[Gllug] Sun hardware/firewall memory

[Ben Fitzgerald]

On Wed, Dec 22, 2004 at 08:53:11AM +0000, Tethys wrote:
> 
> Ben Fitzgerald writes:
> 
> >x86 boxes can have headless support. many do.
> 
> Strange definition of "many" you have there. In my experience, a
> depressingly small number do.

I guess it's market driven. Perhaps as we see more heavy duty players
jumping on the linux bandwagon we will see manufacturers respond to
clients who demand headless systems (that aren't graphical). The fact
is that you can get headless x86 and it's much cheaper than sun h/w.

> >The dl380 can have a  hotplugable redundant power supply. And hotplug
> >scsi h/w raid disks. Plus ILO - a remote monitoring tool that looks
> >promising.
> 
> Don't get your hopes up. ILO is a typical example of PC engineering.
> Don't give the user what they need, give them something pretty
> instead! Rather than just giving us a true serial console, which is
> all anyone wanted, they've overengineered it, and made remote access
> to the BIOS be via a web browser with a nice GUI interface. So, then,
> that doesn't work when I'm called out of hours and have to try and
> fix things with my Zaurus and a 9600 connection over my mobile phone.
> Meanwhile, I can connect to all of my SPARC machines and manage them
> without problems. No, this isn't a contrived example. It's actually
> happened to me. Sigh.

Yes, a GUI is overkill. It's certainly not of the UNIX design
philosophy. I would prefer a terminal. What about this sort
of solution connected to a terminal server?:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/

No quite ALOM (it doesn't have an IP) but not bad. You could get to it
with your handheld as that seems a concern.

I hope you guys realise I'm not totally rubbishing sun. We use their
stuff and I don't have a problem with it. However, x86 is providing
viable alternatives that (in combination with linux) should worry sun.
In the longer term I believe this could see SUN go under. The primary
factor will be linux, supported by x86 from the wings.

Happy telnetting over the xmas period! Hope you don't have any callouts!

Ben

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