[Sunhelp] New Sun Servers

[saul at syncline.com]

Hello Experts,

I have been a personal sun user for a year...and am pretty familiar with
how to use a sun box as a home computer (I am a software developer).  In
this last year, sunhelp has been INVALUABLE to me as a resource, and I
thank you all very much.

Now, however, I am working for an internet startup (bet you've heard this
line before) and we're getting into the market for a couple of sun servers
to run our application and database services.

We were thinking in the range of some of the high-end workgroup servers
that sun makes.  Maybe the 450 or the 420R.  Our thought was to get two
420R's for production machines, and one 220R for an in-house testing
machine.  Is there any real difference between the 450 and the 420R, other
than the rack-mountableness?  Is the 420R scaled down at all?  Is there
any reason not to get the rack-mountable version?

Also, as you all know, oracle is (and many other pieces of software
are) licensed per processor.  Is there any way (on a multi-processor
sun-box) to restrain a process to just one or two cpus?  that way, if we
have 4 cpu's in the box, we can pay for a 2-cpu oracle license, and a
2-cpu weblogic license, and not have to pay for two 4-processor
licenses...one for oracle, one for WL.  Any chance of saving some money
there?

Also, is there any good reason to step up to an enterprise server, rather
than the 420R?  The low-end enterprise servers hold only 4 processors...do
they have better internal harware?

Thanks again for any comments or suggestions!

Saul Farber

Syncline.com
617-661-7134 x207