On Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 05:35:14PM -0800, Raymond Lillard wrote: > > I have been collecting used Netra T1-105 boxes and placing them > in service of the last year and a bit. I find the combination of > them and OBSD to be a rock solid solution for intermediate levels > of traffic. I especially like the LOM serial interface which has > kept me from many hours of driving on several occasions. > > I have over a dozen of them in service at four sites. Once > commissioned, not one has failed. >
Cool, that's the model I've been looking at on ebay.co.uk for a while. Loads about and cheap as chips. I work in a datacentre and one of the blokes from Sun's biggest factory up the road in Linlithgow has a few personal V120s here. I recently had a tour of the plant and saw them building a bunch of E25Ks. A mate of mine from uni is working for the Royal Bank of Scotland (one of the world's largest) and they're getting 500 of them to replace HP and IBM units. The mind boggles.... Anyway, also saw a demo of the new Sun Fire X2100's. Most of Sun's new 1U gear is AMD, which I guess started with the Cobalts. That's one reason why I was musing about just carrying on with x86, as Sun don't use thier own product for bottom end kit. That to me is a bit like buying a Ford and taking it to get serviced, only to find all the mechanics drive Renaults. > Go to the sparc@ archives and find a posting of mine describing > how to get a CDROM drive capable of writing CDs. If you pick > up a D-130 to go with a Netra, you can build and burn new releases, > mail them to your remote sites and do upgrades without the driving. > I was going to try the swap space boot method, then do an ftp install. > > Get an old Pentium-III 1U server and a multi-port serial card, > or a multi-port USP/Serial converter box for access to the > serial LOM consoles on the Netras. > > Another possibility is a Soekris for multiport serial access. > If I get a caged 1/4 rack, I'll look into getting a portmaster. Otherwise, for shared Us to begin with, some ISP's in London (only 500 miles south of the border) offer serial port access: Black Cat comes highly reccommended: http://www.blackcat.net.uk/services/colo I thought Bytemark were doing serial access for their colo customers, but don't seem to be offering rack space at the moment. They are a Linux shop, but use OpenBSD "routers": http://www.bytemark.co.uk/company/network.html Thanks to everyone for the input! Craig.
