Sparc is not frowned upon. What is frowned upon is demands for capabilities and support without any effort to back that support up. I can get sparc hardware easily. What I cannot easily get is someone to host it. I haven't the need for big expensive to run equipment as I don't have a datacenter in my home. Running a sparc build server doubles my electric bill. I doubt I'm alone.
I am looking at qemu as a way to simulate sparc to make it easier for us to support that platform. Right now virtualization has made x86 king. Give me a VMware type experience for sparc emulation and I will give you a sparc renaissance. :-). Or at least another few years of viable developer support. (The other problem is that the latest sparc designs are not open and we aren't getting code from Oracle anymore. That means it's hard to support current gen hardware. But that hardware is most definitely not cheap.) Sent from my iPhone On Nov 9, 2014, at 9:49 AM, a b via illumos-discuss <[email protected]> wrote: >> The fact that this is SPARC-only is even more of a reason it can't >> possibly be hurting anything: there are no SPARC users and there is zero >> new development happening on SPARC. If I'm wrong about this, I want to >> hear the person who is actively developing SPARC tell us why this is >> obstructing progress. > > I actively build software on top of Solaris (and not Illumos) on SPARC. Why? > Because Illumos does not support SPARC and because I can acquire a ton > of dirt-cheap T1000, T2000, T5220, and T5240 servers on ebay. > > I know that discussing SPARC is very much frowned upon here, but honestly: > > - they run databases just fine; > - they run DHCP just fine; > - they run DNS just fine; > - they run NFS just fine; > - they run IPSec and IPFIlter and serve as cryptorouters just fine; > > And they are cheap. Like $250 for a T5220 cheap. Did I mention they are cheap? > For running infrastructure, they are adequate. > > Find me an intel-based, rack mountable server with those features, at those > prices, > and I will go load up on that hardware right away. > > Without SPARC support in Illumos, they cannot run Illumos-based anything, yet > these > are pefectly good servers for running infrastructure. > > > ------------------------------------------- > illumos-discuss > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/182180/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/182180/22003744-9012f59c > Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- illumos-discuss Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/182180/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/182180/21175430-2e6923be Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21175430&id_secret=21175430-6a77cda4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
