Re: Power supply efficiency on older model Sun equipment

On Sat, 30 Aug 2008, D G Teed wrote:

> Yes I expect so, a guy in my LUG says he runs CentOS 5.2
> with no problems.  Many people seem to be looking at them
> for home theatre applications due to the low noise, small
> form factor and cheap price.

Some people might debate the 'Real OS' factor there ;-)

> or less with rate increases.  In case you didn't know, the
> Intel Atom and motherboard are about $70 for the package.
> The processor itself draws 8 watts.  I wonder if there will
> be blades made of stuff like this - maybe not the Atom but
> maybe an Atom version 2.

Plus drives, plus case, plus power supply, plus time.

> We are talking about Suns at home, right?  My wife would freak if
> I brought home a T2000.  They blend into the sound of a machine
> room, but run one in a room by itself and they are loud.

We are. I have a T2000 cranking lately, but I tend to bring work home with 
me. I'm looking forward to seeing the end of it, to be honest, the noise 
is *insane* from that little box. I can't hear the 880 over it, which 
really says something.

> Our student system is still running on an Enterprise 250
> with 2 300Mhz procs (due to migrate to a T2000) with
> Solaris 7.

I've done a lot of similar migrations over the last few years. And a lot 
of software currency upgrades will still staying on E250s!

A lot of this still depends on workload. An Ultra-1 is a prime candidate 
for replacement, I'll agree, because they're getting just a little *too* 
long on the tooth these days, and they don't have the charm of the 
SPARCstations that came before them.

I did my power consolidation about 18 months ago - three E250s, two small 
JBODs, a V210, a Netra T1 and an Ultra-2 onto a V880 and a cleaned up 
Netra T1.

Of course, if one really wanted to save power the answer would be a 
horking great Sun box and SunRay thin clients to replace all the 
workstations!

-- 
Andre van Eyssen.
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