Hello,

I currently resell hosting and I'm in the process of looking into running my own boxes.

I'm looking at getting a 1RU sized server as everybody wants much more money to house a mid-tower ATX style box.

What advantages does a RAQ machine have over, say a Dell PowerEdge, assuming both systems were running same specs (pIII 1G, 256, 40GB)?


Why are they so much more expensive?

the control panel, build in ChillisoftASP, easy webinstallpackages...

They have their own control panel? I was going to run HSphere as it makes life easy with multiple boxes all in different locations.

http://www.sun.com/hardware/serverappliances/raq550/demo.html


for the demo.

Thanks Dan the man.

So are many people out there running these blue pizza boxes? Are they the preferred platform or are there just as many clone PC's running Linux doing the same job?

Disclaimer: We quit buying RaQ's after the RaQ 4, so my experience is only with the Qube, RaQ 1, RaQ 2, RaQ 2+, RaQ 3, RaQ 3i, RaQ 4i, and RaQ 4r. I have no experience with any of the later models.

They work great if you need to host under 250 web sites without much in the way of special server needs. The interface takes a lot of the stress out of running a server, but we've found the same thing can be accomplished with the various CP's out there and a few shell scripts run from cron.

They serve their target market well: server administrators that are looking for a solution that works out of the box without a lot of expandability or frills. They're also good if you are colocating because even the most non-technical staff could handle rebooting it from the front panel.

Why did we move away from them? Several reasons:

1. When Sun took over Cobalt, several back end policies changed that we had grown to love. The major one is that they quit providing security updates on their older models after about 18 months. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem, but if you try to apply security fixes that weren't designed specifically for the RaQ, you inevitably would break the interface or the interface would undo the changes the next time you updated a setting.

2. We got tired of all the cords. We run our own datacenter, so cord management is more of an issue than space. We get space (raw, unfinished) for about $0.30 per square foot around here and we have tons of it. It was always interesting trying to explain to local fire officials that the big pile of cords didn't represent an overloaded electrical system because each cord was only pushing 60 watts of load. ;)

3. Quality control on the RaQ 3 and RaQ 4 models just plain sucked. Fans failed. CPU's overheated. Hard drives failed. Power supplies failed. I suppose the root cause of it all was the fan failures. Those fans just would quit working after a couple of months of operation. Then everything goes buns up as heat silently destroys the system without any warning. The large majority of our RaQ 1 and RaQ 2 systems have fans that have been running flawlessly for years. Every RaQ 3 and RaQ 4 has had at least one of their two fans fail within 12 months of the purchase (brand new).


Like I said before, I can't speak for the XTR and later models. Maybe they got all those issues worked out. Whatever the case, they lost this customer and we've since been using custom built systems with the usual CP software that you can buy. It's worked well for us and we've been happy with the decision.

Thanks Andrew.

The Raq 550 uses sensors on the cooling fans, so so long as you recieve the admin@ emails, you should get warning of any failure.

The 550 series is designed as an all round platform, and is easy to use, but has a major niggling issue with the PHP. The system comes with a PHP 4.0.6 installation. At the moment, Sun are not too fussed about upgrading this to something more modern.

As the GUI as driven by the PHP, it's difficult to upgrade the PHP yourself as you run the risk of braking the control panels. It's possible to get it done, but you are then no longer using a "factory" box as Sun would like.