SUMMARY: Solaris, Sparc vs. Intel

Another quick and to the point answer.

The majority of the respondents feel that overall a Sparc system is a better
investment that a Dell running Solaris x86. Some mentioned Linux, but senior
managment will not hear it. Win 2000 was also mentioned by one person, but my
management is wise enough to not go down that path. While I specifically
mentioned V880's it's interesting that no one compared the price/performance
of Netras vs. PCs on x86. For the price these make excellent web servers (we
even have Oracle development databases on a few). Several brought up the
point
of support: one vendor solution vs. two.  I'be been there (OS support from
one, hardware from another, and EMC on Sun) and I can state that it's
generally not pretty.  The overall archictecture was another point raised.
The
newer Sparc systems will scale better and have higher throughput.  When
coupled with the RISC/CISC factor the Sun's are overall faster.  It's not
enough to have a screaming CPU if its stuck in a bottleneck bus (see DEC
Alpha
and  "Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system." -
Seymour Cray) The bottom line is that for small non-critical uses x86
provides
an economical solution, just don't expect sterling support or future growth.

JC

Original post:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
>
> A Dell sales type has approached one of my senior managers with a story
about
> how well Dell servers run X86 and it would be so much better and cheaper. I
> was asked to come up with some comparisons between Sparc V880 and anything
> Dell has. I will state that I LOVE my V880's. A really great system for
> about
> $50K. Very maintainable, very flexible. I do know that I can't get Veritas
> Volume Manager or File System for X86 and that Sun has stated that Solaris
9
> will not be ported to Intel. I'm also aware that the WinTel architecture is
> much less efficient (memory management, I/O, etc.) that StarFire class
> systems. But as our bonuses are based on monies spent I'm interested in
> saving
> money. On the other hand our application developers, like almost all
> application developers, tend to write "less than optimal code. (I'll need
the
> horsepower)" Does anyone have other data that I can pass to my management
> that
> will allow us to make a rational and truly economic decision?
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