Opinions on Sun systems

unhappy_mage

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - October 2005
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At work we're buying new boxes. Using Sun's educational grant program, we're planning to buy five-ish boxes. Here's the list of parts available. We were going to go with the x4150 (middle build) without qualms until I noticed today that they have x2200 m2's available for less than half of the price of the 4150s. They're fairly similar:
x4150 said:
Sun Fire X4150 x64 Rack-Mount Server: Two Quad-Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) E5440 processor (2 x 6MB L2, 2.83 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB, 80W), 8GB of memory (4 x 2GB PC2-5300 667 MHz ECC fully buffered DDR2 DIMMs), 4 x 146GB 10K RPM 2.5 SAS drives, internal SAS RAID PCI-Express HBA, DVD+/-RW drive, 2 x PSU, embedded LOM, 4 x 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, 5 x USB 2.0 ports, 3 x 8-lane PCI-Express slots, no power cord, order Geo-specific x-option. Standard Configuration. RoHS-5. FOR EDUCATION ONLY.
for $2718 versus
x2200 m2 said:
Sun Fire X2200 M2 x64 Server: 2x Quad Core AMD Opteron Model 2354 processors (2.2GHz/95W, B3), 4x 2GB registered ECC DDR2-667 memory, no hard drives, no optical drive, 1x PSU, Service Processor, 4x 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, 6x USB 2.0 ports, 1x I/O riser card with 2x PCI-Express x8 slots, no power cords, order Geo-specific x-option. RoHS-5. Standard Configuration.
for $1126.

Basically, it's a dual power supply versus single, 4x146 versus no disks, and from a different manufacturer. So why is there a factor of two difference in cost? We don't really need the speed of the intel over the AMD, so the dual power supplies et cetera of the 4150 chassis would be the only reason to prefer it. So, what do you think? We can buy twice as many 2200s as 4150s, even considering buying disks for the 2200s, SCSI cards, and all that jazz. Which makes more sense?
 
Harperton @ 2.8 vs Barcelona @ 2.2. That xeon will beat the snot out of the opty. I'd say by a factor of somewhere around 1.5 in total performance and performance/watt.

And yeah, an SAS raid card and four enterprise 10k rpm SAS drives (that autta run you several hundred bux) and a 2nd power supply. Take a look around at the costs of those drives. I don't know much about enterprise drives, but I do know that a failure can cost a company a fair chunk of down time and Steve Gibson mentioned that they had a lesser failure rate then that of standard consumer drives, so don't just pop 4 raptors in that system and expect the same reliabillity.

but still, 2.5:1? I donno...
 
At their highest support tier, for multiple systems, I cannot get anything resembling support. OS broke? Reinstall. Patching failed? Restore from tape. Failed ethernet interface? Reinstall your OS (. System won't boot? Run this script. And I'm paying actual prices, not stupidly discounted prices. I'm also talking Solaris on SPARC (since they're totally committed to SPARC, really they are) versus Solaris x86 - the support there was so much worse we dumped it for FreeBSD. Even the most minor of problems would require an IDR and days to get any response. ZFS is not officially supported. Sun Cluster is non-functional. Wizard, you clearly have no idea about Sun - the drives will be >$500 per. Also, the controllers and drives are firmware locked in those, the same as with IBM DS4000-series gear.

Frankly, I recommend you talk to IBM or HP instead.

But what would the guy who's job title is System Administrator, and does this for a living, know about it, right?
 
I die a little on the inside every time I have to use Solaris on x86... if you are going Sun/x86 I hope you have alternative O/S options. Not surprising with the price difference as the already noted disks/2x power supplys are not cheap. What do you plan on doing with the systems? 1gb/core also seems a bit low to me, but you might not be doing memory intensive applications.
 
At their highest support tier, for multiple systems, I cannot get anything resembling support. OS broke? Reinstall. Patching failed? Restore from tape. Failed ethernet interface? Reinstall your OS (. System won't boot? Run this script. And I'm paying actual prices, not stupidly discounted prices. I'm also talking Solaris on SPARC (since they're totally committed to SPARC, really they are) versus Solaris x86 - the support there was so much worse we dumped it for FreeBSD. Even the most minor of problems would require an IDR and days to get any response. ZFS is not officially supported. Sun Cluster is non-functional. Wizard, you clearly have no idea about Sun - the drives will be >$500 per. Also, the controllers and drives are firmware locked in those, the same as with IBM DS4000-series gear.

Frankly, I recommend you talk to IBM or HP instead.

But what would the guy who's job title is System Administrator, and does this for a living, know about it, right?

QFT. I have worked with big vendors with 5 & 6 figure pricetags on items with support who could not tell me stuff that was ikn the manual (i tested them).
 
Harperton @ 2.8 vs Barcelona @ 2.2. That xeon will beat the snot out of the opty. I'd say by a factor of somewhere around 1.5 in total performance and performance/watt.
Yeah, but like I said performance isn't really an issue, just reliability. Hell, we're using E250s and 420Rs right now - pentium 3s would be a step up. The reason we're not using the faster x86 boxes we've got around is purely remote management; x86 boxes don't have serial console or OpenBoot to log in remotely when the OS dies.
And yeah, an SAS raid card and four enterprise 10k rpm SAS drives (that autta run you several hundred bux) and a 2nd power supply. Take a look around at the costs of those drives. I don't know much about enterprise drives, but I do know that a failure can cost a company a fair chunk of down time and Steve Gibson mentioned that they had a lesser failure rate then that of standard consumer drives, so don't just pop 4 raptors in that system and expect the same reliabillity.
We'll be using raid 1 on the OS drives for sure, and data is on raid 5 with hotspares and tape. I don't plan to use WD drives; they're fine for home use but I'd find something else for the server room. But even so,
At their highest support tier, for multiple systems, I cannot get anything resembling support. OS broke? Reinstall. Patching failed? Restore from tape. Failed ethernet interface? Reinstall your OS (. System won't boot? Run this script. And I'm paying actual prices, not stupidly discounted prices.
Well, we don't have a support contract anyways, and I don't think we'll get one from this. I know it would be better to run a supported OS, but my boss is a Solaris guy so that's what we're running, for better or for worse.
I'm also talking Solaris on SPARC (since they're totally committed to SPARC, really they are) versus Solaris x86 - the support there was so much worse we dumped it for FreeBSD. Even the most minor of problems would require an IDR and days to get any response. ZFS is not officially supported. Sun Cluster is non-functional. Wizard, you clearly have no idea about Sun - the drives will be >$500 per. Also, the controllers and drives are firmware locked in those, the same as with IBM DS4000-series gear.
Believe me, I know Sun isn't the best of all possible worlds, but the alternative in this price range is Dell. I don't want that.
Frankly, I recommend you talk to IBM or HP instead.

But what would the guy who's job title is System Administrator, and does this for a living, know about it, right?
Well, frankly, IBM and HP aren't having 50% off sales, and we can't afford full price.
 
I die a little on the inside every time I have to use Solaris on x86... if you are going Sun/x86 I hope you have alternative O/S options. Not surprising with the price difference as the already noted disks/2x power supplys are not cheap. What do you plan on doing with the systems? 1gb/core also seems a bit low to me, but you might not be doing memory intensive applications.
There's nothing "intensive" on anything that we're doing, really. Web server, file servers, small database server, mail for a few hundred users, NIS, and print. It mostly runs okay on the current machines, but the problem is they're dying off. 8 years is pretty good, though. If we can get that much out of this crop we'll be satisfied.

Why the hate for Solaris on x86 specifically? Is there some disadvantage over Sparc?
QFT. I have worked with big vendors with 5 & 6 figure pricetags on items with support who could not tell me stuff that was in the manual (i tested them).
That doesn't bother me - I can read the manual, and I did read the manual for both of these machines.
 
Why the hate for Solaris on x86 specifically? Is there some disadvantage over Sparc?

SPARC has the whole uber-BIOS with eeprom and all the other nifty configurations integrated beautifully. The x86 implementation tries to go there, but fails miserably as x86 can't really support it. Basically, they added in a middle layer to try to emulate the entire eeprom/boot settings system rather than just deriving from the standard. It's caused me a whole lot of grief, as it's an entire layer tacked on that you've got to debug whenever you have hardware issues. I'm admittedly no Solaris expert, but go ahead and google "solaris 10 boot archive problem" and that just scratches the surface. Nothing like watching your system not come back from a reboot because for one reason or another Solaris corrupted its boot archive and it has to be rebuilt manually (hope you got console access if its remote). I love playing with the Sun/SPARC/Solaris 10 systems, and the design of the Sun x86 gear is pretty nice... but Solaris on x86 is agonizing.

Also, as noted, Sun support is pretty awful. If you've got their playbook down you can dance around the idiocy, but if you aren't familiar good luck at getting anything done in a reasonable amount of time as they will toss you around.
 
SPARC has the whole uber-BIOS with eeprom and all the other nifty configurations integrated beautifully. The x86 implementation tries to go there, but fails miserably as x86 can't really support it. Basically, they added in a middle layer to try to emulate the entire eeprom/boot settings system rather than just deriving from the standard. It's caused me a whole lot of grief, as it's an entire layer tacked on that you've got to debug whenever you have hardware issues.
That's true, but I wouldn't like to be in charge of modifying the x86 BIOS system so it doesn't suck and still keeping Windows compatibility. I do wish they'd offer something like LinuxBIOS that doesn't do all the hardware initialization only to have the OS redo it ten seconds later, but since they want the machines to boot normal x86 OSes they really can't mess with things too much. From what I saw at the demo, I think the implementation they've got is pretty much the best they could do with what they have to work with.
I'm admittedly no Solaris expert, but go ahead and google "solaris 10 boot archive problem" and that just scratches the surface. Nothing like watching your system not come back from a reboot because for one reason or another Solaris corrupted its boot archive and it has to be rebuilt manually (hope you got console access if its remote). I love playing with the Sun/SPARC/Solaris 10 systems, and the design of the Sun x86 gear is pretty nice... but Solaris on x86 is agonizing.
Yeah, I've actually hit this problem on my home box. It did take me a while to figure out, but even with no internet connection (I left my laptop at school, silly me) I managed to get it fixed by reading through the manual pages. I dunno, it seems like I've had a pretty discoverable experience with Solaris in general - the documentation is pretty clear and consistent with what actually happens.
Also, as noted, Sun support is pretty awful. If you've got their playbook down you can dance around the idiocy, but if you aren't familiar good luck at getting anything done in a reasonable amount of time as they will toss you around.
Well, like I mentioned, we're not buying support for these, so we won't be dealing with that, for better or for worse.

Oh well. I started this thread to ask for comparisons of the two boxes listed, not for Sun versus Everything Else comparisons, and I guess I've gotten all the answers I'm gonna get :p
 
Yeah, but like I said performance isn't really an issue, just reliability. Hell, we're using E250s and 420Rs right now - pentium 3s would be a step up. The reason we're not using the faster x86 boxes we've got around is purely remote management; x86 boxes don't have serial console or OpenBoot to log in remotely when the OS dies.

If you believe Sun, they do. They actually don't. You absolutely should NOT be looking at Sun hardware if you want that, period. IBM has that by default, period. All X-series boxes. RSA-II is a luxury, and not necessary.

Believe me, I know Sun isn't the best of all possible worlds, but the alternative in this price range is Dell. I don't want that.

Well, frankly, IBM and HP aren't having 50% off sales, and we can't afford full price.

Fire your boss; he's obviously a damn zealot and going to screw your infrastructure.

If you're an educational institution, or any business, IBM will cut you some sweetheart deals easily. I never pay list on IBM gear, ever. Not even "look, I don't care what it costs, gimme it tomorrow" orders. My average costs are well below 50% list, and every xSeries has a 3 year warranty by default.
 
Oh well. I started this thread to ask for comparisons of the two boxes listed, not for Sun versus Everything Else comparisons, and I guess I've gotten all the answers I'm gonna get :p

As fyi, Sun wanted to charge us about $680 for a missing 146gb disk. My suggestion if you do end up getting Sun, get the one WITH everything ;)
 
As fyi, Sun wanted to charge us about $680 for a missing 146gb disk. My suggestion if you do end up getting Sun, get the one WITH everything ;)

Yeah, that's always fun. I've had to involve the lawyers over missing or incorrect parts in the past. Sun refused to admit their screwup, and said that was how we ordered things, even when presented with quotes. My personal favorite was an E450 they tried to tell me I ordered with only one power supply and 4 CPUs, which wasn't even a valid configuration to begin with.
 
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