Load Balancing Digest

I got an newsletter email from Sun the other day, basically offering to buy me dinner. No, Sun wasn’t trying to get frisky with me, rather they were trying to entice me to get certified in Solaris 10. (Although, thinking about it, that may just be a clever ploy.)

But it made me think to the last time I came across a Sun machine. I think in the past 3 years, I must have professionally logged into one Sun machine and configured around a dozen Sun servers to be load balanced. Meanwhile, I’ve logged into dozens of Linux and Windows machines and configured load balancing for many more.

I started out in the server world, Solaris mainly (Solaris 2.5.1, what a treat), and as Linux gained acceptance, Linux as well. I tried to stay away from Windows systems, but that’s darned near impossible now, so I’ve pretty much embraced Redmond. Getting into load balancing, and its networking entanglements, was purely by accident.

It’s disheartening, really. In professional services, in the enterprise, Fortune 500, and even SMBs, I don’t see Sun around like I used to. In fact, I rarely deal with them anymore. It used to be I had to have the Solaris NIC tuning scripts memorized to get them going on full duplex (because you’d think that auto-negotiate in Fast Ethernet would work, but you’d be wrong).

Sun used to have its own ecosystem, where thousands found gainful employment working in the incestuous Sun world, but I don’t think that’s really the case anymore. There was a time when a Sun certification meant something (not that I ever got one), but while I don’t think they can hurt, a Sun cert probably doesn’t go as far as it used to.

I’m sure there are many Sun installs in place and going in place, but it’s clear deployments are a fraction of what they used to be. I miss those hulking, noisy beasts.