[SunRescue] How FAST is a SUN IPC

[Paul Theodoropoulos]

What I don't understand is why folks run anything other than 
Solaris on SPARC hardware? It goes without saying that Solaris is 
finely tuned to the SPARC architecture. I've been running Solaris 
for years, and I just don't see the shortcomings in it that people 
constantly refer to (e.g. "Slowlaris").

I'm running a national server complex on sun hardware (e4500's, 
ultra 5/10s, and Netra T1's) running Solaris 7 and 8, and it runs 
like top. I can sleep nights. It's plenty fast - my backbone news 
transit server is in the top 200 servers in the world - it's a 
'lowly' ultra 5/333.

I'm not anti-Linux (or xxxBSD for that matter) either. I just don't 
see the point of linux, at least not on SPARC hardware, when 
Solaris 8 is "free" and runs like a bloody bat out of hell.

(for my 'sun rescue' credentials, I have a SPARC 2/Solaris 7 box 
here next to me under my desk, and a SPARC LX/Sol 8; an Integrix 
SPARC 20 clone/Sol 7; and a SPARC 20/Sol 7 down at my office, 
running an assortment of personal websites for 
friends/family/coworkers. I <heart> Sun, so to speak).

At 03:23 PM 7/6/00, you wrote:

>   That explains it.  I know I'm treading on thin ice here...and 
> let me
>state that, while I primarily am a BSD hack, I do have several 
>Linux
>boxes and I love them all dearly...but many people have found that
>Linux performs a bit poorly on sun4c-architecture machines
>(sparcstation1, 1+, 2, IPC, IPX, SLC, ELC).  For much, much better
>than 486/anything performance from an IPX, I'd suggest moving to 
>one
>of the BSDs...NetBSD or OpenBSD will run fine on the IPX.
>
>   I'm not trying to start a flame war, I'm not an anti-Linux 
> person,
>blah blah blah...I've just run a *lot* of hardware in a lot of
>different places and I've seen big differences in 
>performance.  Linux
>is famous for wringing amazing amounts of performance out of even 
>the
>lowest-end Intel box...this is not so on smaller sparcstations.
>
>          -Dave McGuire

-----------------------------------
Paul Theodoropoulos   paul at atgi.net
Senior Unix Systems Administrator
Advanced Telcom Group, Inc.
Santa Rosa, California
Work: http://www.atgi.net
Play: http://www.anastrophe.com