Hi, has anyone any good or bad experience, advice, etc of the Sun Cobalt RaQ in a dedicated server environment. I`m considering one with (450MHz, 128MB) for a high volume site 17Gb/month - 0.5 million file hits.

thanks for your time.

chmod

From personal experience I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole and I know many others who wouldn't.

The main negative point is the way they are setup by Cobalt/Sun. They use a customized version of linux which is really tempremental. You are very limited as to what software you can install - Cobalt even warn against installing mod_perl....I doubt you'd want to try anyway as the servers don't come with the apache source.

You will have to use pkg's mainly and so you are reliant on Sun to keep them updated (which they don't).

If you happen to install something that the raq disagrees with then it craps out, and I mean craps out. Webmin trashed the RAQ4 I used to administer.

A good point is their ease of use. For a newbie or a lazy person they are great as 99% of things are done from the control panel but if you want to get stuck in or gain experince about linux then RAQ's aren't a good choice.

Hmm hope I helped a little...

thanks RedRum you sure did..

anyone else?

Yup... I own one... All I can say is that the next one I get will be configured by Sun/Cobalt or somebody that has a thorough knowledge of the way the RAQ is set up as it definitely is a tempermental *itch if one isn't familiar with them right from the getgo.

Otherwise, once configured, and you familiarize yourself with the setting up of sites, DNS Server and the email server, it's a piece of cake to own and operate (even by someone like me who has a very limited knowledge of programming). Other than having a few mods added in, I haven't had a glitch with mine since April of last year (at least I think it's been that long)...

If your still thinking of getting one get a wish list together and have Sun/Cobalt configure it for you... I'm sure it will cost you much less in the long run... It's an excellent little unit for somebody starting out or hosting their own websites...

ed

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