Rack Mount Servers

[Tom Buskey]

One advantage Sun (& Apple) have always had over PCs is quality.  They 
are well built.  You can get replacement parts for it well after 
they stop selling them.  

I run 2 Suns.  An LX (1GB, 32MB) running OpenBSD as my firewall and a Sparc 20 
running NetBSD as my fileserver, DNS, mail, etc..  I also have an Ultra 
1.  The LX was $9.99 on eBay + $18 shipping.

My Sparc 20 had a memory error for a month because I was too lazy to
shut it down & reseat the simm.  Can PCs do error correction like that?

I've looked & installed Linux on the sun (both SuSE 7.3, Debian Potato
stable). I'm a bit frustrated with them.  I really want a journaled file
system on my fileserver, but neither of these distributions offer it on
sparc.  The BSD systems don't offer it out of the box either but their 
releases are the same level as the Intel platform.  Solaris 9
does have journaling so I'm considering switching the Sparc 20.

Another advantage of sparcs: you can install with a serial terminal.  No
graphics card, monitor or keyboard needed.  Serial console servers in
the data center is much better then a KVM.  Ever try to use a KVM in
your DC in San Diego, CA from Burlington, MA?

"Andrew W. Gaunt" said:
>
>
>I see a lot of Sun equipment for sale on E-Bay. If you have an
>application for it and the hardware need not be the bleeding edge,
>it may be a good way to get some good hardware that runs linux
>well for $cheap$.
>
>I've got a sparc-20 in my basement that acts as the 'home'
>server, runs  great. I'm planning an upgrade to a
>used Ultra class machine soon. Not because the 20 is maxed out,
>mostly because it's a gee wiz thing I can do real cheap.
>


>On Sun, 11 Aug 2002 kurth at usaexpress.net wrote:
>
>> We're in the same situation.  We've decided to stop screwing around with
>> the x86 platform and move to Sun equipment.  Machines built from the ground
>> up to be servers....no suped up desktop parts here!
>>
>> Sure the cost is up there, but look at the bright side, the run Linux, and
>> in sales you can say something like - "While other ISP's use souped up
>> desktop parts to build servers, USAExpress.net uses only the best....SUN" :-
>> )
>>
>> I'm just tired of the limits of the x86 line....640k,8gb.....why don't manf
>> take into account that just because a 10Tb drive dosen't exist today, one
>> will exist with 6 or 8 months...and plan.....no, that's too simple....

-- 
-------
Tom Buskey