[SunRescue] Re: Looking for SS20

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

well, my only comment is, remember the name of this list - sun rescue. it's 
all about those folks who are 'into' cool sun hardware, old or new. i happen 
to think the sparc 20 was an extraordinarily cool piece of hardware, and to 
this day it makes an absolutely dandy, kickass internet server. i run my 
personal domain - and 70 other domains for friends, family, co-workers, on 
an integrix sparc 10/20 clone, with an SM71 and 256megs of ram. go ahead and 
beat up on www.anastrophe.com, www.parkingquest.com, www.cameronwasson.com, 
etc., responsiveness is dandy. For the ISP I ran several years ago, we ran a 
similar integrix clone, quad hyper 100's, 512M ram - and that box served 
about 12,000 user accounts, banging on it for SMTP, ftp, pop3, imap, http, 
dns, it ran it all, and worked like a champ. 

today, i'm running a system that's reached about the same number of 
accounts, but it's on dual e4500's, behind redundant big/ip traffic 
directors. it's a little bit snappier, with four 333mhz ultrasparc cpu's 
with 4meg cache each, but for internet services, you can hardly tell the 
difference. 

oh my, listen to me yammer on about my beloved sparc servers. i'm typing 
this message through the webmail interface on anastrophe - the actual typing 
taking place on my home PC, a nice athlon 1Ghz win98 system. why? i like to 
play computer games. i also have to reboot the fucking thing every day or 
two, or wait for it to just lock up on me. i'll never run peecee hardware 
for production servers. if sun went belly up, i'd buy a dozen sparc 20's and 
internals, and just keep rolling along for another decade. put yer data on 
some netapps, and scale, scale, scale. 

i'll shut up now. 

Ken Hansen writes: 

> Bill, 
> 
> In my opinion, an SS/20 only makes sense if you have a
> reasonably well-stocked parts bin, and don't need to go out and
> look for HDs, RAM, or CPUs. The way the market is right now, I
> would be very hesitant to open my wallet and spend *cash* of any
> magnatude on SBUS SPARC hardware. 
> 
> Any box based on a Sun4c CPU (IPC, SS/1/2/etc) is not worth
> dollar one to me, that is not to say they don't have usefullnes,
> but I think the folks that buy these units now are going to be
> the last owners of them. 
> 
> I liken this to the market for 80486-based PCs. 
> 
> Sun4m boxes have a bit more time to be marketable, but honestly,
> I'd have to think real hard before I open my wallet for anything
> less than a *real nice* SS/20 (like the 2x SM50, 128 Meg RAM, 2x
> 1 Gig HD, 4 Meg VSIMM and CD-ROM equiped SS/20 I got for about
> $250 a few months back). The 2x SM71s were a nice upgrade, and I
> think that box will be my "beater" for trying things out. 
> 
> Sun Ultra 1s are still quite usefull, and they will be
> marketable for 12-18 months, due mainly to their spiraling value
> and binary compatability with newer machines. 
> 
> Ultra 2s are the new SS/20s AFAIAC, and will hold their value
> for 2 years plus, since they are so powerful, and deployed in so
> many applications as servers... At 2x300 MHz Ultra SPARC CPUs,
> these units can handle most anything thrown at them, esp. I/O
> related activities. 
> 
> I can't speak to the Ultra 5, 10 and above systems - I've just
> not dealt with them to have any sense of value/lifespan/etc. 
> 
> Sun Blade 100s are the crack cocaine of the Sun market, and once
> I can get one with a decent discount (educational) I'll be on
> that unit right away. What I really like is the low-cost of
> add-ons, like RAM, HD, etc. I suspect that a $1K server will
> decimate the Cobalt Cube/RAQ market, and their technology will
> evolve into a pure software offering, based on Sun's new
> generation of hardware... 
> 
> Well, those are my thoughts, I'm sure some folks will difer with
> me, but hey, that's why were here, right? ;^) 
> 
> Ken 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rescue-admin at sunhelp.org
> [mailto:rescue-admin at sunhelp.org]On
> Behalf Of Bill Bradford
> Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 2:38 PM
> To: rescue at sunhelp.org
> Subject: [SunRescue] Looking for SS20 
> 
> 
> I'm in the market (possibly) for a SS20, if anybody has one
> barebones,
> let me know. 
> 
> bill 
> 
> --
> Bill Bradford
> mrbill at mrbill.net
> Austin, TX
> _______________________________________________
> Rescue maillist  -  Rescue at sunhelp.org
> http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
 



 ---------------------------------
Paul Theodoropoulos
paul at anastrophe.net
Senior Unix Systems Administrator
Syntactically Subversive Services, Inc.
http://www.anastrophe.net
Downtime Is Not An Option