Re: [cobalt-users] Sun Fire V100/V120

[Bruce Timberlake <bruce@xxxxxxxxxx>]

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> Is it really a good idea to expend so much time and effort on
> extending the life of machines that are, lets face it, past the
> sell by date ?

The RaQ 1 and 2 are still viable machines for the average hosting 
needs.  No reason to throw them away...  The RaQ 4 can easily 
saturate a T1 line by itself, and handle millions of hits a day... 
that's not a sufficient enough product for most people??

There are a lot of non-hosting applications for appliances as well, 
for customers who don't want to deal with doing it the 'generic 
Linux' way...

> I don't mean to be rude, but when processors are cheap, memory is
> cheaper, and Hdisks are cheap, what is the point in trying to drag
> RAQs into the 21st century ?

Is it cheaper to update the apps on an existing box which really is 
sufficient for most folks? Or throw them away (literally) and spend 
more $$ on a whole new box?? (creating migration issues, etc)

There are close to 100,000 cobalt appliances in the world (granted 
some are the MIPS systems, but those are still perfectly functional 
as well).  That's still a pretty decent market to tap for support and 
upgrade potential, especially for a 'smalltime' operator...

> I see the future as a decent gui, as the raq provides (for
> inexperienced users), not sticking with a 450 Mhz cpu just because
> its expensive to replace now.

There's no reason a GUI couldn't be developed that's general purpose 
enough to use on both white boxes _and_ RaQs.  It's just Perl and/or 
PHP doing the 'heavy lifting', wrapped in a web UI...

The real issue would be the installation mechanism... and both Cobalt 
appliances and most 'white boxes' (including Solaris servers) can do 
a form of network-based installs, so it's not too difficult to work 
that out either.

- -- 
Bruce Timberlake

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