[wplug] Linux and Sparc

Chris Romano romano.chris at gmail.com
Tue Mar 8 09:20:47 EST 2005


On Tue, 08 Mar 2005 09:09:22 -0500, Patrick Wagstrom
<pwagstro at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 08:41 -0500, Chris Romano wrote:
> > Does anyone have experience with Linux on a Sun box?  I am looking at
> > machines to put in a data center to serve as a hot backup for my
> > companies website and secondary DNS server. I want hardware that is
> > rock solid.  Although I have never worked with sun machines, I always
> > hear how good the hardware is.  Can anyone share some wisdom,
> > suggestions, or links?
> 
> I've ran Linux on a couple of different architectures (Ultra 5/10,
> SunBlade, SparcStation) and different distributions (Gentoo, Debian,
> RedHat back in the day).  My experience has been mixed.  I've found that
> unless you're going with the enterprise class hardware, reliability
> really isn't much greater than you'd expect with x86 or PPC boxes, this
> is especially true with sunblades, which were notoriously flaky (bad
> motherboards, ram issues, etc).
> 
> I've got a few boxes that are still running Linux/Sparc in various
> locations around the net and most are pretty solid, but they're not
> doing much anymore (a few firewall machines and a web server or two).
> 
> With Sun machines one of the ways that they're rock solid is that
> they've generally got pretty good support for the machines, however if
> you install linux you can kiss that support goodbye, unless it's Java
> Desktop System.
> 
> Unless you're looking for the newness of playing with a less common
> architecture, you're probably better off picking up some x86 boxes.
> 

I was looking at the Sun Fire V100.  They come with Solaris.  I would
keep Solaris but I am not familiar with it.  I would rather stick to
something I know, until I get the chance to learn it.  So I would be
better off with say an IBM box?  Has anyone used Penguin Computing?

Thanks,
Chris


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