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Screw SunScrew SunPosted Jul 31, 2003 9:04 UTC (Thu) by fx (guest, #12077)In reply to: Screw Sun by JohnBell Parent article: Sun Sees Road To Prosperity Paved With Its Own Products (TechWeb) 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:
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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,
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 (guest, #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 (guest, #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 (guest, #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 (guest, #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 ...
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