[rescue] Solaris vs sparclinux

[Jerry Kemp]

As far as getting UFS root file system on Solaris, the easy way is just to run 
some version of Solaris 10.  Solaris 10 update 11 was the last released version.

There is a way to get newer versions on UFS, but it is not for the meek or 
timid, and requires jumping thru various flaming rings of fire.

Also, as an alternative to Sun/Oracle Solaris, BSD or linux, there are also misc 
open-source Solaris based distro's.  On Sparc, I would suggest OpenSXCE, which 
is championed by Martin Bochnig.

An additional note when benchmarking Sun/Oracle T-series boxes, especially early 
boxes like the T1000/T2000.

These boxes were never fast boxes for single threaded applications, even when 
they were brand new, fresh from Sun.

Sure, its awesome to run mpstat, and the operating system is seeing 64 or more 
CPU's available in a 1U or 2U box, but if your benchmarking application is only 
using one or two of those, its really not a relevant test.

Back when those boxes were still relevant, my $EMPLOYER had some very highly 
threaded Java apps we were running, and once our T2000's, or T5xxx boxes got 
spooled up, the T-series boxes were great, and no x86/x64 box could touch them. 
  Not that there were some groups that didn't try.

OTOH, we had a web application with some non-threaded modules that did horrible. 
  I fought with my boss for 18 months that T-series boxes were not the right 
system to be running that application on.  We even brought Sun in and had them 
look everything over, do all kinds of fine tuning, etc.  Sun kept telling him 
the T-series was where he wanted to be, and nothing I could say would change his 
mind.

At one point, I finally got a vendor to bring in an M3000 to benchmark the app 
on.  No tuning or anything else.  Just threw the app on and tested.  The M3000 
moved three times the data that the T-series boxes did.  It wasn't that one was 
better than the other, is was just a matter of choosing the right tool for the job.

What's the point of me writing all of this?  Just hope you are comparing oranges 
to oranges, especially when you are working with T-series systems.  Don't get me 
wrong, they are certainly cool boxes, but if you are looking for maximum raw 
performance, you need to make sure you have the right workload to get it out of 
the t-series box.

Food for thought,

Jerry




On 06/12/15 03:27 PM, Meelis Roos wrote:
>> Hmm, it would be interesting to install Solaris on a spare disk in T2000
>> and run some bencharks.
>
> Well, I did that - grabbed Solaris 11.2 and installed it on identical
> disk.
>
> Debian unstable with 4.0.0 kernel and my custom configurationf for that
> machine (left out most drivers I will never need, left out some features
> I would not use).
>
> Server is T2000, 1 GHz, 32 threads, 16G RAM, 10kRPM SAS disks. Bare
> hardware, no virtualization if any kind (no ldoms, zones, containers).
>
>> And, should I run single-disk Solaris on ZFS or journaled UFS for this?
>
> ZFS was the only option.