UNIX is a ship very slowly letting in water. The rats aren't about to abandon it quite yet, but they are certainly checking where the life vests are stored.
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Linux's Next Victim
Posted by: Fletch
on October 27, 2008 04:12 AM
This is really...an old subject, that based on what little comments are listed, was already covered in 2006. I guess it was time for a re-hash? The example of a company switching from Solaris to Red Hat was a poor one. Solaris x86 isn't exactly where it shines. Furthermore, I question this company's I.T. management in the first place, especially knowing that Solaris x86 was revived over the last two years. So this was either a company that couldn't move off the product in the first place (as they were running Solaris before Sun tried killing it) or in the last two years they created a project and used Solaris X86, which sounds like they don't have any true management in the first place.
Solaris shines in threads and its ability to support vertical computing. However, horizontal computing is the much cheaper computing model (if implemented with less costly implementations to support them (i.e. if you are using something like Oracle RAC, you will be switching your money from hardware to software, so there is no big difference). I can also say that comparing Red Hat's support vs. Sun's over the years...well, you get what you pay for. I have found Red Hat's support over the years a bit lacking, where as Sun's was top notch. The problem with both is if you do not use the pure support channels with both companies, you can't truly comment on how well they support your products. The number of times support tickets were created to Red Hat, and we received outsourced help that was extremely lacking (not in technical ability, but in communication...reading our original e-mails and support tickets would be nice) was frustrating. However, I believe the support has improved to a degree. I can't recall ever having that sort of experience with Sun, but again, Sun's support usually costs much more, to the point that most companies buy various vendors to support their Sun products, and usually the way those work is that if you pay for the highest support level in those products, it usually is nothing more than turning over the support directly to Sun.).
I would never be foolish to tout that one product is better than the other as both definitely have their strengths. However, noting that Solaris and a lot of Linux based operating systems are free, I don't find cost of the product a deciding factor either. The cost of the hardware would obviously be somewhat of a deciding factor. SPARC vs. X86_64 usually proves that SPARC hardware is more expensive. Also, it can be said that the high end processor for each in the same frame yields that the X86_64 usually yields faster single processing. However, for lights out management and hardware domain control, I haven't seen anything in the X86_64 platforms that is comparable to the enterprise class SPARC systems (now granted blades are similar, and the ILOMs within Sun X series servers are quite nice, especially the remote control features, which in my opinion are much better than the ALOMs of say the T2000 line). However, in SPARC's defense, I haven't fully investigated the XSCF for the larger frame systems of Sun yet, so perhaps there are similar capaibilities. However, the bottom line is that if you are in a small to medium sized business, you are not going to see alot of SPARC and thus, a lot of Solaris as the I.T. staff is going to try and manage everything in their own ranks. In the larger enterprises, it is safe to say Linux is growing, but there are certainly various projects where vertical computing in a more expensive commodity hardware paradigm still gathers support for the Solaris based systems. I would also further state that I can't really speak for the various other UNIX operating systems out there as I speak from the various positions I have held in both public and private sectors that have used Solaris and Linux. I know that there are AIX, HP-UX, and others out there, but I haven't been involved in many clients that have used those (and this is not to say they don't exist, nor that they are not fully vested in those solutions, so this pays those products no disrespect). I'm speaking on the basis of the experience of what I have seen, and at least I gave better references then the example of the author.
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Linux's Next Victim
Posted by: Fletch on October 27, 2008 04:12 AMSolaris shines in threads and its ability to support vertical computing. However, horizontal computing is the much cheaper computing model (if implemented with less costly implementations to support them (i.e. if you are using something like Oracle RAC, you will be switching your money from hardware to software, so there is no big difference). I can also say that comparing Red Hat's support vs. Sun's over the years...well, you get what you pay for. I have found Red Hat's support over the years a bit lacking, where as Sun's was top notch. The problem with both is if you do not use the pure support channels with both companies, you can't truly comment on how well they support your products. The number of times support tickets were created to Red Hat, and we received outsourced help that was extremely lacking (not in technical ability, but in communication...reading our original e-mails and support tickets would be nice) was frustrating. However, I believe the support has improved to a degree. I can't recall ever having that sort of experience with Sun, but again, Sun's support usually costs much more, to the point that most companies buy various vendors to support their Sun products, and usually the way those work is that if you pay for the highest support level in those products, it usually is nothing more than turning over the support directly to Sun.).
I would never be foolish to tout that one product is better than the other as both definitely have their strengths. However, noting that Solaris and a lot of Linux based operating systems are free, I don't find cost of the product a deciding factor either. The cost of the hardware would obviously be somewhat of a deciding factor. SPARC vs. X86_64 usually proves that SPARC hardware is more expensive. Also, it can be said that the high end processor for each in the same frame yields that the X86_64 usually yields faster single processing. However, for lights out management and hardware domain control, I haven't seen anything in the X86_64 platforms that is comparable to the enterprise class SPARC systems (now granted blades are similar, and the ILOMs within Sun X series servers are quite nice, especially the remote control features, which in my opinion are much better than the ALOMs of say the T2000 line). However, in SPARC's defense, I haven't fully investigated the XSCF for the larger frame systems of Sun yet, so perhaps there are similar capaibilities. However, the bottom line is that if you are in a small to medium sized business, you are not going to see alot of SPARC and thus, a lot of Solaris as the I.T. staff is going to try and manage everything in their own ranks. In the larger enterprises, it is safe to say Linux is growing, but there are certainly various projects where vertical computing in a more expensive commodity hardware paradigm still gathers support for the Solaris based systems. I would also further state that I can't really speak for the various other UNIX operating systems out there as I speak from the various positions I have held in both public and private sectors that have used Solaris and Linux. I know that there are AIX, HP-UX, and others out there, but I haven't been involved in many clients that have used those (and this is not to say they don't exist, nor that they are not fully vested in those solutions, so this pays those products no disrespect). I'm speaking on the basis of the experience of what I have seen, and at least I gave better references then the example of the author.
Haz
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