[Antelope] Antelope on Solaris X64 platforms

[Lyons, Jim]

Dear Harvey,

Thank you very much for this extensive answer.  While I was aware of
some of this (e.g., lack of single-thread performance in T2000-series
machines), I thought the X64 side was up and coming.  The picture you
paint is really quite depressing for the entire community.  I will try
to find out more from Sun, and will certainly share whatever I can
glean.

Best regards,

Jim Lyons
Geological Survey of Canada
Ottawa


-----Original Message-----
From: Danny Harvey [mailto:danny at brtt.com] 
Sent: February 23, 2009 12:15
To: Lyons, Jim
Cc: support at brtt.com; antelope at brtt.com
Subject: Re: Antelope on Solaris X64 platforms

Hello Jim,

As you may be aware, SUN is going through what looks to us like either
its final death throws or a complete corporate/product redefinition.  
This last summer SUN discontinued all of its SPARC workstations as well
as all of its low-end SPARC server machines. At that time there was a
family (4 or 5 different models) of x86-based SUN workstations.  
This last fall, in an effort to evaluate what it would take to port
Antelope to x86 Solaris, we purchased a SUN x86-workstation. I was
flabbergasted when I went to their web site and saw only one remaining
INTEL-base workstation that I could buy (no more OPTERON AMD
workstations). This workstation was quite inexpensive, so I ordered it
figuring it would be delivered soon. It ended up taking 6 weeks for SUN
to deliver our INTEL workstation. That is a bad sign.

This experience with SUN gave us concern about putting time and effort
into an Antelope port to x86 Solaris. What if SUN decides to stop making
workstations altogether? What if SUN decides to drop its x86 computers
altogether and focus solely on their high-end SPARC server machines?
Another disconcerting direction SUN has taken with its high- end server
SPARC machines is to remove or greatly diminish floating point computing
capability (like in the T2000 series servers). This suggests to us that
SUN's roadmap involves moving to highly specialized and large/expensive
machines for supporting large scale web/database services. We have made
a number of inquiries with SUN both ourselves and through surrogates
like UCSD and Kinemetrics. So far, SUN has completely stonewalled us. At
this point we have no idea what they intend to do. Maybe they don't
either.

In light if this we have put a port of Antelope to x86 Solaris on hold
until it becomes clearer to us where SUN is going. However, this does
not mean you cannot run Antelope on a SUN x86 workstation. We run
Antelope on an older SUN OPTERON workstation running Linux and you can
certainly do that. We have our reservations about Linux as an
enterprise-class operating system, but we know that it is in use in this
capacity in much larger applications than ours. The major problem we
have with Linux is that it is not commercially supported in an
integrated fashion with the hardware, something SUN excelled at for so
many years and the reason we have always been SUN advocates.

We are now recommending to our users that they seriously start to look
at alternatives for SUN hardware and software. It is the only prudent
thing to do and certainly we are doing this now. The only other
vertically integrated manufacturer who offers completely integrated
hardware and UNIX-based software with active support and an encompassing
warrantee is Apple. We are in the process of moving to Apple/MacOSX as
our mainstream computing environment. As a comparison, I purchased one
of the last remaining SPARC workstations from SUN in June of 2008, a two
core SPARC Ultra 45. After adding memory, disk and upgrading the
graphics processor it ended up costing about $US8000.  
This last summer we also purchased an 8-core macpro workstation which,
after upgrading memory etc., cost about $US5000. In benchmarks so far we
find that the macpro runs 5 times faster than the SPARC workstation on a
single thread and about 20 times faster for highly threaded programs.
IRIS is helping us to start production testing of macpro systems to
acquire and process the 400 station USArray network; the existing ANF
SUN server machines will certainly not last the entire 10 year life of
USArray.

We certainly encourage any feedback we can get from you. We view this as
a serious problem for our entire community. If you have got a better
inside connection with SUN and can let us know their intentions/ plans
it would make our decisions a lot clearer.

================================
Danny J. Harvey, Ph.D.
President
Boulder Real Time Technologies, Inc.
2045 Broadway Street, Suite 400
Boulder, CO 80302, USA
+1-720-274-0099
FAX: +1-720-274-0096
danny at brtt.com





On Feb 23, 2009, at 9:38 AM, Lyons, Jim wrote:

> We at the GSC are in the process of replacing some older SUN/Solaris 
> rackmount servers with SUN blades, most of which will be the X64 
> (Intel or AMD CPU) variety.  I understand that Antelope is not 
> supported on these hardware platforms, even under Solaris.  Could you 
> please confirm this, and whether you have any plans to support them in

> future?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Jim Lyons
> Geological Survey of Canada
> Ottawa
>
> From: antelope-bounces at brtt.net [mailto:antelope-bounces at brtt.net]
> On Behalf Of Mathias Franke
> Sent: February 19, 2009 14:36
> To: Majids at squ.edu.om
> Cc: Yousf AL-Shijbi; Issa El-Hussain; antelope at brtt.net; Ogie Kuraica;

> Salam Al-Hashmi; support; Mohamed El Idrissi
> Subject: [Antelope] FW: Linux antelope
>
> Dear Majids:
>
> I hope this e-mail finds you in good health and spirit. I guess you 
> successfully finished your studies.
>
> I got your e-mail forwarded to me and I am more than happy to answer 
> your questions. Before that I would like to inform you that, in light 
> of the fact that Sun does not build any SPARC based workstations, BRTT

> and Kinemetrics came to the consensus that Apple workstations will be 
> the future platform for networks that use workstations. We found that 
> Apple provides, similar to Sun, a tight integration of hardware and 
> O/S making Antelope installation and configuration predictable and 
> maintainable. All efforts are made by BRTT to provide an Antelope 
> version on Apple workstations that provides the reliability of mission

> critical seismic networks. On the other hand, Kinemetrics will provide

> installation and configuration services for Apple workstations.
>
> Hence, you can get an Apple Mac Pro workstation with 8-cores at up to 
> 3.2GHz (BRTT carried benchmark tests with impressive results), up to 
> 32GB RAM and a multi-client server O/S. You can have a hardware RAID 
> in the Mac Pro with up to 4TB. And the Mac Pro is considered one of 
> the best engineered INTEL-based computer on the market. So, you can 
> consider your basic requirements covered.
>
> With regards to your questions:
> Ad 1)
> Antelope licenses are node licenses; that means you need one license 
> for each computer you run Antelope on. If you have one workstation you

> will need one RTU license independent of the number of terminals your 
> are operating off that workstation.
> Ad 2)
> We would recommend to use Apple Mac Pro (see discussion above); we 
> cannot make a recommendation for PC hardware.
> Ad 3)
> Antelope will run on the current Mac OS X Server v10.5. For Linux:  
> Antelope runs on SLED 10.2.
>
> If you need more information or want to discuss this issue, do not 
> hesitate to contact me.
>
>
> Kind regards,
> Mathias
> ________________________________________
>                                                                       
> \ Mathias Franke, Ph.D.
> Manager - Open System Solutions
>
> Kinemetrics, Inc.
> 222 Vista Ave.
> Pasadena, CA 91107
> USA
>
> Tel.: +1-626-795 2220 X699
> Fax: +1-626-792 0146
> E-Mail: mf at kmi.com
> Web: www.kinemetrics.com
> ________________________________________/
>
>
>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 9:41 AM
> To: Ogie Kuraica; Mathias Franke
> Cc: support
> Subject: Fwd: Linux antelope
>
> I had rather recommendations like this come from Kinemetrics.
>
>
> ================================
> Danny J. Harvey, Ph.D.
> President
> Boulder Real Time Technologies, Inc.
> 2045 Broadway Street, Suite 400
> Boulder, CO 80302, USA
>
>
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> From: Majid Al-Saifi <majids at squ.edu.om>
>> Date: February 18, 2009 12:34:49 AM MST
>> To: <antelope at brtt.net>, <support at brtt.com>, Nikolaus Horn 
>> <Nikolaus.Horn at zamg.ac.at
>> >
>> Cc: Issa El-Hussain <elhussain at squ.edu.om>, Khalfan Al-Tobi 
>> <kitobi at squ.edu.om
>> >, Salam Al-Hashmi <salam95 at squ.edu.om>, Yousf AL-Shijbi 
>> ><alshijbi at squ.edu.om , Mohamed El Idrissi <midrissi at bluewin.ch>
>> Subject: Linux antelope
>>
>> Dear all:
>> We are using antelope installed in sun (Solaris 10) and we plan to 
>> acquire Linux  so that we get a powerful server with a large storage 
>> (central database) and open different terminal in it for several 
>> users who can analyze and review the data simultaneously.
>> Now my questions are:
>> 1)      Do we need to get additional antelope license for the  
>> server only or for each terminal?
>> 2)      And what is your advice to get reliable and cost wise  
>> solution in such situation?
>> 3)      Is there any special system requirements to get Linux based  
>> antelope?
>> Looking forward to see your answers
>> Kind regards
>> Majid Al Saifi
>> Earthquake monitoring center
>> Sultan Qaboos University
>> Oman
>