[olug] Specking out Sun Solaris box(es)

[Phil Brutsche]

IrishMASMS wrote:
> So, to those who are experienced with specking out sun systems my
> quandary: is the SunBlate 150's good enough for our situation, or should
> we go with something more? Something like a SunFire or UltraSparc?
> 
> Any & all comments would be appreciated

Well, first off, they're all UltraSparcs :)  Perhaps you meant the Ultra 
workstations and Enterprise servers...

A SunFire is Sun's latest and greatest.  The V280R (dual processor - 
900MHz, 8MB cache - FC disks) would be a good one.  Everything else 
starts at the $10k+ mark.  Some of the 1U rackmounts might be 
interesting, but suffer some of the problems as the SB150...

A SunBlade 150 won't necessarily make a good server, and will most 
likely make for a slower database server than what you have now (not 
dual capable, small L2 cache for a Sun: only 256kb.  Most other Suns 
start at 1 or 2 MB ), and is IDE only.  It's also a pizza-box chassis, 
meaning running cables for any SCSI hard drives will be tough.

You can see a picture of the insides here:
http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/Systems/SunBlade150/component.top.html

A good choice would be one of these (probably what you were thinking 
when you said "UltraSparc"): the Ultra60 or Ultra80 (2-4 CPUs, tower 
chassis), E220R or E420R (same as Ultra60 or Ultra80 but with 19" 
rackmount chassis & redundant power), or E250 or E450 (deskside, 2-4 
CPUs, dual or triple power).  They all take UW, Ultra2 or Ultra-160 SCA 
disks (the bus is only UW).  All of these systems are available cheap on 
the used market, with support contracts if you talk to the right people.

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at brutsche.us