Looking for Sun Fire X4150 and SunFire X4270 or similar

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Dynamic

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#293530 28-Jan-2022 10:46

Hi Team

We've been asked to assist with keeping some older kit alive a little longer, but hardware issues are conspiring against us. I know it's a long shot, but does anyone have any Sun Fire (or is it SunFire) X4150 or X4270 or similar rack servers in operational or near-operational condition that they could be persuaded to part with? I'm not super familiar with this hardware, so you may have something in the same range that may do the trick.

Can Geekzone pull a rabbit out of a hat for me?

Cheers!

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zaptor

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#2858176 29-Jan-2022 17:13

Curious.

Are you not able to get by via retro-fitting with a more commonly available piece of kit (HP, Dell, IBM etc)?

Dynamic

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#2858192 29-Jan-2022 18:45

It’s not my rodeo, so like for like I will do as requested.

We may just have to bring in equipment from offshore. EBay has some.

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jamesrt

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#2858214 29-Jan-2022 19:30

I can't help, but a potential answer the question about other hardware is 'OS licensing is probably tied to Sun/Oracle hardware'.

[Sold/supported this sort of stuff in a previous life]

zaptor

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#2858229 29-Jan-2022 20:45

jamesrt: I can't help, but a potential answer the question about other hardware is 'OS licensing is probably tied to Sun/Oracle hardware'.

[Sold/supported this sort of stuff in a previous life]

Given the age of the kit, I imagine it's way past EOL.

Knowing Oracle (who don't give a toss about their H/W business), any current SLA's on the associated system will be milking their software licensing - assuming a support contract is even still in place.

If the system is no longer supported by the vendor (which is potentially the case, given the insistence on sourcing the same exact H/W), then replacing what is effectively an Intel OEM'ed box rebranded as a Sun server with similar kit would seem like a viable option?

It's a not a SPARC box, so, unless there's something particularly special about what appears to be a COTS x86 server, I'm wondering if the issue is really a software (not hardware) one.

Without knowing more about the details of the underlying problem, it's hard to say.

Dynamic

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#2858378 30-Jan-2022 10:22

zaptor:

Without knowing more about the details of the underlying problem, it's hard to say.

I'm not sure what flavour of unix is running on these machines as I have not had my hands on a working system so far. I have the impression that the installation needs to only last another year or two before it is completely mothballed. If the choice had been mine and I'd been instructed to get it going ASAP at any reasonable cost, I'd have cloned the drives from the failed machine and done some testing with some spare HPE kit.

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