[nycbug-talk] BSD comparisons to Solaris (slashed)

[Josh McCormack]

Marc Spitzer wrote:

> On Tue, 28 Sep 2004 03:31:43 -0400
> Isaac Levy <ike at lesmuug.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Hi All, <cough> Marc read this </cough>
>>
> 
> much good stuff sniped.   
> 
> Here is one thing that was not mentioned: *SUPPORT*
> 
> BSD's do not have the support channel that sun has.
> 
> If I put in a call at 8pm on Christmas eve I will have someone on site
> before midnight and they will have someone get on a plane and deliver
> the
> part ASAP.  The trick is that you pay a lot of money for this, but you 
> get it.
> 
> Another place is quality of the system as a whole.  The thing is that
> Sun
> expects to have a maintenance contract on the box for 5-7 years and
> builds
> accordingly.  They never want to make a service call while collecting
> their
> fees, so it is cheaper to build very solid boxes.  PC's are junk after 3
> years
> and are build accordingly and support is priced accordingly also.
> 
> marc

I was offered a job to manage a companies cage at a hosting center, 
populated with VA Linux 1Us and older Sun boxes, among other junk. We 
had to cannabalize all the time, and while the ancient Sun boxes did 
occasionally need to be altered to get cards in there or more RAM or 
something, they didn't croak. The 1U machines burned out all the time. 
One of my prouder moments was telling them no way, and subsequently 
getting to see much of my daughters first year while at another job.

Josh