[rescue] replacing an Ultra2

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007, Bill Bradford wrote:

>> But if I could run other OSes in a VMWare type environment on an
>> Ultra 20, that might be a point in the U20's favor.  Anyone do
>> anything like this? I don't even know if VMWare or something like it
>> is available for Solaris x64. Seems that a lot of things are
>> available for Linux, SPARC Solaris and OSX, and that is it...
>
> Jonathan Patschke has a Mac Pro, and he runs TONS of stuff in
> Parallels VMs.

Every OS I've ever run on PC hardware I now run inside of Parallels:
Windows 3.0 through XP, Netware, Linux, Free/Net/Open/Dragonfly BSD,
Solaris 9, Solaris 10, and OS/2.

The only problems I've had are with Windows NT 3.5.1 and Vista.

I'm currently trying VMware Fusion, which has 64-bit support and
accelerated graphics support.  Outside of those two items, though,
Parallels Just Works, and it's incredibly cheap.

To put it in perspective:  I can now have identical duplicates of all my
customers' systems (the ones I've built, anyway) that I can fit on an
external hard drive, rather than half of a decent-sized room.
Downsizing from a pile of computers to my Mac Pro has cut my electric
bill in half, and my (painfully expensive) new workstation will thereby
have paid for itself by the end of 2008.

Once I find the cash to replace my Powerbook with a Macbook Pro, I'll
even be able to carry that environment with me to customer sites.

At $dayjob, we use VMware to run ancient versions of Red Hat Linux on
brand-new hardware.  We have some old EDA software that requires RH 7.3,
and our needs have pushed our memory requirements above the 3G mark.
Try finding a PC that can run RH 7.3 with 3G of memory.

In short, if you don't need fast graphics, virtualization is one of the
neatest things to happen to system administrators and consultants in a
very long time.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke ) "If we keep our pride, though paradise is lost, we
Elgin, TX        (   will pay the price, but we cannot count the cost."
USA               )                             --Neil Peart, "Bravado"