[geeks] Shrinking the Sun Farm

[Mark]

On 20 Apr 2007, at 20:33, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> I'm always looking for ways to save space, and I wanted to ask  
> something
> about Sun's Netra systems.
>
> I have Sun Ultra systems, and I like them, but they are hot and thick.
> Right now I'm running two, and was thinking of getting more, but
> the space is a problem.
>
> I know that rackmount Suns and other servers are thinner, but most of
> them are too deep for my server table. I only have enough depth for
> something like an Ultra 2.
>
> However, I had never really looked at the Netra X1, and just noticed
> that it is no deeper than the Ultra systems.

The Netra X1 is a particularly small example. It's a lot stubbier  
than my T1 105. The X1 uses a 'flapjack' board (which are tiny small  
for a server) and a single IDE hard drive, I dunno how that effects  
the performance?

The T1 105 is all SCSI which has obvious benefits for disk transfers,  
and it holds 2 drives. I'd say the footprint is approx. the same as a  
U60 laid on it's side, but without the height (obviously).

the biggest overiding concern I'd have is if you have to work in the  
same room as the servers for any period of time. 1U rack gear is  
frickin' loud because of all the small, fast running 40mm fans they  
use for cooling. Also Netras are telecoms rack units so invariably  
come sans framebuffers - not an issue as servers - especially as  
occasional user-level access sessions are doable by xdmcp - but if  
you ever needed to push one into a workstation role it'd not work  
that well unless you fitted a PGX32 or similar. Lastly - I think more  
U2s would be a lot cheaper than Netras. In the UK T1 105s are still  
fetching more than I paid a year after I bought mine. Add to that you  
can use SMP on Ultras, which improves any Solaris machine's  
performance greatly for load distribution.

Crazy idea - buy a smaller desk and a 20U rack. You could fit it with  
rack shelves and sit a lot of U2s in it. Sun workstations are all  
equipped to fit racks anyway so there'd be no problems width-wise.

Just my 2 penneth...

-- 
Mark Benson

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