Weblog entry #7 for lters
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#7
Sun Servers
Posted by lters on Tue 17 Oct 2006 at 13:52
I am interested in knowing how you like Sun servers:
I am especially interested in long uptimes, and storage solutions.
They seem to get good reviews on performance even on older hardware.
I have used a few boxes with Sparc but it seems like the Sparc support in Debian is not long term, especially as the new Sun servers are using AMD processors.
Also, the Sparc seemed rather tricky to get working.
I noticed the v40z and v20z and found a few references to them working on Debian.
Anyone with experience care to share?
o running Debian 32/64 (or Ubuntu), o which servers are the easiest to install, o and perhaps what gets you the most server for the dollar.
I am especially interested in long uptimes, and storage solutions.
They seem to get good reviews on performance even on older hardware.
I have used a few boxes with Sparc but it seems like the Sparc support in Debian is not long term, especially as the new Sun servers are using AMD processors.
Also, the Sparc seemed rather tricky to get working.
I noticed the v40z and v20z and found a few references to them working on Debian.
Anyone with experience care to share?
Comments on this Entry
I've got an old Sparc5 that I keep meaning to swap out the ancient Solaris 2.6 install with Debian. In theory it should be possible to install it using Bootp, NFS and some messing - I've just not got round to trying it...
I'd like to know how easy it is to do too.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
I'd like to know how easy it is to do too.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (71.97.xx.xx) on Fri 20 Oct 2006 at 04:19
Debian does a good job supporting Sparc. So far I've done installs on two very different sparc boxes and each one work very well.
The first box was an old SPARCstation LX with no removeable media like CD-ROM so I setup a RARP and TFTP server on another Debian box and used the Netboot image to do a net install. It worked flawlessly even though this machine is more than 10 years old and pretty obscure.
The second box was a Ultra 60, dual UltraSPARC II (64bit) cpus, Elite3D graphic cards, 2GB Ram-- and more recent system. It worked just fine as well booting from CD and doing a Netinstall.
On both systems I found everything seemed to work just fine, not any more difficult than a regular old x86 machine.
Sun hardware is reliable, but I'd say no more reliable than an equivelent x86 based server. As far as uptime, my old PIII based server keeps up right along with my Sun boxes-- 100+ days of uptime is no sweat.
Debian is great. You can login to my sparc machines or my x86 machines and not really tell the difference. They just work like they should.
The first box was an old SPARCstation LX with no removeable media like CD-ROM so I setup a RARP and TFTP server on another Debian box and used the Netboot image to do a net install. It worked flawlessly even though this machine is more than 10 years old and pretty obscure.
The second box was a Ultra 60, dual UltraSPARC II (64bit) cpus, Elite3D graphic cards, 2GB Ram-- and more recent system. It worked just fine as well booting from CD and doing a Netinstall.
On both systems I found everything seemed to work just fine, not any more difficult than a regular old x86 machine.
Sun hardware is reliable, but I'd say no more reliable than an equivelent x86 based server. As far as uptime, my old PIII based server keeps up right along with my Sun boxes-- 100+ days of uptime is no sweat.
Debian is great. You can login to my sparc machines or my x86 machines and not really tell the difference. They just work like they should.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]