Sun Server?

[ManicMike]

I just found this on ebay and was wondering what the performance of something like this is (8meg cache!) and what os it would run and the price you would be able to sell it for later this is it

 

[Elif Tymes]

OS would be LINUX or UNIX,

would work excellent as a file server, as it has extensive amounts of RAM and an ungodly amount of cache.

Course, that depends on if it has RAID supprt. No info on the motherboard on the auction, although it looks like you actually have to plug it into a SUN Server board, which is propably expensive. doesn't look like its stand alone.

 

[ManicMike]

Whats a sun server board? and how much
I would like to maybe try and make it my main server for file and booting other operating systems off it would this be possible
Are there any reviews of this?

 

[Elif Tymes]

Well, a SUN Server board would be the board in a SUN server really, I don't know to be honest, but I do know thats definately not a standalone, you would propably have to buy a SUN Server missing this board, or even with one, at a lower CPU speed...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=51237&item=5784921232&rd=1

theres one.,

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=51238&item=5785663069&rd=1

nother one.

Good luck though, and google prolly knows more about this than I do

 

[ManicMike]

Well google aint really that much help but I probably will get it. I mean what have I got to lose?

 

[Elif Tymes]

Well, I found a store selling the processors them selves for nearly 50 dollars apiece

 

[dicecca112]

personally its not worth the trouble, the parts are hard to come by, and probably expensive. Get a PIII Combo on ebay, usually you can find a board, cpus and memory for relatively cheap

 

[TimP]

Sun servers run Solaris natively, like AIX is to IBM servers, but SPARC a moderately popular Linux/BSD platform. It's less popular than PowerPC, but more popular than most other non-x86 platforms. I would agree with the recommendation of buying a Pentium III if you're looking to drop a little bit of money for a decent box. I bought an IBM RS/6000 (early PPC) on eBay and I've found it to be nearly impossible to do anything useful with it.

 

[emboss]

This is just a daughterboard that contains the CPUs and RAM. You'll need a Sun Enterprise server to stick it in. Seems to be compatible with most Enterprise models.

 

[pik4chu]

This is just a daughterboard that contains the CPUs and RAM. You'll need a Sun Enterprise server to stick it in. Seems to be compatible with most Enterprise models.

bingo, its a daughterboard, can't be used stand alone. And is far from worth the effort to find one and get it working.

I suppose the good news is that Solaris is a free download with $ for hard copy+documentation like Linux. Just remember that nearly all Sun stuff is proprietary (waaaaay worse than dell )

 

[MadSkillzMan]

Um as far as i know, only the x86 version os solaris is free. i could be wrong.

Sun machines are neat, theyre similar to those IRIX boxes, low speeds, nice performace...theyre mainly for server use, crunching numbers

but yea, as said thats a daughterboard. some of those machines i beleive can take many of those, so you get some serious SMP action

 

[emboss]

Solaris 10 is free for both x86 and sparc versions. You don't get any support, and have limited access to patches, but you're allowed to use it (even in a commercial server situation). Solaris 9 is less free; I think it's uniprocessor only, non-commercial.

As an X server my Ultra 2 (dual 300MHz 4MB cache, 512MB RAM, 73GB HDD) feels about as responsive as my P3 700. Load times are quick thanks to the HDD and it multitasks very smoothly. It really shines under heavy MySQL loads though: it just keeps on going no matter what sort of load you pile onto it. Thow a similar load at a single (IDE-based, Linux) XP1700 and it does the typical overload collapse. It's probably a whole lot of little things adding up (SCSI, nice bus architecture, Solaris, SMP) but as a whole it's certainly a tank of a machine.

On a price/performance scale, is it worth it? Hell no, for the same money I almost certainly could have got much better performance using a modern CPU and an off-EBay SCSI system. But it's also wonderfully built, much better than any other recent boxes I've messed around with. I've had a GDM 20E20 monitor sitting on top of this box. According to Sub it weighs about 30KG, and my arms would tend to agree with this number. The box takes it with no trouble. Sit a similar monitor on top of a, say, Dell desktop case and you'll end up with a pancake. Everything inside the case is also screwless. Flip a (metal) lever and the HDD/CPU/RAM/fan smoothly slides out. It's wonderful to work with after cheese-grating my fingers inside my main computer. Only problem is, there's rarely any reason to open it up.

OK, I'll stop reminiscing. Usual thread activity may resume

 

[MadSkillzMan]

lol thats kinda cool. thatd be one of those machines id try to pickup for next to nothing at a college or soemthing

good to know solaris 10 is free. however i have no use for one of these machines, im all graphics...now an IRIX machine...