[geeks] Shrinking the Sun Farm

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>
>Date: 2007/04/22 Sun PM 04:53:06 CDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Shrinking the Sun Farm

>Sun, 22 Apr 2007 @ 14:27 -0500, Lionel Peterson said:
<snip>

>The 420... I think that's too big for me right now. I'd love to have one
>large Sun to do it all, but the power requirements, size, and heat make
>it prohibitive.

One SPARC to Rule Them All ;^)

The U2 has a 350 Watt PS, generating 683 BTU/hr.
The E420r has a 680 Watt PS, generating 2080 BTU/hr.

As a space heater, the E420r is much more efficient ;^)

Two U2s would use the same power, but generate less heat...

>> 1 Gig. A good alternative might be to look for a Cycle Quad 4-way
>> desktop (essentially an E450 in a U2-sized cabinet (I have one I could
>> shed, for a small price), 
>
>Yeah, I really like 2 and 4 way SMP. It makes things smoother, even if
>you have less raw power than a single modern CPU, and plus it is fun to
>play with parallel programming.

SNMP-baby!

>> or more U2s - the U2s take up to 2 Gig of RAM (Cycle Quad takes up
>> to 4 Gig), and each only accepts two HDs, but a 6 or 12 slot drive
>> cabinet isn't too expensive if more drives are needed).
>
>I've thought about a U80, but they are still pretty expensive.

U80 has a 380 Watt PS, generating 1,300 BTU/hr - a better space heater than the E420r!

>However, it's one of the smallest systems with 4-way SMP, and thus
>desirable.

Agreed.

>Drive cabinets aren't too bad if you get older used units, but the
>drives are still quite expensive.

I have a few of the 6 drive storage "arrays" (JBOD) - a lifetime supply, as I see it.

>What would be really nice is someone releasing a controller for older
>Sun's that supported SATA.

For storage, it's not so bad, but not as a bootable drive - the OpenBoot PROM would have to be altered... Unless, some SATA controllers emulate "standard" IDE controllers... Have to look into that some day...

>Either that, or the industry could start making 7200 rpm SCSI drives
>again. That's all I need most of the time, not the screamers.
>
>I would not mind having a desktop Sun and KVM it with my PC. I guess it
>would be easiest if the Sun in question used PC keyboards and mice.
Newer Suns use USB keyboard/mouse, and PC video connectors - IOGEAR makes Sun/PC/Mac compatible USB KVMs...

Of course, an SB1000 is also nice...

Lionel