Re: [cobalt-users] Are RaQs here to stay? (opinions wanted)

["BT" <error404@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

speaking personally, and I only own a very small number of now almost
obsolete RAQ2 and 3 that I bought second user anyway, I will be selling my
RAQ's in the new year and in effect staying with a solution that offers zero
useful after sales ("we've had you money, now piss off!") support, but
offers significant cost saving, namely generic servers built around
supermicro boards with dual p3 2bg fast ram scsi disks etc and one of the
several increasingly good after market administration interfaces... the
costs will be about the same but there performance orders of magnitude
greater.

the big plus being that standard hardware and standard software means almost
anything coded for the same can be installed without a qualm

RAQ5, yes, I would buy one if it was based on standard P3 or P4 or AMD MP
processors, took cheap DDR ram and could take up to 2  G of it, took any 3.5
inch form factor hard disk in either IDE or SCSI, could run either linux or
win2k at will, and generic versions of either, not custom installs, had an
integrated watchdog / management circuit, and generic fan trays and
cabling.... plus of course a up to date admin interface...  given all that I
wouldn't even worry over much about having hot swappable components, taking
a server offline for ten minutes to swap out a faulty raid HD is a
reasonable trade off for a system that is £200 cheaper as a result... and I
would even pay £2000 for such a box... I can build *one* for less than that
so a bulk manuf like Sun could prolly do em for £1200 cost... a healthy
profit...

but sadly any company that simply abandons products that are literally only
a few years old deserves nothing but my disdain... Microsoft and intel still
support my P2/300 slot 1 which originally came with windows 98 and a cutting
edge 8mb ati graphics card and 2 x 6 gb seagates... it is still chugging
away in the corner quite happily as a win2k file and print server... and
guess what, I can even stick XP on it if I want to, and the latest
applications, and they will all work (albeit slowly) ....

no, even a dell poweredge or ibm netfinity makes a *far* more sensible and
cheaper in the long run purchase than anything sun has to offer...

sure, if I wanted to spend 2 million dollars on *one* server I would give my
money to Sun and drive away with one of  those new fire servers.... I think
sun may be reading from the book of the IBM exec who predicted that there
might be as many as ten bloody great mainframe computers in use on the
planet...

personally if I was a sun employee working in the cobalt department I would
be jobhunting while it was still an option and not a necessity.

cheers

JB