We run 2 V440s (4x1.6GHz, 16GB). At most there may have been 20
concurrent users on them - most doing development and using a reasonable
amount of resources. For the most part, I didn't notice any applications
launching slowly unless the system was pinned with high load.
Firefox/Thunderbird/OOo usually open reasonably fast on them - at least
not slow enough that users complain -or- perceive any real slowness.
What kind of loads do you see on the 440 on a normal day? Are
applications locally installed or being launched from an NFS mount? Are
home directories on NFS?
> Maybe the Sparc servers with higher cpu counts and cores can handle
> more users and give more throughput, but I'm skeptical that single
> desktop app's seem much faster than on the V440.
Our primary machine is a SF6800 domain (12x1.2GHz UltraSPARC IV,
4x1.5Ghz IV+ & 64GB RAM). The apps don't launch any faster per say
since raw CPU power seems to determine that. However, they always get on
the CPU quickly (even under higher loads) which makes this machine
really responsive. Even comparing to a modern x86 Ubuntu/Nevada
workstation it feels just as fast.
Ken Mandelberg wrote:
We currently use a V440 as a Sunray server. There is a population of
maybe 50 potential users, but there is rarely more than a dozen logged
in and half that many active. The active ones are running thunderbird
and firefox, and occasionally Matlab and various development tools.
Firefox can easily soak a lot of cycles.
The system is perceived as slow for two reasons. First, there are times
that there are too many users. We can solve that by putting a second
V440 we have in a rotary.
Second, even if you are the only user on the system its simply not as
fast as a modern X86 workstation. As far as I know none of the Sparcs
are really that much faster than the V440 for single threads. Maybe the
Sparc servers with higher cpu counts and cores can handle more users and
give more throughput, but I'm skeptical that single desktop app's seem
much faster than on the V440.
So is there a Sunray server that would give faster desktop performance?
Would an AMD/Intel server give faster Sunray desktops? Even if it did
there are issues because of software support. The Linux support is
disappointing. No NSCMS and rather old enterprise editions that are not
desktop rich. Solaris X86 on the other hand doesn't have vendor support
for Matlab and similar packages.
So its not very clear to me what server hardware would be perceived as a
real upgrade.
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Theron Dekok
UNIX Systems Administrator
Sun Center of Excellence for Visual Genomics
University of Calgary
Phone (403) 220 2201
Mobile (403) 612 9077
Email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.visualgenomics.ca
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