Friday, January 9, 2009

Sun x2250 box experiences

I'm not trying to push Sun hardware here, I'm not even paid for doing so, I'm just reading up on what is available. In my experience, the probably most common MySQL box is the DL380 from the guys that also make a nice steak-sause (I'm not sure I can mention names here). This is a nice steady workhorse of box that's been around since the Lincoln administration or something like that. A good old box anyway, with ample space for disks and stuff and there is also the smaller brother, the DL360.

Now Sun has, since last summer or so, an entry level x86 box in it's offering. I haven't tested it, but am curious of any real world experiences with this machine, which is competitively priced, it seems, the Sun X2250. This is much smaller than the DL380 (it's only 1U high) and has space for only 2 SATA disks. But today, when there are more and more SAN, NAS and stuff like that used, lack of internal disk-space isn't that much of an issue. And the thing supports 32 Gb memory. And Sun wasn't tempted to go DDR3, so memory for this puppy shouldn't be too expensive.

So has anyone used the X2250, is it any good as an entry level MySQL server box? And any other comments? (except that there is still a lack of a mid-range box in the Sun lineup, the next machine in price is much more expensive, but that I already know).

Your temporary hardware guy, with a screwdriver and soldering iron in hand
/Karlsson

1 comment:

ryan said...

I use local "share nothing" approach, so the 2x SATA is not ideal for that. However the X2250 is not a bad machine, I have tested it in combination with 2x Intel X25-M SSD with very good results.

However for production I strongly recommend the X4140 or X4150. 8 SAS bays on a 1U rack unit, with redundant power and 4x networking... plus supports more RAM than the X2250.