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Switching to Linux in 2000 for something as busy as Amazon.com was a really ballsy move. I remember fighting kernel panics and hangs under load on RH7 - java wo

Switching to Linux in 2000 for something as busy as Amazon.com was a really ballsy move. I remember fighting kernel panics and hangs under load on RH7 - java workloads. This was pre RMAP VM and I vaguely remember the JVM was able to trigger Linux VM scalability issues due large number of anonymous page mappings. For all the money they were charging Sun did really put lot of engineering effort into Solaris and SPARC.

bcrl 6y ago
We (the Linux kernel community) put a lot of work into scalability back then. One time we delayed a Red Hat release several weeks due to a persistent bit flip on an NFS filesystem on one of our stress tests that we thought was a kernel bug. It ultimately turned out to be a broken Cisco switch that was happily fixing up the CRC and checksums on the NFS packets it was bit flipping.
- blinkingled 6y ago
  Of course. Sun was ahead of the curve in OS scalability and SMP hardware departments and for some time Solaris was still the best OS to run databases and Java.
  - bcrl 6y ago
    Sun also made some pretty awesome x86 servers. It's sad that so many of the vendors left standing today have such crappy IPMI implementations.
    - Bluecobra 6y ago
      I used to work at a shop that had hundreds of X4100's running x86 Solaris 10. It was a pleasure to work those hosts. Solaris had some really cool stuff like ZFS, dtrace, Zones/Containers, SMF, etc.
      - yetanotherme 6y ago
        And now you read the release notes with dread as you witness more and more functionality being dropped because they choose not to maintain it. Luckily there is FreeBSD
        Bluecobra 6y ago
        Yeah it’s a shame. If Sun would have made Solaris (both SPARC/x86) free sooner, they might have prevented the mass exodus of companies moving off to save money.
        jabl 6y ago
        In retrospect, they should have gone down the Sun386I path back in the day, instead of changing gears and spending $$$ building up the SPARC architecture and ecosystem.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    The SPARCcenter 2000 had 20 sockets in 1992: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun4d#SPARCcenter_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun4d#SPARCcenter_2000 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation The Cray CS6400 had 64 in 1993: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_CS6400 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_CS6400 SunOS 4.1.4 was released in 1994 and SunOS 5.x ("Solaris 2") started in 1992.
    - h2odragon 6y ago
      The Sparc2k was a beast. I got on in 1998 that (among other tasks) ran the IRC bot for our channel with a 4gb text quotes database to chain off of. ("Shut up, lucy"). It usually ran at a load average of 4 to 12 per CPU. I had just over 1TB of disk array on it; in 4 dozen, full height, 5 inch 23GB SCSI drives. I sank about $10k into that system in ebay parts. at the time there just wasn't any way to get such bandwidth out of x86, but used gear was cheap. if you could afford the time, sweat and blood to keep it running.
205guy 6y ago
I remember reading Sun’s financial statements at the time and bragging about huge 50% margins and thinking that can’t last. In some alternate timeline, Sun would’ve lowered their prices, stayed in the game, and we’d all have rock solid Sparc laptops by now.
- tempfs 6y ago
  Yeah, no way to survive in the computing game very long with super high margins. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/profit-...
  - giovannibonetti 6y ago
    What about Apple?
  - yyyk 6y ago
    Sun didn't have Jobs's Reality Distortion Field technology. It can't work otherwise.
    - danielscrubs 6y ago
      Oh but Sun did. It’s what made them rich and it wasn’t pretty.
- blackrock 6y ago
  “We’re the dot in dotcom.“ Well, they ended up as the .loser instead.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    Sun: "We put the dot into dot-com!" Microsoft: "Oh yeah? Well we put the COM into dot-com. Pthththth!" IBM: ”When they put the dot into dot-com, they forgot how they were going to connect the dots. Badoom psssh!” https://www.itbusiness.ca/news/ibm-brings-on-demand-computing-to-the-channel/4107 https://www.itbusiness.ca/news/ibm-brings-on-demand-computin...
kev009 6y ago
If you read the other DE respond in the tweets, it was DEC/Compaq Alphas. I think it's kind of insane to have gone from 64b back to 32b (and the DE claims it caused big issues). Seems like API alphas running Linux would have been a better play until Opteron made it clear amd64 had a lot of runway.

bcrl 6y ago

We (the Linux kernel community) put a lot of work into scalability back then. One time we delayed a Red Hat release several weeks due to a persistent bit flip on an NFS filesystem on one of our stress tests that we thought was a kernel bug. It ultimately turned out to be a broken Cisco switch that was happily fixing up the CRC and checksums on the NFS packets it was bit flipping.

blinkingled 6y ago
Of course. Sun was ahead of the curve in OS scalability and SMP hardware departments and for some time Solaris was still the best OS to run databases and Java.
- bcrl 6y ago
  Sun also made some pretty awesome x86 servers. It's sad that so many of the vendors left standing today have such crappy IPMI implementations.
  - Bluecobra 6y ago
    I used to work at a shop that had hundreds of X4100's running x86 Solaris 10. It was a pleasure to work those hosts. Solaris had some really cool stuff like ZFS, dtrace, Zones/Containers, SMF, etc.
    - yetanotherme 6y ago
      And now you read the release notes with dread as you witness more and more functionality being dropped because they choose not to maintain it. Luckily there is FreeBSD
      - Bluecobra 6y ago
        Yeah it’s a shame. If Sun would have made Solaris (both SPARC/x86) free sooner, they might have prevented the mass exodus of companies moving off to save money.
        jabl 6y ago
        In retrospect, they should have gone down the Sun386I path back in the day, instead of changing gears and spending $$$ building up the SPARC architecture and ecosystem.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  The SPARCcenter 2000 had 20 sockets in 1992: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun4d#SPARCcenter_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun4d#SPARCcenter_2000 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation The Cray CS6400 had 64 in 1993: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_CS6400 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_CS6400 SunOS 4.1.4 was released in 1994 and SunOS 5.x ("Solaris 2") started in 1992.
  - h2odragon 6y ago
    The Sparc2k was a beast. I got on in 1998 that (among other tasks) ran the IRC bot for our channel with a 4gb text quotes database to chain off of. ("Shut up, lucy"). It usually ran at a load average of 4 to 12 per CPU. I had just over 1TB of disk array on it; in 4 dozen, full height, 5 inch 23GB SCSI drives. I sank about $10k into that system in ebay parts. at the time there just wasn't any way to get such bandwidth out of x86, but used gear was cheap. if you could afford the time, sweat and blood to keep it running.

205guy 6y ago

I remember reading Sun’s financial statements at the time and bragging about huge 50% margins and thinking that can’t last. In some alternate timeline, Sun would’ve lowered their prices, stayed in the game, and we’d all have rock solid Sparc laptops by now.

tempfs 6y ago
Yeah, no way to survive in the computing game very long with super high margins. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/profit-...
- giovannibonetti 6y ago
  What about Apple?
- yyyk 6y ago
  Sun didn't have Jobs's Reality Distortion Field technology. It can't work otherwise.
  - danielscrubs 6y ago
    Oh but Sun did. It’s what made them rich and it wasn’t pretty.
blackrock 6y ago
“We’re the dot in dotcom.“ Well, they ended up as the .loser instead.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  Sun: "We put the dot into dot-com!" Microsoft: "Oh yeah? Well we put the COM into dot-com. Pthththth!" IBM: ”When they put the dot into dot-com, they forgot how they were going to connect the dots. Badoom psssh!” https://www.itbusiness.ca/news/ibm-brings-on-demand-computing-to-the-channel/4107 https://www.itbusiness.ca/news/ibm-brings-on-demand-computin...

kev009 6y ago

If you read the other DE respond in the tweets, it was DEC/Compaq Alphas. I think it's kind of insane to have gone from 64b back to 32b (and the DE claims it caused big issues). Seems like API alphas running Linux would have been a better play until Opteron made it clear amd64 had a lot of runway.