Popularity of the current Solaris releases
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From: Martha Starkey on 30 Nov 2009 12:29 Andrew Gabriel wrote: > In article <JsBQm.7467$Lq5.284(a)newsfe20.iad>, > Canuck57 <Canuck57(a)nospam.com> writes: >> Agreed. But one hold back for Solaris on x86 is the lack of SATA >> ICHR7/8/9/10 drivers in modes other than IDE emulation, which many BIOS >> no longer supports the IDE downgrade part. > > Solaris has driven these natively for some time with ahci(7D). > They're used in a number of Sun systems, and probably half > the newer systems OpenSolaris is routinely installed on. > >> I have 3 perfectly good common mobo based systems at home, none will run >> Solaris nor OpenSolaris outside a VM. And the chipsets are amongst the >> most common in the desktop quad processor arena there is. > > Sounds like you have poor motherboards and/or ancient BIOS. > Probably worth trying a BIOS update, if the board manufacturer > makes them available (sadly some cheaper ones don't after they > stop manufacturing the board, and you're stuck forever more > with whatever bugs the BIOS has at that point). > > If you said what motherboard models you're using, someone > else might say if they have them working OK. > can also look here and provide info: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/
From: Andrew Gabriel on 30 Nov 2009 15:35 In article <4b129c58(a)212.67.96.135>, Dave <foo(a)coo.com> writes: > There are basically 4 current Solaris operating systems? > > * Solaris 10 on SPARC processors > * Solaris 10 on x86 processors > * OpenSolaris on SPARC processors > * OpenSolaris on x86 processors. > > how do they compare in popularity? Depends very heavily on the type of customer base you're considering. > I assume it fairly safe to assume that OpenSolaris on SPARC is less popular than > OpenSolaris on x86, but I'm less sure how the others rank. > > I guess Solaris 10 is more popular on SPARC than x86, but maybe that is not true. You also need to define what you mean by popularity. -- Andrew Gabriel [email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]
From: Andrew Gabriel on 1 Dec 2009 16:25 In article <Toqdne9RdMmsbo7WnZ2dnUVZ8kqdnZ2d(a)pipex.net>, solx <nospam(a)example.net> writes: > Hi, > > Having worked for a software house, Sun has done themselves no favours > by dropping SPARC workstations. The Sun workstations are all AMD or > Intel based, while servers are SPARC, AMD or Intel. > I worked with developers who wanted SPARC workstations but were given What did they want them for? If you want to develop for sparc servers, you need to do that on a sparc server. They are now so different from workstations, that if you developed on a workstation, your app would probably run very badly on a modern server. > AMD64/x86 based workstations running Windows. Hopefully with Solaris 11 Stick Solaris x86 on it and use it to front-up your sparc server for same look and feel, or even just as an X terminal (or use a SunRay). There's no shortage of ways to achieve the same thing, but developing on a sparc workstation won't any longer give you any feel for how a modern server works - they've moved on too far from simply being big versions of a workstation. -- Andrew Gabriel [email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]
From: Dave on 1 Dec 2009 20:16 Andrew Gabriel wrote: > In article <Toqdne9RdMmsbo7WnZ2dnUVZ8kqdnZ2d(a)pipex.net>, > solx <nospam(a)example.net> writes: >> Hi, >> >> Having worked for a software house, Sun has done themselves no favours >> by dropping SPARC workstations. The Sun workstations are all AMD or >> Intel based, while servers are SPARC, AMD or Intel. >> I worked with developers who wanted SPARC workstations but were given > > What did they want them for? > If you want to develop for sparc servers, you need to do that on > a sparc server. They are now so different from workstations, that > if you developed on a workstation, your app would probably run > very badly on a modern server. > >> AMD64/x86 based workstations running Windows. Hopefully with Solaris 11 > > Stick Solaris x86 on it and use it to front-up your sparc server > for same look and feel, or even just as an X terminal (or use a > SunRay). There's no shortage of ways to achieve the same thing, > but developing on a sparc workstation won't any longer give you > any feel for how a modern server works - they've moved on too > far from simply being big versions of a workstation. > Are you referring in particular to the CoolThreads chips? They certainly are a totally different animal to the SPARCs in any workstations I've ever used. They clearly are capable of high performance if your code can exploit their parallelism, or you have a lot of processes, but otherwise they are pretty damm slow. I've just about given up trying to develop on a T5240 due to its speed. -- I respectfully request that this message is not archived by companies as unscrupulous as 'Experts Exchange' . In case you are unaware, 'Experts Exchange' take questions posted on the web and try to find idiots stupid enough to pay for the answers, which were posted freely by others. They are leeches.
From: Andrew Gabriel on 2 Dec 2009 14:01
In article <4b15bfdf(a)212.67.96.135>, Dave <foo(a)coo.com> writes: > Andrew Gabriel wrote: >> In article <Toqdne9RdMmsbo7WnZ2dnUVZ8kqdnZ2d(a)pipex.net>, >> solx <nospam(a)example.net> writes: >>> Hi, >>> >>> Having worked for a software house, Sun has done themselves no favours >>> by dropping SPARC workstations. The Sun workstations are all AMD or >>> Intel based, while servers are SPARC, AMD or Intel. >>> I worked with developers who wanted SPARC workstations but were given >> >> What did they want them for? >> If you want to develop for sparc servers, you need to do that on >> a sparc server. They are now so different from workstations, that >> if you developed on a workstation, your app would probably run >> very badly on a modern server. >> >>> AMD64/x86 based workstations running Windows. Hopefully with Solaris 11 >> >> Stick Solaris x86 on it and use it to front-up your sparc server >> for same look and feel, or even just as an X terminal (or use a >> SunRay). There's no shortage of ways to achieve the same thing, >> but developing on a sparc workstation won't any longer give you >> any feel for how a modern server works - they've moved on too >> far from simply being big versions of a workstation. >> > > Are you referring in particular to the CoolThreads chips? They certainly are a > totally different animal to the SPARCs in any workstations I've ever used. They > clearly are capable of high performance if your code can exploit their > parallelism, or you have a lot of processes, but otherwise they are pretty damm > slow. I've just about given up trying to develop on a T5240 due to its speed. T series and M series - they're very different beasts, but again both very different from a workstation. For a T5240, you're going to need somewhere up around 128 runnable threads to get the most from it, and ideally many more in practice. That's great for throughput computing such as web serving, and apps which have been designed to scale to very many threads such as Oracle*, but if you write an app on a workstation and just move it across without understanding the differences, you might find you can only use about 1% of the server's capability. For M-series, you also need a good number of runnable threads, 16 or more, and you have that combined with cores that each give you something like 3 times the performance of something like a V890 core at the same clockspeed. These systems just don't look anything like big workstations anymore - they've well outgrown that. I suppose the nearest would be an M3000 with a SunRay. * http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/036544 -- Andrew Gabriel [email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup] |