24 GB RAM in a Sun Ultra 27 ??

[David Kirkby]

I have a Sun Ultra 27 which I know is speced to take 12 GB RAM. Mine
has the full 12 GB, but I'm finding it rather limiting.

However, I have seen a couple of references to it being possible
(though not supported of course), to put 24 GB RAM in the machine. Has
anyone done this? For example, the Kingston web site says the maximum
memory is 24 GB,

http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator_new/modelsinfo.asp?SysID=54967&mfr=Sun&model=Ultra+27+Workstation&search_type=&root=uk&LinkBack=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kingston.com%2Fukroot&Sys=54967-Sun-Ultra+27+Workstation&distributor=0&submit1=Search

yet they don't appear to offer any kits that give 24 GB. I've seen
another 3rd party memory manufacturer say the same too.

I worked out I can get 24 GB of RAM from eBay for about £160, but that
is not an insigificant amount of money to risk from my own pocket. The
machine is not under any support contract, so I'm not worried about
what "officially" works or not. But I'd like to know if anyone has got
more than 12 GB to work in one of these boxes.

Mine has the 3.33 GHz Intel Xeon W3580, which according to the Intel
site, can address 24 GB

http://ark.intel.com/products/39723/Intel-Xeon-Processor-W3580-%288M-Cache-3_33-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI%29

So it seems like 24 Gb might be possible, but I'd be interested to
hear from anyone who has tried.

I'm tempted to try a single 4 GB DIMM, then if that works, buy another
5. If it does not, I've not lost a lot of money.

Dave


Dave

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Some systems require that you install DIMMs in pairs or foursomes. I'm
not familiar with the Ultra 27. If you have, or can get, the "Owner's
Manual" or whatever the hardware docs are called there should be some
info about installing memory.

Once upon a time, the Sun web site had hardware documentation on-line.

I got mine several years ago and don't know what, if anything, has
changed. Except, of course, that Oracle bought Sun several years ago.
Sun used to have a treasure trove of documentation on-line. Oracle may
have kept it or trashed it. Let us know what you find.

[John D Groenveld]

[follow-up's set to comp.sys.sun.hardware]
In article <x4udnfjrTOlNuHTT...@giganews.com>,

Richard B. Gilbert <rgilb...@comcast.net> wrote:
>Once upon a time, the Sun web site had hardware documentation on-line.

<URL:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19127-01/ultra27.ws/820-6776/z400047d1287383/index.html>

John
groe...@acm.org

[David Kirkby]

On Dec 14, 10:40 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber...@comcast.net>
wrote:

> On 12/14/2011 10:34 AM, David Kirkby wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > I have a Sun Ultra 27 which I know is speced to take 12 GB RAM. Mine
> > has the full 12 GB, but I'm finding it rather limiting.
>
> > However, I have seen a couple of references to it being possible
> > (though not supported of course), to put 24 GB RAM in the machine. Has
> > anyone done this? For example, the Kingston web site says the maximum
> > memory is 24 GB,
>

> >http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator_new/modelsinfo.asp?SysID...

>
> > yet they don't appear to offer any kits that give 24 GB. I've seen
> > another 3rd party memory manufacturer say the same too.
>
> > I worked out I can get 24 GB of RAM from eBay for about £160, but that
> > is not an insigificant amount of money to risk from my own pocket. The
> > machine is not under any support contract, so I'm not worried about
> > what "officially" works or not. But I'd like to know if anyone has got
> > more than 12 GB to work in one of these boxes.
>
> > Mine has the 3.33 GHz Intel Xeon W3580, which according to the Intel
> > site, can address 24 GB
>

> >http://ark.intel.com/products/39723/Intel-Xeon-Processor-W3580-%288M-...

>
> > So it seems like 24 Gb might be possible, but I'd be interested to
> > hear from anyone who has tried.
>
> > I'm tempted to try a single 4 GB DIMM, then if that works, buy another
> > 5. If it does not, I've not lost a lot of money.
>
> > Dave
>
> > Dave
>
> Some systems require that you install DIMMs in pairs or foursomes.  I'm
> not familiar with the Ultra 27.  If you have, or can get, the "Owner's
> Manual" or whatever the hardware docs are called there should be some
> info about installing memory.

Thank you.

I have the documentation on the machine. It is possible to install one
DIMM. In fact, I bought it brand new with just a single 2 GB DIMM as
Sun wanted too much for RAM. I think the person installing it must
have thought it mad that I bought the fastest/most-expensive 3.33 GHz
CPU, only to have 2 GB of RAM. But then perhaps they guessed I'd buy
memory elsewhere.I bought the other 10 GB from Kingston, Crucial or
similar. (I think it was Crucial).

But my question is related to using an unsupported combination of RAM.
Whether the machine will actually recognise 4 GB DIMMs and so allow me
to put 24 GB in it.

The Ultra 27 has run fine for a couple of years with 12 GB RAM. It is
a lovely machine. Very quite. I am in fact sleeping in the same room
as the machine at the minute while I have a friend staying and doing
some work on the house. But I know what I want to do is unsupported -
I just want to know if it will work.

Dave

[Sami Ketola]

Richard B. Gilbert <rgilb...@comcast.net> wrote:

> Once upon a time, the Sun web site had hardware documentation on-line.

They still are there. Only oracleised now:

https://support.oracle.com/handbook_private/

Sami

[David Kirkby]

On Dec 14, 3:34 pm, David Kirkby <drkir...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a Sun Ultra 27 which I know is speced to take 12 GB RAM. Mine
> has the full 12 GB, but I'm finding it rather limiting.
>
> However, I have seen a couple of references to it being possible
> (though not supported of course), to put 24 GB RAM in the machine. Has
> anyone done this? For example, the Kingston web site says the maximum
> memory is 24 GB,
>

> http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator_new/modelsinfo.asp?SysID...

>
> yet they don't appear to offer any kits that give 24 GB. I've seen
> another 3rd party memory manufacturer say the same too.
>
> I worked out I can get 24 GB of RAM from eBay for about £160, but that
> is not an insigificant amount of money to risk from my own pocket. The
> machine is not under any support contract, so I'm not worried about
> what "officially" works or not. But I'd like to know if anyone has got
> more than 12 GB to work in one of these boxes.
>
> Mine has the 3.33 GHz Intel Xeon W3580, which according to the Intel
> site, can address 24 GB
>

> http://ark.intel.com/products/39723/Intel-Xeon-Processor-W3580-%288M-...

>
> So it seems like 24 Gb might be possible, but I'd be interested to
> hear from anyone who has tried.
>
> I'm tempted to try a single 4 GB DIMM, then if that works, buy another
> 5. If it does not, I've not lost a lot of money.
>
> Dave

I decided to give it a try, and ordered one 4 GB DIMM from Crucial.

http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT51272BA1339&click=true

I'll try one, and see if I can the Sun to see 4 GB from a single
module. If so, I'll buy another 5 to attempt to get the Sun to see 24
GB.

As far as I can tell, apart from the size (4 GB), all the other specs
are the same as the 2 GB modules I bought from Crucial for this Sun.

Of course, I'm taking a bit of a chance here, but weighing up my other
options, I can't see any sensible way to get more performance than I
have without spending a lot of money. Any used machine is likely to
have poorer processors than the 3.33 GHz W3580. Some HP servers would
be better spec, but would make too much noise for a domestic
environment.

I'll let others know the result, so they can see whether it's worth
trying up upgrade a Ultra 27.

Dave

[ChrisQ]

On 12/17/11 14:54, David Kirkby wrote:

> I decided to give it a try, and ordered one 4 GB DIMM from Crucial.
>
> http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT51272BA1339&click=true
>
> I'll try one, and see if I can the Sun to see 4 GB from a single
> module. If so, I'll buy another 5 to attempt to get the Sun to see 24
> GB.
>
> As far as I can tell, apart from the size (4 GB), all the other specs
> are the same as the 2 GB modules I bought from Crucial for this Sun.
>
> Of course, I'm taking a bit of a chance here, but weighing up my other
> options, I can't see any sensible way to get more performance than I
> have without spending a lot of money. Any used machine is likely to
> have poorer processors than the 3.33 GHz W3580. Some HP servers would
> be better spec, but would make too much noise for a domestic
> environment.

If you want a quiet hp machine, the ml350 pedestal mount are designed for an
office environment and are fairly unobtrusive, unlike the 1 or 2u high
variants,
which are quite noisy.

I'm still using a couple of G4 examples in the lab (for software tools that
need windows), but there are g5, 6 and 7 models now...

>
> I'll let others know the result, so they can see whether it's worth
> trying up upgrade a Ultra 27.
>
> Dave

Just curious, what applications needs 24 Gbytes of ram ?. One alternate
might
be to use a solid state drive for fast swap / paging...

Regards,

Chris

[David Kirkby]

On Dec 17, 10:47 pm, ChrisQ <m...@devnull.com> wrote:

> > Of course, I'm taking a bit of a chance here, but weighing up my other
> > options, I can't see any sensible way to get more performance than I
> > have without spending a lot of money. Any used machine is likely to
> > have poorer processors than the 3.33 GHz W3580. Some HP servers would
> > be better spec, but would make too much noise for a domestic
> > environment.
>
> If you want a quiet hp machine, the ml350 pedestal mount are designed for an
> office environment and are fairly unobtrusive, unlike the 1 or 2u high
> variants,
> which are quite noisy.
>
> I'm still using a couple of G4 examples in the lab (for software tools that
> need windows), but there are g5, 6 and 7 models now...

Thank you. I had been considering the HP server range, but only the 2U
or 4 U systems. I was not aware of that machine, which does look
interesting.

> > I'll let others know the result, so they can see whether it's worth
> > trying up upgrade a Ultra 27.
>
> > Dave
>
> Just curious, what applications needs 24 Gbytes of ram ?. One alternate
> might
> be to use a solid state drive for fast swap / paging...

3D electromagnetic simulation software.

Possibly HFSS
http://www.ansoft.com/products/hf/hfss/

or a similar tool (Agilents EMPro)
http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/product.jspx?cc=GB&lc=eng&ckey=1297143&nid=-34278.0.00&id=1297143

CST Microwave Studio
http://www.cst.com/Content/Products/MWS/Overview.aspx

FEKO
http://www.feko.info/

Empire's XCcell
http://www.empire.de/

ALL of these sorts of programs need loads of CPU power and loads of
RAM. I know some users are using 100's CPUs and TB's of RAM, but they
are simulating things more complex than I need. But still computer
performance is going to be quite important.

I need to sort out how these are licensed, as most or all of this sort
of software supports the use of using multiple machines in parallel to
arrive at a solution faster. It might be more sensible to run the
front end on a machine with fairly limited CPU/RAM and decent
graphics, but do the actual solving on remote machine(s) with more RAM/
CPU which can be located in a server room. But I think this sort of
arrangement increases the license costs quite considerably.

A mate suggested if there were ways around the RAM limitation issues
with some other device. The solid state disk is one option. But I see
a lot of reports of poor reliability of these. Also, I still expect
they are going to be orders of magnitude slower than system RAM, but
obviously not as slow as a physical hard disk to swap to.



> Regards,
>
> Chris

[Torsten Kirschner]

Den 15.12.2011 07:35, skrev David Kirkby:
[...]

> But my question is related to using an unsupported combination of RAM.
> Whether the machine will actually recognise 4 GB DIMMs and so allow me
> to put 24 GB in it.

Crucial usually publishes the actual maximum amount of RAM which can be
installed in a system, regardless of whether the manufacturer claims it
is less.
Unfortunately, in case of the Ultra 27, it seems you've already maxed it
out:
http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Ultra%2027&Cat=RAM

regards,
T

[ChrisQ]

On 12/18/11 09:16, David Kirkby wrote:

> 3D electromagnetic simulation software.

>

>
> ALL of these sorts of programs need loads of CPU power and loads of
> RAM. I know some users are using 100's CPUs and TB's of RAM, but they
> are simulating things more complex than I need. But still computer
> performance is going to be quite important.
>
> I need to sort out how these are licensed, as most or all of this sort
> of software supports the use of using multiple machines in parallel to
> arrive at a solution faster. It might be more sensible to run the
> front end on a machine with fairly limited CPU/RAM and decent
> graphics, but do the actual solving on remote machine(s) with more RAM/
> CPU which can be located in a server room. But I think this sort of
> arrangement increases the license costs quite considerably.
>
> A mate suggested if there were ways around the RAM limitation issues
> with some other device. The solid state disk is one option. But I see
> a lot of reports of poor reliability of these. Also, I still expect
> they are going to be orders of magnitude slower than system RAM, but
> obviously not as slow as a physical hard disk to swap to.
>

There many advantages for server class hardware: better io bandwidth, memory
interleaving capability, which can be usefull if you are processing
large contiguous
data sets. You also get better build quality, a more full set of
peripherals (Hardware raid etc), as standard and generous expansion slot
capability. The only proviso is with regard to pci-express graphics
cards. Most of these seem to have a 16 lane connector, even when 4 or 8 lane
internally, whereas some server motherboards only have 4 or 8 lane pci-e
connectors. Something to check, but even single lane pci-e might be good
enough
and are hardware compatable with the wider connectors...

Regards,

Chris

[David Kirkby]

On Dec 20, 3:00 pm, ChrisQ <m...@devnull.com> wrote:

> There many advantages for server class hardware: better io bandwidth, memory
> interleaving capability, which can be usefull if you are processing
> large contiguous
> data sets. You also get better build quality, a more full set of
> peripherals (Hardware raid etc), as standard and generous expansion slot
> capability. The only proviso is with regard to  pci-express graphics
> cards. Most of these seem to have a 16 lane connector, even when 4 or 8 lane
> internally, whereas some server motherboards only have 4 or 8 lane pci-e
> connectors. Something to check, but even single lane pci-e might be good
> enough
> and are hardware compatable with the wider connectors...
>
> Regards,
>
> Chris

I've just bought an IBM server from eBay:

IBM X3550 SERVER (7978-BGG), DUAL INTEL XEON QUADCORE X5460 @ 3.16GHZ,
8GB RAM

That gives me 8 Xeon cores @ 3.16 GHz, and I've bought another 8 GB of
RAM. I'll add another 16 GB later, if the machine seems to be ok. The
problem is I want to run this in a domestic environment, and whilst
the Ultra 27 is quite, I very much doubt a 1 U rack mounted unit with
8 cores running at 3.16 GHz will be!

I got 4 GB from Crucial and are going to try it in the Sun Ultra 27 in
half an hour or so, to see if the Sun can reconise a single 4 GB
DIMM.

Dave

[Doug McIntyre]

David Kirkby <drki...@gmail.com> writes:
>I've just bought an IBM server from eBay:

>IBM X3550 SERVER (7978-BGG), DUAL INTEL XEON QUADCORE X5460 @ 3.16GHZ,
>8GB RAM

>That gives me 8 Xeon cores @ 3.16 GHz, and I've bought another 8 GB of
>RAM. I'll add another 16 GB later, if the machine seems to be ok. The
>problem is I want to run this in a domestic environment, and whilst
>the Ultra 27 is quite, I very much doubt a 1 U rack mounted unit with
>8 cores running at 3.16 GHz will be!

1U machines are the worst for noise. They have to spin those fans very
very fast to get the cooling airflow through the box that they need.

3U or tower machines are much better for noise levels.

I have a Dell server tower in my finished basement area that I can't
hear at all (except at POST). I really do need to get everything off
my Netra X1 someday so I can finally turn that noise maker off. Even
so, the X1 isn't all that loud compared to a modern x86 1U box.

[David Kirkby]

On Dec 20, 2:06 am, Torsten Kirschner <torsten.kirsch...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Crucial usually publishes the actual maximum amount of RAM which can be
> installed in a system, regardless of whether the manufacturer claims it
> is less.
> Unfortunately, in case of the Ultra 27, it seems you've already maxed it
> out:http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Ultra%2027&Cat=RAM
>
> regards,
> T

Well, I bought one 4 GB DIMM (Crucial CT51272BA1339) and installed it
my Ultra 27. The U27 boots fine and detects it as 4 GB. The
"Performance Monitor" in OpenSolaris shows 4 GB. So I reckon if the
machine can see one 4 GB DIMM, there is a very good chance it will see
six, so giving me 24 GB. I'm going to order five more 4 GB DIMMs.

I'm 99% sure that will give me 6 x 4 GB DIMMs will give me 24 GB,
which will be a useful step up from 12 GB.


Dave

[David Kirkby]

On Dec 20, 11:46 pm, Doug McIntyre <mer...@geeks.org> wrote:

Yes, I know 1 U is more noisy, but I will probably remotely mount this
(in the garage). The hope is to run the U27 in the house, and the IBM
in the garage.

The nice thing about that IBM was that it was cheap! 2 quad core 3.16
GHz Xeons, 8 GB RAM, a pair of disks and it only cost me £385, which
is around $600. A larger HP or Dell would cost a lot more.

You may have seen from my other post that my U27 sees a single 4 GB
DIMM as 4 GB, so I reckon it will see six of them and give me 24 GB,
although I know it's unsupported. I'm going to place an order for a
further five 4 GB DIMMS in a minute.

Dave

[ChrisQ]

On 12/20/11 23:11, David Kirkby wrote:

>
> I've just bought an IBM server from eBay:
>
> IBM X3550 SERVER (7978-BGG), DUAL INTEL XEON QUADCORE X5460 @ 3.16GHZ,
> 8GB RAM
>
> That gives me 8 Xeon cores @ 3.16 GHz, and I've bought another 8 GB of
> RAM. I'll add another 16 GB later, if the machine seems to be ok. The
> problem is I want to run this in a domestic environment, and whilst
> the Ultra 27 is quite, I very much doubt a 1 U rack mounted unit with
> 8 cores running at 3.16 GHz will be!
>
> I got 4 GB from Crucial and are going to try it in the Sun Ultra 27 in
> half an hour or so, to see if the Sun can reconise a single 4 GB
> DIMM.
>
> Dave

Have no experience of ibm servers and would be interested to hear how you
get on with it, problems etc. I'm sure that their kit will be as well
screwed together as the Proliants. One reason I chose them initially was
cost - the ml350 series were made in large quantities and can be found for
10's of ukp on Ebay on a good day - a lot of functionality for the money.
One other possible gotcha is that server memory is nearly always ecc and
buffered, which is more expensive. The advantage is of course,
that you get single bit error correction, which becomes more usefull as
memory sizes increase.

I guess you'll have the server in the garage with the m27 indoors - well
on your way to having a compute farm :-)...

Regards,

Chris

[David Kirkby]

On Dec 21, 3:15 pm, ChrisQ <m...@devnull.com> wrote:
> On 12/20/11 23:11, David Kirkby wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > I've just bought an IBM server from eBay:
>
> > IBM X3550 SERVER (7978-BGG), DUAL INTEL XEON QUADCORE X5460 @ 3.16GHZ,
> > 8GB RAM

> > Dave
>
> Have no experience of ibm servers and would be interested to hear how you
> get on with it, problems etc. I'm sure that their kit will be as well
> screwed together as the Proliants. One reason I chose them initially was
> cost - the ml350 series were made in large quantities and can be found for
> 10's of ukp on Ebay on a good day - a lot of functionality for the money.

The HPs I were looking at were quite expensive. I never see much
cheap, though I was looking for things that would take 64 GB + RAM,
whereas in fact the IBM only takes 32 GB. But it was a lot cheaper
than any HP I could find. People are selling on eBay a pair of
processors for more than I paid for the machine.

> One other possible gotcha is that server memory is nearly always ecc and
> buffered, which is more expensive. The advantage is of course,
> that you get single bit error correction, which becomes more usefull as
> memory sizes increase.

Yes. I'm really ****ed off about memory, as Amazon had two pieces for
about £47 each, so I bought them. When I looked at my order, the price
of them has doubled. So whilst I got two (8 GB) cheap, the next 16 GB
is going to cost me a small fortune.

> I guess you'll have the server in the garage with the m27 indoors - well
> on your way to having a compute farm :-)...

I've pretty much got a server farm in my garage - IBM RS/6000 running
AIX, a couple of Sun Blade 1000s, a Sun Netra T1, HP box running HP-
UX.

I did until fairly recently have a Dec Alpha and an SGI Octane, but I
sold them.

Still, all that hardware is old/slow, but 8 cores of 3.16 GHz Xeons
should have decent performance. The issue is more one of whether it's
financially viable to license the software in such a way it will make
use of distributed computers.

I don't have much idea about how practical it is to use a Windows
machine remotely. i.e. if due to noise considerations I can only put
the IBM in the garage, how practical is it to get a decent GUI on
another machine on a LAN, using Gbit ethernet? I've never used RDP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Desktop_Protocol

and so don't know how practical it is to use an application which
wants fairly decent graphics, though the main issues are RAM and CPU.
Since it's a CAD system, graphics are important, but not to the extent
that RAM + CPU are.



> Regards,
>
> Chris

[ChrisQ]

On 12/21/11 18:28, David Kirkby wrote:

>
> Yes. I'm really ****ed off about memory, as Amazon had two pieces for

> about Ł47 each, so I bought them. When I looked at my order, the price

> of them has doubled. So whilst I got two (8 GB) cheap, the next 16 GB
> is going to cost me a small fortune.
>

That's called fraud and I would have demanded a refund for the difference
or just issued a chargeback. In the uk, if you are quoted a price, then
the supplier must supply at that price. B & Q are famous for this sort of
thing - price tag at the shelf suddenly get's inflated at the till. It's
called "bait and switch". We don't buy anything from them anymore. Abe
books were nearly always cheaper than Amazon, though I understand that
they have recently been bought by Amazon :-(.

> I've pretty much got a server farm in my garage - IBM RS/6000 running
> AIX, a couple of Sun Blade 1000s, a Sun Netra T1, HP box running HP-
> UX.

Sounds a bit like the collection here, though I still haven't been able
to part with things like the Indy Webforce. Having a bit of a dec
background,
ran an Alpha w/station and server and various sparc machines here for years,
but he cost of energy now means that i've had to cut back on the number of
active machines to the ones that actually support work.

>
> I don't have much idea about how practical it is to use a Windows
> machine remotely. i.e. if due to noise considerations I can only put
> the IBM in the garage, how practical is it to get a decent GUI on
> another machine on a LAN, using Gbit ethernet? I've never used RDP
>

You can run a remote X session, but that assumes unix or linux at both
ends. There are X clients for windows (www.labf.com etc), but not
used any of them. Same for rdp and for flexibility, would probably
try to avoid any obscure M/soft only protocols. Is it free to use /
are there any open source versions, does it work cross paltform / os
etc ?. You could also look at vnc, which has both windows / unix
client and server packages and it's open source.

>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Desktop_Protocol
>
> and so don't know how practical it is to use an application which
> wants fairly decent graphics, though the main issues are RAM and CPU.
> Since it's a CAD system, graphics are important, but not to the extent
> that RAM + CPU are.
>

Gbit ethernet may be fast enough, depends on required update rate. The
only way is to try it :-)...

Regards,

Chris

[David Kirkby]

On Dec 22, 11:47 am, ChrisQ <m...@devnull.com> wrote:
> On 12/21/11 18:28, David Kirkby wrote:
>
>
>
> > Yes. I'm really ****ed off about memory, as Amazon had two pieces for

> > about £47 each, so I bought them. When I looked at my order, the price

> > of them has doubled. So whilst I got two (8 GB) cheap, the next 16 GB
> > is going to cost me a small fortune.
>
> That's called fraud and I would have demanded a refund for the difference
> or just issued a chargeback.  In the uk, if you are quoted a price, then
> the supplier must supply at that price. B & Q are famous for this sort of
> thing - price tag at the shelf suddenly get's inflated at the till. It's
> called "bait and switch". We don't buy anything from them anymore. Abe
> books were nearly always cheaper than Amazon, though I understand that
> they have recently been bought by Amazon :-(.

Chris,
you mis-understood me. When I see the memory on the Amazon site it was
£44.73. So I bought two, paid 2 x £44.73 = £89.76, and have received
the RAM at that price. But if you look on the Amazon site now,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000G6BL0G

you will see the RAM is priced at £91.54. It has more than doubled in
price since I bought it. That's one hell of a price increase.

However, I made a mistake, as looking at that Amazon page it appeared
at first sight that this is for a single 4 GB DIMM, but it is in fact
a pair of 2 GB DIMMs. It is actually stated further down the page, but
it is well hidden. I think the Amazon page could be a lot clearer. As
such, whilst I received 8 GB of RAM as expected, it will take up 4
slots, which I don't want to do when the machine can take 4 GB DIMMS.
The IBM only has 8 slots, so I don't want to fill it with small ones.
So I suspect I'll be returning the RAM to Amazon, though I'm going to
check what it sells for on eBay, as it might actually be profitable to
sell it on, since the price has changed so much.

On a related issue, I recently bought a laptop from John Lewis at £999
and then it went down £100 to £899 a week or so later. Apparently John
Lewis have a policy of refunding price changes for 30 days, so I
phoned them up and they credited my account with £100. The service
from John Lewis really is excellent.


Dave

[David Kirkby]

On Dec 20, 2:06 am, Torsten Kirschner <torsten.kirsch...@gmail.com>
wrote:

I can now confirm the Sun Ultra 27 does indeed work with 4 GB DIMMs
and when all 6 slots are filled, the machine sees the full 24 GB.

drkirkby@hawk:~$ prtdiag | head -3
System Configuration: Sun Microsystems Ultra 27
BIOS Configuration: American Megatrends Inc. 1.03 04/23/2009

drkirkby@hawk:~$ prtconf | grep Memory
Memory size: 24567 Megabytes

So whilst not supported, the combination does seem to work. I've not
done any extensive testing, as I've only fitted the RAM in the last
half an hour or so.


Dave

[ChrisQ]

On 12/22/11 12:45, David Kirkby wrote:

> On a related issue, I recently bought a laptop from John Lewis at Ł999
> and then it went down Ł100 to Ł899 a week or so later. Apparently John

> Lewis have a policy of refunding price changes for 30 days, so I

> phoned them up and they credited my account with Ł100. The service

> from John Lewis really is excellent.
>
> Dave

My younger lad is currently working at Waitrose, stacking shelves and doing
checkout while he makes his mind up what he really wants to do. They are
part of the J Lewis group and seem like a fair employer, with share options
and all kinds of other benefits. Sort of proves that capitalism and
ethics can
coexist...

Regards,

Chris

[David Kirkby]

On Dec 22, 11:48 pm, ChrisQ <m...@devnull.com> wrote:
> On 12/22/11 12:45, David Kirkby wrote:
>

> > On a related issue, I recently bought a laptop from John Lewis at £999
> > and then it went down £100 to £899 a week or so later. Apparently John

> > Lewis have a policy of refunding price changes for 30 days, so I

> > phoned them up and they credited my account with £100. The service

> > from John Lewis really is excellent.
>
> > Dave
>
> My younger lad is currently working at Waitrose, stacking shelves and doing
> checkout while he makes his mind up what he really wants to do. They are
> part of the J Lewis group and seem like a fair employer, with share options
> and all kinds of other benefits.

I know two people who work for the John Lewis partnership, and from
what I here, they are a very good employer. The partners get a share
of the profits each year, which IIRC was 18% of their salary last
year, or it might have been the year before. One of my friends has
worked there 25 years, and so was able to take 6-months off on full
pay.

Another friend, who has spent 25 years in Nat West bank, got a £250 or
£500 (I forget which) bonus. That compares pretty poorly to 6 months
off my other firend got from John Lewis!

> Sort of proves that capitalism and
> ethics can
> coexist...

Yes. They are an example that other companies could try to follow.

> Regards,
>
> Chris

BTW, I received the IBM server yesterday, but it will need to be
returned to the seller. First the RAM is not 2 x 4 GB modules as
described, but 8 x 1 GB. Secondly, and more serious, one of the
heatsinks is floating around inside, as it looks like a clip that is
supposed to hold it to the motherboard has been pulled out. The
company has another server, but not the RAM.

They don't seem keen to give me the amount off to allow me to buy the
RAM from elsewhere, as a pair of 4 GB RAM modules are quite expensive.
They have offered me a Dell R610 with a pair of E5506 processors, but
want more money for it. Although the E5506 processor is a newer model
than the X5460 used in the IBM server, it is much slower (2.13 vs 3.16
GHz) and has a much smaller cache (3 MB vs 12 MB). The Dell seems to
have a much cheaper processor. I personally think it will be a slower
machine, so paying more for it does not seem too attractive. That
said, it can be upgraded more, as faster processors can be installed,
as can a lot more RAM.

So I seem to be a bit stuck now, but at least my Sun is more usable
now it has 24 GB RAM.



Dave

[ChrisQ]

On 12/23/11 11:03, David Kirkby wrote:

>
> BTW, I received the IBM server yesterday, but it will need to be
> returned to the seller. First the RAM is not 2 x 4 GB modules as
> described, but 8 x 1 GB. Secondly, and more serious, one of the
> heatsinks is floating around inside, as it looks like a clip that is
> supposed to hold it to the motherboard has been pulled out. The
> company has another server, but not the RAM.
>
> They don't seem keen to give me the amount off to allow me to buy the
> RAM from elsewhere, as a pair of 4 GB RAM modules are quite expensive.
> They have offered me a Dell R610 with a pair of E5506 processors, but
> want more money for it. Although the E5506 processor is a newer model
> than the X5460 used in the IBM server, it is much slower (2.13 vs 3.16
> GHz) and has a much smaller cache (3 MB vs 12 MB). The Dell seems to
> have a much cheaper processor. I personally think it will be a slower
> machine, so paying more for it does not seem too attractive. That
> said, it can be upgraded more, as faster processors can be installed,
> as can a lot more RAM.
>
> So I seem to be a bit stuck now, but at least my Sun is more usable
> now it has 24 GB RAM.
>
> Dave

Have no experience of Dell servers, but the dell desktops that i've used
have always seemed a bit flimsy and plasticky in engineering terms. Servers
may be better, but probably better to avoid and ask for a refund. Have had
2 or 3 heavy-ish items damaged in transit in the past 2 or 3 years and have
found the ebay vendors cooperative, with a complete refund in every
case. They
always ask for jpg's of the damage, then I assume that they just put in an
insurance claim with their carrier. In one case, the vendor didn't even
bother
to collect the unit, even after reminders. Ended up with a set of spares,
but did buy another machines from them soon after, which *was* properly
packed.
Best way though is to collect if they are within reasonable driving
distance,
as all the couriers seem to chuck stuff around a bit.

Found these on Ebay:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-ML350-G5-QUAD-CORE-1-86-8m-4u-Rack-Server-146gb-VMWARE-Vsphere-ESXI-5-64bit-/150724406920?pt=UK_Computing_Networking_SM&hash=item2317dfee88

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-470064-100-ML350-G5-1-86GHz-Quad-Core-server-7GB-RAM-3x-MAX3073NP-hard-drives-/190617885556?pt=UK_Computing_Networking_SM&hash=item2c61b61b74

The g5's are quite a bit cheaper than the g6's, which are still current,
iirc,
but don't know how they would stack up against the ibm or dell. Apologies
for the compaq plug, but the proliants remind me more of the dec minis
of the
1980's rather than the paper thin metal kit that you see these days. Appeals
to the engineer in me, I guess :-).

Took a chance on a pallet load (6) of "partially tested" (ie: do the
power lights
and fans come on :-), v240's a few weeks ago on ebay. All of them work,
had various
pci boards, inc fibre channel controllers etc. Most are dual 1Ghz cpu,
(will take
up to 1.5 Ghz) various amounts of ram. Have wanted to rationalise to
fewer machines
to reduce power consumption. The v240 is considerably faster than the
Blade 1000
which I was using for server and s/w dev. Firefox is slower than the
intel box, but
still a great improvement over the B1K and generally plenty fast enough
for everyday
interactive work. There's also space for 4 drives, 2u high, though a tad
noisy to
sit next to. Have S10 running on one for the server, Debian squeeze
on a second and all good so far. Both have XVR100 graphics cards fitted,
though
others are supported. One thing I really did mourn about Sun was their
giving up on
workstations, so quite pleased to find a reasonably modern server class
machine
that has enough slots and obp support for later graphics cards. Keyboard
is usb as well,
so you can use a usb <-> mini din adapter to hook up to a kvm switch.

It's never been a better time to buy s/hand hardware to reequip your lab
and will
most likely be even better come next spring/summer. Watchfullness and
patience are
the answer :-)...

Regards,

Chris

[Doug McIntyre]

ChrisQ <me...@devnull.com> writes:
>Have no experience of Dell servers, but the dell desktops that i've used
>have always seemed a bit flimsy and plasticky in engineering terms. Servers

>may be better...

Dell servers are way different than their desktops.

But in either line, they definately have three+ levels of product.
The entry line is pretty cheap and junky. The mid level is okay, and
the high end is real nice to work with in general.

The servers are a bit more flatened out, mostly just the entry level
cheapo servers and the enterprise servers with a zillion of options
to choose from.

Having worked with just about every vendor, I'd say that IBM, HP and
Dell are pretty equivilent if you get equivilent lines. Ie. HP makes
some pretty junky entry level servers, same as Dell or IBM. But their
middle and upper end lines are all pretty nice. The R610 is a pretty
nice server, but I like the R710s for their bigger upgrade options.

Personally, I wouldn't see the difference in the CPUs for the OP, but
then again, I don't do anything close to what he is either.

[Torsten Kirschner]

Den 12/22/11 1:52 PM, skrev David Kirkby:

Cool, congratulations.

regards,
T

[kuehkw...@gmail.com]

HI David , just want o find out with u , did you manage to get the Sun Ultra 27 to work with 24GB of RAM ?

[miles...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 6:52:17 AM UTC-6, David Kirkby wrote:
...

> I can now confirm the Sun Ultra 27 does indeed work with 4 GB DIMMs
> and when all 6 slots are filled, the machine sees the full 24 GB.

I know this is eons old, but I tried this last night (3x4GB DIMMs). When I powered up the system, the fan went into normal high speed startup mode, but after 45 to 60 seconds was still doing that, with nothing on the screen. With 6x1GB it only takes a few seconds.

The 4GB DIMMs are the right type and were taken from a decommissioned (but working) Sun server (a noisy rackmount or I'd have taken the whole thing to use!)

Do you recall if it took an inordinately long time to get to the first prompt? I really didn't want to leave this running indefinitely only to have something die.

Thanks!

[Bruce Esquibel]

miles...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 6:52:17 AM UTC-6, David Kirkby wrote:
> ...
>> I can now confirm the Sun Ultra 27 does indeed work with 4 GB DIMMs
>> and when all 6 slots are filled, the machine sees the full 24 GB.

> I know this is eons old, but I tried this last night (3x4GB DIMMs).

Hmmm, 3x4GB is not the same as the old post using 6x4GB.

I think those slots are paired, you need to use 2 at a time.

I haven't looked at one of those in a decade but aren't the memory slots
marked "bank 0", "bank 1" and "bank 2"?

Find another 4GB chip or just try it with 2 but I'm pretty sure you need to
use an even number of them.

-bruce
b...@ripco.com

[fbord...@gmail.com]

6x4gb is possible. I have this set up right now on an Ultra27 no problems.

[Luca De Nardis]

On Thursday, August 23, 2018 at 9:15:49 PM UTC+2, fbord...@gmail.com wrote:
> 6x4gb is possible. I have this set up right now on an Ultra27 no problems.

hello,

sorry to jump in on this thread with a different issue for an Ultra 27, but since your post is relatively recent, I hope you still have the set up running and can help...
I am refurbishing an Ultra 27. Regarding RAM, I kept the original 6 (3x2GB) and added 12 (3x4GB) without issues.
I am now moving to GPU(s?).
The machine had a cheap Quadro FX380 on, so I bought a used Quadro FX5800 which is the best card originally supported by the Ultra 27.
Since the deal included a Nvidia Tesla C1060, I am tempted to install that too and see if I can take advantage of the dual setup with a SLI cable.
In terms of connectors I don't see any problem, the motherboard has two PCIe slots for graphic cards and a power connector that supports a split in two 8 pin connectors required
by the Quadro and the Tesla, but I am wondering about power requirements.
The boards according to specs have a typical power consumption of 188 W (Tesla) + 189 W (Quadro); even taking into account the 130 W used by the CPU, the 530 W PSU could be enough, although we are probably rather close to maximum load.
The biggest problem I see is that the Sun service manual says that the two slots have a maximum load of 225 W, but it seems this is for the two slots combined...
Any chance you tried to do something similar?
Thanks,

Luca

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[Fernando Bordignon]

Ciao Luca.
The Ultra 27 is retired, she gave up a few months after my post.
Take care

[Luca De Nardis]

too bad :)
Thanks for getting back to me...
Ciao!