[Gllug] Sun hardware/firewall memory

[Ben Fitzgerald]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2004 at 02:57:07PM +0000, Christian Smith wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Dec 2004, Ben Fitzgerald wrote:
> 
> >On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 08:38:38PM +0000, Adrian McMenamin wrote:
> >> So, what is so great about the Sparc that it cost so much more? To be
> >> honest my impression is that it is a better box than, say the Pentium
> >> 166 that is my firewall (which probably gets better benchmarks), but
> >> then it does have 192 MB as opposed to the 48 MB on the firewall.
> >
> >The hardware is proprietary. If you have a solaris run shop you will
> >pay what sun want, so they charge higher prices. This is one reason
> >sun are on their knees, IMHO :)
> 
> 
> SUN have the least proprietry hardware of any of the UNIX boys. Lets take
> the SUN SS 20 as an example. We'll ignore the many clones you could get
> (Tatung, ROSS etc.)
> 
> CPU - SPARC. Independent specification by SPARC Int. CPUs made by people
>       other than SUN (TI, Cypress, Fujitsu, ROSS)
> 
> BUS - MBUS. Standard CPU modules available from many vendors.
>     - SBUS. IEEE standard interface, with implementations available from
>       many card vendors.
> 
> F/WARE - OpenBoot/OpenFirmware. IEEE standard, CPU independent peripheral
>          drivers. The initial MacPPC OpenBSD port ran completely with
>          CPU independent OpenFirmware FCODE based drivers, IIRC.
> 
> IO - SCSI. Drives and tapes use IEEE standard SCSI.
>      RS232. Need we say more.
> 
> 
> Of course, the kit that sun made themselves was proprietry, but that's the
> meaning of proprietry, just as DELL kit is proprietry to DELL. The higher
> price comes as a result of superior engineering and support, coupled with
> the lower volumes.
> 
> If you are a Solaris shop, there are plenty of alternatives for hardware,
> especially in the old days. Stuff like SCSI devices have a vast choice of
> suppliers.

Christian,

yes, I see your point, but almost all hardware is sourced from suppliers
and brought together to create a product. I'm not saying sun made their
own capacitors for their own motherboards and refused to verify if other
capacitors work with their kit (a silly example but you see what I
mean). If you run solaris on kit you got from a non-sun supplier would
the support be as complete? Not sure it would, but then they can't cater
for all permutations to the same standard - who could. My perspective
here is sun h/w vs. x86, which has a very broad choice that is driving
down prices.

If you get a V100 now you pay a good whack for it and it comes with a
bog-standard pci + ide drive. I believe it's western digital? I wouldn't
describe plugging the cable into the mobo socket as great engineering.
I think you pay nearly a grand for these. I have no axe to grind against
sun, they are okay. And their headless support is great. I just know
that I wouldn't buy one for myself because that's when my value for
money instincts really go nuts!

I think your last comment is telling - "in the old days". Are we agreed
that the sun is setting? Maybe due to a change in thinking (bad hardware
is acceptable, just pile 'em high + sell 'em cheap) or perhaps sun's
customers do not agree that the value sun added in sourcing and
assembling the hardware justified the price of a system. I suspect
it could be a bit of both. Either way, it's looking like sun will not last
too long.

Ben
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