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> You can't deny that Sun hardware was top tier and always ahead of its time (until Oracle bought them). From Brian Cantrill's original HN comment in 2011(http

by ragall 13d ago

> You can't deny that Sun hardware was top tier and always ahead of its time (until Oracle bought them). From Brian Cantrill's original HN comment in 2011(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287033): "I never hesitated to tell anyone that was listening that our x86 boxes were starting to smoke the hell out of UltraSPARC". SPARC stopped being ahead of its time way before being bought by Oracle.

throw0101a 13d ago
>> You can't deny that Sun hardware was top tier and always ahead of its time (until Oracle bought them). > SPARC stopped being ahead of its time way before being bought by Oracle. You seem to be focusing strictly on performance, but there were other factors: e.g., remote management is still a bit of a mess with x86. With SPARC everything can be done on the CLI (serials consoles or SSH), with x86 quite often you're still clicking on "open KVM window" for so many things. And of course many/most vendors make you purchase an 'advanced license' to use the remote KVM functionality of the LOM system.
- frutiger 13d ago
  Why is that a property of the ISA?
  - wmf 13d ago
    It's path dependence. If you built a Sun-syle x86 server with a serial console and inserted a random Linux installer CD, the installer would probably only output VGA and thus it wouldn't work.
- Borg3 13d ago
  Yeah, that was amazing. And so, I learned how to provide LILO + agetty on COM1 on every server I was admining :) So, unless there was HW fault, I could just connect to server via serial to check things out.
- ragall 13d ago
  > You seem to be focusing strictly on performance, Just like the vast majority of buyers do. SPARC was abandoned by customers due to poor performance. > but there were other factors: e.g., remote management is still a bit of a mess with x86 That's a property of the systems integrator, not the ISA. Dell's iDRAC works quite well.
deleted 13d ago
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by ragall 13d ago

throw0101a 13d ago

>> You can't deny that Sun hardware was top tier and always ahead of its time (until Oracle bought them). > SPARC stopped being ahead of its time way before being bought by Oracle. You seem to be focusing strictly on performance, but there were other factors: e.g., remote management is still a bit of a mess with x86. With SPARC everything can be done on the CLI (serials consoles or SSH), with x86 quite often you're still clicking on "open KVM window" for so many things. And of course many/most vendors make you purchase an 'advanced license' to use the remote KVM functionality of the LOM system.

frutiger 13d ago
Why is that a property of the ISA?
- wmf 13d ago
  It's path dependence. If you built a Sun-syle x86 server with a serial console and inserted a random Linux installer CD, the installer would probably only output VGA and thus it wouldn't work.
Borg3 13d ago
Yeah, that was amazing. And so, I learned how to provide LILO + agetty on COM1 on every server I was admining :) So, unless there was HW fault, I could just connect to server via serial to check things out.
ragall 13d ago
> You seem to be focusing strictly on performance, Just like the vast majority of buyers do. SPARC was abandoned by customers due to poor performance. > but there were other factors: e.g., remote management is still a bit of a mess with x86 That's a property of the systems integrator, not the ISA. Dell's iDRAC works quite well.

deleted 13d ago

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