[Gllug] Sun hardware/firewall memory

[Ben Fitzgerald]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2004 at 06:43:43PM +0000, Christian Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Dec 2004, Ben Fitzgerald wrote:
> 
> >On Tue, Dec 21, 2004 at 02:57:07PM +0000, Christian Smith wrote:
> >> On Mon, 20 Dec 2004, Ben Fitzgerald wrote:
> >>
> >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 I buy a Solaris based solution from Fujitsu, with support contract, I
> don't care that Solaris is a SUN product. Fujitsu will support me within
> the obligations of the contract, including Solaris.
> 
> 
> >
> >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!
> 
> 
> So, it'll be how much more expensive than an equivalent PC? Given the
> headless support by default, the difference can be saved with a single
> call out to the datacenter to manually debug a boot problem. BIOS problem
> on your cheap PC? Better get in the car.

x86 boxes can have headless support. many do. if the bios totally failed
then you would need to replace the bios chip, but if the openprom fails
on solaris, I believe that would also need replacing. (I believe you can
jump one pc from another but I've never tried this - sounds hairy!)

> Of course, it depends on how much you need the support. The extra $$$ can
> look pretty cheap against a days worth of downtime as you scrabble around
> sourcing parts for the cheap PC, instead of ringing SUN 24/7 and getting
> the parts required and fitted within 4hrs[*].
> 

Why must this PC be cheap? HP are manufacturing and shifting rather
expensive systems with sophisticated monitoring. HP offer support
and quick delivery of replacement hardware. SUN are not the only company
to offer support. That said, my experience of SUN support is that it is
good (I'll forget the time they delivered the wrong disk and I had to
stay until 2am, missing Match of the Day!!!). But HP deliver quickly too.

The HP dl380 boxes are several grand with 4 x 3.2GHz high end x86 chips.
The V440 has 4 x 1.28GH procs. Looking on google a V440 is at least
5,500GBP and the HP is around 2,0000GBP That's quite a difference when
you consider the bang per buck.

> People get the expensive support and redundent, high quality hardware when
> they can't afford the downtime, period. There, SUN, along with the other
> high price UNIX vendors, dick on Lintel based solutions.

Again, you can get x86 solutions that offer redundancy. And you can
pay for good quality disks, scsi controllers etc on x86, don't you
think? Also, large companies that cannot afford downtime have moved
from SUN to x86.

> >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.
> 
> 
> My "in the old days" is based on the SUN kit I have direct experience of.
> Lately, I only have direct access to Ultra5/10s, but the Ultra30/60 seem
> solid, SCSI beasts, equivalent to the SS20 of old, and the SCSI based
> servers seem to be a cut above any PC hardware we have. Just nice details
> like front loading PSUs and card mounted removable NVRAM (or hostid card,
> whatever) are nice touches PCs don't have.

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.

> No, I don't think the sun is setting. The low end V1xx servers look a bit
> cheap and nasty, but even that is relative. We've just taken delivery of a
> V440, and it looks like quality hardware that will take an absolute
> pasting. We'll see how it holds up.

Certainly a robust looking box! Does it really have good hardware in it?
If so, the scsi stuff etc. can be sourced by x86 providers for high-end
customers. Like you said, SUN source it all too! I think there will be a
demand that will see a race to the top in the x86 market (rather than the
earlier x86 race to the bottom).

> In capital costs, SUN can't compete with the price/performance of PCs (at
> least, SPARC based can't), but capital cost can be but the tip of the
> iceberg.

Agreed. But as in my last point, I don't see why we have to be pessimistic
about x86 manufacturers constantly churning out cheaper and less reliable h/w.
The sun market was not as open so the customer didn't drive it. It is now up to
the open market to decide - what makes you think businesses won't go for
reliability through x86 hardware?

Boy - this is a long mail!!! :)

ben
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