Sun 4/490 - Any Opinions?

[Gary Blumenstein]

Folk's,  We're in the process of shopping for an upper-end UNIX server
to improve the performance of our existing networks and provide the
necessary resources for expansion.  As a part of our research,
I would like to solicit your opinions regarding Sun's 4/490 high 
end server.

If you are involved as an Administrator or Manager of your organization's
network operations, It would be most helpful if you could provide some 
general information regarding your experiences with the 4/490.

We thought the questions below would serve as a good starting point
as it will make summarizing the answers easy.  However, please feel free
to answer any way you choose.  A short description of your experiences or
just some suggestions would be great.  YOUR ANSWERS WILL BE HELD IN
THE STRICTEST CONFIDENCE! 

As a return favor, I will summarize the results for the net, once again 
emphasizing that your name and organization will not appear.  Of 
course, if you don't wish to be included in the summary, just indicate
so.  

Thanks and plese e-mail your results to:  garyb at gallium
        ...uunet!philabs!crpmks!gallium!garyb

    ===============================================================
                     Sun 4/490 Questionnaire
    ===============================================================
General Questions:
------------------
   o  How satisfied are you with the performace of the 4/490?
   o  How long did it take to install and get the system running?
   o  Did you have any reservations about going with Sun's IPC disk
      technology?  If so why?
   o  What was your main bottleneck in performance prior to installing
      the 4/490.  (e.g. NFS traffic, CPU,...)
   o  What was your most significant reason for selecting a 4/490 instead
      of let's say, an Auspex?

Service, Support, and Reliability:
----------------------------------
   o  How would you rate Sun Hotline Support for the 4/490?
   o  How is the Sun Hotline turnaround time?
   o  Have you experienced any down time?  If so, for what reasons? 
      ( How long did it take to recover?)
   o  Have you had any disk crashes?  Were you able to recover?
 
Your Environment:
-----------------
   o  When was your 4/490 server installed?
   o  What system/server did you previously use?
   o  What types of software applications are you running?
   o  How many clients do you have on the 4/490?  What kind?
   o  How many terminals, PC's and Mac's do you have on the network?
   o  How many users?
   o  How many people are in your systems department?  
   o  What level of unix experience do they have?

Once again, many thanks for taking the time to respond.

--
Gary M. Blumenstein, UNIX System Administrator
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