[SunRescue] Suppprt for Sunhelp.com (long)

[Kurt Huhn]

I know a lot of people have expressed support before me, and some will
follow after.  Instead of regurgitating what has already been said by folks
more eloquent and knowlegeable than myself, let me offer my experiences with
Sunhelp instead.

About two years ago I cam across a SparcClassic in the back room of one of
my clients during a junk-tossing session.  Mixed in among the broken
monitors, cracked LCD screens, abandoned Intel 386 boxen, various unused
cables and cords, and trashed office furniture, was this neat little gem
that was obviously a computer of some kind.  Not being one to let this get
tossed even if it was broken, I sat it on my desk.  I was proud of my find
and even mentioned it to a couple of freinds who, being Intel/MS/Novell
engineers like myself, had no idea what it could be.  Just the fact that it
had the Sun logo on it made me think it was something special though, so I
kept it.

As it sat on my desk I couldn't help but wonder, does it work?  However, not
having the knowledge to find out, it continued to sit there for about 6
months being admired only for it's design ingenuity and not for it's more
palpable merits as a computer.  I wanted to learn about it though and
performed a search on the Internet using Altavista (then
altavista.digital.com), and found only one site with enough information to
satisfy me - Sunhelp.org.  A directory of information, housed both on the
Sunhelp website and other websites including Sun itself.  Sunhelp.org also
had mailing lists!  Imagine my luck!

Through careful study of the information on this site I learned all about
the Sparc Classic, the Free Solaris program, Sparcstation 1s (which I also
managed to pickup in the meantime), and the illustrious SparcBook from
Tadpole Technologies.  It was through this site that I learned about Ross
Pennington and his "clearance sale" of sparkbooks.  Saints be praised, I
managed to convince my wife to let me buy a 3GS - and it quickly became my
mobile workstation leaving the Intel laptop at home.

The information housed at Sunhelp helped me weed out the flotsam from the
information stream and provided me with real, useful information concerning
Sun and Sun equipment.  Because of this site I found myself becoming not
just a NT engineer, but a passable Solaris sysadmin - whou would've thought
it?  The information at Sun.com was sorely lacking in information on older
Sun equipment - of the type I could afford at the time.  Without Sunhelp's
help, I never would have been able to learn as much as I did.  Without
Sunhelp that Sparc Classic would never have been turned on, had Solaris 2.6
installed, and taken it's rightful place as my primary Unix workstation.

Not being an Internet "surfer" I appreciated the fact that all of the
information I needed most was accessable through Sunhelp - including links
to another site containing pictures of older Sun equipment that helped me
identify such beasts at swap meets and flea markets.

Thanks to Bill Bradford and the time he spent on Sunhelp, I also learned
about Sun's low-cost Sparc systems - the Ultra5 being the most prominent.
Now I knew that Sun also built a viable alternative to Intel based systems,
which were beginning to disgust me with thier daily ABENDs and outages.
Before I learned of these systems I thought that Sun was primarily producers
of high-cost equipment accessable by only large, multinational corporations.
A little more research, using Sunhelp.org, and I realized that this wasn't
the case at all.

Now I suggest Sun Microsystems equipment as an alternative to clients who
need high-availability solutions.  NT has it's place, but in mission
critical enterprise applications, you need a Unix system to ensure
high-availability.  Granted, I don't consult with companies that would place
orders in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I do promote Sun
equipment and it's merits to anyone who will listen.

Now, allow me to say that my feelings about Sun may be in jeopardy.  In the
course of two days I've learned things about Sun's legal department that
bring tears to my eyes.  I can't imagine a company with roots such as Sun's
would threaten legal action against the very website that helped me learn
about them.  These actions are unconscienable and tarnish Sun's image in my
mind. They also threaten my, at times aggresive, promotion of Sun and thier
ideals, equipment, and values.

Perhaps overprotective lawyers are to blame for this episode - lets hope so.
I can't imagine the management of Sun saying "Let's take action against this
site.  They're clearly helping us out by promoting our products and services
for free.  We simply can't have that, free advertising will hurt our image.
Besides, nobody uses the old equipment anymore, anybody we really care about
will be buying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of new stuff and,
support contracts to go with it since nobody can possibly learn how to use
this stuff right.  To hell with these folks, do you think we can get this
site shut down? Get me the legal department."

Suffice to say, I've put my reccomendations of Sun equipment on hold for the
time being.  I won't stoop to the level that Sun's legal department
apparently has by asking my clients to put a hold on thier orders from Sun,
but I am saddened by the whole mess.  Perhaps it's time I really started
looking at Silicon Graphics systems as an alternative to Sun.  I hear the
I/O system, that which is most important in server solutions, is superior to
Sun in some fashoin.  I wonder if there's a SGIhelp.org site out there....

Kurt A. Huhn
kurthuhn at k-huhn.com
Network Engineer, Systems Consultant

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