[OpenAFS] Hardware Grants from Sun

[Robert Banz]

On Feb 22, 2007, at 7:54 PM, Derrick J Brashear wrote:

> On Thu, 22 Feb 2007, Jeffrey Altman wrote:
>
>> Tom has proposed that OpenAFS submit a hardware grant request to Sun.
>>
>> It is believed that we can obtain up to $100,000 in 1U X86 boxes  
>> that we
>> could use for a test infrastructure.  Sun may be tempted to  
>> provide this
>> equipment if OpenAFS was to state a desire to target OpenSolaris as a
>> preferred operating system for OpenAFS deployments.
>>
>> Please let us know if you believe this is a good or bad idea.
>
> Personally I have concerns given the observed (on my part) maturity  
> of x86 OpenSolaris, however I can't take a hard and fast position  
> based on that.
>
> I can share that experience if any of you are curious, however, I'd  
> like to not share it widely until others have shared to avoid  
> creating bias.

Solaris 10x86 has been really good to us -- at least on Sun hardware  
(v20/v40z's, X4x00 series).  Some issues with running it on some  
older Dells due to device driver problems, but on the Sun provided  
gear it's been as solid as it's SPARC brother.

Sun seems to be putting quite a bit of focus lately into building  
that 'dream' platform for file service -- whether it be an NFS share  
or an iSCSI LUN -- and AFS fileserving can take advantage of the same  
functionality.

And ya know -- if someone wants to drive a dump truck load of  
hardware up to our door for development and testing?  It's really  
hard to say no...  All of the OpenAFS platforms will benefit from  
having a robust development and testing environment -- of course  
we'll still have to focus in on various details that are specific to  
each OS that is supported, but that's par for the multiplatform  
course ;)

-rob