>> You can't deny that Sun hardware was top tier and always ahead of its time (until Oracle bought them).
> SPARC stopped being ahead of its time way before being bought by Oracle.
You seem to be focusing strictly on performance, but there were other factors: e.g., remote management is still a bit of a mess with x86. With SPARC everything can be done on the CLI (serials consoles or SSH), with x86 quite often you're still clicking on "open KVM window" for so many things. And of course many/most vendors make you purchase an 'advanced license' to use the remote KVM functionality of the LOM system.
Why is that a property of the ISA?
It's path dependence. If you built a Sun-syle x86 server with a serial console and inserted a random Linux installer CD, the installer would probably only output VGA and thus it wouldn't work.
That's part that was changed with UEFI when the old IBM PC "contract" was finally severed.
I would wager that almost no Linux installs are done by CD or displaying VGA anymore (maybe 0.01%).
> I would wager that almost no Linux installs are done by CD or displaying VGA anymore (maybe 0.01%).
When one of your Proxmox (or XCP-ng, or VMware/Nutanix/OpenStack) servers won't boot and you need go into single-user/rescue mode, then talk to me about the convenience or not of a remote KVM (versus having to drive to the DC and hook up the crash cart).
It's all very well if all you manage is VMs/instances, but some of us deal with the hardware that those VMs run on, and things break.
That 0.01% of servers is probably the layer that the other 99.99% run on (and yes, a lot of that 0.01% can also be automated, but if PXE isn't working (or you're getting strange CPU3VOLT or SLOT17ECC or BUS1RESET errors) then neither is re-imaging).
The alternative isn't driving to the DC; it's remote serial console through a console server or the BMC.
Path dependence again. x86 servers in the 1990s had to have VGA so it was never removed. (Except Oxide.)
Oxide happened long after (U)EFI brought proper serial support to boot process
Yet every UEFI server has VGA and remote KVM.
Debian installer runs fine over serial, at least.
Yeah, that was amazing. And so, I learned how to provide LILO + agetty on COM1 on every server I was admining :) So, unless there was HW fault, I could just connect to server via serial to check things out.
> You seem to be focusing strictly on performance,
Just like the vast majority of buyers do. SPARC was abandoned by customers due to poor performance.
> but there were other factors: e.g., remote management is still a bit of a mess with x86
That's a property of the systems integrator, not the ISA. Dell's iDRAC works quite well.
> Dell's iDRAC works quite well.
I currently admin several racks of Dells (and Lenovo, and SuperMicro, and previously HP). Just make sure you buy the license for KVM in case you ever need to go into single-user/rescue mode (otherwise better not mind having to drive to the DC and hooking up a crash cart).
Ask @bcantrill (the author of this article/story) about how well integrators integrate (as a hint to the answer, he co-founded Oxide Computers because he ran a cloud service with Dells/HPs/etc).
You can ignore KVM license if you have good netboot infrastructure and only install OS in UEFI mode - SOL works fine.
The big issue is usually "remote media" support, thus my recommendation for setting up netbooting infrastructure
Integrators integrate very well at the level that they're operating, i.e. the single server. Rack-level integrated systems are a whole different thing, very specialised and unrelated to the old thing.