Screw Sun [LWN.net]

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 30, 2003 20:58 UTC (Wed) by sandy_pond (guest, #9734)
In reply to: Screw Sun by fx
Parent article: Sun Sees Road To Prosperity Paved With Its Own Products (TechWeb)

But he is correct in that "Sun is another failing proprietary UNIX company". You can't argue with that.

(Log in to post comments)

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 30, 2003 21:58 UTC (Wed) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

Of course I can argue with that. Why would SUN be a failing company?
Their hardware scales up to 106 CPU's. 43.2 GBps sustained throughput on the system bus. Ever tried that on Intel?
Solaris is the #1 proprietary UNIX, bar none. The others are constantly playing catch-up.
Java is opening doors for them in all kinds of businesses.
Do you consider them "failing" because they are not profitable at the moment? If profit is the criterium: Red Hat has only recently had one or two slightly profitable quarters, before that they've only lost money while SUN made billions.

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 30, 2003 22:32 UTC (Wed) by sandy_pond (guest, #9734) [Link]

Try this: Sun Micro's Q4 profits fall 80 percent

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 8:04 UTC (Thu) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

The economy is still in a very bad shape, that's hard to deny. Nevertheless SUN is not burning cash, is's running more or less break-even. Yes, SUN sells a lot less servers than they used to, but to conclude that SUN is a "failing company" is just ridicilous. Most Linux companies didn't even manage to make money during the heydays of the economy.

Low end always eats the high end

Posted Jul 31, 2003 11:19 UTC (Thu) by kfox (guest, #4767) [Link]

I work for a U.S. Fortune 100 company.
We've bought a lot of Sun equipment in
the past, but that's changing. For
example, CAD (design) and CAE (engineering)
workstations are being replaced with
Windows boxes or dual-boot Linux boxes.
Our file servers are being replaced by
service companies renting us storage.

I'd be really interested in hearing
if this is happening other places.

The only glimmer of hope I have that
we're not going to become all Windows
is IBM. Some of our application servers
may become Linux IBM servers.

Long term I think Microsoft is in trouble
from Free Software. What could be lower
than Linux? ;)

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 14:19 UTC (Thu) by sandy_pond (guest, #9734) [Link]

> economy is still in a very bad shape

Of the major hardware manufactures they have been one of the worst performers over that time period.

> conclude that SUN is a "failing company" is just ridicilous

No one concluded that SUN can't turn things around. If SUN really wants to turn things around they'll have to figure out a way to transition from their proprietary past to embrace Linux/OSS. Right now it seems they have a Jekyll/Hyde duel personality.

> Most Linux companies didn't even manage to make money during the heydays of the economy.

Apples and oranges.

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 15:05 UTC (Thu) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

It's hard to compare SUN to the others. HP for example can hide it's UNIX business behind ink cartridges. If you'd compare HP's HP9000 server business to SUN you'd see very similar figures. IBM can hide behind services. As for SGI, they'd probably gone bust 10 years ago if the US defense department wasn't subsidizing them.
SUN (also just received a $50.000.000 subsidy BTW) is trying to move part of it's low-end business to Linux. Their V60x/V65x systems look nice. I'd definitely consider them: if anything goes wrong they support both the hardware and the software, so no fingerpointing.

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 15:49 UTC (Thu) by sandy_pond (guest, #9734) [Link]

Ahh ... some of the other failing proprietary UNIX platforms. Like I said in another post: "Hopefully they'll continue to remember why UNIX failed to become the dominant platform it could have become. Unless they want to hand the remainder of the business computing market over to MS they will continue to play nice."

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 17:37 UTC (Thu) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

Eeeh... proprietary UNIX *is* the dominant platform in the business computing market. It has been for a while and SUN is leading the pack.
I do think however MS should have been destroyed by the legal system and the fact that that hasn't happened might have serious consequences for UNIX or Linux in the long run.

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 20:39 UTC (Thu) by walterbyrd (guest, #11620) [Link]

There are three companies who's primary business is proprietary UNIX: SCOX, SUNW, and SGI. Take a look at their finacial fundamentals, then you tell me.

IBM and HP are big UNIX companies, but IBM and HP are also very diversified.

Screw Sun

Posted Aug 2, 2003 10:56 UTC (Sat) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

Tell you what in fact? I fail to see the point here.

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 30, 2003 23:20 UTC (Wed) by JohnBell (subscriber, #12625) [Link]

*ahem*

http://www.sgi.com/servers/altix/

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 9:04 UTC (Thu) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

Do you really think there's a company out there that would run, say a mission critical data warehouse on this platform given the fact that:

Itanium (or was it "Itanic"?) is immature, to say the least.
Linus would actually like to see Itanium fail.
Linux kernel developers claim Linux 2.4 scales reasonably well up to 16 CPU's. Linux 2.6 (not in production for at least another year) will probably extend that to 32 CPU's, but given the fact that almost nobody runs Linux on anything beyond 8 CPU's today, you've got be crazy to run your business on that. Compare that to Solaris running on 64 CPU's in production environments for more than 5 years now.
SGI has been building systems with hundreds of CPU's for ages, but real world performance takes a lot more than putting CPU's in box. For example, SGI claims sustained I/O throughput of more than 2GBps for the Altix. The SUN Fire 15K goes up to 21.6 GBps sustained I/0. Eat that.

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 13:12 UTC (Thu) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]

Hasn't linux been running on 32-cpu boxes since, oh, last century?

Doesn't it run now on 128-cpu boxes?

Haven't we recently had a LOT of improvements which give linux almost linear scaling as cpus are added?

As for i/o, surely that depends on what you want. A z900 only has *four* cpu's, but could probably eat a Sun Fire 15K for breakfast. In fact, didn't its predecessor the z800 eat some *seventy* Suns for breakfast at Telia recently?

If you buy an SGI, you want to crunch numbers. i/o is just willy-waving. Which is better, a truck or a porsche? Depends on whether you want to pull loads, or girls...

Cheers,
Wol

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 16:05 UTC (Thu) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

Yes, Linux has been "running on 32 CPU's since last century", but this has very little meaning. How many people have actually seen such a system running? Does the kernel really scale linearly up to that many CPU's? How many hardware vendors support anything beyond 8 CPU's on Intel? AFAIK only IBM has recently gone up to 16, Red Hat doesn't support anything beyond 8. Things are indeed improving, but the fact remains that Linux kernel developers focus on 1-8 CPU systems. Scaling really well beyond that would probably even require a fork in kernel development.
So a z900 would eat a 15K for breakfast? That's just laughable. Got any figures to back that up?
So Telia replaced a bunch of old SUN boxes with a mainframe. What does that statement bring to the table? I know a company that recently migrated their Linux servers to NT. At the moment Telia's website seems to be happily running on Solaris (check telia.se or telia.dk on netcraft).
It's silly to scale vertically if you just want to crunch numbers. It's much cheaper to scale horizontally. Hell, that's why Beowulf is so popular and that's why nobody is buying these 500-way MIPS servers from SGI.
Talking about cars/girls, I used to be doing Linux consulting, but it was hard to find customers that were willing to pay some real money for Linux projects. I switched to HP-UX and Solaris consulting some time ago. Since then I drive a BMW.

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 16:42 UTC (Thu) by JohnBell (subscriber, #12625) [Link]

This thread is hilarious. Now we're waving our BMWs (running WinCE, of all things) and aerobic intstructor girlfriends around to prove our arguments. We might as well throw Hitler into the mix and call it a day.

Obviously I have hit a sore spot, those damn Altix machines, how -dare- SGI make such a box? The audacity! The temerity! Why, it's gotten to the point where a fat cat Sun consultant can't fleece his customers for everything they have! Yes, my Sun brothers, these are dark days indeed... the evil Big Blue mainframes are beating us, Linux is beating us, SGI is beating us, Unilever is throwing us out the door and going all Linux, the Linux cluster manufacturers are getting all the scientific and Hollywood projects. Oh, how terrible! I may have to trade down to a Buick and start dating Flo down at the Waffle House!

LOL

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 17:28 UTC (Thu) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

I didn't start talking about cars, somebody else did that.
I'm not saying SGI should stop building the Altix, it's an interesting excercise. I'm just saying that it doesn't scale up to the levels a SUN Fire 15K can for real world workloads. I don't agree with SUN being "just another failing proprietary UNIX company" either.
If you're honestly thinking SGI is beating SUN I think you've been on Mars the past 10 years, so I can't wait to hear the stories.
I'm not just a SUN consultant. As I said in another comment, I've been doing Linux since 1994 and passed the RHCE exam. I've worked for several Linux companies, both as an employee and an independent consultant. I've even been reselling some Red Hat support contracts.
And it's true: there is very little money in Linux. Ask that to any Linux company struggling to survive (BTW, anybody remember what happened to VALinux ?). Companies do use Linux, but they do it mostly on low-end "edge" servers and in many cases they don't even bother to have a support contract. They consider it a "black box" OS.
Talking about waffles: how did you know I'm from Belgium?

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 17:59 UTC (Thu) by JohnBell (subscriber, #12625) [Link]

Mars was great, I highly recommend the skiing ;-).

Belgium, eh? Nice place. I enjoy Europe in general. I usually head for Germany (Bavaria) or Austria, however (family on my wife's side).

Just as another data point, I myself have made a killing working on Linux and Linux-based projects. I guess good work is where you find it. My current job is to wrangle a large Linux and FreeBSD farm, using things like Oracle 9i RAC on Linux, supporting multi-tier web apps, etc.

I do enjoy my job, very much, as I am sure you do yours. Let's not kid ourselves that there is no money to made in Linux, however. Especially supporting it. IBM has already proven that it can be done, and companies are scrambling madly for the technology. Linux is here to stay, and it's going to make a lot of people very well off.

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 18:38 UTC (Thu) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

The day Linux starts powering some real databases in the various datacenters in Brussels I'll be going back to Linux. For the moment, the HP-UX/Solaris market is just infinitely bigger here. Even a dead-end OS like Tru64 is generating more business. Sad but true.
The company I work for now is migrating some NT web servers to Linux, but that's peanuts to what they've got running on HP-UX.

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 18:33 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]

It's not that a living can't be made by being a Linux specialist--it's just that certain assumptions have to be rethought (both on the specialist's end and their customers'.) The system of consultancy that works with proprietary software just doesn't work the same way with free software. It just takes some retooling of the process, and the market hasn't completely figured out how to exploit the new method yet.

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 16:19 UTC (Thu) by JohnBell (subscriber, #12625) [Link]

Look, Sun equipment is great and all, but it's not the be all and end all of computing.

Don't look behind you, someone might be catching up faster than you think.

A -lot- faster.

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 17:03 UTC (Thu) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

Of course SUN is not the be all and end all of computing, but I wouldn't describe it as "another failing proprietay UNIX company" either.
For what it's worth I happen to be a RHCE and I've been using Linux since 1994. If Linux catches up with Solaris on a 64-way server tomorrow I'll have been waiting for 9 years. I wouldn't call that "fast".

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 17:49 UTC (Thu) by JohnBell (subscriber, #12625) [Link]

I'll admit to being born, just not yesterday.

I don't recall 15K systems being production ready and for sale in 1994. Solaris wasn't worth the powder it would take to blow it up in 1994, for that matter. If you wanted 64 bit computing at that time you were looking at Alpha systems from Digital. I know that for a fact, because I had to evaluate HP vs. Sun vs. Digital as part of the TAC 3 / TAC 4 transition proposals in our project for the Navy (SQQ-32).

Sun was, at best, a workstation vendor in 1994. Saying anything more than that is twisting history into very strange shapes.

As for Linux catching up to Solaris on 64-way sparcs, I believe David Miller has already shown that v2.4 can more than keep up to Solaris on equivalent equipment. Given that, it's always been about the applications, not the platform itself. As it always is when you're dropping multiple millions on a piece of equipment.

Screw Sun

Posted Jul 31, 2003 18:31 UTC (Thu) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

Solaris was indeed in it's infancy in 1994, did I ever claim otherwise (SunOS was very mature at the time)? In the mean time it has become the #1 UNIX on the block, SUN has eaten the competition alive during the .com boom and Digital, the Alpha and HP's PA-RISC are meatballs.
I'm not twisting reality. SUN has indeed matured a lot since then, up to the point where they are now: the leading proprietary UNIX vendor, having so much cash on their hands they can give OpenOffice away for free so the Linux purists finally have a half decent office suite.
Linux on SUN Fire equipment... hm... I'd like to see what happens to Linux when I pull out a system board from a 4800 ...