Wow...I really hadn't intended this to sound THAT snotty, Greg,  
sorry 'bout that.  But I should point out that yours did start out  
with an attempt at professional character assassination, and I admit  
I was very much rubbed the wrong way by seeing a flood of PC  
evangelism on, in all places, the NetBSD/sparc64 mailing list.

   To expand a bit on my point of view, and hopefully add a bit of  
civility...Yes I am aware of a few datacenters which are filled to  
overflowing with PC hardware, but not many...and certainly none of  
mine.  Your experience may be different, and if it is, you have my  
sympathy.

                    -Dave

On Oct 31, 2006, at 12:17 AM, Dave McGuire wrote:
>>>> its sad, but you're entirely right. x86 won.
>>>
>>>   ...in some areas, like desktops.  Real server work, however, is  
>>> typically done on real computers.  You just don't see very many  
>>> serious datacenters full of PCs.  Some, sure...complete with a  
>>> constant revolving-door of repair parts, etc.  But for the most  
>>> part, that world is actually populated by UltraSPARCs, RS/6000s,  
>>> and big HPs.
>>
>> Hah.  Get out much?  Apparently not.  Or did this post bubble up  
>> from 5 years ago?
>
>   Nope, I don't get out much; I work from home because my uptime  
> allows me to.  I manage four datacenters now, one with well over a  
> thousand machines in it, and have been doing so for a good long  
> time.  The closest is about 1100 miles away, I've seen it twice  
> this year.
>
>   YOUR datacenter may be different.  See below.
>
>> I work at a U.S. Government Lab, and trust me, our 'serious  
>> datacenter' is
>> full of "PCs".  1U, 2U, even 3U configurations.  Giant RAID boxes  
>> with
>> multiple terabytes.  We just installed a 2U 7.5TB box with quad  
>> Xeon 5160's
>> the other day.  Since the CPUs are all Hyperthreaded, it looks to  
>> the OS
>> (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, if you had to ask) like 8 CPUs.  It  
>> screams.
>> While we also still have some Suns (mostly V240's and V210's), the  
>> vast
>> majority of our in-house systems are now RHEL 3 and RHEL 4 x86  
>> boxes.  It's
>> just far more cost-effective and bigger-bang-for-the-buck than  
>> Suns are.
>> You can't fight City Hall ...
>
>   Well, if "bang for the buck" doesn't include downtime or  
> throughput, I guess not.  I learned some time ago that I couldn't  
> fight City Hall...when I realized that was an industry which  
> believes glossy Dell ads in business magazines over the word of  
> experienced professionals, I let them go twist in the wind of  
> downtime of Microsoft toys, throwing good money after bad, and left  
> for greener pastures.
>
>   Did I say "there are no datacenters in the world that are full of  
> PCs"?  No, I didn't.  But I assure you, where throughput and uptime  
> are important considerations...such datacenters are the exception,  
> rather than the rule.
>
>> Sun hardware might be pretty solid and good for us home users  
>> (heck, my e-mail
>> server is an 11-year-old SPARCserver 20, which someday will be  
>> replaced by
>> my Ultra 60 when/if I can ever find a couple of dreary days to  
>> devote to
>> the task - kinda hard to come by when you live in Southern  
>> California),
>> but let's get real here - out in the real world where I live, "x86  
>> won".
>
>   *ROFL*  That's pathetic.  I have some standards regarding who  
> I'll work for...perhaps you should too.
>
>                -Dave
>
> -- 
> Dave McGuire
> Cape Coral, FL
>
>