[geeks] Shrinking the Sun Farm

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Mark <md.benson at gmail.com>
>Date: 2007/04/20 Fri PM 05:53:03 CDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Shrinking the Sun Farm

>On 20 Apr 2007, at 20:33, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
>
>> I'm always looking for ways to save space, and I wanted to ask  
>> something
>> about Sun's Netra systems.
>>
>> I have Sun Ultra systems, and I like them, but they are hot and thick.
>> Right now I'm running two, and was thinking of getting more, but
>> the space is a problem.
>>
>> I know that rackmount Suns and other servers are thinner, but most of
>> them are too deep for my server table. I only have enough depth for
>> something like an Ultra 2.
>>
>> However, I had never really looked at the Netra X1, and just noticed
>> that it is no deeper than the Ultra systems.
>
>The Netra X1 is a particularly small example. It's a lot stubbier  
>than my T1 105. The X1 uses a 'flapjack' board (which are tiny small  
>for a server) and a single IDE hard drive, I dunno how that effects  
>the performance?
>
>The T1 105 is all SCSI which has obvious benefits for disk transfers,  
>and it holds 2 drives. I'd say the footprint is approx. the same as a  
>U60 laid on it's side, but without the height (obviously).
>
>the biggest overiding concern I'd have is if you have to work in the  
>same room as the servers for any period of time. 1U rack gear is  
>frickin' loud because of all the small, fast running 40mm fans they  
>use for cooling. Also Netras are telecoms rack units so invariably  
>come sans framebuffers - not an issue as servers - especially as  
>occasional user-level access sessions are doable by xdmcp - but if  
>you ever needed to push one into a workstation role it'd not work  
>that well unless you fitted a PGX32 or similar. Lastly - I think more  
>U2s would be a lot cheaper than Netras. In the UK T1 105s are still  
>fetching more than I paid a year after I bought mine. Add to that you  
>can use SMP on Ultras, which improves any Solaris machine's  
>performance greatly for load distribution.
>
>Crazy idea - buy a smaller desk and a 20U rack. You could fit it with  
>rack shelves and sit a lot of U2s in it. Sun workstations are all  
>equipped to fit racks anyway so there'd be no problems width-wise.

<Mind control>
You Want More Ultra 2s
</Mind control>

Seriously, Ultra 2s are great little boxes, but I'm becoming impressed with the E420r systems I've just started playing with.

Rackmount machines have odd memorysizes, and many machines max out at 1 Gig. A good alternative might be to look for a Cycle Quad 4-way desktop (essentially an E450 in a U2-sized cabinet (I have one I could shed, for a small price), or more U2s - the U2s take up to 2 Gig of RAM (Cycle Quad takes up to 4 Gig), and each only accepts two HDs, but a 6 or 12 slot drive cabinet isn't too expensive if more drives are needed).

Personally, I like 4x SMP, and the E420r takes about 2x the power of an Ultra 2, and you can install a UPA graphics adapter if you want a desktop machine.

SMP + Containers = lots of little boxes...

Lionel