Sun Announces New x86 Servers

Sun and X86 by Bame+Flait · 2003-05-20 05:03 · Score: 3, Funny

I'm eagerly awaiting their move into adult markets with XXX86 servers. And Windows XXXP support!

Incidentally, Pr0stx0r fr1stx0r

Bitches

Re:Sun and X86 by NanoGator · 2003-05-20 05:37 · Score: 2, Funny

"And Windows XXXP support!"

Complete with Orifice XP!

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"Derp de derp."

wow by banka · 2003-05-20 05:04 · Score: 4, Interesting

is this a ditch effort by sun to stay alive? it seems as though they've just been slipping away in recent years; they had the "One" platform of ubiquotous distributed computing and then that sort of disappeared, are we going to see the end of solaris soon?

"An anonymous reader" by Anonymous Coward · 2003-05-20 05:05 · Score: 5, Funny

From 68-248.sun.com

Sun is taking the same route as SGI by mikael · 2003-05-20 05:06 · Score: 5, Interesting

Remember when the x86 workstations began to eat into SGIs bottom line? They responded with building x86 workstations. The same thing is happening to Sun. Their SPARC servers are not keeping up with x86 servers, just as SGI IRIX/MIPS workstations began to lag in performance.

Now before the slashdot crowd begins to scream "But hey! The Sun Fire V480 is really fast!", remember that it is $19,995.00 in the base configuration. You'll get 10 IBM rack servers for the same price. In a clustered enterprise situation 20 3GHz Xeon will perform better than 2 900MHz UltraSPARC. Especially if we are talking Java.

Just as SGI was faster in the absolute high-end, so is Sun. The E15k is a monster. For some very specialized applications, this may be the only way to go. But for the very large majority of systems being purchased, a simple x86 server will do, especially if you can cluster it. This is where Sun is loosing the grip. Earlier you had to have a SPARC machine for advanced enterprise computing. These days are over, just as you had to have a SGI to run 3D software.

Now they are competing head to head with Dell in the x86 arena. This is a bold move. Wonder how long they will last.

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Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by sisukapalli1 · 2003-05-20 05:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

SGI ditched their core IRIX. They started moving towards NT on their machines. So, the analogy does not apply directly here.

Furthermore, regarding competing with Dell in the x86 arena, the redhat/sun/oracle partnership has some chance of becoming stronger than redhat/dell partnership.

Well, we will have to wait and see. I think sun is a good company -- and teaming up with oracle and redhat can't be a bad move at this point.

S
Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by phraktyl · 2003-05-20 05:21 · Score: 5, Informative

I've actually been looking at Sun's new entry level servers, the v210 and v240 servers.

The v210 starts at $2,995US, and the large configuration, with 2 1Ghz UltraSparc IIIi processors, 2GB of RAM, 2 36GB 10,000RPM SCSI-III drives, and 4 10/100/1000 network intarfaces comes in at $5,795US. I've seen comparible x86-based servers for more than that.

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Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by BWJones · 2003-05-20 05:21 · Score: 4, Interesting

Just as SGI was faster in the absolute high-end, so is Sun. The E15k is a monster. For some very specialized applications, this may be the only way to go. But for the very large majority of systems being purchased, a simple x86 server will do, especially if you can cluster it. This is where Sun is loosing the grip. Earlier you had to have a SPARC machine for advanced enterprise computing. These days are over, just as you had to have a SGI to run 3D software.

Actually, I am seeing a number of folks either 1) migrate to or 2) seriously consider Apple's Xserve for purposes sort of in-between. The Xserve runs UNIX, it is absurdly easy to manage, they are cheap, and give pretty good performance especially when code is optimized for Altivec. Add to that the power consumption (or rather lack thereof), and for large numbers of servers, the Xserve becomes even more attractive in terms of lower electricity and cooling costs.

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Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by maitas · 2003-05-20 05:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

> In a clustered enterprise situation 20 3GHz Xeon will perform better than 2 900MHz UltraSPARC. Especially if we are talking Java.

Well... show me one real application benchmark (like SAP or ORACLE apps., not TPC-C) where 10 one CPU machines has 9x times the performance of single of those same machines and I belive your speach. Currently, there's now paralell database that supports massive inserts using more than 2 nodes.
Clearly http://c-jdbc.objectweb.org/ looks promising, but there's still the problem of "order by" queries, since eahc node will answer its own order and the final appended result won't be valid.
Latency is the name of the game, with Ethernet in 10s of miliseconds and memory in the 10s of nanoseconds, there will always be a huge penalty for sincronization through network.
There's alway ways to add throughput (http://geocities.com/feromus/db-scalability.html) but latency will always have to increase...
Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by EinarH · 2003-05-20 05:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

Mod parent up, nail on head.
To me it looks like Sun x86 are competing with Sun SPARC with this move.
Who wants to buy a Sun Fire V240 at $6495 when they can this Sun Fire V65x at $4595?
Lets look at the specs:
V240 (SPARC),2U 2*1GHz UltraSPARC3, 1 MB Cache pr.CPU, 2 GB RAM max 8GB, 2 x 36 GB max 4, 4 x1Gb Ethernet, Solaris 8.
V65x (x86),2U 2*3GHz Xeon, 512 KB Cache pr.CPU, 1 GB RAM max 12GB, 1 x 36 GB, max 6, 2 x1Gb Ethernet, Solaris 9 or Linux.
Maybe the SPARC have better "troughput" for some applications, but it looks as if the V65x is better overall especially for CPU intensive tasks.
Since the volume of total SPARC CPU's will go further down as more Sun machines are sold with Intel CPU's they will become even more expensive.

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Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by zrm8y5m02 · 2003-05-20 05:34 · Score: 2, Interesting

Sun has always been competing with itself - they are notorious for canibalizing its own sale with a new product. After all, it's not that surprising, considering that if they don't do it themselves, someone else will.
Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by u19925 · 2003-05-20 05:37 · Score: 4, Insightful

Not true. The SGI didn't have and still doesn't have IRIX on X86, so they couldn't migrate their customers successfully. If I am installing Linux or Windows on X86, why should SGI matter? On the other hand, if you need Solaris X86, it does matter. Thanks to SCO, Sun's importance is even higher. This is number one difference between DEC, SGI, HP migration to PC and Sun's.

SGI also didn't have SGI proprietary software installed free on their x86 boxes. OTOH, Sun includes StarOffice, JDK, App Server etc.

SGI was more expensive than Dell, HP etc... I just compared Sun offering and found that they are cheaper than even Dell.

SGI x86 hardware (initial) was proprietary. I remember stock Linux would not install on them. Sun hardware is same as rest of X86.
Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by iomud · 2003-05-20 05:55 · Score: 3, Informative

I agree, it will even be a more compelling product once the 970 comes out and we see improved io with very large memory configurations.
Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by KingRamsis · 2003-05-20 06:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

but it looks as if the V65x is better overall especially for CPU intensive tasks.

Well x86 are CISC processors while Sparcs are RISC processors so you cant just judge by the clock speed alone, they are fundmentally different, another thing ...the architecture itself is different. the x86 architecture has indeed evolved a long way from the single user machine to the server land BUT a SUN is a SUN, did you ever wonder why is there a 2K$ gap between the lowest end Sparc and the highest end x86 machine of the same class ?.
Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by CatOne · 2003-05-20 06:30 · Score: 3, Interesting

The IO on the box is already amazing, for large file transfers/etc. And if you want disk speed, hook up an Xserve RAID and run a 7 disk SCSI 5 array. Benchmarks are showing 210 MB/second *sustained* for reads and writes.
Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by joeykiller · 2003-05-20 07:07 · Score: 5, Informative

Because people in purchasing and management are stupid. There hasn't been a Sun worth the premium since the SS20.

Actually, I don't know if I agree with you about Sun not being worth the premium.

We run a very large web site that mainly consists of cheap Intel based hardware. But at the core of it all we've always used Sun servers with Solaris. Sure, the Sun servers have always cost us 10 times the price of comparable Intel hardware, but the Sun hardware comes with two things the Intel hardware does not:

1) The hardware (and the OS) is remarkably stable. One server ran for five years under heavy load the entire time without needing any maintenance. In the same time period we had to replace a lot of the Intel hardware.

2) In the unlikely event that something actually breaks, even if it's at 2AM in the morning, a guy comes rushing in and repairs the machine. The most amazing thing is that he always seems to have the right spare parts stored away, just in case. It's a fantastic service, and when you run a large scale, business critical operation, that kind of service is _extremely_ valuable.

And although this has nothing to do with hardware, there's (for me) an important point that concerns the OS too:

3) Even when upgrading the OS from 2.6 to 9, old software and strange old Apache modules (which we have to continue using, even though it's developer has stopped supporting them a long time ago) keeps working. I can't think of many Linux binaries from 1997 that would work for me out-of-the-box on a modern distribution today.

I'm not saying Intel hardware or Linux is bad, but I say that there are a few cases where the safety that overpriced Sun hardware can give you, gets more or less priceless.
Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by christophersaul · 2003-05-20 07:28 · Score: 2, Informative

It depends. The 210/240 run Solaris for Sparc, which is a great OS. The internal system bandwidth is higher than the Dell and you get 4 Gbe NICs as standard, plus it'll go up to 8Gb of RAM.
Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by sean23007 · 2003-05-20 07:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

Unfortunately, that is exactly Apple's biggest problem: they're always about to release something newer and better, to the point where one would hesitate to purchase their current product. Although a company is in good shape if repeated excellent releases can be considered a problem...

--

Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Re:Sun is taking the same route as SGI by drunkenbatman · 2003-05-20 07:32 · Score: 2, Informative

Actually, I am seeing a number of folks either 1) migrate to or 2) seriously consider Apple's Xserve for purposes sort of in-between. The Xserve runs UNIX, it is absurdly easy to manage, they are cheap, and give pretty good performance especially when code is optimized for Altivec.

I've been on the lookout for this (and possibly webobjects uptake) and just haven't seen it... where I have seen xserve adoption has been in certain areas where macs would have been the preferred platform (ie, mac clients) but for many reasons they had to go with a higher-end unix or NT server as apple just didn't have much to offer for that market. There was a small market for people who wanted to use Apple servers but they just didn't meet their needs- so Apple saw a big spike in sales for them when they were released. Heck, some of these people use OS9 with webstar... I'll be more impressed if they can actually grow unit shipments quarter after quarter.

I mean... for 99% of the server tasks out there where are you going to see massive improvements due to altivec? You don't see apache getting big gains from using SSE on x86. Much more important to the xserve's large performance increase over past apple offerings was the new DDR bus, and the just as important new architecture with some mondo bridge chips for cutting the processors out of the equation as much as possible via DMA requests. This is because the bandwidth to the processor is very limited with the current machines in general, and in a dual config they have to share it... cutting them out of the process helped a lot.

That's why you hardly saw any improvement with the new DDR machines for things like photoshop over the past towers, as bandwidth but for server related tasks it helps sooo much.

Add to that the power consumption (or rather lack thereof), and for large numbers of servers, the Xserve becomes even more attractive in terms of lower electricity and cooling costs.

I'd be interested in knowing just what thermal savings there actually are in using an xserve over a competing x86/sparc 1U server. I've used them, and they are NOT cool running machines... they're very hot, and extremely noisy as a quick google will show.

People always think that the PPC is so much cooler than x86, and in general it is... but we aren't talking about 1/4 of the thermals here. Crack open a new P4 or AMD box and there is some big heatsink stuff going on there... kinda funny. Crack open a G4 quicksilver where Apple has been having to essentially overclock the processor and they're ungodly big also, and run really, really hot with huge fans that have made their customers pretty peeved. Just look at these pictures to get an idea of just how big the heatsinks are in new mac towers... and realize that the fans are very, very loud.

So we know that the current G4's are hot as hell, as are the pentiums and amd processors. Apple uses some monster chipsets as well, and it isn't as though apple uses different disk drives or memory... so where are the big thermal savings with the xserve? Companies make custom enclosures like this and this just to make them run cooler and quieter... I doubt people would spend the money on them if there simply wasn't a problem.

Now if you were talking about something like this... gotcha. But they're a whole different ball of wax.

Don't get me wrong- the xserve is cool, and a lot of the points you make about it are valid... as are things like this (largest xserve cluster i know of). But it isn't a miracle worker and it isn't a cool and quiet server.

Why not.. Follow SGI by acomj · 2003-05-20 05:06 · Score: 4, Funny

Wow.. I mean it worked so well for SGI, its a wonder everyone doesn't realease servers like this..

This could make life easy for redhat users by sisukapalli1 · 2003-05-20 05:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

Having the latest versions JDK and also J2EE SDK built in with the system may mean that the Apache Tomcat/ant and other things will also come bundled with redhat (and most likely pre-configured just like mod_perl and mod_php).

A brand new installation of redhat can then run things like servlets, jsps, etc., just like we can now run mod_perl and all that without end users having to build and install it.

S

Re:This could make life easy for redhat users by chez69 · 2003-05-20 05:14 · Score: 2, Informative

two of those CDs are source.

--
PHP is the solution of choice for relaying mysql errors to web users.

sun becomes a commodity vendor by havaloc · 2003-05-20 05:07 · Score: 2, Interesting

Let's see. Sun decides to release commodity hardware with the option to take commodity software, and charge a non-commodity price. So what makes Sun better than say, Dell, HP or the many other commodity vendors? Sun will be finished at this rate.

Re:sun becomes a commodity vendor by teeker · 2003-05-20 05:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

Because not only is Sun competing with similar hardware, they are selling it for a good price. After owning examples from both manufacturers, I would bet on Sun's hardware quality (x86 or otherwise) over Dell's any day of the week. For the same price, I'll pick Sun every time.

HP/Compaq? They're in the same league as Sun (HW quality-wise), but just spot-checking one of their ProLiant servers against the v65 configured similarly, the Sun machine is a little cheaper (no OS selected on the Compaq). Close enough to consider both. Again, after working for a company that has owned both, I still lean towards Sun as far as general hardware goodness. Hopefully this new kit lives up to that reputation.

That's what makes Sun able to compete in this market. Good hardware at a competitive price. Obviously the rest of the "commodity vendors" find it worthwhile to be in business.

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teeker

Re:Who'd have thought? by saintjab · 2003-05-20 05:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

How is this going to hurt the MS strangle-hold over the desktop environment? Neither SUN or RH could compete with MS for the desktop; why would the two together be any different? If the two were to partner up and dump huge amounts of capital into developing a more robust and usable desktop there may be a chance.. But I doubt seriously that this is their intention. This may put a ding in MSs armor, but it won't affect their overall control of the desktop arena. But that's just my worthless $0.02.

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"Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs" - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

Sun's new move... by bsdparasite · 2003-05-20 05:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

Sun's new move is good enough for them to get into the x86 server space. I don't think anyone at the enterprise level is replacing all their SPARCs quite yet, even though the average x86 user thinks that's the way to go for servers. And when enterprise users think of a good vendor to do hardware business with, they might as well go with Sun. I also don't believe all the hype that predicts the death of every other form of Unix other than Linux. Solaris is a solid platform, and will continue to be until Linux can perform SMP like Solaris, handle I/O banks like Solaris.

"Free your OS"

Price Comparasion by Deathlizard · 2003-05-20 05:23 · Score: 5, Informative

IBM's 1U Server
Sun's 1U Server

At least they are price competitive with IBM. I'm not too sure about Dell but it's a start.

--
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!

Re:Price Comparasion by t482 · 2003-05-20 08:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

No big companies pay list price for IBM stuff. Larger customers get a 20-40% discount.

Dell also discounts off list prices.

Anthony

Re:SGI didn't see the signs by Anonymous Coward · 2003-05-20 05:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

Actually it was the incompetent management of Mr. Beluzzo who wanted to force feed NT down SGI's throats. SGI had long moved from the "graphics gravy train" and were making inroads in the Super and server markets. Mr. Belluzzo or whatever the spelling of his name is tried to move towards NT when SGI still had a technological lead, plust it made disasterours alliances with Microsoft (they gave tons of IP to Redmond for mere peanuts).

Incidentally Belluzo left SGI after almost running it to the ground, and jooined Microsoft right away, some people think that he was on M$ payroll even while he was destroying, er I mean managing SGI. Coincidende?

Every major company that has got in bed with M$ and based their business on NT offerings is either dead or dying: Intergraph, DEC, etc. etc..

RedHat + Sun Java = w00t by Znonymous+Coward · 2003-05-20 05:27 · Score: 4, Funny

RedHat will also start shipping Sun's Java with their distribution

w00t. One less thing I have to do after install.

--

Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.

Redhat abandons idealism ? by vinodh · 2003-05-20 05:28 · Score: 2, Interesting

Isn't this the same Redhat that refused to ship KDE because QT was not free software ?. When did java become Free Software ?

But how could this be??? by SashaM · 2003-05-20 05:28 · Score: 4, Funny

Wasn't it a well established fact that Except for SCO, none of the primary UNIX vendors ever developed a UNIX "flavor" to operate on an Intel-based processor chip set.

Re:But how could this be??? by stox · 2003-05-20 06:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

I must have been hallucinating, then, when I had AT&T System V/386 boxes all over the place, Sun 386i's, and Altos's. Well, that was the 1980's, and I guess SCO can't remember back that far..

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"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "

Sun cheaper than Dell? by u19925 · 2003-05-20 05:30 · Score: 3, Informative

for the first time, apple to apple comparison shows sun cheaper than dell. i selected sun v65 and tried identical system at dell. dell doesn't give 3.06 GHz in 2U rack, so i selected 2.8 GHz. This is 600 cheaper. However, Dell charges $600 for upgrade from 2.6 to 2.8, so their upgrade from 2.8 to 3.06 would have been higher than 600 (upgrade from 2.4 to 2.6 is 200, 2.6 to 2.8 is 600). dell comes with customer installed RedHat Advanced Server while Sun comes with Solaris 9 and both are atleast comparable system (to be frank, RH profession is cheaper. but i am aware of several server apps which require RH AS patches and won't be certified on RH Pro).

Re:Who'd have thought? by MAXOMENOS · 2003-05-20 05:30 · Score: 2, Interesting

This could be the combination that breaks the Microsoft desktop hegemony, if Sun and Redhat market it correctly toward that end.

Not in your lifetime. RH just isn't a good desktop distribution; Mandrake is much more polished and has fewer bugs. RH's real strength is in an enterprise envirionment. Similarly: Java is pretty weak for desktop apps (a survey of AWT, Swing and SWT should bear this out) but it's perfect for web interfaces and business logic.

The real fight is in the server world. Java + RedHat Linux is a winning combination, if they can get it right.

--
Finding God in a Dog

Stop the presses, misleading info... by Znonymous+Coward · 2003-05-20 05:35 · Score: 4, Informative

I just read the fine print... Suns JVM will only ship on Red Hat's Enterprise Linux Product.

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Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.

Might help get x86 into Sun-only shops by djh101010 · 2003-05-20 05:37 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'm in a corporate environment where trying to get Linux or *BSD into the data center is an uphill battle. If the box comes from Sun, and runs Oracle, that makes that argument a whole lot easier for me. Even if it's more expensive than commodity hardware, they do have a deserved reputation for solid hardware, and I can use the logic that if Sun is willing to put their name on it, they're willing to back it up. I'm building a support system that's going to need it's own database; this box is worth looking into, for me.

Re:Might help get x86 into Sun-only shops by crotherm · 2003-05-20 06:45 · Score: 3, Interesting

I work for a rather large aerospace corp whose name name starts with a B, and we still do not have a real linux road map. With SUN putting its name on low cost servers, hopefully this will make it that much eaiser for me to get linux in here and stop the windows server advance in the machine room.

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK

Ahh, the final nail in the coffin called Sun. by LibertineR · 2003-05-20 05:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

I hope Sun notices the smoldering carcass of Silicon Graphics on the side of the road they are now traveling down. Happy to see that the death of this horribly managed beast is not too far off.

"Hey, not enough people are buying our most profitable hardware! Lets give them MORE reasons to think about buying something else!!!" - Scott McNeely.

Captain Ahab is not going to do down with the ship until he has managed to feed the White(Wintel) Whale his entire reason for being. Thank you, Scott. We hardly knew ya. I hope you Sun employees out there know how to tread water, and while you are at it, try to keep those resumes dry long enough to get them distributed.

Re:Ahh, the final nail in the coffin called Sun. by stratjakt · 2003-05-20 05:59 · Score: 3, Interesting

Sun, like others, looks to be making the switch towards a more software and service oriented company, and less on the hardware. I've had no first hand experience, but from what I've heard, their support is second to none.

So these things are competitively priced, and if they come with useful support by people who actually know what they're selling and building (unlike Dell who no doubt has those moronic interns answering the phone), then they could definately make a go of it.

But the writing on the wall is that all of these specialized architectures are doomed to obsoletion. Commodity hardware is ever faster, fast enough to handle what were previously 'big iron' chores.

--
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Re:Ahh, the final nail in the coffin called Sun. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-05-20 06:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm so bored with this same theme over and over again. Why don't you all stay in your own thread and keep your comments to yourselves.

Sun selling x86 has nothing to do with competing with Dell and everything to do with selling big kit. It's about competing with HP and IBM who can offer more flexible solutions, i.e. small web/app servers talking to huge database servers. Big kit is Sun's core business now. This is what it has to protect.

Likewise, as another writer writes, it's a way to keep Sun only shops from straying away. More and more companies are installing Linux in the low end - fact. Sun doesn't want another vendor in there selling Linux boxes, which might mean losing other sales later in the mid/high end.

The One Vendor Solution by Greyfox · 2003-05-20 05:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

Folks like to stay on one vendor whenever possible, since it simplifies accountability issues. If you're buying big iron from Sun anyway, it may be worth picking up the mid-range and desktop from them as well. Chances are, that'd lower support costs, make it easy to find the phone number to call when something breaks and normalize quality of support. If Sun's support desk is better than Brand X (And I can tell you first hand that Brand X support sucks,) that alone might make it worth dropping a couple extra grand per machine for the brand name.

Of course, they will be trying to beat both Dell and IBM at their own game. SGI was at the last Linux Expo I went to (A few years back now) and during their presentation I was struck by the fact that they were trying to beat IBM at their own game, and I knew IBM was going to end up being the better player. Sun has more market share, extreme java expertise and a full range of machines to choose from, so I think they have a much better chance than SGI did.

--

I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

Red Hat produces more than one product... by aksansai · 2003-05-20 05:43 · Score: 2, Informative

Be mindful that Red Hat attempts to provide an array of software and services to their customer base - this includes the mainstream (read: free) distribution that contains GPL (or near-equivalent license) software.

Otherwise, Red Hat produces other distributions (like Advanced Server and Enterprise Server) that might contain proprietary (read: not so free) code and software that may require additional licenses.

The spirit is in open-source - but customer wishes also pay the bills.

--
Ayup

Re:wow by andy1307 · 2003-05-20 05:43 · Score: 3, Funny

they had the "One" platform

Sun-One as in Sun and their stock price a year from now...

Wow.... Java by Kurtv · 2003-05-20 05:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

Like it isnt easy enough to download it and unpack it on your own.....

Unfortunately... by moogla · 2003-05-20 05:49 · Score: 4, Informative

While it is a very cool system... (incl. the 4 network interfaces), 1 GHz UltraSparc IIIis are slow, and they don't have the extra benefit of tons of cache compared to the regular US3. The RAM is only SDRAM (still), and 72GB of space is paltry.

So, if you absolutely need a SPARCv9 architecture rackmount, this is the way to go. But featurewise it falls short of say an Altus 140 from Penguin Computing, or even a 1000E if you want 64-bit. And Peng. Comp. is expensive as far as that kind of thing goes.

That being said, the small Enterprises are quite cool, but they aren't as cost effective. It helps if your organization has a pre-existing agreement, and can get you a break.

--
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE

Re:Unfortunately... by raptor21 · 2003-05-20 08:40 · Score: 2, Informative

The RAM is only SDRAM (still)

I believe the USIIIi have a built in 266MHz DDR controller. The ram is 266 MHz DDR.

Re:Oracle because... by KingRamsis · 2003-05-20 05:57 · Score: 2, Informative

I agree 100% as much as I love to see mature open source databases with enterprise featuers I got to admit that it is still not coming anytime soon.
IIRC 6-7 months ago a marketing person from Oracle came to our company to discuss if Oracle will be suitable for our next development project, our customer contracted us to develop an online electronic components database with over +20 Million component with all their information, spec sheets. In the first year the database is expected to reach 0.7TB.
I recall asking her that we plan to implement heavy server side logic in stored procedures, and she said "if it couldn't be done with Oracle then it can never be done", you get to love Oracle's marketing people but technically she was right.

The only ready-today open source database that comes near Oracle (actually it is equivalent to Oracle 7) is SAPDB and what drives me really nuts is that the open source community ignores it completely in favor for something like MySQL (not that something is wrong with MySQL).

They don't care that Sun Java is non-free? by epukinsk · 2003-05-20 06:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

Correct me if I am wrong, but Sun Java is non-free, right? They don't make source releases and their license certainly isn't OSI approved. I thought Red Hat was all about squeezing non-free software out of its distro? From their mission statement:

"Red Hat believes that software infrastructure should be free. To that end, we are sharing our infrastructure technologies with the intention of establishing a common, open standard platform for software developers." [1]

Is Java really a free, open software infrastructure?

Erik

[1] http://sources.redhat.com/mission.html

Re:They don't care that Sun Java is non-free? by Wesley+Felter · 2003-05-20 06:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

Red Hat only cares about open source for their regular distribution; for Enterprise Linux they're willing to make an exception. I wonder if they're going to continue to include IBM's JVM in RHEL, though.

Sun x86 servers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-05-20 06:04 · Score: 2, Funny

Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!

Could Java be to blame by jefmsmit · 2003-05-20 06:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

Its interesting to think that it could be Sun's Java that is to blame for the demise of Sun hardware to some extent. Many server sales are now for people needing servers for J2EE applications which tend to scale out instead of up. Why spend significantly more on Sun hardware to scale out when you could just throw more X86 cluster nodes at the problem and achieve similiar results for less money.

Routeness by fm6 · 2003-05-20 06:20 · Score: 4, Informative

You're picking up on one little parallel (both sell x86 boxes) and inflating it into a grand paradigm. The differences are more to the point:

Sun sneers at x86 workstations. SGI would like to sell x86 workstations, but waited too long to enter the market.
Sun used to talk about doing Itanium boxes, but lost interest. SGI's put a lot of effort into its Altix servers.
Sun has an x86 rackmount business, SGI does not. Though I often wonder how serious Sun is about this business. I've noticed that people who were customers when it was a separate company called Cobalt are not happy with the new management. And you'll notice that Sun has two or three Sparc rackmount models for every one x86 model.
Sun still has a huge Sparc development operation, and still uses Sparc exclusively in most of its products. SGI has spun off MIPS, and supposedly plans to give "commodity" systems equal priority -- though MIPS-based systems still dominate their product line.

Re:Routeness by SLot · 2003-05-20 11:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

Sun has an x86 rackmount business, SGI does not. Though I often wonder how serious Sun is about this business. I've noticed that people who were customers when it was a separate company called Cobalt are not happy with the new management. And you'll notice that Sun has two or three Sparc rackmount models for every one x86 model.

While I know you are talking about the Raq's, a lot of the earlier models from Cobalt are still around - Raq2, Qube2 & 2700. And you were right, I got so sick of waiting on patches after Sun bought Cobalt, I did the only thing I could. I put debian on my Qube2 and quit caring about what Sun did. :) Of course, this guy went with NetBSD, but hey, either way, whatever Sun does or doesn't do is what Sun does or doesn't do. I don't care anymore. :) And if you are interested in what I did with my qube, poke around in the forums on my website.

Re:1 word by oldmanmtn · 2003-05-20 06:38 · Score: 2, Interesting

OK, let's assume for a second you actually can build a rackmount server with exactly the same specs for less. Can you build 200 of them?

Sun isn't getting into this market to sell individual systems for people to run in their bedroom / offices. They are in the market to sell these in multi-rack installations to run the web servers that are attached to the clusters of Sun Fire 4800 app servers, which are attached to the failover-capable pair of 15Ks running Oracle on the back end.

Now, lets see you whip up a 72-way 576GB machine with over 100 GB/s of local memory bandwidth.

--
- Old Man of the Mountain ---- "I want to disturb my neighbor"

Two Words by jtharpla · 2003-05-20 06:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

Hardware RAID. Dell sells Intel boxes with it, HP sells Intel boxes with it. Why should I consider Sun without this? I know Dell's Hardware RAID isn't the best performance, but it's great for availability--actually I prefer's HP's (er, Compaq's) RAID controllers the best. What does Sun bring to the table to compete?

Re:wow by adam872 · 2003-05-20 06:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

I think this is actually a smart move on Sun's part. For several years, Dell, IBM, Compaq have been taking away market share at the low end from Sun. Now they at least have a product that can compete in the commodity space, where price is the overriding factor. It also means they have products all the way from the low end to the mainframe class like the E15k. Even if they only sell a small number of boxes, it will be better than they have been getting before.

As an IT manager, this is great, because I can buy Sun everything if I want to, which makes purchasing and maintenance easier. I can also push for a better volume discount if I want. Better still, at the low end, there's no vendor lock in, as I can run Open Source software under Linux. I also get the choice of Solaris x86 or Redhat. My experiences with the build quality of Sun equipment would give me some confidence too.

I think this is good for the customer and Sun. About time, I say...

Competing Solaris against Linux by HighOrbit · 2003-05-20 06:57 · Score: 5, Interesting

are we going to see the end of solaris soon?

Absolutely not the end of Solaris. Sun is shifting some of their focus (if not most) from producing hardware to being a software and services company. Although this was announced along with the Red Hat deal, this is actually an attempt by Sun to compete Solaris against Linux at the low end. Sun is basically admitting and re-acting to what people have been saying for months (if not years) - Linux has been eating at Solaris by replacing high-cost sparcs with low cost x86.

The Red Hat deal is an obfuscation. The real aim here is to co-opt Linux by having current Solaris shops stay with Solaris. Lots of these shops that would have replaced the Sparc/Solaris platform with Linux are now going to be induced to stay with Solaris on x86. Sun figures that it is better to sell Solaris services without Sparc than to sell nothing at all.

Up until now, Solaris on x86 was always a "redheaded stepchild" at Sun. The hardware support was terrible and limited (very few video cards, for example). Hopefully, Sun will now give x86 good hardware support.

Re:Competing Solaris against Linux by Anonymous Coward · 2003-05-20 08:07 · Score: 2, Interesting

Up until now, Solaris on x86 was always a "redheaded stepchild" at Sun. The hardware support was terrible and limited (very few video cards, for example). Hopefully, Sun will now give x86 good hardware support.
I don't think they will. That's what the RedHat deal is for. Sun's story is pretty simple: If you want the latest/greatest/cheapest hardware, run Linux. If you want high reliability/cost, run Solaris86 on "approved" x86 hardware (Sun's or HP or Dell). If you want maximum reliability, run Solaris on SPARC.
Re:Competing Solaris against Linux by akuma(x86) · 2003-05-20 09:32 · Score: 4, Informative

I agree that this is a good way for Sun to make money in the computer business. Solaris is better than Linux at certain things and that will differentiate Sun enough for customers to go with them.

Beware the Linux distributions that come out of Sun. It is in their interests to make it look bad compared with Solaris. They tried the same thing with x86 Solaris. They made it so crappy to try to convince customers to switch their hardware from x86 to Sparc.

Hardware (servers in particular) are becoming more and more commodity-like as standard components work their way up the enterprise stack. Sun can't play there, they're too inefficient compared with a company like Dell that has much lower overhead - Dell has minimal inventory and just about 0 R&D cost. In a commodity market the leanest players win and Sun is a big fat pig.

Go with software and services. It works for IBM.

I'm looking at buying one of thse v65x boxes... by smkndrkn · 2003-05-20 07:04 · Score: 2, Interesting

...in order to move a small production machine off aging hardware. The price is in-line with other 2U rackmount servers from Dell and IBM and probably a better deal than sparc hardware with the same specifications. The fact that we'd be running Intel + Linux on this machine as opposed to sparc + solaris is a huge benefit. That coupled with the Sun support services (which I think are prett good. Just like all support programs there are problems but as a whole its worth having) makes these new servers VERY attractive.

Now I have to convince my department to try this out...shouldn't be much trouble considering its $8,000.00

--
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========

Re:Why Oracle? by NineNine · 2003-05-20 07:10 · Score: 4, Funny

And people don't need Oracle databases. Most of the free SQL flavors work just fine, thank you.

Give me PostgreSQL or MySQL any day over Oracle crap

Let me guess... you're 18 and haven't had your "introduction to Relation Databases" class yet, right? Kid, go away, you're bothering me.

Sun 386i by dprice · 2003-05-20 07:16 · Score: 2, Interesting

Back in 1988, I remember seeing x86 based Suns running SunOS. It wasn't called Solaris back then. SPARC RISC based workstations weren't available then. The bulk of the Sun workstations were Motorola 68xxx based. Sun came out with an 80386 workstation called the 386i.

I had the opportunity to touch one when they first came out. A coworker was all excited that they were moving all their CAD software to the 386i, and he took me to their lab to show me the new machines. I wiggled the mouse, and it immediately crashed. That was the extent of my exposure.

As far as I can tell, the Sun 386i flopped. Linux was not around yet. SPARC came along a couple years later, and Sun migrated totally to SPARC. Perhaps their first attempt at x86 was a good idea, but poorly executed.

JDK or JRE on Red Hat? by nedron · 2003-05-20 07:19 · Score: 2

Hopefully, Red Hat will be shipping the JDK, not just the JRE. Generally, the only thing I have to do to a system after installation (aside from system updates) is installing Sun's JDK.

It's too bad Red Hat didn't do this previously as it would have saved people a lot of trouble (particularly when they didn't realize they were using kaffe rather than Sun for java).

-David

--

* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.

Re:Focus on bus speed by jedidiah · 2003-05-20 07:23 · Score: 2, Informative

Sun already outclasses PC hardware with their SPARC systems. Xeons plugged into Sun's NUMA systems would be interesting but redundant.

These servers address those parts of a customer's application that may not need those spiffy and expensive busses. It is good for Sun to adequately address this part of the business. They need to keep their big box customers from getting distracted when shopping Dell or IBM for pizzabox application servers.

--
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.

Java optimizations? by nsushkin · 2003-05-20 07:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

Does anyone know if Java for solaris/x86 is better optimized than Java for linux/x86?

I know that Java for solaris/sparc has some specific garbage collection options.

Re:SGI didn't see the signs by Anonymous Coward · 2003-05-20 07:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

SGI and DEC were going into the ground long before getting in bed with MS.

These companies were completely proprietary -- everything from the CPU to the Window Manager on their OS. Being proprietary is very, very, very expensive -- and the companies realized this. In the long term there was simply no way they would be competitive with Wintel/Lintel. So they did the only thing they could -- tried to leverage "commodity" technology onto their propreitary platforms and see if they could ride it out for a few years.

SGI also got royally screwed when Itanium was delayed for 4 years. They were left with shitty hardware while the highend got it's last hurrah boost during the dotcom years.

It's funny that IBM's and HP's "successful" Linux/Windows on Intel strategy is really no different than the failed strategies of SGI and DEC. The only reason is that IBM and HP had more money to play with until the market shifted.

This is only for RedHat Enterprise Linux by miniver · 2003-05-20 07:58 · Score: 4, Interesting

If you look at Sun's press release about Red Hat you'll see that Red Hat will be including the JVM with their RH Enterprise Linux distributions ... not with Red Hat Linux, and that Sun will only be supporting RH Enterprise Linux. Why? Because Sun still won't license the JVM for redistribution. I'm not saying that Sun is wrong here (it's their toy, they get to choose the license), but this is what has been slowing the acceptance of Java on Linux with many developers. (Except for corporate Java developers -- they love it, and thus, so do I.)

Sun's trying to balance control of Java against market acceptance, and Solaris against Linux. Sun obviously thinks that anyone who wants Java for Linux will go to the effort of downloading it from Sun, while at the same time they get to differentiate Solaris from Linux by including Java. On the other hand, Sun could hardly sell & support Linux on Sun servers without also including Java; this agreement gives them what they want without letting go of their (perceived) control of Java.

--
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.

Uh-Oh...Sun is going down the SGI path.... by zerofoo · 2003-05-20 09:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

A few years ago SGI decided that the Wintel market was where they had to be. Soon, they were peddling commodity Intel boxes running NT....and it was almost the death of the company.

I see Sun going down that road. Sun needs to learn from SGI's mistake. Their bread and butter was the high-end stuff. The stuff that makes scientists drool. These guys will pay anything for massive number-crunching ability. SGI realized this and decided to drop the low-profit commodity business.

Commodity Intel-Red Hat-Oracle boxes are NOT a way to build a profitable business.

-ted

Re:wow by deaddrunk · 2003-05-20 09:21 · Score: 2, Informative

Same reason the ultra-bulletproof zSeries are set up the same way. Shit happens, and when it hits the fan, you want a spare fan.

--
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?

It's not about the low end. by fleabag · 2003-05-20 10:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

Sun does not really compete at the low end. A 280R at 17,000 GBP (discount yadda yadda) is not really competitive with a Xeon whatever, but that's not the point. It is binary/OS/Firmware compatible with the F15K/6.8K that I will deploy on, and that's why I will specifiy if for a dev box every time.

Granted an x86 box will blow a 480/3800/280/240 into the weeds (probably) - but an x86 does not deliver the power of 72 CPUs on a 15K - or even 24 on a 6800. This is not about the back end - deploying a stateless web farm on x86 is cheap and good - but the back end DB/App server needs power (>24 CPU) and resilience (zero transaction loss fail over), and x86 does not offer the power at this stage.

Re:wow by willtsmith · 2003-05-20 12:06 · Score: 2, Interesting

Can you so SoLinux? How about SolarNux?????

Sun, more than ANY OTHER company is getting their ass kicked by Linux. It's simply no longer necessary to have a SunStation to drive a web server. Standardized PC hardware running Linux is MUCH, MUCH CHEAPER!!!!!

Sun's largest liability may be it's persistance in producing it's own CPU architecture. It may be VERY, VERY fast, but the marketplace for such a specialized platform is quickly evaporating.

Sun has created a sizable market for workstations in higher education environments. However, that could VERY EASILY ERODE with next generation purchasing. The push to standardize on hardware that can run EVERYTHING could very well doom Sun.

Sun needs to create an environment that their legacy scripts/software can run on PCs running Linux. Call it Solarnux if you will. That way they can sell Sun boxes that will fit easily into their traditional environments. At the same time these workstations could plausibly run Lindows to host Windows applications.

Similarly, their are lots of data centers out their that run on Sun hardware. Sheer cost decisions might force a platform switch. Linux keeps Sun in the game. The alternative is Windows2003 which puts Sun out of the ballgame. Why by a Sun box to run Windows2003?

At the higher end, Sun needs to seriously consider whether to keep making SPARC processors. A switch from SPARC to say ... the new IBM PowerPC 970 may seem painful. But losing their high end business is probably EVEN MORE painful. Doing so would free up a lot of $$$ and perhaps make Sun more of an ally with IBM and perhaps even Apple.

A switch of processing platform could bring a license to allow SunPPC workstations to run OSX apps. It could also bring an alliance to provide core services to creative shops that run OSX instead of Windows. In a way their fate is kinda linked.

Regarding SGI:
SGI better become a PURE SERVICES company or face certain extinction. LucasArts decision to buy Dell instead of SGI sounded the death bell for SGI. Their hardware business has been commoditized and they can no longer justify selling $25,000 workstations when a $3000 workstation with an nVidia Quadro card will do the same job.

--
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!

My bad... PC2100 it is. by moogla · 2003-05-20 15:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

Unfortunately, the Sun Fire 2x0 are the only SPARCs with DDR.

The 440 and 880s use quad-interleaved SDRAM at (!) 75 MHz. I think they could ramp up that a wee bit... considering the RAM itself costs an arm and a leg.

--
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE

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