Re: Power supply efficiency on older model Sun equipment

On Sun, 31 Aug 2008, Andre van Eyssen wrote:

> 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 ;-)

CentOS is quite a good OS - that's what the Strongbolt OS for Cobalt 
embedded-x86 servers is based around.

>> 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.

SB1000 is my newest system. Don't have access to anything newer but I 
could get my hands on ugly Wintendo-based servers a-plenty if I wanted 
them.

>> 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!

It's a good, solid, reliable system, so that's not at all surprising 
really.

> 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.

About the only Ultra-1 based system I would consider now is an E150, but 
they are *rare* and very hard to find (esp. here in Australia).

> 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.

At the moment I run a bunch of Sun hardware including this SB1000, an 
E450, Ultra 2, SS20, and Cobalt Raq4i (plus a Dell GX-270 running Windows 
which I use for my digital camera, etc. plus the kids use it, and the 
APANA-owned Compaq PL-800 server). Our electricity bill is almost A$600 
per 3 months at present - way too high.

> 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!

SunRay software isn't free though, and licensing it for US$125 per device 
per year is a bit on the nose for a grass-roots application. That's why I 
decided to list the SunRay 150 I've been hanging onto for a while on Ebay 
- can't justify paying extortive amounts for access to the software for a 
home environment. Sun does offer a 'trial' download for free of version 4, 
but it's only good for 30 days I think. I don't know if version 3 is 
available for free without restrictions but I haven't seen it anywhere.

Craig.

-- 
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