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Linux to Replace Solaris at Duke
wwhsgrad2002 writes "At the end of the 2004-2005 academic year, the Sun Solaris computers available in public computing labs at Duke University will be replaced. The replacement computers in these spaces will be Dells, running a version of Centos 3.3 as supported by Linux@DUKE. Pragmatic and technical considerations have driven this change, as Linux continues to gain a greater userbase and more third-party commercial software is made available on the platform. Are other universities eliminating Solaris in favor of a Linux distribution?"
Both Linux and Solaris seem to have their respective merits, and with the OpenSolaris project, it would seem that Sun might be leaning towards the open source world, but this is an interesting choice by Duke, as one might think that a large university such as Duke would perhaps go with something with more corporate backing like with Sun. But Dell also has been pimping Linux to the server market for awhile now...
Yep, and it'll be really outdated by then and will need to be replaced anyway.
Some companies have said that if Sun was doing three years ago what they are doing now (Solaris 10, OpenSolaris, free licensing), they would not have switched to Linux. Consider that Sun still guarantees binary and source compatibility when migrating to Solaris 10 from older versions, while Linux cannot. Linux is very useful, but there are still things that make long-term deployments awkward at times. Mod what you will, but it is true.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Hmm, 1/3 the cost, 1/2 the longevity.
Sounds like a good deal to me!
Because Centos is based on RedHat Enterprise the support lifecycle will be much longer.
I don't know much about CentOs, but I would guess that proprietary apps built for RH run on it without major tweaks to the CentOS file system.
Most Solaris labs are used for engineering and similar technical work, often on proprietary apps distributed in binary for for only 1 or 2 major linux distros. This probably makes support a breeze compared to all sorts of tweaks and hacks to make these apps run under Unbuntu or others.
If something's mission critical then it'll be used until it irrevocably breaks down - witness brand new IBM mainframes running executables compiled in the sixties, just because the customer wants to do the same thing, only faster.
Even VAX machines are still being used, and MULTICS wasn't finally put out of use until the year 2000.
Yes, if you're doing short-range projects with relatively trivial applications a Dell machine running Linux is better value; if you'll still be doing the same thing in a decade you'll want something more upmarket. How many people lived in shitty apartments before they got a nice house?
Sounds like a good deal to me!
I think you're trying to be funny, but it is a good deal - if you buy two in a year instead of one, each at 1/3 price, you pay 2/3 the price - thus saving 1/3 the price. Since failure is unpredictable even in expensive equipment, you're going to buy two of your servers for redundancy anyways (right?) - so the longevity argument doesn't even factor in.
Breaking the 4GB segment barrier. If you ever coded on an 8-bit micro or DOS PeeCee you'll understand the crapness of small memory segements and the frustration and bugs caused.
There are other improvements in Opteron (AMD64) that are nothing to do with being 64-bit (such as the integrated memory controller, Hypertransport, NUMA, advanced superscalar execution) that have their roots in larger systems of yesteryear that intel has yet to catch up with (except in itanic).
And don't get me started on itanic. It's basically an over-grown signal processor whose sole purpose in life is executing SPEC floating-point benchmarks.
Anyway, screw the computer industry, I'm off to do something less boring instead.
Your initial question smacks of the lack of imagination and small-mindedness that condemns 99% of the population to a lifetime of mediocrity.
Isn't beer fun? :-)
Stick Men
I'd be more willing to buy sun if they stopped propping up their reseller channels and just made their real prices available on a web page. Dell (for example) lets me pick the machine I want by choosing parts from a web page and then tells me the price. If I don't like the price I go on to the next vendor. With sun I have to invest time and money just to find out what sun feels like charging, then I have to go back and ask them if they want to change the price. I'm just not interested in wasting time playing games with sun or their resellers.
Yes Sun boxes will last forever, but who keeps them that long? I would rather have a box that will work reliably for the expected lifespan before it is reasonable to upgrade.
You'd be surprised, a lot of universities and colleges have a lot of old hardware, especially Suns.
Why go with Sun when there are 100 other companies that will give me practical experience in programming?
Ouch. That was a real career blunder on your part. I'm sure that you, like many CS grads, assume that you *deserve* a job programming fresh out of school. The reality is that most of us who became professional developers do have to pay our dues in support. And the experience, even in support, at Sun, would have really set you up on a fast track into some good stuff. I hope your current job is somewhere as prestigious and well-respected as Sun and not some tiny Internet-based startup.
I don't respond to AC's.
Presumably your purchasing people are smarter than you and compared these new Dell machines with current Sun machines. Now, Sun's SPARC-based systems are still basically more powerful than Dell's Pentium-based systems. But Pentium-based systems cost a lot less to make, so your company finds its more cost effective to buy more Dell machines to make up the difference in raw processing power.
Sun hasn't forgotten how to make powerful machines. They just don't have the economies of scale to make them cheaply.
SPARC hardware may not be fast relative to an x86 box,
Speed is relative anyway. My Ultra 5 didn't run individual programs as fast as its PC contemporary, but it's multi-processing ability was worth it's weight in gold. Windows absolutely choked on my workload, whereas my Sun kept chugging no matter what I threw at it. Program loading? No problem! Just minimize, keep working, and come back to it when it's loaded. Windows would thrash on that sort of thing.
Got three compiles, two remote X sessions, four netscape windows (in each session), and a StarOffice document open? Pff! As if that will slow an UltraSparc down!
It scares me that I need a modern Windows machine with 50 times the power to produce anywhere near the same experience...
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
How many people lived in shitty apartments before they got a nice house?
While I agree with your point in general, I take contention at your use of the above analogy, at least in respect to American architecture post 1940.
Apartments, by their nature, are most commonly found in urban (regardless of size, village-->town-->city) settings. As such, they exist in densely populated spots and were usually built pre 1940 at a point when the general public cared about quality (both sturdiness and look) of buildings. The apartment's interiors may be lacking, but the building itself has very likely stood for the better part of a century, possibly through several retrofits and extensions that enable it to be a viable living space for people for years to come. Additionally, it is probably located within walking distance of other urban amenities such as food, shopping, and employment.
Contrast this with the average American house. This house was most likely built post 1940 in the desolate sprawl known as suburbia. Like the territories conquered at the end of the expansionist Roman empire, suburbia was not planned and built with a future in mind. Instead, it is the product of supplying product for an immediate desire, in this case for "spacious country living". As a result most suburban houses are constructed of generally low quality -- with some infamous "green lumber" fiascoes -- by developers who have no interest in what the place will be like in 100 years. Even the nicest of these are simple scaled up versions of the same cheap construction with shiny fittings added; the McMansions.
Not only are the physical quality of these buildings significantly lower than those of say, most European cities, but their positioning far from all commercial and social centers forces residents of them to get in a car EVERY time they leave their home. Not only does this increase traffic and pollution, but it also creates noticeable emotional tension in residents, especially those such as teenagers who can't drive and can't therefore get out of the house.
I'm not saying that any given apartment is better than any given house, but the American dream of a "rural house with urban lifestyle"=>suburbia is more like a nightmare.
P.S. - Check out anything on urban planning by James Kunstler. He is a great lover of hyperbole, but manages to squeeze some insight into his works none the less.
"When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers
If you're just trying to point out that rebooting shouldn't be such a big deal, I catch your drift, but there are other issues here, Namely:
#1. What are the ramifications of applying the patch? What applications do they break?
#2. Is my server even going to come back up?
#3. Why should I have to apply a patch for the "base install" tftp daemon that gives remote root anyway? Why did solaris install this? Wouldn't it be better to leave this to the aptly named "system administrator"?
#4. Though the chances of it happening are small, what if my Server A fails during Server B's update/reboot(With all the patching, I have a lot more downtime on the Server A and B...)? Sun is just going to sell me 4 more? Sounds like they're fixing fundamental system issues with bandaids like "multiple servers" and "redundancy".
It's not really a non-issue, quite the opposite.
And what about time? As a system administrator I firmly believe I don't need to spend a majority of my time considering reboots, and I have the ability to do that with systems like debian.
Overall: More software per server=More Security vulnerabilites=Reboots=More Time Invested=Lopsided TCO equation.
That's just in my company, I understand this doesn't apply everywhere, and debian isn't always the right tool for the job.
If you think a big-end database can get by with only 4 GB of RAM you don't know what a big-end database is. Unless you're referring to "big-endian" which has nothing to do with memory size. The ammount of RAM is certainly a limiting factor if you're dealing with lots of data and lots of users at the same time. Maybe no single user or query needs more than 4 billion items, but when you've got hundreds of users and tables with hundreds of rows, space matters.
No biggie really. I love my 105 year old house on 2 acres in northern New Jersey. I can't see my neighbors and the silence is exquisite.
Note 1: I said post 1940.
Note 2: I can't see my neighbors and the silence is exquisite. That doesn't sound like suburbia
The suburban life that I have witnessed (growing up in south-central Pennsylvania) was a soul-sucking existence that had many features that didn't make sense. For example, there is the characature of a "porch" and "front door" that all of the suburban houses have, but are functionally useless since the porch is only 18 inches wide and the "porch/front door" complex is centered on a large lawn with no walkway to it. The real entrance is through the kitchen/garage side-door. So why does the "porch/front door" even exist? I suggest that its function is to make a not so nice house LOOK like a nice house, since they aren't even usable.
I currently choose to live in a modest apartment in an old building right at the center of a small town. Yeah, I hear trucks on the street all night, but I also can walk across the street to the grocery store, the hardware store, and the bank. 10 restaurants and bars are with 3 blocks (8min) walk, and I can walk 15min to work. The other benefit is that I see the same people every day on my walks to and from work and the various stores. In the 8 months I've been in my current location I've met (and chatted with) more people in my community than in my previous 25 years combined.
Having a truly rural life would be great too. Some gardening, raise some chickens, do some consulting over the net from home, etc. Its the bastardization of human life that suburbia entails that I have a problem with. I'm not saying that anyone is wrong to want the things that suburbia purports to offer (large house, good schools, relative quiet, two-car garage, etc). Those things are honest, basic desires.
I do however feel sorry for those who have to live in suburbia because of the additional consequences involved with fulfilling those honest desires; reliance on a car to get anywhere, having to cumulatively waste years of one's life sitting in traffic while commuting, having to play "soccer mom/dad" and drive the kids everywhere since they can't walk home from school/practice/etc, having to drive drunk or find a DD instead of just walking/taxi home from the bar, etc, etc, etc.
"When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers
I just love this shit. It's hilarious. And it always happens, without fail. When everybody brings out their anecdotes about hardware reliability, someone trashes on pretty much everybody's gear, somebody's worked at a place where any given manufacturer's stuff was junk, and someone out there has had any given vendor's stuff work perfectly.
At least everyone can agree that everyone's stuff used to be reliable. They sure don't meake 'em like they used to...
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