Re: Comments on W2100z workstation?

SQ <onestatusquo@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

I am looking to buy W2100z workstation. I realize it's a few years
old from 2004 but I found a good deal on one.

Is it a good machine to get or should I look for a newer workstation?

I realize that Ultra 40 is not a SCSI machine (Or is it?) And is it
that much better?

Take this with a pinch of salt as it's one (possibly
not-statistically-valid) data point, however ...

I got a 2100z off Ebay "New in box". The machine happened to turn up
DOA and I returned it for a full refund. However, whilst spending
hours and hours trying to find the fault, I came to the conclusion the
case was a cheap and nasty POS. It seems to be held together with
small plastic tabs designed to snap off if you so much as look at the
machine. Despite its weakness in I/O I much preferred the quality of
an Ultra 10, for example, which was often thought to be a bit cheap by
Sun standards.

I can't comment on its run-time performance/behaviour, I was never so
privileged.

By contrast a Sun Ultra 40 is a fairly solid machine - much much
better than those W?00z machines. I would say it's awesome, but then I
have a Sun Blade 1000 to compare it to which has the edge on
absolutele build quality amongst Sun workstations in my book (not to
mention weight, heat and power draw). Mind you an SB1000 is too old to
bother with unless you're a collector...

Back on topic a bit, Ultra 40 can be ordered with SCSI - look for
"SAS" disks, that stands for serial attached SCSI, which cleverly uses
the same connectors and cabling as SATA. I have an SAS machine built
by HP that I like (unfortunately for my reputation it runs Windows XP,
but Solaris was pretty good on it when I ran off the OpenSolaris live
boot). The M2 revision also goes up to something like 8 disks which is
a fair bit of storage, especially with SATA disks (soon to hit 1.5TB).

The only problem I have with the ultra 40 is sun's policy of bundling
various machine options, so get SAS you tend to have to buy the
fastest CPUs they offer. I never found just the right deal on one on
Ebay (hence the HP machine).

If you are at all considering buying new also bear in mind that Sun
hasn't refreshed its workstations with the quad-core Opterons yet,
unlike some of its servers. Also it's fair to say the Ultra 24 (Intel,
not AMD-based) is probably the best deal on a Sun workstation for a
long time. IIRC a Sun Ultra 24 with quad-core Core 2 Duo type CPU can
be had for <$2k.

Chris

--
Chris Morgan
"Post posting of policy changes by the boss will result in
real rule revisions that are irreversible"

- anonymous correspondent
.

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