[geeks] Ran the numbers - V240

[Lionel Peterson]

The V240 can not run Solaris 11, support ended with Solaris 10. That being
said, neither offers freely-available security updates.

Linux on RPi (or almost any platform) is sparingly documented, as many other
freeware projects are also.

(I would have little interest in deep, system-level documentation, and I am
happily indifferent about closed-source drivers vs open source. Of course,
that's just me, YMMV.)

I have since taken a good look at what's around me, and I found a shallow 1U
x86 Server with a quad-core Xeon and 16 Gig RAM that uses half the power of
the Sun V240 (173 Watts), making my first year cost of operation about $150,
or $2.50/month per VM... that means my two year cost is half that of the Sun
V240 and roughly equal to the RPi - I'd have to operate the machine well into
a third year before the RPi (or similar) solution becomes the lower-cost
option.

Just a few more thoughts on comparing current (RPi), and different legacy
platforms (Xeon x86 or UltraSPARC).

Lionel

On Nov 9, 2017, at 7:45 PM, Mouse <mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG> wrote:

>>> How does reliability fit in?  What is the MTBF for rPi?  (I have no
>>> clue.)
>
> Well, pis usually run Linux; there probably are alternatives, but AIUI
> the pi is not documented enough for any of them to be much good (which,
> if true, also probably means that Linux on a pi depends on binary-blob
> drivers and thus is not truly open source - do any of you know the pi
> well enough to know whether I'm off base here?).
>
> The V240 is at least capable of running something approaching a real
> OS, though, given Sun's penchant for not documenting their hardware
> (and I can't believe Oracle didn't continue that tradition), it may
> well not be cable of anything even as close as Linux-on-a-pi is to open
> source.
>
> How much either of those matters to you, of course, only you can say.
> (They sure would matter to me, though, were they my machines.)
>
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