Server deja vu

Over a year ago, I had a great deal of fun and games when we got some Sun X2100M2 systems:

On to the X2100 M2
Me versus the M2
The M2 comes alive
Server Wars: The M2 strikes back

Well, it looks like I have another battle on my hands. After a stack of flawless installs of X4200 and X4500 boxes, we decided it was worth getting an X4150 to see what the Xeon offered. Our cpu-hungry applications love the idea of quad-core; our data storage likes the idea of 8 disks in a 1U system.

Installing this thing isn't going well. Watch this space...

Sunsolve needs a makeover

Sunsolve is an excellent resource. I don't have any issues with the content - it's great stuff.

Where I do have problems is with it's reliability and performance. I couldn't get through at all for a while over the weekend, and often have problems with my automated patch scripts - which can time out, report 500 errors, or tell me I'm unauthorized, all at random, and have been that way for a long time.

I even got the following gem off the website just now:


Come on Sun - show us how good your stuff really is by making your own sites work well!

Sun, Intel - friends?

OK, so Sun and Intel made a big fuss about some deal or other (one which doesn't really set the pulse racing, mind). What I found ironic was the ticker underneath the main feature on the Sun home page, where they put the knife into Itanium.

I remember Sun recently selling a number of Intel powered systems. The LX50 was a nice box - even if it was pushed with SunLinux. The V60x was OK, but I quite liked the V65x, and that sort of system (6 internal drives) is something that would be quite valuable. And the B200x blade was quite a marvel - twin hyperthreaded Xeons and a decent memory configuration in a tiny package.

I expect closer collaboration will improve driver support for Solaris, but I'm also hoping for a wider range of systems designed for Solaris to give us a breadth and variety of system configurations that Sun themselves seem disinclined to supply.