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,