[Sunhelp] New Sun Servers

[James Lockwood]

On Fri, 23 Jun 2000 saul at syncline.com wrote:

> 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.

If at all possible, try to qualify for the Sun Startup Essentials program.
Many startups do, you basically can get certain machines at cost for a
year and discounts on many others.

> 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?

The two machines share many characteristics, but they're based on quite
different boards.  The 450 is one of the earliest PCI UltraSparcs, while
the 420R is a U80 in a rackmount case.  The 450 has many more PCI slots,
room for 20 disks and horizontal UPA64S slots.  The 420R can only mount 2
internal disks, has fewer PCI slots, has faster processors available
(450MHz vs 400MHz) and uses vertical UPA64S slots.

If you don't plan to use many PCI cards or disks then the 420R is a good
machine.  I still favor the 450 when space is available but that's not
always possible.

> 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?

Yes, you can restrain process to only run on certain processor groups.
Check psrset and pbind for details.

Warning: some companies will consider this a breach of license if you are
running the software on machines with more CPU's than you are licensed
for, even if the software is limited to a subset of the CPU's.  Weblogic
is a good example.  I don't particularly agree with this, but IANAL.

> 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?

The lowest end "enterprise" server at this point is the E3500, which tops
out at 8 CPU's.  The E450 is merely a marketing designation for the 450.

-James