Re: Sun w1100z/w2100z & Solaris 9 x86

From: Colin Stuckless (cstuckless_at_gmail.com)
Date: 09/03/04 

Date: 3 Sep 2004 09:29:54 -0700

Frank Cusack <fcusack@fcusack.com> wrote in message news:<m3hdqfaami.fsf@magma.savecore.net>...
> On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 01:27:08 -0230 Colin Stuckless <colins@stuckless.com> wrote:
> > Rich Teer wrote:
> >> On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Colin Stuckless wrote:
> >>
> >>>Linux is stable, high quality and 'mission-critical' (a BS term to begin
> >> Tee hee! You forgot the smiley.
> >
> > No smiley. We've been running Linux workstations for more than a year
> > now with the same heavy workloads we previously ran on Blade
> > 1000/2000s. Other than the Linux boxes running much faster, we have
> > seen no difference in stability or quality between the two platforms.
>
> You must not be using any "advanced" features like NIS or LDAP, or I
> don't know ... threads?
>
> Of course the Linux boxes run much faster, Sun workstations are junk.
> But the software is *worlds* better. God, what idiot would buy a
> blade 2000. Even if your app only runs on SPARC, use a server with
> remote x terminals for heaven's sake.
>
> Sorry for the vitriol. I would actually be interested to know what
> software you were running on blades that recently became available
> for Linux/x86.

Hi Frank

We run applications related to oil & gas development. This was a
market that belonged to SGI (Indigo^2, then Octanes) before Sun
started making inroads with the release of the Ultra 5/10/30/60/80.
Blade 1000/2000s have been the staple for the past 4 years and are
still very common in these environments.

But today, just as Sun took the market from SGI - IBM, HP and possibly
even Dell machines running Linux are taking the market from Sun. Sun
is now back in the running with the w2100z, but as far as Solaris x86
goes, none of our vendors support it.

Some of the specific applications we run that are now available on
Linux can be found here:

http://www.lgc.com/productsservices/integratedinterpretation/default.htm
http://www.magic-earth.com/geo.asp
http://www.hampson-russell.com/products.htm
http://www.roxar.com/category.php?categoryID=91
http://www.paradigmgeo.com/home/

Your suggestion on using Sun servers and remote X terminals is not
applicable in our case, as these applications are graphic intensive
and many require the fastest 3D acceleration we can buy.

Cheers,

-cjs

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