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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!news From: David Bellamy <bellamy@commerce.uq.edu.au> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.aix Subject: Re: ISP hardware/software choices (performance comparison) Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 10:03:06 +1000 Organization: Dept. of Commerce, The University of Queensland Lines: 67 Message-ID: <30F8483A.7187@commerce.uq.edu.au> References: <4cmopu$d35@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <cnordin.821050414@news.vni.net> <4crliv$smk@olympus.nwnet.net> <4cuums$bi1@helena.MT.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: gandalf.commerce.uq.edu.au Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0b3 (X11; I; SunOS 5.3 sun4m) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:1810 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:1932 comp.unix.solaris:56412 comp.unix.aix:68023 Nate Williams wrote: > > In article <4crliv$smk@olympus.nwnet.net>, > Anthony D'Atri <aad@nwnet.net> wrote: > >>BSDI is going to run around SunOS, Solaris, and AIX . It is faaaaast. > >>The Sparc20s are very nice and some of them might actually be an > >>improvement -- but why move yourself off of the commodity prices of > >>Intel sub-systems ? > > > >Because commodity-priced Intel-architecture stuff doesn't run reliably or > >cheaply. > > So don't buy the commodity-proced Intel stuff. > > >In order to configure such a box to run a Unix decently, you don't > >use a flinky $25 mass-market enclosure -- you pay more for one with a decent > >power supply and cooling. You pay more if you want a halfway-usable keyboard, > >for any machines that need one. In the end, though, memory and disk costs > >for this sort of application are going to dwarf the CPU costs anyway, which > >kinda makes the argument moot. > > Acually, no. The CPU cost still is significant. > > >IMHO, the Unix-on-MSDOS-hardware route can be by far the most time-consuming > >and headache-prone. Hardware and software vendor support can be even worse > >than that of Unix-hardware vendors. > > Find a good HW vendor. How hard is that? It'll cost you a bit more > (10-15%), but once you've found a good vendor you won't have to worry about > it anymore. > > >It can take a week to get a machine to simply recognize two SCSI > >controllers. Nobody expects you to put two into a machine, so nobody > >tells you the convolutions needed to do so. > > You'll have the same problem with PC unices as you do with SUN/DEC/SGI > workstations. How do I stick one in my Sparc 10, I've avoided doing it > simply because it's a pain? (BTW - I know how, it's almost *exactly* > the same procedure as doing it under any of the BSD's) > That must be something peculiar to BSD (SunOS 4.x ??). Under SunOS 5.4, touch /reconfigure power down and install new SCSI-2 card boot There it is. (If you forgot the touch /reconfigure, you can always just do boot -r.) > Software support isn't perfect on *ANY* OS > you choose, but if you stick with the standard OS's already discussed > you'll be pretty safe. > You'd probably also want to pick one that is being actively developed and enhanced - all this WWW stuff is introducing stresses and demands on an OS that no one could have dreamed of. BSD derived systems are pretty well dead (yes I'm sure there is an exception, somewhere) but most mainstream suppliers now are using SVR4 derived systems. -- David Bellamy. Deparment of Commerce. The University of Queensland. Australia. Internet: bellamy@commerce.uq.edu.au Phone: +61 7 336 56652