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Sun's Bold New Ad Campaign
Celeritas writes "Sun is making some noise over their latest x64server entries by doing a fly by over Dell's HQ yesterday. A few pictures were snapped to capture the event. Sun has continued the offensive by running some interesting ads as well as designing some that were rejected due to the controversial content or as Sun calls them 'bold ad concepts'"
Err, have you NOT been reading slashdot for the last couple of days? This is what these ads are all about. AMD Opteron boxes for cheaper than Dell sells em and faster as well. New designs by Andy Bechtolsteim (sic), who is widely regarded as one of the best server designers...
Oh, and I think these boxes are supported by Sun for Windows, Linux (Redhat and Suse) and of course Solaris.
And of course they push Solaris. Some people actually think that it MIGHT be a better Unix that Linux (Moderators, you didnt read that...)
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
What price sheet have you been looking at and from what year?
... all of Sun's x86 servers are certified to run Linux. They wouldn't bother if they thought that Linux sucks.
A Sun Fire X2100 starts at $745 LIST. Go through a reseller and you're guaranteed to get discounts on top of that. These prices that UNHEARD OF for Sun. They have completely slashed their prices down to levels that I never thought I would ever see. I've been working with Sun hardware for 10 years and I've been cursing their outrageous prices for nine of those years as I saw Intel after Intel replace numerous Sun workstations and servers. I've had no excuse to curse Sun's prices in the past 12 months.
If we were talking about the Sun of the past, you'd be absolutely correct. They charged outrageous prices because your were buying the Sun name and the Sun R&D. That arrogance died very recently. Look at any of their x86 offerings, like the Ultra 20, which is also available for less than $900 list.
Half the quality? They offer a 3 year warranty on all hardware. Every other vendor I've had to deal with wants a service contract ($$$) for that amount of coverage. I doubt they'd give that warranty if they thought the quality was such that the systems wouldn't last at least that long. Otherwise, they'd expect to lose a shitload of money to spare parts and customer service calls, which would not be a wise move at all.
Oh, by the way
It's blatantly obvious that you don't have a clue what you're talking about or you just want to bash on Sun for the sake of bashing on Sun.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
How are these ads for Dell? Look at the
specs. The Suns cost 50% less,
and use 66% less power. If anyone did
any investigation (which is often the case when
buying servers), then Sun gets the benefit of
this ad. If, however, buying servers is merely
about name recognition and "branding" then,
yes, Dell benefits. But honestly, home
users do not buy 1U devices. People who
buy 1U devices look at price, performance,
and power consumption. So, these adds help
Sun.
The 2100 is basically a reference design -- the 4100 and 4200 boxes are designed entirely by Sun and are most excellent.
-30-
You act like this is new for Sun. Let's not forget that this is the same Sun that sent a boatload of exterminator trucks to the Windows 2000 launch just to remind everyone that Win2K had 65,000 bugs in it. Or the constant bickering between Sun and IBM.
Not to mention McNealy's comments about HP: "They make great printers!"
Nope, nothing new under the Sun.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
> don't even know what their talking about.
"their" is a possessive, I think what you meant was "they're" or "they are".
no, they "just now" started selling low cost AMD64 servers. They NEVER sold an entry level complete box for 795$ before the latest release. That's the type of market dell held before. IIRC, the cheapest opteron box previously was almost 2k$. Not only that, these new boxes are "all sun" instead of just a rebadged whitebox from a different manufacturer.
that $745 is sans drive and OS - $1295 for the 80GB SATA & Solaris.
That's still half the price of the low-end xServe. Hmmm....
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Nope. I live right next to Dell's Round Rock campus and this (http://www.justanotherpodcast.net/Files/Sunx86Fly oversmall.jpg) is exactly what was flying over around 2 PM.
Without much poking on the Sun web site, I found that the new x2100, an x64 machine like these, use SATA...
I recognize people by their sigs. Is that a bad thing?
Sun would probably say AMD64, since that is what they sell, except that they also want you to run Solaris on your non-Sun boxes, which may have 64 bit Intel x86 processors. They may also want to avoid burning bridges, in case Intel processors become more compelling in the future.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
"x64" is compression of "x86-64", namely the instruction set developed by AMD to extend the capabilities of the old x86 yet again. What was it? 8088 - 8 bit instructions 8086 - 16 bit instructions with 8 bit channel 80386 - Pentium - went 32 bit somewhere in here. For 64 bit, Intel decided to develop a new, more efficient instruction set to get rid of all these generations of crap. That was Itanium. It didn't work as there were no applications, and people didn't want to move across. This opened a window of opportunity which AMD filled. Intel will catchup, but AMD have between 6 and 18 months to enjoy the spoils.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Er, the 8088 and the 8086 were both 16-bit CPUs that took 16-bit instructions. The 8088 was only "8-bit" in that it had an 8-bit data bus, internally it was 16 bits wide.
The 8-bit progenitor of these was the 8080. The 8086/8088 were designed to be assembly-compatible with the 8080, but not binary-compatible. (i.e. you took your 8080 assembly and ran it in an 8086 assembler that was 8080-aware and it would produce working code with little-to-no tweaking).
Cost is still cost no matter where it comes from. And telling the VP that you save them so much a year always gets you brownie points no matter where that savings goes. It doesn't even matter if what you did to save them money actually sucks vs what you did before. As long as they hear a lot of the good and don't noice the bad you are golden.
At anyrate here are some reason why lower power is becoming more and more important. First all large datacenters costs tons to cool. You are talking huge air conditioning units running 24/7. Everytime you add a rack to your server room you come that much closer to having to spend a large chunk of money upgrading your cooling. You also come that much closer to having to upgrade your power systems. Server rooms aren't usually just plug it into wall kind of deal. You actually get large power conditioning in professional datacenters. The point is you don't just save on the power the servers themselves actually use but also on cooling and the power conditioning. Also the less power a server uses the cooler it runs the more you can pack into a rack without worrying about them over heating. That also saves you money cause it means you can put that many more servers in the space you have before you need a cheque to pay of an expansion or relocation to a large facility.
Wikipedia claims that the first 32-bit chip in the x86 line was the 386DX.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I just ordered two hundred of them at 680 bucks each (with hard drive). They're twice as powerful, use less power, and are $40 cheaper than the servers I was getting from Dell.
:)
Oh and yes, we get most of our business from serving porn, and that's what these machines will be doing
There is an ad saying microsoft is less expensive than linux, and in essence better than linux, in every computerworld newspaper I have gotten.
Whats the point of a mature ad campaign that nobody notices. An obnoxious one is almost always better.
That would be a valid point if you were selling soft drinks to teenagers. Then, plublicity is everything. Instead, you are selling servers to people who spend a lot of money on computers. People like that are generally not particularly impressed by childish, insecure ads. While you are allowed to have brash, bold, ad campaings, the general rule in corporate "stuff" advertising is NEVER ADVERTISE YOUR COMPETITION. If you do, the target of the campaign might get the idea that you are tyring a Jedi Mind Trick on him, and figure out that maybe he/she should take a closer look at the company your ad is telling him to ignore.
Ads that extol how great your stuff is are taken far more seriously than ads that say how much your competition sucks.
You can come up with a witty, fun way to do this (IBM's ads come to mind), without resorting to childish insults. (Sun Example: "Their servers run on twice the power and are slow [or something like that]. No wonder their name rhymes with HELL.")
Gimme a break... this is schoolyard recess crap. Most of us outgrew this in fourth grade.
SirWired