I was a sysadmin in a windows desktops + sun/windows server env for about 10 years from 1999 I loved our sun boxes, hated that we could only ever afford their

I was a sysadmin in a windows desktops + sun/windows server env for about 10 years from 1999 I loved our sun boxes, hated that we could only ever afford their "midrange" models, and then only from grey market resellers, or outright second hand. Everything being said here is pretty much true.. but the additional factors I'd call out were vmware and to a lesser extent "componentised" infrastructure systems.. I'm thinking blade servers and sans. If I bought a sun box, it was only a sun box. If I bought an intel/amd, then it could be linux or windows or both. Yes we could, and did, hook the sun boxes to SAN's, but I don't remember sun ever having a particularly strong blade offering.. or maybe it was just priced and like sun hw, either way.. Dell Blades let me do incremental upgrades at price points within individual projects sign off budgets, and dell delivery times + San boot + esx meant I could usually have new systems up and available in a couple of weeks. That sounds bad in the cloud era, but before that I'd probably still be trying to get quotes or negotiate discounts, so it was fantastic. Linux and the other bits above let me say "yes" to user requests more often, with lower friction and shorter deliver times. I can't tell you just how nice that was. Then I started work at an aix/linux/windows shop and the whole cycle repeated...