Sparc64 support

[Bill Sorenson]

I have done much convincing with regard to new hardware. It always happens
eventually. But many companies I deal with are in a colo, don't care about
power consumption (yet) and are reluctant to quit paying for rack space
they think they might want. They move very slowly. I'd love to have them
all by new modern hardware, believe you me.

On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 10:19 PM, Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling at kev009.com>
wrote:

> On 8/5/2015 12:10 PM, Bill Sorenson wrote:
>
>> I have been advised to post this in this list. I was going to rewrite this
>> a bit but I'm not sure what parts people will be interested. Anyway:
>>
>>
>> I'm one of probably a few users of FreeBSD and OpenBSD on multiple
>> platforms left and I thought I'd share some of my experience with BSD on
>> some of the lesser used platforms.
>>
>> I manage a fair number of systems, most of them running FreeBSD on 64-bit
>> Intel, but I probably have more sparc64 and powerpc systems running now
>> than on i386. I have made it a bit of a specialty of mine to make use of
>> BSD on existing equipment owned by a customer in a Solaris or OS X (or
>> some
>> other, older Unix...) environment and migrating their special sauce to run
>> on it (or it could be as simple as setting up a FreeBSD Samba server on an
>> existing G5 Mac they own).
>>
>> There are a lot of old SunFire servers running Solaris out there that will
>> take years to die, and a lot of companies aren't excited about buying a
>> lot
>> of new hardware and porting their code over to Linux (thank goodness).
>> When
>> they start to run into software support and management issues, I've found
>> FreeBSD to be a relatively easy sell. They get an up to date modern OS
>> with
>> modern ports available and usually migrating their C code or perl isn't
>> much of an issue. They get to hold off on buying hardware until there is a
>> direct need (accounting really loves this).
>>
>> The advantage for me is that when these companies start looking at new
>> hardware with the latest Xeon, they're already running FreeBSD 9.3 or
>> 10.1.
>> Their code is already ported, the software they're now using is already
>> available and works. When they move, its basically a recompile and its
>> good
>> to go. These customers stick to BSD and forget about Linux or paying
>> Oracle
>> more money. Everything just works and they couldn't be happier.
>>
>> I've always been interested in the older and more unusual hardware, its a
>> big part of how I found a niche in supporting it on a professional level.
>> Personally I run a sparc64 server, a powerpc G5 Xserve, a Alpha based
>> DS20L
>> running OpenBSD and an old 68k Mac running NetBSD, partly for fun and
>> partly to make sure I can support my clients (ok, the 68k Mac is purely
>> for
>> fun).
>>
>> I've found a lot of value in FreeBSD's support for older platforms for
>> getting my foot in the door with a lot of customers. Yes sparc64 isn't the
>> future for FreeBSD but I still think it is very much the present. Its not
>> dead yet, there are a lot of users of this old gear out there if you know
>> where to look. For a company that has never heard of FreeBSD to adopt it
>> because it will extend the life of their hardware I think that is a very
>> powerful thing.
>>
>> -Bill Sorenson
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>>
> If you look around, you'll find many core committers are quite active on
> the ARM and MIPS ports.
>
> SPARC became solidly niche when Oracle bought Sun.  Your business model is
> commendable, and getting people onto FreeBSD makes me happy.  But these
> businesses are being penny wise, pound foolish.  A $1200 Xeon-D server
> could consolidate (jails) a handful of sun4u systems and pay for itself in
> electric savings within the year.
>
> I would love to see SPARC support continue simply because it's a gauntlet
> that can eek out bugs.  jhb@ gave a good overview of what is needed for
> the toolchain.  sun4v support would be another nice thing.
>
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