I would really like to see a price/performance comparison of some Sun servers vs a cluster of Linux/BSD servers.
Most people would agree with you (I think) that Sun machines are more scalable than PC hardware. But what I'd really like to see is a head-to-head price/performance comparison of an E220R (around $15K for a medium configuration) and a cluster of PC's running Linux/BSD. I mean, with sub-$1000 1GHz PC's available, you could get 15 PC's for the price of one Sun, and that's not even considering the cost of the software.
It seems to me that low-cost clustered PC's are likely to become more popular as companies begin to realise that they don't have to pay exorbitant amounts of money for high-performance servers. Sun is realising this too. I believe their purchase of Cobalt and the recent release of the Netra X1 range show that they are trying to head off the influx of Linux/BSD into the server market.
I think there's a definite niche for a company building cheap cluster solutions. Beowulf clusters, High-Availability Linux, the Linux Virtual Server Project and MOSIX are all very cool solutions for Linux, they just need to be capitalised on.
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I like the fact that it has no package management.
I like the fact that there are only 6 or 7 startup scripts.
I especially like the fact that it doesn't have linuxconf or webmin.
I basically just like the simplicity.
But by the same token, I completely understand people who like Debian, Redhat or others.
Each to their own - the tenet of Linux.
I would really like to see a price/performance comparison of some Sun servers vs a cluster of Linux/BSD servers.
Most people would agree with you (I think) that Sun machines are more scalable than PC hardware. But what I'd really like to see is a head-to-head price/performance comparison of an E220R (around $15K for a medium configuration) and a cluster of PC's running Linux/BSD. I mean, with sub-$1000 1GHz PC's available, you could get 15 PC's for the price of one Sun, and that's not even considering the cost of the software.
It seems to me that low-cost clustered PC's are likely to become more popular as companies begin to realise that they don't have to pay exorbitant amounts of money for high-performance servers. Sun is realising this too. I believe their purchase of Cobalt and the recent release of the Netra X1 range show that they are trying to head off the influx of Linux/BSD into the server market.
I think there's a definite niche for a company building cheap cluster solutions. Beowulf clusters, High-Availability Linux, the Linux Virtual Server Project and MOSIX are all very cool solutions for Linux, they just need to be capitalised on.
FORTH - the Yoda of computer languages