[CentOS] SunFire X2100 and X4100

[Chris Mauritz]

Peter Arremann wrote:

>On Wednesday 14 September 2005 13:43, Chris Mauritz wrote:
>  
>
>>Anyone seen either of these "in the wild" yet?  RHEL3/RHEL4 are install
>>options so I'm assuming CentOS will just work out of the box, but I
>>thought I'd ask here.  The 2100 seems like a viable alternative to
>>whitebox 1RU boxes that we currently use, especially with the new dual
>>core processors.
>>    
>>
>X4100 works fine. The x2100 is basicly a very basic workstation in a pizzabox 
>and while I didn't get mine yet to test, I doubt there will be issues.
>  
>

Cool.  My thoughts were that it would make a nice vanilla renderfarm box 
with the dual processor core.  It's probably also suitable for medium 
volume web/DNS/mail usage if you've got a load balancing appliance handy.

In the past, I've been a fan of whitebox machines running Linux mostly 
because you can use anthill labour to solve a given problem and they're 
substantially cheaper than hp/dell/ibm/etc rackmount servers while doing 
equivalent (or superior) work.  The price delta has allowed me to pay my 
people more (we've all got to make a living, right?).  It wasn't that 
long ago that Compaq/HP would charge 5X (or more!) the street price of 
an actual processor for a processor upgrade or 3-5X the street price for 
a hard drive so eventually I just couldn't justify the silliness 
anymore, even though non-technical people were perfectly willing to pay 
whatever bill I gave them.  If I can spec Sun equipment at near whitebox 
prices and run Linux, that's a win all around.  Some folks would say 
"why don't you just run Solaris?"  My answer is that Linux is perfect 
for most of our needs and we like to support OSS.  Also, when I was 
coming out of college, SunOS (and later Solaris) was the lingua franca 
for comp sci majors.  Increasingly, at least from the interviews that 
I've conducted, there has been a BIG shift to Linux.  Eventually, those 
kids are going to be running IT departments and they'll "go with what 
they know."   I hope Sun can re-invent itself to take advantage of this 
environment.

Cheers,