hard-drive, 256MB of memory, and no POWER CORD either.

Haha, Sun, right. $1500 would buy a kick-ass PC server (with no monitor of course). The problem is most PC hardware is cheap (as in built poorly).

(BTW, I do own a Blade 100 but I hardly use it; I only to it to test Solaris builds when I need to; it's so slow)

Re:Dude...Sun Blades are $1500...

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a 533MHz Sun Blade 100 with 768MB of RAM, 20GB Hard Drive and a 15" monitor and a cool USB Keyboard and Mouse for $800 (US)

Where? EBay.
Anyone who pays retail for Sun hardware is insane. There are plenty of used Suns from bombed out companies and broken development houses.

Their loss is my gain.
cya

Re:Dude...Sun Blades are $1500...

[AKnightCowboy]

I haven't seen the new machines, but for $1395 you get a 550MHz Sun Blade 150 with keyboard, mouse, 40 GB hard drive, 128 megs of ram, etc. It's also just PC-133 memory so you can add a gig of ram for $100 or less. Now, I was amazed to see they got rid of the Blade 100 priced at $995, but this is still affordable. To me, I'd buy a Sun box to act as a server so you can still buy the Sun Fire V100 for $995. As for the PC, that's true. $1500 will buy you a PC that will kick the Sun box's ass. For around that price I built an AMD Athlon 2000+ system with a nice 4U rackmount case, 1GB of DDR ram, two 80GB WD "Special Edition" IDE drives, a 3ware RAID-1 controller, a cheapo ATI Radeon 7000 graphics card, a 3com 3c905 network card, AND an APC 620VA Smart-UPS to replace my old colocated web/shell/mail server box. I had originally bought a Sun Netra T1 105 off of eBay for $1400 to do the same thing (the listing said it had 512MB of ram and a single 18GB SCSI drive, but it came with 1024MB of ram and the 18GB drive) and I spent another $200 to add the proprietary CD-ROM drive to it. So, $1600 down the hole before I finally realized I'd be better off just running Debian GNU/Linux on a PC box as a colocated server. It's just much much easier to keep updated and I never have to physically be at the box to upgrade it with apt-get. So let's see. 1.667 GHz AMD Athlon processor with 1 GB and two 80GB IDE hard drives vs. a 440 MHz Ultrasparc IIi with 1GB of ram and two 18GB SCSI disks. Frankly, the IDE disks run circles around the SCSI disks. I get 45MB/sec out of them. The processor is also much faster. The Sun is a dog serving up webpages and dealing with dynamic content with PHP/MySQL.

Re:Dude...Sun Blades are $1500...

[AKnightCowboy]

Oh yea, and BTW, the main reason the Netra interested me was for the LOM support. I can't find any reasonably priced PC parts with both flawless serial console redirection support and the ability to power off/on the box from remote. Adding support like that in a card would probably run $500 easy.

Re:Dude...Sun Blades are $1500...

[Cirvam]

Just one question, as far as I know, all suns (well almost all) that have onboard scsi just use scsi cdroms? Is that what you consider proprietary or does it infact use a specilized interface? I know that the scsi cdrom has to be able to read a strange number of blocks or something at once to work correctly with a sun, but other then that I thought they were just standard scsi cdroms.

Re:Dude...Sun Blades are $1500...

[lindsayt]

No, he had a Netra t 105 - it's a 1U, very proprietary server. So yes, it is standard SCSI for the connection, but the drive itself is an oddball ultralow form factor device with special rails to slide right into place. You wouldn't expect your laptop to use any standard IDE CD-ROM would you? Sure it's IDE, but it's not a 5.25" HH bay.

Re:Dude...Sun Blades are $1500...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to the LOM! Disclosure: I work at Sun and I write the kind of code that turns the box into a brick if it doesn't work properly -- so I have a particular affection for the LOM. But _damn_ is it nice! And you do have to pay an extra ~$500 or so to get the same functionality from Dell (and even then, it's a giant-ass card; not sure if it can be crammed into a 1U.) To me, that's the value proposition of Flapjack...

Re:Dude...Sun Blades are $1500...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Frankly, the IDE disks run circles around the SCSI disks. I get 45MB/sec out of them."

rrrrriiiigggggghhhttt. why don't you next time stand up and say i know nothing about computers.

your IDE disk seem faster, since your the only person accessing them. if you had anything useful to do then you would quickly see that SCSI disks crush IDE disks.

Re:Dude...Sun Blades are $1500...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, I always forget to add paragraph tags. I need to see if I can change the default to just posting straight text. My other account was straight text so I'm not used to it.

This is great news

[Uhh_Duh]

I really dig sun hardware -- it's extremely robust, but when it comes down to price, you can buy an awful lot of intel power for the prices Sun tries to get you to pay.

This won't save Sun for one simple reason... Even if they lower their prices to a point where it's really "worth" the extra dollars to buy the Sun label (again, their hardware is far more robust than anything I've seen on the Intel side) customers aren't going to recognize that.

Sure, bigger companies will still recognize the value of buying more robust hardware, but their mid-market business will dry up and Sun will buckle. IBM will step in to fill the high-end server role (with Linux) and in 6 years, Sun will be a distant memory.

Re:This is great news

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot more to a Sun system than just hardware nowadays. There's a whole stack of sever software in there.

Re:This is great news

[HamNRye]

"The blades will start at $4,800 and range up to $20,000." Umm, at an entry price of $4,800 they're not competing with Intel. Add to that their $200 keyboards, $100 mice, and $2,000 video cards, and they are still priced way the hell out there.

We recently replaced the video cards, mice, and keyboards for 2 E450's, and the video card was an ATI rage 128 card ($295). We spent almost $1,000 outfitting our machines with peripherals. The next step up in video cards was $2,000.

I would say that these exorbidant prices are worth it for Sun HW, but their $3,000 monitors have the life expectancy of a fruit fly. But hey, buy our pricey support agreement and we'll replace it free*! (*Free: n. How much Sun will charge you to replace a $3,000 monitor after they get $20,000 for their support contract.)

There are darn few things which Sun is cost effective for anymore. Running a big DB, etc... But the word is Intel for file and print servers and smaller app servers as well. Choose a Linux box with commodity hardware and you could have that entry level blade for about $1,000. If you are worried about the reliability of commodity hardware, get a back up. You still saved half your money.

Does Sun really think anyone is going to shell out for this hardware to run Apache?? If they can't get their foot in the webserver door, what hope is there for Sun ONE?? (Like there was ever hope, but still....) Starts to make you wonder if Sun even knows what they're trying to accomplish anymore.

My SUN wish list:
1) Better volume management without needing to buy Veritas. This is just another way Sun is too expensive. Having their Volume management on Par with AIX would be a start.
2) Die CDE, Die! (Side note - Noone ever sees the desktop of our Sun boxes, noone cares, why not run a default TWM that consumes as little resources as possible.)
3) Better Package management - Take a lesson from Debian.
4) Better freeware access. Pre-compiled binaries are rareish, and downloading and installing gcc so you can use top (if it compiles) is just silly. Add to this my complaint about package management and you have a serious problem as far as I'm concerned.
5) Stop being Microsofty about naming OS releases. I am tired of explaining to my boss that there were not 6 major upgrades to Solaris between 2.7 and 8. I am tired of explaining that the SunOS 3.5 we run downstairs is much, much older than Solaris 2.6. Bastards!

(Boss, we need to upgrade from 2.6 to 8. - What, how do we know it will work! That's like upgrading WFW 3.11 to Win2000! The world will end! Can't we just upgrade to 3.5?? I hear we have that on one of our servers...)

~Jason

Re:This is great news

[Dragon213]

Don't forget that SUN, IIRC, still has a contract with the American Military to supply "hardened" computers and other hardware for use in it's tactical LAN and phone switch systems.

Re:This is great news

[antifun]

There are darn few things which Sun is cost effective for anymore. Running a big DB, etc... But the word is Intel for file and print servers and smaller app servers as well. Choose a Linux box with commodity hardware and you could have that entry level blade for about $1,000. If you are worried about the reliability of commodity hardware, get a back up. You still saved half your money.

Exactly right, and this is why I think they are doing themselves serious harm by still pretending like there is profit to be made in their vertical strategy. Linux hasn't hurt Sun that badly in the computer room, but it is eating its lunch in the network room and on the desktop. Who in their right mind would shell out twice or thrice the bucks for a Sun desktop box when they can get functional equivalence or better with a Linux/Intel one?

Seems like I keep beating this horse...Sun is not going to be able to compete any more on the user end unless they join the commoditization parade. Period. They don't want to recognize this but they really need to. The no-alternative days that saw any corporation needing Unix run to one of the big vendors and forking over millions for end-to-end installations are long over. SGI has been down this path already; Sun won't be able to subsidize their desktop hardware with server revenue for much longer.

You also mention another reason I hate Solaris -- the dearth of what have become common tools and features for an OS. Yes, I know that kickback from Veritas is nice, but volume management support is about six months away from becoming a throw-in. Oh yes, it makes perfect business sense to maintain an entire separate toolchain for things like 'ls' and 'grep'. Etc.

And I really wish Sun would stop calling their shitty workstations "Blades", since that term has become accepted to mean something else entirely.

Re:This is great news

[Cirvam]

Ever check out sunfreeware.com? That kinda answers most of your packaging requests. As for CDE, couldn't you just use pkgrm to remove all the uneeded stuff (like the X-server, CDE, misc documentation, etc)?

That shrinks your list down to 2 items if the above are new to you. Of course can't really fix the naming thing now, unless they decide to start over with the naming scheme.

Re:This is great news

[Anonymous Coward]

"The blades will start at $4,800 and range up to $20,000." Umm, at an entry price of $4,800 they're not competing with Intel.

Errrr, are you sure that is not $4,800 for the blade chasis ("intelligent shelf" )and one blade? The blade chasis seems to contain a substantive 10 Gigabit switched internal network. The "one blade" is only $1,700-2,900 of that cost.

Throw in a 16 port Gigabit switch with dual power supplies and the Intel based solution shouldn't be radically different for similar quality packaging.
IBM's blade chasis and blades aren't in the discount bin at your neighborhood computer vendor either.

[Price/peroformance may be another question. I suspect the intel blade that costs $1,700 will
wipe the floor with the 600 MHz Ultra IIi for
most computations. ]

Peace

Re:This is great news

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely agree about the monitors. They die weekly, here. Love the SUN hardware. I want to take home one of the V880 cubes and use it as my coffee table (it would be the only furniture in my box under the bridge, considering its cost).

Only problem I have with SUN right now is the fucking boat anchor of a SunBlade 1000 that has had every component except the case replaced 1-3 times in six months. They still refuse to give us a new one. Granted, the other 12 are chugging away, but 1 in 12 failure for the amount of money we paid (even if we did get them 2 for 1) is just not acceptable, IMO.

Re:This is great news

[isaac]

We recently replaced the video cards, mice, and keyboards for 2 E450's, and the video card was an ATI rage 128 card ($295). We spent almost $1,000 outfitting our machines with peripherals. The next step up in video cards was $2,000.

Sun loves customers like you! Those bloated prices are pure profit on top of an already high-margin product. I have to ask, though, why the heck are you attaching framebuffers, keyboards, and mice to E450s in the first place? Was there really something you needed (crappy, slow) local graphics for, instead of just using X across the network? I mean you already said:

(Side note - Noone ever sees the desktop of our Sun boxes, noone cares, why not run a default TWM that consumes as little resources as possible.)

So what gives? Why not just use a serial console when you need to touch the machine directly (rather than over the network)?

-Isaac

Re:This is great news

[Darren.Moffat]

1) The product formerly known as Disksuite but now much enhanced with many of the features that used to be used to compare with Veritas: Integrated as a core Solaris 9 feature (lvm).

2) See last weeks news, Sun has already started shipping GNOME 2.x packages for Solaris 8 & 9.

3) WebStart Wizards + SVR4 packaging is a lot more powerful than most people realise. Please don't confusing the power of the package system with a nice easy download thingy. Remeber also that Sun does real patches not just upgrade everything to the latest bits. Our enterprise level customers need this - minimal change.

4) We ship a full CD worth of stuff including gcc and top already compiled and in SVR4 package form (gets installed into /opt/sfw by default).

5) The reason for dropping the "2" from Solaris naming is that there are no plans for a Solaris 3.x line (that would be SunOS 6.x). That one is all down to marketing - I hated it when I first saw it but it actually makes a lot of sense.

Re:This is great news

[flawed]

(Boss, we need to upgrade from 2.6 to 8. - What, how do we know it will work! That's like upgrading WFW 3.11 to Win2000! The world will end! Can't we just upgrade to 3.5?? I hear we have that on one of our servers...)

Just tell him you need to upgrade from SunOS 5.6 to SunOS 5.8. Simple, isn't it? :)

Re:This is great news

[HamNRye]

Ummm, having freeware hosted by "some guy" with packages that are out of date compared to their Linux brethren is not my Idea of good freeware support. This is like saying that WindowsNT supports Shareware because of Download.com. Sunfreeware offers an important service to the community because Sun doesn't.

Yes, Sun has recently been offering a CD with freeware, and I consider this to be like the NT resource kit. It is a marked improvement. But perl winds up in the "wrong" (hard to frikkin' find) place. etc., etc., etc....

Their package system is still stone age. Yes, their patches are the quality you would expect from any big iron vendor, but the package management system is still arcane and tempremental. I manage one Debian system and 40+ Solaris systems, and apt-get never confuses, I don't struggle to remember syntax, and it's easy to find out what is on the system.

Right.... Disliking CDE means I want to rip out the entire XServer. Thanks. I do remove CDE and run most of my boxes on OpenWindows, but it would be nice if they had a streamlined WM for production boxes.

None of the above were new to me, just none of them are solutions I consider acceptible. Not for the big money we pay for the privelage of using Sun. Everbody trashes MSFT for not being able to make a stable OS with billions, why can't we jump on Sun for failing to make a usable OS with billions. I understand all about commercial Unices, but AIX does a much better job of being "Industrial Strength - No Fluff" while Sun hides behind a marketing logo and pretty puce CDE.

The funny thing is that Sun thinks of themselves as a Microsoft competitor... Ummm, not since 1991. MSFT ate their lunch on the desktop, with Windows95 of all things (shame), and is now gloating over their last few remaining soldiers in the server room. What MS doesn't do Linux will.

Case in point: MS releases .NET, to great fanfare and controversy, an OSS clone is slated for Linux, books are written, countless articles about what it is and what it isn't. Sun.ONE, Sun's "Really, we're a Microsoft competitor" offering, is ignored. Where is the Sun.ONE client for Gnome?? That same Gnome that will someday ship with Solaris....

So MSFT goes from NT3.51 to .NET server and we get SOS... Same old Solaris. At least it reigns in the need to upgrade....

~Hammy

From the article...

[ChimChim]

"Most of the industry's growth over the next few years is expected to come from servers using Intel chips and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. These so-called Wintel systems are generally cheaper and offer a wider range of chips."

A wider range of chips under Windows? They dropped the Alpha, so the only chips are Pentiums and Itaniums, right? I suppose you could argue that you have a lot more clones of Intel systems, plus options for Xeons, PIIIs, and such, but it's not really anything like the BSD or Linux systems' idea of "wider range of chips."

Re:From the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you not read the sentence right before the ones you quoted, or are you just a retard? "Sun's been criticized heavily for sticking to its own Sparc processors and Solaris operating system." Why the fuck are you talking about Linux and BSD?

Re:From the article...

[torqer]

hmmm, Chips that windows supports...

For Intel... pentium, pentium pro, pentium 2, celeron, celeron 2, pentium 3, pentium 4, the xeons, and the itaniums

For AMD... k5, k6, multiple athalon lines (k7s), duron, althalon XP, and the hammer

There's also Cryix, dragonball, xscale...

God, I'm sure I could come up with a whole whack of more chips. But this is everything off the top of my head.

Re:From the article...

[Alan Partridge]

ATHLON you mindless fucking goon

Re:From the article...

[Lynn Benfield]

Alan! There's no need for language like that.

Re:From the article...

[Alan Partridge]

Sorry, mum.

Servers already ./?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I have been all morning (1 hour) testing the connection, and now I cannot connect with Real. What? Is this the availability they are talking about? Is Microsoft behind this?

EDITORS, remove ad.doubleclick link in main story

[freuddot]

Editors,
this is unacceptable.

Link in story :
http://ad.doubleclick.net/click;h=v2|2f40|0|0|% 2a| v;5176750;0-0;0;7859018;9323-728|90;2305354|230362 5|1;;%3fhttp://www.sun.com/bignews

And I'll even post with karma bonus, even though this is offtopic.

Parent is not "offtopic"

[missing000]

It's a valid point. There is a problem with this story. I would say this is funny.

Other cutting edge news

[automag_6]

>>Welcome to Sun's first Web-based mega-launch

Wow, they are selling *computers* on the *internet*, I guess that's proof that they are ahead of thier time. I shouldn't poke fun at that, but for me, when I hear that kind of marketing fluf as the first sentence in an article, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Re:Other cutting edge news

[licketyspit]

You know, for the longest time, Sun's company motto was "The network is the computer." Seeing as how they've been a nix environment for as long as I can remember, this does sort of seem ridiculous to reiterate.

Sun equipment...

[Junta]

Sun is really backed into a corner and this move I don't see as really fixing much....

I have worked at places that use Sun equipment. All but one were using them for legacy apps as they phased them out. The other place used them for everything, but went under because they couldn't recoup the investment.

Sun hardware is nice to work on, and you can do a lot to Sun equipment without interupting it. They are a pleasure to work with, but they are not worth the price premium they charge.

Nice x86 boxes which can do most of the things a Sun can do in terms of uninterrupted operation during maintenance can be had for cheaper than Sun equipment. Even in the cases of downtime, a lot of places are finding that failover clusters of x86 boxes are more cost effective and reliable than Sun offerings. Also, planned downtime isn't *that* bad...

Couple this with the rather lackluster performance of their offerings in the face of rapidly developing x86 processors, and you are seeing why Sun is in such financial trouble. In the 90s and earlier, Sun was kicking all kinds of ass and was truly worth it for the businesses that used them. A 10-year old piece of sun equipment still beat a brand new PC in about 95 and 96 (my personal experience), but now, a brand new Sun Workstation is nothing special...

Re:Sun equipment...

[hackstraw]

a brand new Sun Workstation is nothing special...

I really don't think that there servers are that much special either. When I saw the headline, I thought that Sun was going to announce some competative hardware (faster CPUs and higher memory bandwidth), but this was about blade servers (that you can get just about anywhere) and a 12 processor box (how many people need one of these?).

I coadmin a Sun cluster (I think its like the biggest in the northern hemisphere), and admin an Alpha cluster. And although the hardware is excellent in terms of reliability and overall craftmanship, but they are too damn slow. At least for scientific computing. I've done some benchmarks on brand new 280s with the 900MHz processors (retail about 20k), and they perform as well or worse than an 800$ low end Dell (about 8 months old). Take a look at the Itanium2's performance. These guys are awsome. Memory bandwidth out the yazoo! 64bit addressing, nice machines. We're getting 3 of em soon :)

I loved this line from the article: Sun's been criticized heavily for sticking to its own Sparc processors and Solaris operating system.

Umm, so if they don't do this, then what do they do? Become an integrator or a reseller? One thing I will give Sun, is Solaris is pretty damn nice.

I will give one thing to Sun's boxes/Solaris. They might not be fast, but then again they never really slow down. I've seen Sun boxes that are almost completely out of memory and have a load of like 10 or 20 (maybe higher, don't remember on a 1 cpu box), and they are completely usable! Compared to my dual Alpha's running Linux, if they are paging hard and the load is about 4-6 it can take a couple of minutes just to log into one of em.

All in all I like Suns, but they look like they are setting themselves up to be an orphaned division of some other company.

Re:Sun equipment...

[Usagi_yo]

Yea, and the world is full of people and software capable enough to build and support x86 failover clusters that have 24/7 operation ... right.

Oh, I guess not ... once you get past the technojocks who think networking 4 x86 systems with linux is clustering.

The fact of the matter is, once you've hired the right people to do this alternative, then invested in the premium hardware (What? Not buying cheap clones for your companies critical apps?), then arrange for Software and software support ... guess what? You've just gone to 4 independants and paid more for what you could have got just by going to somebody like SUN for a one vendor solution.

On top of that ... Where are your consultants going to be around long? Or are they just a traveling snake oil salesman?

Linux is cool, no doubt. Intel platforms are inexpensive, no doubt. Linux programmers, Linux support and intel System engineering all combined together for building, deploying and maintaining mission critical apps is not. So the time you took and the money you spent and the money you are going to spend on support ... you'll find is just as expensive as going to a top notch vendor like Sun.

As for Windows? Pftttt, Windows is a toy. Look how much effort Microsoft is putting into the home entertainment market. They see their future quite clearly.

Re:Sun equipment...

[Anonymous Coward]

1> you can do a lot to Sun equipment without interupting it.
2> but they are not worth the price premium they charge.

Unless you need #1. In which case #2 is wrong.

3>Nice x86 boxes which can do most of the things a Sun can do in terms of uninterrupted operation
3>during maintenance can be had for cheaper

Unless you need the things they can't do. Then X86 isn't cheaper. Cheaper doesn't count if it can't do the job.

4>Even in the cases of downtime, a lot of places are finding that failover clusters of x86 boxes
4> are more cost effective and reliable

Unless your application doesn't cluster, or is too expensive to cluster. Then X86 isn't cheaper. There are also applications / problems that will only run well on a large box. X86 doesn't do large well, although Opteron should change that in time.

5>Also, planned downtime isn't *that* bad...

A. Unless its $1,000,000/hour down time. Then it is bad.
B. Unless you are trying to get a product to market to beat the compeition. Then it is bad.
C. Unless dozens, hundreds, or thousands rely upon the provided service. Then it is bad.

5>Couple this with the rather lackluster performance of their offerings in the face of rapidly developing x86 processors,

If the application runs there. If X86 can handle the load (oooh, sorry, its a 4.00001Gb process). If X86 benchmarks OK in the application. (Some actually suck compared to others.) If the X86 operating system supports the job type/ size/ requirements. (Benchmarking & prototyping should be your friends. They have to be if you want to avoid expensive "white elephants." I have no Sun white elephants, I do have a big Dell thats now a sort of joke. "Sill no use for it?")

6>and you are seeing why Sun is in such financial trouble. .com := .boom

7>In the 90s and earlier, Sun was kicking all kinds of ass and was truly worth it for the businesses that used them.

In may respects, little has changed. Sun's CPUs weren't the fastest then, they aren't the fastest now. Sun was innovative then (NFS, NIS, etc. etc.), they are innovative now (Java, N1, Sungrid, Solaris N..N+!). Economies go through boom/bust cycles. I expect that the economy will improve, and so will Sun's position.

8>A 10-year old piece of sun equipment still beat a brand new PC in about 95

I remember PC magazine panning the new SparcLX (Classic?) in a Unix shootoff about that time (Maybe a couple of years earlier). Sun was expensive then, they are expensive now. But for some things, its worth every penny.

Some things are only free if your time has no value. A cheap box that can't do the job isn't a good value.

Re:Sun equipment...

[Junta]

Well, if a company really had the need, you can bet your ass they can get that support at a reasonable rate from Red Hat. The difficulty associated with complex clustering configurations is mostly in the software, and RedHat is dying to show their stuff. The hardware requires some consideration, but any decent vendor provides the hardware needed (Dell, IBM, HPaq). If you are buying Sun equipment, you are generally expected to have a proficient Solaris administrator on staff to take care of those babies. That Solaris administrator would cost about the same as an administrator with the capability of dealing with two vendors (hardware and software), and knowing how to glue things together.

In the .com days, where competent administrators were gold, the value Sun added with their turn-key solutions and support were well worth the price. Now with pay rates no longer in the stratosphere for good administrators, the value is diminished...

Re:Sun equipment...

[Anonymous Coward]

> but this was about .... and a 12 processor box (how many people need one of these?).

> I coadmin a Sun cluster (I think its like the biggest in the northern hemisphere), and admin an Alpha cluster.

I'm kind of curious, at top500.org, they list some of the largest clusters in the world. Several of the top listed Sun ones in the US appear to be made up of 64xE4500 14CPU boxes. Whats in your cluster?

Re:EDITORS, remove ad.doubleclick link in main sto

[Junta]

Looks like they have, but without an update comment. They really should own up to what they did. I mean, it was in the *editor's* text, not the submitter's....

Sun Blades are Awesome

[LordYUK]

I had a level 11 fighter with a Sun Blade once...

nothing like twirling the sword around yer head to blind/stun/destroy undead with Sun Rays...

Sheesh, how is this "news that matters"? Any second rate geek worth his 6 siders knows about Sun Blades...

Re:Sun Blades are Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

They are great, but they don't help if you've been hexed by a "charm of budget withering," or if a Veep with a wand of budget freeze hits you. :(

My budget didn't have enough hit points. Now its frozen stiff and the orcs from accounting are feasting on it. :(

Re:Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Xine, Mplayer and XMMS work just fine on Solaris 8,9 and 10 thank you very much. UltraSPARC has had SIMD multimedia instructions since 1994 or 1995 IIRC, long before the Pentium got MMX. Get back under your bridge, troll.

Re:Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't plan on running Linux on anything with more than 8 CPUs either, which pretty much means it is out for serious database work. Oracle on linux, pffft. That's a joke...

heh

[DarkHelmet]

I always find the name Blade servers amusing considering typically How the admins who run these systems commonly appear.

Of course, no one on THIS site appreciates my sense of humor.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

That was really funny.. Hehhe..!
but not as good as this sysadmin:
sysadmin

Re:heh

[CrocOS]

BAD movie, good parody =)

Issue is Channel

[salesgeek]

I've always hated the Sun channel - it is considerably more difficult to buy and sell Sun that PC gear. I wonder where Sun would be if they had a really good open channel...

Mozilla

[stefanlasiewski]

If you were running Mozilla, you could turn that Ad into a big, blank box instead.

Re:Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

But can Mozilla turn off slashdot stories.

Re:Mozilla

[KDan]

If you install bfilter as your proxy, you can turn all ads into big blank boxes instead, regardless of what browser you're using.

Daniel

Grace Slick Is My Cousin

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

The more aggravating part is that now that whoever put that link in has been called on this, it's been quietly removed. When this type of activity occurs, I think the readers of this website deserve a bit of an explanation from on high. I just want an editor to lay down the official policy regarding advertising. Are some stories paid advertisements or do you select some stories because you've already received paid advertisements for a product?

I'll be thinking a little bit more carefully about submitting a story in the future until this issue is addressed. If they want to advertise and call it journalism, that's fine - it's their sandbox. But I don't need to help them reach that goal. Of course, I could make sure to only submit stories concerning topics that couldn't possibly be related to any type of product release or the like. But then they could just throw a double-click link into the article. Oh well, no more submissions from this pony.

Re:Grace Slick Is My Cousin

[zapfie]

What was the original link?

Re:Grace Slick Is My Cousin

[Anonymous Coward]

http://ad.doubleclick.net/click;h=v2|2f40|0|0|%2a| v;5176750;0-0;0;7859018;9323-728|90;2305354|230362 5|1;;%3fhttp://www.sun.com/bignews

Ads smell foul.

here a blade there a blade

[sirsampson]

everywhere I go is news of this newfangled *blade* thing.

Nothing too suprising.

[bscanl]

Blades, some new storage options, some big iron, a graphics machine...

The rumour mills already knew about these well in advance ;)

It'll be interesting to see what Sun do next: This
product release was nothing special. Their direction
regarding Linux might be a bit clearer next time around.

Note: As of 18:00 GMT, not all of the products have pages on sun.com

Question

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

I would love to have a Sun box, and each new offering from Sun looks better and better.

But they continue to shrink in marketshare, and the non-hardware related news items coming from Sun make them look, well, stupid.

Are the engineers and PHBs even talking to each other any more?

Re:EDITORS, remove ad.doubleclick link in main sto

[Hemos]

My fault - I right clicked, and pasted the link locaton - it's been updated to the correct one.

Important, actually ...

[theProf]

Actually, this is quite important.

I do not think Sun is going away. They build good
kit. It lasts, its reliable and its not power hungry. Solaris has been around a long time. Its stable, scales extremely well and is well understood. Its is also very network aware. It does cache filesystems for instance.

The N1 idea is a pearl. Admittedly they have a way to go in implementation but you can see the point where they completely virtualise storage and hardware. If you read the docs for the blade stuff (computer on a card with standard connectors) you see that they are already offering automatic drop out & replacement from pool of failed gear. That is really very impressive. And they will do Linux. You try and do this at home ...

PS

For some reason these forums now seem to attract a huge amount of vacuous posts. No reasoning, just kneejerk "X company are dead cos they dont do linux/wintel".

A very large base of the open source software you all now use was created on Sun gear. If SMCC had not survived 12 years ago I really doubt there would be a Linux. Show some perspective.

Re:Important, actually ...

[ilikehardhouse]

"X company are dead cos they dont do linux/wintel".

I have to agree. Every Slashdot post about Sun generates a fair number of "Sun is dying" messages. Yes, Linux on x86 is making some of their past offerings in the blade server market look a bit sad.

This is why they released their own Linux/x86 system. This is the second time Sun have released an x86 based server. This time it just might work.

Besides, Sun have a lot of diverse products - let's not forget that. Granted, the future of computing may not include some of these, but I think they are aware of that.

Re:Important, actually ...

[h8sg8s]

Let's not forget that Sun has serious credentials in the opensource movement with the contribution of OpenOffice, etc. How useful would the average Linux distro be without it? I'm tired of all the Sun-pounding when leaches like Dell ride high on the contributions of others. I think Sun got most of the things right today. Name another high-density blade server that supports both Lintel and 64-bit UNIX in the same chassis...

Now all they need

[Znonymous Coward]

is a some hip young guy to do TV ads.

Dude, your're getting a Sun???

Re:Now all they need

[nuclearmoose]

Yeah, the dell dude has turned to a life of buying drugs on the street. I'm sure he could use the work:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/02/10/dell.dude.arrest /index.html

Re:Now all they need

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean that Dell is a Gateway computer? I'm confused.

Re:threre is a live webcast going on

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm watching it too - i think that was the idea. notice that the story appeared at 12.30 exactly as the the webcast started. think this was paid for. They are talking about anti-aliasing of all things. WTF the entire audience is wearing 3D glasses!!!!

Mots reliance on Sun workstations got them ...

[linuxislandsucks]

Mots reliance on sun workstatisn and laptops got them where? another roudn of layoffs at the chicago facility soon..

Okay, I'll bite

[Ars-Fartsica]

What is unstable, untested, or "untrue" about x86 servers? I don't know where this argument comes from. My employer has used x86 servers for years in highly stable, high-use, high availability commerce applications for a very high traffic website.

Re:Okay, I'll bite

[Cirvam]

Can you hot swap the CPU's or RAM modules on a x86 server while its running? Or can you have 512 (is that what they are at now?) CPU's all in the same system? I don't know of any x86 servers offhand that can scale to over 8 processors (maybe they have 16 now?) or that you can hotswap CPU's in. Also its just a recent development that x86 server could address the massive amounts of ram that Sun's have been able to for years. I mean if there are x86 servers which you can do this, I wonder how their prices compare to Sun's prices, obviously you don't have hot swap CPU's on your latest gaming motherboard so its not exactly a common item there.

Re:Okay, I'll bite

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you hot swap the CPU's or RAM modules on a x86 server while its running?

Thats a software issue if I understand correctly. QNX apparently supports all of this hot-swapping on a variety of hardware platforms.

I'll care when I can run OpenBSD on them =)

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a SS20, and Ultra5. Sun, I'd love a nice new SunBlade!

Re:EDITORS, remove ad.doubleclick link in main sto

[Hemos]

The update took longer then the link correction - Apache has to propogate for it to come up.

Re:EDITORS, remove ad.doubleclick link in main sto

[Junta]

Cool, good to see you explain it and admit the correction.

It does not have 1 GB of texture RAM

[GoSpeedRacerGo]

It does not have 1 GB of texture RAM.

It has 4 banks of 256 MB of texture RAM. The four banks are on separate pipelines and a copy of each texture needs to be duplicated in all four banks since you don't know what portion of the screen they will fall on.

As a result, this solution only has 256 MB of texture which isn't going to be much of a differentiation for very long. (Both NVIDIA and ATI have 256 MB boards coming--although that is shared with FB). The low FSAA resolutions and lackluster performance is what will keep people from paying 10x-20x for this visualization solution.

Re:Linux?

[Wakko Warner]

I don't plan on turning Linux into a slow-ass operating system

That's cool, because I have no plans to do that to the Solaris machines I run. It hasn't been "hip" to call Solaris slow since 2.5.1, perhaps 2.6 -- about 4 years ago.

with no multimedia support

This is important on a server...

and 80MB Java footprints from a "Hello World" program

Yes, Java on Solaris sucks. The official Java distribution for Linux is also from Sun -- so go figure, it sucks on Linux too.

so I guess you're right that Linux will never do all the things Solaris does.

Guess I am.

- A.P.

Re:Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, that's what a big iron server needs...Multimedia support. Wake me when Linux can scale like Solaris or have the availablility of Solaris.

--AC

The real problem

[AKAImBatman]

Personally, I love Sun hardware. Intel hardware still can't break the 4 gig barrier and Itanium isn't looking promising. Plus, Solaris gracefully handles just about any emergency situation you can throw at it. Too many threads? I hadn't noticed. Too much traffic through the network card? Huh, hasn't seemed too bad. Compare that to Windows were suddenly terminal services die, processes get locked in place, and things just generally spin out of control. The ONLY problem I have with Sun right now is their propensity for undercutting you on memory. Every time I try to configure a machine, it comes with about half the memory a machine its size should have. So I try adding it, and BAM! the machine is suddenly 10x more expensive. If Sun would just stop skimping on the memory and fill these boxes out, the Sparc platform would start to look *way* more attractive. I mean, how are you supposed to get the message across that your machines are powerful if they have half the memory of an Intel machine?

Re:The real problem

[pmz]

Every time I try to configure a machine, it comes with about half the memory a machine its size should have. So I try adding it, and BAM! the machine is suddenly 10x more expensive.

Two words: third-party memory. As always, cost vs. risk, but the risk is generally very low as long as you don't get bottom-of-the-barrel RAM.

Why SUN?

[josh crawley]

Is Sun still NOT supplying basic low-level data documents on how to control memory management and chip accesses? If I remember correctly, SUN allowed a Linux developer see the required documents and code a kernel compile for the Sparc64 platform, but is holding out on the BSD's.

Thing is, if you request the papers, you have to sign a NDA to get them. They arent even saying Yes to the BSD developers (probably cause BSD's better than sunos, and they see Linux as sucky piece of shit).

Re:Yeah.

[nolife]

Fans powerful enough to work with a filtration system to kill most of the dust intake.

I'd bet that more damage would occur from overheating caused by lack of air flow when the filters get clogged then if there were no filters and the equipment had dust in it.
In a server room environment, it is easier to filter the recirculated air at the central cooler then to worry about each piece of equipment seperately.

Changing/checking filters should be routine maintenance but is commonly overlooked. Not an excuse but an observation.

what this all means...

[ubiquitin]

..is that 64 bit desktops are really on their way now. So Sun has to pre-emptively promote its hardware in the areas where 64bit personal computers could be effectively deployed in the data center. IBM's power4/5, AMD and Intel's 64 bit offerings are going to blow Sun off the map and they know it. This will enable robust RAM addressing space that's good enouguh for enterprise-level servers. When 64bit chips start arriving in quantity (late 03 early 04) we can all kiss Sun's licensing and pricey hardware goodbye.

I think you're missing the point

[AKAImBatman]

Yes, you can always get extra third party memory, but how does that help customers perceive Sun better? Quick Answer: It doesn't. The plain and simple fact is that off the shelf Sun hardware (the stuff that comes in a shiny plastic case that you should never, ever have to do anything more than plug in) is heavily underpowered for what it does. And the worst part of it is that filling out the boxes with some serious memory shouldn't affect Sun's bottom line all that much. That is, unless a Sun Engineer is hanging around somewhere and can tell me the critical point I'm missing.

12 CPU box

[royalblue_tom]

The difference is in the pricing structure - before this box came out, you had to jump to a "midrange" server, and pay a massive premium:

V880 - 8CPU @ 900 MHz, 16GB - 100k
V1280 - 12CPU @ 900 MHz, 24GB - 174k
4800 - 12CPU @ 1.2 GHz, 48GB - 450k
6800 - 16CPU @ 1.2 GHz, 64Gb - 743k
6800 - 24CPU @ 1.2 GHz, 96Gb - 1,000k

Prices c/o http://store.sun.com

So, if you didn't quite fit on an 8 CPU box, watch the prices jump ...

Re:12 CPU box

[flawed]

And now what if I don't quite fit on a 12 CPU box?
Wait for Sun bringing the V1680 and watch them duplication their "Midframe" line in the V-Class?

I could understand the V880 as an E450 successor
with processors internal and lots of internal disk,
but I can't really understand V1280 with its not-quite-Uniboard CPU boards, except as a stopgap measure forced by competition.
Who will now buy F4800 anymore?

Bye Bye Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm selling my stock. Actually I never had stock in Sun nor would I ever buy any. $1000 for a graphics card upgrade that can do 7 million triangles a second ... hmm, guess I'll live with the standard 8-bit color. Consider that a Voodoo II does better and can be had for $10 on Ebay. I don't know how any company with an exponential pricing model could survive as long as Sun has. Of the two Sun Blade 100's my group bought a year ago none of them are still working and Sun won't even acknowledge a problem with either of them.

Used market may end up being Sun's best bet....

[Desmoden]

As funny as this sounds, I'm buying more Sun equipment now then I ever have. I'll admit I love sun boxes, but I also manage 300-400 linux boxes. But we are buying more and more Sun equipment because it's so cheap. I just got a 420 (4proc/2gigmem) with D1000 (12x18GB) for about 6k. I get stocked 250s for 2.5k. They are almost new, and much much much more reliable than all my rackables.

While I know this won't last, I find it interesting. Linux was always easy because it was so cheap, but used sun prices have really changed things. For the first time in about 3 years I'm seeing an increase in the number of Sun boxes I manage :)

Re:Your Sig

[EnVisiCrypt]

" The Slashdot default score should be the median score of your last eleven moderated messages"

Don't you mean "mean" or "mode"? With median, in a set of eleven comments, each being modded -1, with the 6th being modded 5, the default score would be 5, even though though the poster would seem to be a troll. With mean, the default score would be the more appropriate 0. With mode, the default score would be -1.

Or maybe I'm wrong. I'm not aware of any other definitions of median, though. If I am wrong, I apologize.

Re:EDITORS, remove ad.doubleclick link in main sto

[ERJ]

Alright guys....let's mod Hemos down ;-)

Won't fix Sun's biggest problem

[cartman]

Sun's CPU offering is simply not competitive. On commercial workloads it gets apprxomiately half the performance of its peers. This is for two reasons: 1) the design is bad, leading to lower performance at a given clock speed, and 2) the manufacturing process is very old, leading to low clock speeds. (double whammy).

It would be very difficult for Sun to sell competitive boxes when their CPUs are half-speed. How are they going to sell an 8-way box for the same price as a 4-way commodity Xeon 3GHz?

What Sun has to do is: GET THE HELL OUT of making CPUs. It costs them tons of money, and they can't do it well, and the failure is crippling them. Everyone likes Solaris; everyone likes Sun's reliability features; everyone HATES Sparc's performance.

My advice to Sun? PARTNER WITH FUJITSU!! Fujitsu currently makes a Sparc chip that's almost twice the speed of Sun's! Sun should just drop their own CPU development and buy Sparc CPUs from Fujitsu. This would save Sun the $400M they currently spend on CPU development, drastically lowering their prices, and would double their performance. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Re:Won't fix Sun's biggest problem

[Usagi_yo]

This is not true. The top end commercial systems suppliers all run within 90% of each other when comparing apples to apples. 50% less is a notion you pulled out of the sky.

What is true. Sun is not at the bleeding edge of processor development -- a place primarly for scientific computing. They are however at the leading edge, along with many others, and because of that they produce very stable, very productive, very scalable commercial application servers.

Oh, and please do have a visit to Sparc Consortium and check out the many other who contribute to sparc development.

Re:Won't fix Sun's biggest problem

[javiercero]

Well, another slashdotter w/o any idea what he/she is talking about.

1st) SUN doesn't make the CPU's, they specify the design... but the implementation is left to 3th party suppliers. Just like MIPS. But of course you already knew that, not!

2nd) on a per MHZ basis the US III is more efficient that any intel P4, i.e. it gets more done per clock cycle.

And of course you had to top it all by giving financial advice. My guess is that the less you know the more you have to speak....

Re:Won't fix Sun's biggest problem

[cartman]

"This is not true. The top end commercial systems suppliers all run within 90% of each other when comparing apples to apples. 50% less is a notion you pulled out of the sky."

That's completely untrue. Sun withdrew from the recognized transaction processing bencharks (tpc) when their performance started to fall seriously behind. I've witnessed the performance of database applications that I architected, on Sun's high-end servers, versus the high-end servers of other vendors. Sun's performance was ABSOLUTELY NOT within 90% of their competition. The major industry benchmarks (tpc-c) amply demonstrated this fact, before Sun withdrew from them out of embarrassment.

Sun's UltraSparc-III is still an in-order processor; they've never been able to implement out-of-order instruction scheduling. This architectural feature alone is responsible for a 30-40% improvement on commercial workloads. This is not "primarily for scientific computing" as you contend, since the primary benefit of OOO is Integer/commercial workloads. ALL of the other RISC vendors have implemented OOO, even MIPS.

Not to mention, the US-III has a 14-stage pipeline, which is rather long considering that they don't even have to dynamically select instructions to execute. And, the US-III is only a 5-issue core!

"Oh, and please do have a visit to Sparc Consortium [sparc.com] and check out the many other who contribute to sparc development."

I've visited the Sparc consortium website many times in the past. The members of the Sparc consortium specify the instruction set architecture for Sparc; they have nothing whatsoever to do with Sun's CPU core designs, or with the UltraSparc-III that I mentioned was deficient. As such, your point is irrelevant to the current conversation.

"Oh, and please do" have a look at Paul DeMone's insightful article regarding Sun CPUs, at www.realworldtech.com:

"The immediate future aside, Sun is faced with a long term MPU credibility problem ... The more SPARC performance lags behind openly available merchant processor families like x86, x86-64, and IA64, the greater this pressure becomes."

Re:Won't fix Sun's biggest problem

[oingoboingo]

2nd) on a per MHZ basis the US III is more efficient that any intel P4, i.e. it gets more done per clock cycle.

Oft quoted, but irrelevant. Efficiency doesn't matter when Intel has a 2GHz lead over Sun. The entire point of the P4 architecture is to sacrifice a high IPC to go for high clock speeds, which results in better overall performance. Comparing Sun's new blades (650MHz UltraSPARC IIi?) with something like IBM's dual hyperthreaded 2.4GHz P4 Xeon blades is a cruel joke, with the joke being on Sun.

Only the most die-hard Sun shops, or those with legacy Solaris apps will be buying these things. They're hideously slow, no matter how efficient the CPU architecture might be.

Re:Won't fix Sun's biggest problem

[cartman]

"Well, another slashdotter w/o any idea what he/she is talking about."

I not only know what I'm talking about, I'm also capable of composing a reasoned message, unlike you.

"1st) SUN doesn't make the CPU's, they specify the design... but the implementation is left to 3th party suppliers. Just like MIPS. But of course you already knew that, not!"

Oh, really? My, you're knowledgeable. Dude, everyone knows that Sun is fabless, and that they've always been fabless, and that Texas Instruments is their current foundry and manufactures their chips.

It's obvious that TI doesn't care about Sun, otherwise US-III wouldn't have been relegated to a manufacturing process that is almost two generations behind that which Intel & IBM are using.

However, Sun's US-III suffers from architectural and design shortcomings that are entirely apart from the outdated manufacturing techniques TI allots them. The design of the US-III is inferior to that of Sun's competitors in extremely important ways. For example, the US-III is the only major RISC CPU that still doesn't have dynamic instruction scheduling! In other words, the US-III is an IN-ORDER cpu. Out-of-order execution was a major architectural innovation that leads to performance improvements of 40-50% on commercial workloads. US-III is the only major chip that doesn't have it. Even MIPS (R10k) does OOO. This is a large part of the reason that the US-III trails its competitors so badly. Another reason is: the US-III has a 14-stage pipeline, which is exceptionally long for a CPU that doesn't even have to dynamically select instructions to execute. To say nothing of the slow clock speed despite long pipeline lenghts.

"2nd) on a per MHZ basis the US III is more efficient that any intel P4, i.e. it gets more done per clock cycle"

Anything is faster than an intel p4 at the same clock speed, even an intel p3. This is because the p4 has a design that increases the clock speed while decreasing the instructions per clock. It's irrelevant that the US-III gets (slightly) more done per clock, because the p4 has more than three times the number of clock cycles. Unless the US-III gets more than three times more done per clock, it will trail the low-end, cheap commodity part (x86) in performance.

At present, the top offering from Sun (US-III 1.05GHz) gets less than half the SpecINT performance of the top commodity Intel offering (p4 3GHz), and less than half the SpecINT performance of other high-end MPUs like POWER4. We would have a better idea of how US-III performed on commercial workloads if we were able to inspect the standard tpc-c benchmarks for Sun platforms. However Sun withdrew from those benchmarks, out of embarrassment, when their performnace began to seriously trail that of their competitors.

"And of course you had to top it all by giving financial advice. My guess is that the less you know the more you have to speak...."

You should learn manners.

Re:Won't fix Sun's biggest problem

[xose]

_ALL_ Sun servers are very stable, but slow. SPARC speed is poor, take a look at SPEC CPU2000 Results. The memory bandwidth is _very_ low. In Linpack-top500 you won't see SUN in the 100 first places.

The Fujitsu SPARC64 V is better chip and 100% compatible with SUN solaris/SPARC. And better servers with 128 CPUs !!!!

LiNUX is a better alternative below 8 CPUs: Migrating Oracle9i - Based Sun Servers to Dell Servers Running Linux and Migrating Oracle9i - Based Sun Servers to Dell Servers Running Linux, Part 2. LiNUX+x86/ia64 , and soon AMD x86-64, is cheaper and faster than Solaris/SPARC

DEC/Compaq/HP have the best chip(Alpha EV7) and the best UNIX servers (ES47,ES80,GS1280) in RISC arch. It's a pity that Alpha is going to die to put intel ia64 instead.

And if you need NUMA machine, SGI Altix is for you.

Why do you need to buy a SUN server?
- because my programs _only_ run with solaris/sparc

Sun: Apple 2?

[qa'lth]

Here's an interesting thought I've been having for the last 20 minutes:

Why doesn't Sun pull something like Apple did? Make a high-end workstation, running Solaris with some much, much better UI over top of it - something akin to Aqua.. Could call it Solarix, heh, or Solaris X or something. Possibly dump X11 in favour of a proprietary display engine, similar to Apple/QNX/NeXT/etc, but keep X11 compatibility availble in the system. Start getting stuff like Photoshop and the big 3d apps, Maya, Lightwave, Softimage|XSI, ported over. It'd probably take a serious expenditure of capital to bribe the companies into supporting the OS/architecture.. but it could be done. The SPARC processor would likely stay, of course, but they'd have to get better 3rd-party video hardware support going to really get this to play nicely. DDR memory would be necessary, too, maybe even AGP graphics. Almost a complete reworking of existing SPARC motherboards, I'd think.

Then you get high-end SPARC servers, and midrange, class workstations equivalent to Apple's best, and, if they design the OS properly, usable by new users as easily as OS X is now.
Pipe dream, maybe. Could be worthwhile for Sun to look in to this sort of thing.

What do you guys think?

Re:Sun: Apple 2?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Easy", just remove the FreeBSD part of MacOS X and replace it with Solaris ;-) Mac platforms already use Open Boot Prom (OBP)

Re:Sun: Apple 2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet Apple can just port OS X to Sparc and Sun can use that.

Sun needs to focus like a laser

[digitalgimpus]

Sun needs to focus it's business. IMHO they should focus on mini mainframe systems. Dell, Compaq, and Apple are taking the low end. Sun can't compete where they stink.

Sun has very high grade hardware. Reliable, and proven. They should stick to that.

To many markets spreads a company to thin.

Even the OS should stick to being high end, industrial product. Don't make solaris for everyone. Everyone doesn't need it. Redhat, et. al. have that end covered.

And Java could use a good overhaul. Make it more capable, rather than frozen in time like it appears now.

Re: relicensing?

[ubiquitin]

Glad you got a good deal on the hardware. Be careful though.

They have a whole section of the Solaris licensing pages dedicated to relicensing. Don't laugh. For some models, Solaris 9 relicensing fees are in the US$100,000's. Not sure if this link will work because the have some strange session-management junk on the pages with the pricing on them: store.sun.com/catalog

Often overlooked reason PCs are selected over suns

[Anonymous Coward]

PCs overlooked competitive advantage"

I predict IBM will buy Sun, eventually...

[aquarian]

I think Sun will continue to lose, both marketshare, overall sales, stock value, everything. They do a lot of neat stuff, but the one that pays the bills is getting hammered by cheap Intel/Linux solutions. There's less and less need for enterprise class servers these days as the cheap stuff gets more powerful, and that business will go to companies offering the best service -- probably IBM. Since IBM is best able to continue Sun's work on this front, IBM is a natural buyer to step in at the last minute to save Sun's ass. Not to mention that IBM is already as big a Java player as Sun itself, and could benefit from Sun's talent. How soon will this happen? I'd say give it a couple of years, maybe three...

Why this story? Why not HP, Dell, IBM stories?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is slashdot a product announcement site for Sun?

Shouldn't it also report whenever IBM, HP, Dell, etc.. release new hardware?

Sucky stories lately....

Re:single-system-image blades -- AKA V1280

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody needs to combine the high-density, inexpensive technology of blade servers with a scalable single-system-image design.

Ummm, isn't this the idea behind a multi-cpu box? We run a V880 and are thrilled. All things run on it: apache, samba, oracle, user's desktops, web apps, print facilities, etc. etc. It does all of this and is the desktop for 30 people, running openoffice, evolution, netscape and more. These cost, what, under $30k? That puts our per-desktop cost under $1k per user and it is centrally managed.

I hear half the people demanding gazillions of servers and the other half wanting centralized management.

Get a central, big server and you have the best of all worlds.

Re:Your Sig

[SpikeSpiff]

In your example, the mode would be 5, because the six scores (6-11) would be 5, and there would be only five -1's.

Heck, for that matter, a -1 or 5 poster would be Babe Ruth, home runs or strikeouts. Mod that person up because they make the conversation interesting.

In the real world, the difference would be small anyway. I agree with the basic sentiment though.

Maybe the base should be the standard deviation of the previous modifications. That would block the Karma whores and contribute to risk taking.

Re:single-system-image blades -- AKA V1280

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Ummm, isn't this the idea behind a multi-cpu box?

Yes. That's what "single system image" means. But it would be cool if the systems were more scalable and less expensive. The V880 scales from 2 to 8 processors and the V1280 only goes up to 12. That blows in terms of scalability. It seems that there should be a way to make a system scale from 1 to N processors, for some very large value of N, for a lot less money up front and preferably less money per upgrade step.

Single system images are easy, for some very large value of easy, up to 1024 processors; SGI sells 1024-processor machines right off their price list. You can phone them up and order one. Why can't we apply blade server technology, high-speed interconnects, and single-system-image operating systems to make a system with a low entry price that scales economically?

Oh, and speaking of economically, you got ripped off something big. A thousand bucks per desktop? That's terrible. You either overpaid for your server, or you're seriously underusing it.

Re:Idiot - they do Linux Intel already - RTFM

[Anonymous Coward]

So you didn't read the article moron?

Anal-ysts

[ader]

...People who divine the future and interpret industry news by gazing up their own asses.

"Sun's single operating system, single chipset design, is getting a little old now," said keen MTV viewer and Sageza Group analyst Charles King.

At least Sun is making steps in the right direction, analysts say. Its new blades are compatible with Intel systems, as if this is fucking news to anyone who has ever put a PCI card in an E450.

"That means customers can connect Sun's products with all types of different blades and use them together," said Jim Garden, a deluded inmate in the special care wing of the local happy house. Unless "use them together" means "plug them into the same electric supply".

"Now they've got to go out and win more customers." Doh! That's where they've been going wrong! Although come to think of it, I can recall several companies that seem to be on the opposite tack.

Ade_
/

Sun costumers that don't watch the bottom line...

[Anonymous Coward]

... will perish. If Sun is the best for a ceratin task but they follow marketing hype, they do so at their peril.

It is of no use to have Intel machines with a shoddy OS at half price if that means downtime in bussinesses where downtime means loss of big money. Most companies making money today trust their mission critical stuff to one flavour or other of UNIX, of which Sun has the biggest share of the market last time I checked (or they may be 2nd, who cares, they are there) Other stuff less critical (like internal email and collaborative tools) are left to other OS in Intel platform, if it crashes (he, one of our mail servers just did so, why I am not surprised?) it is a nuisance but does not cost as much money. If it was not for Office and the collaborative capabilities of Exchange, we may be a UNIX only shop.

We have hundreds of Sun servers, all of them with uptimes of months (cut short only when a security patch has to be installed) resilient to hardware failures, performing with few hitches and when those hitches appear (which normally does not mean that a machine goes down) we have replacement parts in a couple of hours or in 24 hours if it is an older platform.

Nevertheless Sun has recognized that middle and small servers are going to go to Linux (once it gets disk mirroring easier to use, almost there but nothing compared to Sun's offerings) thus they are postioning themselves to serve that segment of the market as well.

Sun sells complete systems solutions, they are not as comprehensive as IBM, but they are not selling only hardware or software, they are selling computing solutions. This is appreciated by cleints that are technologically adept.

Commodity hardware.

[jotaeleemeese]

"If you are worried about the reliability of commodity hardware, get a back up"

This is not applicable in many situations. If you have 1TB of data it is going to be a PITA to recover that from tape.

You need mirroring and if possible data replication in a different machine or machines (each one of which has the data mirrored) if possible in different locations.

Backups must be your last resort once all the other preventive measures have failed.

If your data is really important then you owe yourself to do more than rely on slow tapes (starting with good quality systems perhaps, those 2 or 3 thousend bucks that you "saved" may come to bite you later when you face downtime. There are not blanket solutions, sometimes commodity hardware will do, other times you must use other solutions).

Re:single-system-image blades -- AKA V1280

[flawed]

Well, the Fire 15K scales up to 96 CPUs, it even has something like blades - it is called Uniboards. ;-)
Sure the price for base configuration it still high.
Same with SGI - just they have a litte bigger granularity with their CPU Bricks, as they like to call them. You see, modularity is there.

The problem is that the high-speed interconnects that acually scale up to several hundred CPUs are hideously expensive. Gigabit Ethernet just doesn't cut it for these applications and that is what common blades usually have.

Then come and work for bigger companies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most banks use Sun stuff extensively and they are not jumping ship anytime soon.

Ditto for the oil industry.

You have no idea about the value of a system that does not crash at the drop of a hat. Think trading floor.

The fact that you end your sentence talking about Sun Workstations shows that you have no clue about the full capabilities of the different Sun offerings.

Why are you running computations...

[Anonymous Coward]

... in an NFS/DB server (or in which context are you using the word "cluster")?

Inquirying minds want to know.

Nonsense.

[jotaeleemeese]

Red Hat does not have the capability to provide support round the clock every time for both hardware and software.

Re:single-system-image blades -- AKA V1280

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You see, modularity is there.

God, dude, I really appreciate your input, but you are so missing the point. Read my original post, okay? I started with the Origin series and said, "Gee, wouldn't it be cool if you had a system that scaled like a blade server but used a single system image like an Origin?"

So like I said, while I appreciate your input, we are now right back where I started from. ;-)

Re:single-system-image blades -- AKA V1280

[flawed]

Indeed.

But there won't ever be, as single system images limit scalability.

Re:single-system-image blades -- AKA V1280

[Twirlip of the Mists]

But there won't ever be, as single system images limit scalability.

Single... what? SSI defines scalability. "How far does this system scale?" "Uh. Two processors. But you can cluster them!" "So the answer is two processors, then. That sucks."

Re:single-system-image blades -- AKA V1280

[flawed]

Every SSI has some amount of intercommunication it needs to keep itself in a consistent state. At a certain number of CPUs this communication grows so large, that adding more CPUs doesn't yield results.
This is the scalability limit I meant.

That said, please decide what you want.
You can have large CPU Single System Image scalability, go to SGI and pay the price. As I wrote above in this thread, the interconnects for node coupling that is sufficiently fast for SSI operation isn't cheap.

So, maybe your question should rather read: "Gee, wouldn't it be cool if you had a massively scalable system that was as cheap as a blade server but used a single system image like an Origin?"
To which I'd say: "Yes, would be cool, but won't ever be there."

Many CPUs, Cheap, SSI, pick two.

Re:single-system-image blades -- AKA V1280

[Twirlip of the Mists]

This is the scalability limit I meant.

We have yet to reach that limit. I've personally seen 1,024-processor systems-- well, one system, but there are others out there-- and I've heard that 2,048 is working in the lab. The limit right now has nothing to do with anything intrinsic; it's a cost issue. It's really expensive to get two 1,024-processor systems in the same place at the same time.

That said, please decide what you want.

I already have. I want a scalable blade system. ;-)

Re:single-system-image blades -- AKA V1280

[Anonymous Coward]

The Whole poin of N1 is to allow many many smaller servers to act as one big virtual server (it also allows one big physical server to act as many smaller virtual servers and everything in between). Not exactly a single system image but like McNealy and Tolliver said, people have got to stop thinking about the number of CPUs, the size of the memory in each box, just be concerned with the end resource and whether it meets the needs of the customer. No need to go over-techy on this, compute power is a utility ... or something.
But seriously if you want high throughput interconnects to link many systems into a single system image how about a SUN WildCat link (SunFire Link) ? $50,000 buys you a fibre optic interconnect that plugs striaght into the FirePlane data bus (it's NOT just an I/O module) and gives 9.6 Gb/sec sustainable bandwidth per Wildcat link, allowing upto 7 SunFire 15ks with upto 102 CPUs in each (with WildCat fitted you loose a few CPU boards). Thats 714 CPUs in one system image with *near* linear scalability. Yours for a mere $10-$12million all in, but I'm sure SUN could do you a good price right now ... :)

Re:single-system-image blades -- AKA V1280

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The Whole poin of N1 is to allow many many smaller servers to act as one big virtual server

Virtual smirtual. The goal here-- in my little thought-experiment-- is to have scalability and cost effectiveness without unnecessary complexity. Clusters, apart from being unsuited for many tasks, are unnecessarily complex. N1, as I understand it, is basically a glorified cluster with some additional layers of complexity on top to make it seem simpler. (Which strikes me as wrong-headed, but that's just me.)

Thats 714 CPUs in one system image with *near* linear scalability.

Yawn. You can buy an Origin 3000 with 1,024 CPU's with considerably better bandwidth than what you described with nothing more than a phone call. The systems ship preconfigured from SGI's Eagan plant. They're not special orders or anything; they're in the price list, for cryin' out loud.

This has been the case since about 1996. The size of the largest supported system image has increased-- from 64 processors to 128 to 512 and now to 1,024, with 2,048 coming later this year-- and the interconnects have gotten faster over time, but the software and the overall system architecture have remained essentially unchanged for the past seven years.

It's good to see that Sun is finally catching up to where SGI was in the mid-1990's.

Who will now buy F4800 anymore?

[royalblue_tom]

That's pretty much the question, isn't it!

I suspect Sun will bring in the V1680 when they feel that there is a perceived need to compete on price at the 16 CPU level ...

Last Post!

[alpg]

A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
And the Master answered:
It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.
It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City
to City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns
have come to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
And that is Fate? said the priest.
Fate... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know
what Freight was too.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"

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