Which Sun to Pick?

[mmcgurty]

In our current location, we are running a Sun Enterprise 450 totally maxed out with CPU and RAM. We are running Oracle8 with about tops 600 users using the database daily, and planned to go to about 1200. Currently, the load is just too much for the machine to handle. We are looking into a Sun Enterprise 4500, but I wanted to see what you all thought would be a good solution with those variables in mind? Do you think Sun could answer this question without saying buy the biggest and most expensive? We need to take into consideration AC usage, power useage, and the room it will take up from the 450 vs. the 4500.

Any ideas would be helpful.

Maybe Sun has a configurator page that you can enter some criteria in and it'll pop out a recommendation. I know Cisco does this with its routers and switches.

 

[ianf]

I'm not going to comment on the actual sizing, sorry !

Sun doesn't have a configurator that I've found. They have plenty of spec-your-own pages, but nothing with advise on sizing.

I suppose it depends on your location, but Sun Sales seem pretty clued up on when to stop pushing you toward bigger systems.

All the heat & power specs can be found on the Sun site.

Depending on whether you have E450 Rack or pedestal, I'd also have to consider a disk/RAID array for the 4500. Just for convenience. There's plenty of space inside the 4500 (up to 2Tb so they say), it's just not as easy to deal with as in the E450 pedestal.
The 4500's I've worked with have all had FC-AL attached disk arrays rather thsn using the internal storage. Speed & convenience !

Have fun spending the money. Ian

"IF" is not a word it's a way of life

 

[mmcgurty]

We ended up using Sun 4500's w/ 8 CPU's.

 

[AJdeWired]

We're running a couple of E4500s. Ian is right; most systems run with an FC-AL-connected array, like an A5200. You never stated what your storage requirements were. Does it increase linearly with # of users?

Keep in mind that the E4500 scales upwards nicely to 14 x 464 MHz processors. But the base system with 4 CPUs starts around $140,000 list.

Our 2 x E4500s, 2 x A5200s, 2 x D130s & one of two [heavy] UPSs all fit into a single rack, without additional room. We opted for the D130 instead of taking up a processor slot (each with 2 x CPUs) in the E4500 chassis. This provides for a boot drive setup, necessary with an FC-AL array.

The E4500 can certainly handle the increase in workload over an E450. If you want one consolidated DB server.

Regards,
Alan
Itinerant Reader

 

[jimbopalmer]

One Comment with the 4500. 'My' 4500 with 6 CPUs, 4 gig of RAM and RAM on 4 motherboards running Oracle 7 was twice as fast as 6 CPUs and 4 gig of RAM and RAM on 2 motherboards. Try to max out your RAM interleave! The one thing you can't give for your heart's desire is your heart. - Lois McMaster Bujold