On 11/05/10 14:29, Joe McDonagh wrote: > "If your Sun fails" <-- that's a big IF. It's approaching a possibility > of 0 in my experience. > > If performance isn't an issue and stability is your chief goal, none of > this hardware is as stable as a Sun.
Good to hear your experience with sun HW is better than mine. SS20s overheat U1's pop power supplies (gone through three in my PERSONAL stock!) U5/U10/AXi pop processors (three, in my personal stock) U2's have issues with connectors (blow out dust, clean 'em up, can do much better). That's all my personal systems. At work, I have evidence that E250s and E450s blow power supplies (the bad power supplies make great monitor stands), v250 power supplies are expensive to get (and they DON'T make good monitor stands), T1-105s can blow main boards, E4500s can blow CPUs (and come back up with the bad processor off-line in solaris. impressive!). T2000s light up wrench lights and finding out why is a surprisingly difficult. (this is all ignoring the CMOS batteries which die and take out the system's MAC address). On the other hand, I have a U60 that had a very traumatic trip to my front porch, judging from the amount of uncracked case plastic on it and unbent frame in it (none. Thing probably took one heck of a chunk out of the UPS truck), but still works just fine, and a U5 at work that has been running an app for probably the last ten years with probably less than five hours total downtime (original disk. I'm scared). I can point to PCs with similar feats, though. Suns are good, but they aren't beyond failure, and since failure means you can't stick the disks in a commodity machine, you had best be prepared in advance for the failure of the hardware. Anyway... All hardware can fail. Be ready for it. Don't pretend it won't, unless you already have the new job lined up. If you run a highly regarded brand that "doesn't fail", you will be worse off than the person who runs known-junk, but has spare parts on hand and a plan to deal with failures. (I work at a place with some "doesn't fail" stuff that does...and a lot of old junk that we have spare parts for which is less scary when things break. Now, if only I could convince management to keep my junk pile deep and wide). Nick.
