[ILUG] [OT] Want to buy a NIC ?

[Kevin Gannon]

At 10:53 AM 3/1/01 +0000, Brian Scanlan wrote:
>On Thu, Mar 01, 2001 at 10:36:14AM +0000, Kevin Gannon wrote:
> > I read with great interest the Sun Netra servers now start at $1000.
> > They are appliance type boxes like the Cobalts.
> >
> > Has anyone seen/used the new Netras ? We have been using Cobalts
> > all over the place for various things but they have there "issues".
>
>The Netras are great machines, but they're not exactly like the Cobalts. They
>come just with Solaris. They're just normal Sun boxes (well, shrunk), they
>don't come with applications etc.

That is the very reason we are looking at them, also the NEBS L3
certification is a nice things to have and so is the LOM using a
console port.

We went for the cobalts as they have linux preinstalled and an engineer
can get them LAN attached in 5 minutes or 10 if they have to put them in
a rack.

The problem I have with the cobalts is:
1) If you edit any file on the damned things cobalt wont support them.
      Of course now that sun have bought them that will all change ;-)
      wont it.

2) They have a very nice feature called swatch which is a bit like the
      original swatch perl app in that it monitors the box. When processes
      go out of control it kills them. It took me a long time to figure why
      sendmail was dying every few minutes with a signal 11. Swatch was
      killing the process. I dont mind this so much if it is documented
      somewhere.

3) We have had some flaky hardware on a number of boxes.

Mind you they are great little boxes for hosting and the support on
this end of things is very good indeed.

Regards,
Kevin
>Very very nice all the same - Though I've only got Netra T1s, haven't
>seen or used the new Netras.
>
>Brian.
>--
>Mike Love, not war.