[rescue] good sources for USIII + systems

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

On Jan 22, 2008, at 11:44 AM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:

> Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
>> I don't know if it is because Sun had a sales slump, or for some
>> other reason, but inexpensive USIII-based systems and those based on
>> the T1 chip are still hard to find on eBay at least.
>>
>> Anyone have any good sources for such systems?  Minimum RAM
>> capability needs to be 16GB RAM because I do a lot of zones etc.
>> Right now it seems dual-Opterons with lots of RAM are at least half
>> the cost.
>
> Depends on what you mean by inexpensive.


Well, allowing for some of the nicer features that Sun gear has (true  
LOM etc.), and comparing e.g. typical IO and memory bandwidth, the  
USIII stuff is overpriced compared to the similar performance you can  
get from Opterons running e.g. 64 bit Solaris.

Example:

cheapest Sun 16GB system is a 14U V880 with 16GB RAM, 8x900Mhz CPUs,  
4x36GB disk  $2850

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sun-V880-Server-w-8x900MHZ-16GB- 
RAM-144GB_W0QQitemZ170186314927QQihZ007QQcategoryZ51239QQssPageNameZWDVW 
QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

similar in CPU power (probably a lot faster actually), quad-Opteron  
(though not a V40z as claimed in ad)  $1600 in a 3U or 4U chassis

http://cgi.ebay.com/Newisys-4300-Sun-V40Z-Quad-2-0GHz-16GB-2x73GB- 
Server_W0QQitemZ160201258598QQihZ006QQcategoryZ51238QQssPageNameZWDVWQQr 
dZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Almost double, for a much larger and less compact system.

--Patrick