> Sun had become bored with the mechanics of running a business.
I would contend that Sun was never interested in running a business. They always cared more about building amazing technology and suffered the sales to make money.
You can't deny that Sun hardware was top tier and always ahead of its time (until Oracle bought them).
Edit: I had on rose colored glasses. I was thinking of late 90s SUN. They did in fact start getting crushed in the early 2000s.
> 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(<a href="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.
>> 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.
I currently admin several racks of Dells (and Lenovo, and SuperMicro, and previously HP). Just make sure you buy the license for KVM in case you ever need to go into single-user/rescue mode (otherwise better not mind having to drive to the DC and hooking up a crash cart).
Ask @bcantrill (the author of this article/story) about how well integrators integrate (as a hint to the answer, he co-founded Oxide Computers because he ran a cloud service with Dells/HPs/etc).
Integrators integrate very well at the level that they're operating, i.e. the single server. Rack-level integrated systems are a whole different thing, very specialised and unrelated to the old thing.
jedberg · · focus · HN ↗
I would contend that Sun was never interested in running a business. They always cared more about building amazing technology and suffered the sales to make money.
You can't deny that Sun hardware was top tier and always ahead of its time (until Oracle bought them).
Edit: I had on rose colored glasses. I was thinking of late 90s SUN. They did in fact start getting crushed in the early 2000s.
ragall · · focus · HN ↗
From Brian Cantrill's original HN comment in 2011(<a href="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 · · focus · HN ↗
> 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.
ragall · · focus · HN ↗
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.
throw0101a · · focus · HN ↗
I currently admin several racks of Dells (and Lenovo, and SuperMicro, and previously HP). Just make sure you buy the license for KVM in case you ever need to go into single-user/rescue mode (otherwise better not mind having to drive to the DC and hooking up a crash cart).
Ask @bcantrill (the author of this article/story) about how well integrators integrate (as a hint to the answer, he co-founded Oxide Computers because he ran a cloud service with Dells/HPs/etc).
ragall · · focus · HN ↗