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4-Way Sun Fire V40z Reviewed
Hack Jandy writes "Anandtech has a pretty thorough analysis of Sun's V40z 4-way Opteron server that fits in a 3U. Among some of the more noteable benchmarks include a 2 minute, 30 second Linux 2.6.4 kernel compile! Who would have thought only a few years ago that Sun would be the new champion of Linux and AMD?"
Not that that is a bad thing, but I cannot see any difference between the V40z and this.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
That's pretty fast compared to what I've done: compiling 2.4.27 in Gentoo on a Sun Ultra 2 (2 x 300 MHz UltraSPARC). It took over 90 minutes, and that was without the USB and Bluetooth sections of the kernel, since there's no way the Ultra 2 can make any use of either.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Maybe if Sun hadn't given a ton of money to SCO, but they did so no, Sun is not a champion of Linux.
I wonder how long to kompile KDE. That's the worst part of a Gentoo install for me.
Grrr, any Sybase engineer could tell when the HELL they are going to deliver Sybase ASE on Linux 64-bit for Opteron???
We're just waiting for this at work to move to all this cool hardware! Geez... chalk one more for moving to Oracle!
Since when... (Score:1)
the kernel compilarion speed is a benchmark factor for a server hardware.
because it is something that many home users as well as server admins have actually performed on various machines and gives a better measure of performance to people than some arbitrary benchmark score.
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4 years ago slashdot posted a story introducing the first Dual-processor athlon system and used the linux kernel compilation time as a benchmark.
A little over 4 years ago, a Dual Processor Athlon System compiled the kernel in 2 minutes flat. The kernel was version 2.4.0ac12.
I'm no software/hardware developer, so I'm not going to comment on the significance of this result, but nonetheless I find it interesting that the kernel took less time to compile on a much more modest system 4 years ago. Has the kernel really grown THAT much?
Think about it --- they were using two 1.2ghz 32-bit processors with 256mb of ram opposed to the four 64-bit processors with 8gb of ram in this test, and it still took 20% longer to compile!!!
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I suspect that kernel building does not run in parallel very easy.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Before the Sun lovers go chanting ga-ga-ga about how this will save Sun's sorry ass or how it outperforms their "other" systems , I'd like to put forward some numbers running similar tests against whitebox systems.
/usr/lib/gcc-lib/x86_64-redhat-linux/3.2.3/specs
Configured with: ../configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --infodir=/usr/share/info --enable-shared --enable-threads=posix --disable-checking --with-system-zlib --enable-__cxa_atexit --host=x86_64-redhat-linux
Config: On my 8GB 246 (single processor, whitebox) opteron I get (make distclean etc between steps)
Time / Kernel / Make option
2"12s / 2.4.21 (time make -j5)
3m33.081s / 2.6.4 (time make -j5)
3m31s / 2.6.4 (time make -3)
From anandtech for the 2.6.4 kernel.
2"43 sec V40Z -j5
3"30 sec V40z -j3
4" 34 sec W2100Z -j3
Hmm.. for the 5K I paid for it. I'm happy waiting 50 seconds more.. ( 5K v/s 17K and 3"30' v/s 2"43')
Misc info:..
gcc -v
Reading specs from
Thread model: posix
gcc version 3.2.3 20030502 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.3-42)
make --version
GNU Make version 3.79.1, by Richard Stallman and Roland McGrath.
Built for x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu
-- everyones not everybody and neither is everybody like everyone.
If Apple continues to make MacOS X Server more and more robust, and if they could reduce the price on the XServes, then for many environments why not run MacOS X? From looking through guides to OSX Server, it seems really straight forward to setup and maintain compared to even most Linux distributions and looks like it just might be something that if marketed correctly could at least clobber Windows Server for many small business server needs.
I remember taking a networking class a year and a half ago where we did Red Hat 9 and Windows 2000. Even though I already was comfortable with Linux, it just seemed to be a lot easier to configure than Windows. In fact, I was actually quite amazed at how much harder it was to get Windows to do something server-related through all of the GUIs than it was to do it on Linux. Combine the fact that OSX is a UNIX clone at its core and that it's GUI is well-designed and terribly slick, I just can't imagine why most companies don't even look at it. If kept safely behind a good firewall it should be easy as hell for non-geeks to keep running for basic things like file/printer sharing.
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No... gentoo != good server distro. I am a satisfied gentoo user on the desktop, and I run a very small server (alongside my desktop, just for light personal use). I don't use gentoo for the speed, I use it for the customizability. Portage is a great tool. Ideally, the Gentoo project would make portage a tool which can be put on top of other distros, as they do have advantages. Portage, at the moment, is more or less tied to gentoo, so gentoo is what I use. There are binaries for things like KDE, and besides, it's not like I need everything now. I can be patient unlike some people. That being said, these qualities do not make a good server. You might want something like Debian or slackware for that.
What about this ProLiant DL585 server from HP. It seems very comprable (4 Opterons, 8 or so PCI-X slots, configurable with lots of memory and storage, not to mention a similar price point). There are links to a few benchmarks on that page. Anyone have any experience with the DL585 or similar HP servers or know how they compare to these servers from Sun?
That price is lowball, not fully equiped. In serious drool mode I priced out a Tyan K8Q type mobo (quad Opteron), 4 Opteron 850's, and 32 gigs of memory. On pricewatch thats over $12,000. You still need a case, PS, drives,... and thats not from vendors I would buy from based on their ratings either. Reputable vendors have higher prices. Sun of course gets the volume discount if this takes off for them.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
except risc systems using 'real' unix have always been hardcore and reliable, no crap that evolved from the dos days, and yes i own 4 pc's most running linux, but I still see the attraction of workstation machines
It's a quad-opteron in a 4U chassis. I don't get it, what's so special about that?
I'd be much more impressed with a 1U quad opteron with 32GB of RAM via 16x2GB DDR400 and 1.5TB of storage via 3x500GB drives.
Oh wait. It's already been done. It's called Appro's 1142H, a 1U quad opteron server.