[Sunhelp] 3500 vs 4500

[Magnus Abrante]

Well, you have 5/8 slots, and then you'll need to have 1 IO board (which 
handles internal SCSI etc) and at least 1 CPU board. 

There are 2 types of IO boards, a SBUS one and PCI one,  both of the IO 
boards have a SCSI controllers and a network interface (10/100Mb), the SBUS
IO board has 3 SBUS connector, the PCI IO board has 2 PCI connectors.

I dont know which kind of array/tape library you want to attach, but 
usually these are either attached to the SCSI controller or to a SBUS/PCI
card, if so you'll only need an IO card to deal with them.

There are sbus/pci cards which has network connectors, if you would like
a second interface, there are also Quad ethernet  cards, which has 4 network 
interfaces/card.

So if your array / tape library are connected to sbus cards you would only
need 1 IO board. Othervise you might need 2.

Humm, hope this answer your question :)

        //Magnus Abrante
/* This is my opinion and not the one of my empolyer */

> So if I want 4 CPUs and a separate board each for the tape library and disk
> array, I've already used up 4 of my 5 boards on the 3500.  What about lan
> cards, if I wanted a second lan interface would I use up the last board? 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:	Jim Howell [SMTP:jwh2 at cornell.edu]
> > Sent:	Thursday, September 21, 2000 12:20 PM
> > To:	sunhelp at sunhelp.org
> > Subject:	Re: [Sunhelp] 3500 vs 4500
> > 
> > Hi,
> >          A single I/O board can handle at least 3 devices and more 
> > depending on device type.  So you could have your disk array and tape 
> > library share an I/O board from that viewpoint, however they also share
> > the 
> > capacity of that board and affects redundancy.
> >          If you think that your desired configuration would complete fill
> > a 
> > 3500 I'd consider getting a 4500 so that you have growth potential.
> > Jim
> > 
> > At 12:05 PM 9/21/2000 -0500, Yoho, Cindy wrote:
> > >Hi Folks,
> > >
> > >I am looking at the specs for the E3500 and the E4500 from Sun's website
> > and
> > >I have a question I'm sure you all can answer for me quicker than a Sun
> > >rep...:-)
> > >
> > >The specs say the only differences are in the max number of CPUs (8 vs
> > 14),
> > >the max external disk storage (2 TB vs 4 TB), the max amount of RAM (8 GB
> > vs
> > >14 GB), and the max number of boards (5 vs 8).  It's this last difference
> > >that I am wondering about.  Are these boards the CPU and I/O boards?  In
> > >other words, the more CPUs I add (14 CPUs would take up 7 boards at 2
> > per)
> > >the fewer I/O boards I have left (7 left for I/O boards if I have 14
> > >CPUs)???
> > >
> > >We need to put a 300GB disk array and an AIT tape library on this server.
> > >Would that take up 2 of my boards, or is it figured differently?  What
> > about
> > >the internal devices, like DAT, CDROM, and internal disks - do they take
> > up
> > >a single I/O board?  I guess I'm used to figuring slots, and I'm not sure
> > >what a board contains on a Sun.  With HP (which I'm more familiar with!)
> > >some of the "boards" are half-height, some are full-height and some are
> > 1.5
> > >height.  I may have 5 "slots" but I can put into those 5 slots 10 1/2
> > height
> > >boards, or 5 full-height, or 3 1.5 height and 1 half-height, etc.
> > >
> > >Thanks in advance for your help on this -
> > >
> > >Cindy
> > >_______________________________________________
> > >SunHELP maillist  -  SunHELP at sunhelp.org
> > >http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/sunhelp
> > 
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