On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 02:46:32PM +0000, Ronnie Wallace wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Just a little tale of woe that may be of interest to those of
> you running SL on Sun kit.
> 
> About 18mths ago we bought a couple of X4150s each with a J4400
> storage array attached. Only populated 12 of the 24 drive bays
> in each of the J4400s at the time of purchase.
> 
> Time passes, grants come in, storage needs grow ....
> 
> Approach Oracle reseller to get quote about getting additional drives,
> only to discover that not only did Oracle EOL the J4400 in Dec 2010,
> they also EOLed accessories so it is no longer possible to get the
> drives. EOLing the array itself is fair enough, but the drives too,
> what a way to treat customers that have invested in their products!
> Apparently this is the case with quite a lot of "older" Sun hardware
> not just the J4400.

If you like Solaris you might check out Nexenta.  Runs great on
SuperMicro hardware (or even Dell + MD3000's).

We are a fairly big "Sun" shop, but the decision to go with more and
more Dell/IBM/HP is becoming easier and easier -- especially for
running Linux.

Also, Solaris is real expensive on non-Oracle hardware ($1K/yr for
Premiere support for 1-2 sockets -- goes up after that).

> 
> cheers,
> Ronnie

Ray