[geeks] Sun-HOWTO

[Peter L. Wargo]

On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, Ken Hansen wrote:

> I assume they are site-built, much like a mainframe - which produces the
> *largest* pile of packing scrap I have ever seen - every card, every option,
> everything came in a box...

Nope, just the opposite - a Sun Fire(tm) 15K comes in *one* box.  One
*very big* box.  We actually assemble them @Sun, in beaverton, then ship
to the customer site.  I/O (usually racs of T3's) arrive in one big box,
also all ready to go - we connect fiber, networking, and LOTS of power,
then fire up the SC's, then the platform, and get down to business.  The
SC's are set up and ready to go, and we set up one domain with OS.  The
SC's even have images of the OS on them, so you can use them as jumpstart
servers.

Even the early systems are doing well - right now our group goes out on
installs, and works to help local folks and train 'em.  A fellow greoup
memeber and I hold the record right now, for a system delivered on Friday,
and running on Monday (less time than we like, but we got 48 hours of
burn-in/diags done!).  Not bad for a 72-CPU 144G system.  The cool thing
was that the config needed was one big-ass domain, and it was so sweet to
see a swngle OS image boot with that much CPU/Memory.

I'm actually impressed with 'em - they are amazingly easy to get going for
such a complex system.  They essentially take what was good about the E10K
and make it better.  Plus, the 900MHz UltraSPARC III+ is a fast chip...

-Pete