[TriLUG] Re: old Sun equipment

[Aaron S. Joyner]

Dan Simoes wrote:

>A Ford Ranger could handle a few of the smaller machines but not the
>e6500s, at least I don't think so.
>  
>
It really is quite sad how the value of Sun hardware plummets when it
reaches end of life.  It's all because the companies that purchase Sun
equipment are generally doing so for a) the very fastest UNIX platform
at hand, and b) the very nice support contracts from Sun to assist in
guaranteeing that it'll be up and available.  When the boxes go end of
life, you can't get support for them anymore, getting parts is tricky at
best (usually involves Ebay), and thus the appeal to their original
customer base goes *way* down.  Consequentially, they upgrade, and pay
Sun huge chunks of money again, or they switch to a commodity platform
with clustering on cheap PCs.  :)  Either way, the market for old Sun
gear is small, but it's really great hardware and rock-bottom prices,
considering.

I worked for a Biotech company in the late 90s, and we dropped around
$250,000 on a Sun E3500, with a Sun A5200 disk array half full of disks
(about 500G if I recall), 7 disk DDS-7 juke box, pair of very nice
SharkRack enclosures, etc, etc.  I was shopping on Ebay a few months ago
and saw an E3500 for sale for around $400 after shipping (from
Australia), and it's not uncommon to find fully loaded ones on Ebay for
under $2,000.  There was also an A5200 (chock full-o-disks) that went by
for around $700 or so.  It was highly tempting to pick up the bits and
pieces for nostalgia purposes, but I some how managed to refrain.  :)

As for transporting E6500s, remember that these are 19 inch rack mount
equipment, and the racks they come in are roughly 60 tall, 30 inches
wide, and 40 inches deep.  Don't neglect to consider that they weigh
roughly 1000 pounds.  The E450s are much more transport-friendly. 
They're 22 x 17 x 26 inches, which weighs approximately 200 pounds.  For
the official specs of both lines, check these links:

http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/Systems/E450/spec.html
http://www.sun.com/servers/midrange/e6500/specs.html

For reference, they're both on wheels, and in order to deal with an
E6500 you're going to need a loading dock, as you can't reasonably lift
the thing into a truck.  You could conceivably disassemble it and carry
it up into a truck piece by piece, and repeat the process in reverse to
get it off, but I wouldn't recommend it, and more than one or two of
them probably exceeds the weight rating on your truck bed.  Actually, a
quick google leads me to believe the ranger's payload capacity is only
1,260 lbs., so more than one is probably a really bad idea.  :)

Happy hunting!  :)
Aaron S. Joyner