From owner-freebsd-sparc64@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jan 11 23:27:13 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-sparc64@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1807F106566B for ; Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:27:13 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) Received: from mail-gw1.york.ac.uk (mail-gw1.york.ac.uk [144.32.128.246]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9E3FD8FC14 for ; Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:27:12 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-gw6.york.ac.uk (mail-gw6.york.ac.uk [144.32.129.26]) by mail-gw1.york.ac.uk (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id o0BNR85v001367; Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:27:08 GMT Received: from ury.york.ac.uk ([144.32.108.81]) by mail-gw6.york.ac.uk with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.68) (envelope-from ) id 1NUTf9-0007Az-SU; Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:27:07 +0000 Received: from ury.york.ac.uk (localhost.york.ac.uk [127.0.0.1]) by ury.york.ac.uk (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id o0BNR7GL047818; Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:27:07 GMT (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) Received: from localhost (gavin@localhost) by ury.york.ac.uk (8.14.3/8.14.3/Submit) with ESMTP id o0BNR6XG047807; Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:27:07 GMT (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) X-Authentication-Warning: ury.york.ac.uk: gavin owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:27:06 +0000 (GMT) From: Gavin Atkinson X-X-Sender: gavin@ury.york.ac.uk To: Kaya Saman In-Reply-To: <4B4B7D86.6000502@netscape.net> Message-ID: References: <4B4A6FA5.1010002@netscape.net> <4B4B6E37.3050005@netscape.net> <9dd082311001111056j1ca3afb4le14ba84270fb730@mail.gmail.com> <4B4B7D86.6000502@netscape.net> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-York-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-York-MailScanner-From: gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk Cc: freebsd-sparc64@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Newbie to FreeBSD on SPARC - questions about Sun hardware X-BeenThere: freebsd-sparc64@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to the Sparc List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:27:13 -0000 On Mon, 11 Jan 2010, Kaya Saman wrote: > Actually I am not that much interested in the performance benefits between x86 > and SPARC; but more between OpenSolaris and FreeBSD on SPARC as I will be > running either one on a Sun V480 server. It's quite hard to say with any certainty. I'd personally say that on my old Ultra 5, Solaris is a little faster, especially for IDE disk access. On my V480, I can't tell any difference in speed between FreeBSD and Solaris. However, it's probably very dependent on the exact workload: something entirely CPU bound or I/O bound probably won't be any faster or slower whatever the OS is. > The issue I am facing is purely down to software and administration. I mean > the best example I can provide is that BSD has the packages I want at least > for x86 which I've seen: that are Cacti, Munin, and awstats (should also be > there for SPARC too) but then Solaris has zones which allow me to allocate a > separate virtualized OS contained within the master OS or global zone. BSD on > the other hand has jails and as from going onto the jails list apparently I > can actually assign interfaces to various jails which is what I was going to > do if I used Solaris Zones. Briefly (and again, personal opinion): Solaris Zones win over FreeBSD Jails (but if you're not using the extra features like resource limiting then there's probably no real difference). Solaris hardware monitoring (failed PSU, etc) wins over FreeBSD (I'm not sure if FreeBSD supports any "fan failed" type stuff) FreeBSD ports win over OpenCSW or Blastwave, by a *long* way. FreeBSD community wins over Solaris community (I've had a lot of experience with both!). At the end of the day, Solaris is always going to win on the level of hardware support, but from a day to day management point of view I'd say FreeBSD and it's ports win hands down. Gavin