[Suns-at-Home] Raw Power

[Craig Dewick]

On Mon, 16 Jul 2007, Andre van Eyssen wrote:

> On Sun, 15 Jul 2007, Ben Lewis wrote:
>
>> Having acquired a E3500 and an Ultra 1 in the last couple of months I find 
>> myself only really switching on my Ultra 5 to actually do anything useful.
>> 
>> The E3500 has much more power and the Ultra 1 is much quieter than the 
>> Ultra 5 but somehow it feels like my "home machine".
>> 
>> Is there a size-power-cpu-ram-diskspace to usefulness equation that I'm not 
>> aware of?
>
> Yes. The more CPU, RAM, Storage and network connectivity a box has the more 
> potentially useful.
>
> This is an easy one to spot. The Ultra-5's CPU is far faster than the 
> Ultra-1, no doubt it has a better framebuffer and will be much snappier to 
> use.
>
> The E3500 takes half an hour to POST, so if you're switching machines 
> on-and-off the wait would drive you nuts.

I noticed this when I set up my E450 last year - POST takes a good 10 
minutes or more depending what diag level, etc. I have it set up for. It's 
supremely quiet apart from disk noise, and it replaced about four small 
server boxes (a couple of t105's and some older systems) I had running in 
my rack with one single, relatively more energy-efficient, quiet, powerful 
system that's simple to move around when that need arises.

> Personally, I'd try to score a SunRay thin client or two and plug 'em into 
> your 3500. The performance may surprise you.

How freely available is the software, etc. to run SunRay's like that? Has 
sun closed off access to it just like they've done with SunSolve and 
access to Solaris patches, etc.?

If the software is freely available, that's good as SunRay's (esp. the 
earlier ones) show up on Ebay all the time now at cheap prices.

Craig.

-- 
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