Sun sucks. Their overpriced hardware got eclipsed by Pentium 4 PCs which could do the same work for 1/10th the price. In the end, the only advantage Sun platforms offer over PCs is the capability to use massive amounts of RAM (64G, 128G, and beyond). But make no mistake about it, Sun got eclipsed by Intel. Moore's law has a harsh penalty for those who don't keep up.
On the other hand, Oracle having a say in OO, Java, and other projects is a bit scary. I'm not so in love with Oracle's embrace of FOSS or even
Unfortunately said Pentium 4s also would fail 10x more often.
I don't know if you've worked (ie, have had direct administrative experience) with any of the larger Sun hardware such as E2900 and above, or even the Ex500's from back in the day, but if you did you'd also know that these servers have a knack for uptime and resiliency that x86 servers, even to this day, have never had. There was a reason for those higher costs.
Unfortunately said Pentium 4s also would fail 10x more often.
I don't know if you've worked (ie, have had direct administrative experience) with any of the larger Sun hardware such as E2900 and above, or even the Ex500's from back in the day, but if you did you'd also know that these servers have a knack for uptime and resiliency that x86 servers, even to this day, have never had. There was a reason for those higher costs.
At the same time, the application landscape changed to prefer scalability that allowed servers to be down without impacting the whole system. A single machine no longer was so important.
And up until a few years ago, people still went with Sun when they had a single important node.
The choice became between more servers that will crash slightly more often with less overall impact to the application, and more servers that will crash slighly less often.
Larger Sun hardware was never amazingly reliable anyway. Wh
It isn't if it is Sparc or x86 that matters, it is about the OS and skill needed to run it that maters more. While Solaris has some nice features in HW servicing without going down, 98% of the systems out there don't use it. The real key is that you generally have a better quality admin, running a quality OS like Linux or Solaris, the up times will be fantastic.
My longest up time so far is 4.5 years on Linux 6.1. We even forget where we put the server. It was a hand-me-down server that never ran MS-Wind
Not sure if this is more funny or scary (Score:1, Insightful)
Sun sucks. Their overpriced hardware got eclipsed by Pentium 4 PCs which could do the same work for 1/10th the price. In the end, the only advantage Sun platforms offer over PCs is the capability to use massive amounts of RAM (64G, 128G, and beyond). But make no mistake about it, Sun got eclipsed by Intel. Moore's law has a harsh penalty for those who don't keep up.
On the other hand, Oracle having a say in OO, Java, and other projects is a bit scary. I'm not so in love with Oracle's embrace of FOSS or even
Re:Not sure if this is more funny or scary (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately said Pentium 4s also would fail 10x more often.
I don't know if you've worked (ie, have had direct administrative experience) with any of the larger Sun hardware such as E2900 and above, or even the Ex500's from back in the day, but if you did you'd also know that these servers have a knack for uptime and resiliency that x86 servers, even to this day, have never had. There was a reason for those higher costs.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately said Pentium 4s also would fail 10x more often.
I don't know if you've worked (ie, have had direct administrative experience) with any of the larger Sun hardware such as E2900 and above, or even the Ex500's from back in the day, but if you did you'd also know that these servers have a knack for uptime and resiliency that x86 servers, even to this day, have never had. There was a reason for those higher costs.
At the same time, the application landscape changed to prefer scalability that allowed servers to be down without impacting the whole system. A single machine no longer was so important.
And up until a few years ago, people still went with Sun when they had a single important node.
The choice became between more servers that will crash slightly more often with less overall impact to the application, and more servers that will crash slighly less often.
Larger Sun hardware was never amazingly reliable anyway. Wh
It is about how and the OS they are run (Score:0)
It isn't if it is Sparc or x86 that matters, it is about the OS and skill needed to run it that maters more. While Solaris has some nice features in HW servicing without going down, 98% of the systems out there don't use it. The real key is that you generally have a better quality admin, running a quality OS like Linux or Solaris, the up times will be fantastic.
My longest up time so far is 4.5 years on Linux 6.1. We even forget where we put the server. It was a hand-me-down server that never ran MS-Wind
Re: (Score:0)
So long as you didn't have the magic leaking caps of doom - Pent 4's had great uptime once one picked a real OS like FreeBSD.