[lug] Re: LUG Digest, Vol 53, Issue 11

[Nate Duehr]

William D. Knoche wrote:
> Nate, send me the part number and I will look up and see who 
> manufactures the drives. Most of the drives Sun is using these days are 
> Hitachi.

Just a fast look in the lab in the 480's shows:
5404525-1
5405408-01

But those are just lab boxes, and not many failures in there...

> There has been so much consolidation in the disc biz that there really 
> aren't very many choices (Seagate, Hitachi, or Fujitsu is about it in 
> the enterprise class and just WD left otherwise).

That's definitely true... not many real fabs behind all these names 
anymore, but the different production lines do seem to use "different" 
tech that was bought from one place or another over time... kinda like 
the ExtremeTech article alludes to by saying Hitachi's stuff is "falling 
behind".

As far as these fiber channel things go, it's not super-important much 
anymore... the SunFire 480's started being replaced in our "recommended 
hardware" lists quite some time ago with the 440's... which are just 
SCSI...

And the next major rev of the product uses Linux "pizza boxes" in a 
clustered DB and application software environment... the cluster of 
cheap boxes is just simpler, and Telco has slowly been moving away from 
the requirement that the boxes be NEBS-compliant for fire-suppression at 
un-manned (dark) sites.

Everything's mostly gone "dark" other than roving techs going in and out 
of sites all day, and everything's moved to pizza box 1RU servers, and 
nothing has burnt down... yet.  LOL.

Sadly maybe for the Sun fans here, we're using Dell and IBM pizza boxes 
for those clusters... I don't think the Sun Opteron-based systems or 
whatever other small boxes Sun had were even considered serious 
contenders, mostly on price -- I think.  Don't know, not involved in 
those decisions.  Maybe they just liked the stupid LCD displays on the 
front of the IBM's and Dells.  (Snicker... marketing.)

I like Sun hardware, but even the "funny" video the Sun Germany guys did 
to show off ZFS where they had a monster Sun server delivered, and then 
their boss told them "We can't afford THAT!  Find some other way!" and 
then they use a laptop with Solaris and a bunch of USB hubs and sticks 
to show off ZFS... kinda really tells the story.

I'm surprised Sun's marketing folks ever let them put that out, really 
-- the story it tells is the same as what's happened out here in the 
real world... Sun hardware kicks booty all over these cheap PC's, but 
it's so expensive, no one can integrate products onto the platform 
anymore.

So Sun instead sells boxes that will run Linux???  Sad, since Solaris is 
far more predictable and stable even than good old stable Linux!  So 
stable no one wants to upgrade off of Solaris 8 in the telco world, 
really... almost like Sun was "too successful", if there is such a 
thing... in the 90's and early 2000's.

Sorry folks, I know I went a bit off-topic here, but it's interesting to 
see how Unix "history" works.  Solaris isn't going anywhere, but it's 
being stuffed into a few niche corners right now, and cheap hardware 
only built half as well is "good enough" -- and then we have to install 
three or more of them, to equal the reliability of one Sun box.  Kinda 
silly, to throw out good engineering for "good enough" engineering and 
then build a bunch of redundancy of boxes in... but that seems common. 
Not just in the computer world...

"Just throw it away and buy a new one."

How many people buying HDTV's know that their backlights on the LCD's 
are dying from the day the first turn them on... their CRT's will be 
running for at least 20 years, but these new tech things aren't built to 
last... like a lot of stuff...

Oh well, 140,000 miles on the Jeep and we'll just keep going and see how 
far that old straight 6 will run.  So far, no signs of stopping it any 
time soon.  Some people don't like making capital expenditures for 
hardware very often... (GRIN)... others always want the "latest and 
greatest" and if they can't afford it, they drive the pricing down by 
demanding lower quality... "I'll throw it away in three years anyway, 
who needs temperature sensors!?"

Interesting strategy problems for hardware manufacturers these days. 
Guess that's always been true, but the demand for LOWER quality is 
somewhat a new thing.  Of course, I could ask the mainframe guys if they 
agree that the sentiment is "new" - ha ha ha.  They're all running Linux 
ON the mainframes, now... a novel idea, and WAY interesting considering 
that everyone thought that big-iron would be "dead" by now.

Nate