[rescue] 72gb+ Disks in A1000

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:

> Nice things about 10:
>
> zones

Nice, if you have need for them.  However, I have a lot more use for
Solaris 9 Just Working than I do for them.  Zones are a good start,
but I use AIX at work.  I'm too spoiled by LPARs to have much interest
in prissied-up jails.

> dtrace

That's quite a good thing, I hear.  It's too bad they won't back-port
it.  They did, after all, make quite a noise about how easy it was to
implement the kernel-facing side of it.  Coming up with a Really Good
Feature and expecting people to take the carrot to upgrade and suffer
other massive lossage is a page out of Microsoft's playbook.

> supposedly better networking stack

*shrugs*

Solaris 9's IP stack isn't blazingly fast, but, then I don't use my
Solaris boxes as routers or packet-filters, either.  I have BSD boxes
for that.

> iSCSI, and iSCSI target mode (maybe in update 1, not sure)

iSCSI is another solution looking for a problem.  SCSI over network has
been happening for years with fibre channel.  A need for -routable- SCSI
over the network is a Big Clue that you've taken a wrong turn a ways
back.

> SMF can be a plus or minus, depending on how you look at it.

Well, I look at it as SysV init scripts Just Work and are well-
understood (whether you love or hate them).  They can be deployed solve
the precedence problem that SMF claims to solve, even if they do require
it being solved by hand.  That's not a bad thing.  Knowing your system's
startup procedure is a Good Thing.

> XML in config files?  Blecch.

XML is a cancer of the mind.  It's astonishingly good for a small class
of applications, but those who deploy it feel compelled to use it
everywhere.  Witness BEEP (RFC 3080), an astoundingly well-thought-out
application communication protocol, except that it uses -XML- in its
command packets.  MARKUP LANGUAGES DO NOT BELONG IN OSI LAYER FIVE!

The prevalance of "web applications" and their developers seem to only
push this forward and have given birth to a new phenomenon.  Whereas we
used to have write-only programming lanuages (PL/I, APL, etc.) we now
have read-only config files.  It's perfectly clear what they're trying
to convey when you read them, but God help you if you try to write or
edit one without having the XML DTD handy.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke  )   "Once again, `digital' is proving to be a
Elgin, TX         (     synonym for `crap'."
USA                )                    --Andrew Orlowski on DRM