MORE POWER!!!! (with apologies to Tim Allen)
Written: May 26 '01
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Pros: Reliability, capacity and scalability -- catchwords, but true in this case
Cons: Somewhat high cost; your company must be staffed to support this machine.
The Bottom Line: Buy it if you can afford it. Maximize uptime -- but be sure you have some Unix admins on staff.
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| tarthurs's Full Review: Sun Enterprise 4500 |
Full Disclosure -- the Author has worked for Sun Micro Systems as a contractor in the past, but currently has no financial ties to this company.
The Sun Microsystems Enterprise server line is a very scalable, powerful and reliable set of servers. The 4500 is a mid range system. For those used to the 250/450 line, it is has some surprising architectural features. For example, the system is made up of "trays," rather than boards. Lower end configurations are easy to put together, but higher capacity calls for compromises between CPU/memory trays and I/O and disk trays. You can get up to 8 system trays per frame, including CPU/memory, I/O SBUS trays and disk trays. Each CPU tray can take up to 2 CPU's, various memory configurations depending on SIMM module size. Each I/O tray can have up to 3 SBUS cards including network card and/or storage interface (SCSI or fiber). Each disk tray can hold 1 or 2 disk drives. The cdrom drive is included with each frame, and you can add an optional tape drive. Each enclosure can contain up to 4 power/cooling modules. Each power/cooling module can power 1 or 2 system trays. To see the details and to configure a system, go to http://store.sun.com and click on "servers", then click on "Midframe and Midrange -- Data Center Servers", then click on "Sun Enterprise 4500 Server."
A large configuration with an external array can top a half million dollars, so if you are not prepared to spend this kind of money, go elsewhere. With Sun, though, you get what you pay for. The servers that we have installed in my company typically go for months without re booting -- sometimes they are re booted because the systems admin feels that it would be good for the machine. Most of the downtime on these machines are because of relocation. We've seen 2 crashes on 6 of these servers -- both due to failed CPU's -- and that would have been avoided if we had had them configured into domains (each CPU running in its own space as a separate server. I think this demonstrates the flexibility of the system very nicely.
This is a good configuration for a large departmental server and a fair compromise for a co-location server -- lots of power in a fairly small amount of rack space. If you are looking for just a web server, though, you might be better off with the rack optimized servers such as the Netra line. However for web farm data base server or a heavily loaded application server, this is an ideal solution -- if you take care sizing your ultimate load. If you think you may need to scale beyond the capability of the 4500, you may be better off looking at the larger frames such as the 6xxx line or the 10000 servers, though the cost of the frame may be higher at the front end, it will save the cost of swapping out the frame for a larger one.
These servers also cluster very well, either using the sun cluster system, or separate load balancing solutions.
With all sun servers, there are a few things you can do to improve reliability -- when you first install them, run the following commands at the open boot prompt (OBP):
input-device = ttya
output-device = ttya
This will ensure that the server doesn't crash when you plug in a terminal to the serial port (or a keyboard/mouse into the keyboard port) or when you unplug.
Also add the following after you are confident that all the hardware is working -- preferably before you put the machine into production:
diag-leve = min
This will shorten the boot up time considerably.
(Many thanks to Daryl Jackson for those last bits).
If you can afford it, this is a very reliable server. Be sure to carefully weigh the bang for the buck considerations, if you don't need the power, don't pay for it, but for heavily loaded internet servers, data base servers or general purpose departmental servers, you can't find much better.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
tarthurs
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Member: Tom Arthurs
Location: Newark, CA USA
Reviews written: 29
Trusted by: 26 members
About Me:
Computers, Books, Cats, Travel, and California. And, of course, Epinions.
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