Unix Vendors Get Creative Against Windows & Linux

coondoggie writes "As x86 servers become increasingly capable, IT managers are taking a closer look at their Unix installations to determine whether a move to Linux or Windows might make sense, analysts say. "The defensible hill for Unix is the big, vertically scaling, mission-critical application, which is usually some type of database serving," says Andrew Butler, a vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "But increasingly, the appeal of Windows- and Linux-based systems running on cheaper, commodity hardware is becoming more and more compelling.""

Commodity hardware

[b0s0z0ku]

"But increasingly, the appeal of Windows- and Linux-based systems running on cheaper, commodity hardware is becoming more and more compelling.""

Last time I checked, both BSD and Solaris (which are UNIX not Linux) run just fine on commodity x86/64 hardware. Sounds like somebody missed everything from 1999 on.

Cheers, -b.

Image is still something...but learning curve...

[otacon]

When I think of Sun, I think of reliable, mission critical, just like the article says...Sun has this big business image that "if you want it to run, you should be using Sun", but it also comes with a steeper learning curve. Whereas Linux's image is building and linux has an attitude like "anything you can do, i can do better, and if i can't yet, i will soon" and also comes with less of a learning curve...however still a lot more of a curve than your run of the mill windows server guy would like, I've met so many bleeding heart MS guys that would use/try Linux if they didn't have a misconception that it is infinatley harder than windows...

Re:Solaris runs on x86, free as in beer

[BrianRoach]

Linux beats it in hardware support, but Sun has the whole overpriced reliability image which some might find attractive. If you're paying the big bucks you can get a good response from Sun, though I'd suspect people working on Linux could make those bucks go further.

Have you actually looked at what Sun is doing these days?

Not only are they offering AMD Opteron (And soon Intel) server and workstation solutions running Solaris 10 x86 (which is damn near feature-for-feature as Solaris 10 on Sparc), their prices have come down.

I'm typing this on an Ultra20 Opteron workstation that I bought last year under one of their offers. 3 year service and support (Hardware and software including the dev tools) for $1k, and they bill my credit card for 3 payments over that time, no interest, no BS.

- Roach

Re:solaris dvds ?

[CompMD]

I ordered them the day I read the slashdot article. I still haven't received them.

Re:solaris dvds ?

[MaxPowerDJ]

sadly, no... I dont expect them for a while either. The ubuntu cd's I got from them took about 6 weeks...

I can't believe people aren't talking about....

[Biff98]

RELIABILITY!

Cheaper, commodity hardware does not work for all of us! There's a huge category they're missing out on.

I know the Fortune 100 (or maybe 500?) companies don't care, as they can just run clusters of cheap ass machines. But what about the millions of small to middle sized businesses and research institutions?

I've been involved in a number of smaller sized research organizations, and uptime is the utmost importance, however, we definitely aren't running "server farms", so clustering is out the window. I've relied on Sun servers running tons of GNU tools to get the job done. I think you'll find (unless you already know) there's a very large number of people doing what I'm doing. We can't rely on Dell (or even Penguin, or Monarch, or....) to deliver consistent, well thought out, easily-repairable, robust servers. Sun (and other big box makers) can! So what do I do? Run Solaris 10 (GREAT, Solid OS) and install a ton of GNU open-source tools. The result? Great open-source software, and the reliability and well thought-out hardware from Sun. It takes a bit longer to do, but the results are great.

B E A utiful.

Re:telco

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's no wonder you're having kernel panics and reboots if you're running Red Hat -- they patch the kernel to christ and their userland stuff depends on the patched kernel. Try Slackware or Debian. They both "Just Work" with a kernel built from plain old kernel.org sources.

Re:Solaris runs on x86, free as in beer

[hackstraw]

Have you actually looked at what Sun is doing these days?

Yes :) And Sun is refinding themselves (if that makes any sense).

Sun used to only have a few products that were relatively expensive, but very good.

Look at there offerings today. They have _many_ products in all shapes and sizes, and there prices have really come down in price. I've been critical of Sun for years, and they really seem to be adapting to the market by offering everything from an E15k to inexpensive x86 boxes at about commodity prices with better engineering than your COTS junk.

Things like the x4500 [sun.com] are really turning heads (even here on slashdot [slashdot.org]).

Today's market requires more disposable and inexpensive computers. Why pay $10k for a server today that will last for years, when in 2-3 years it is way outperformed by a $1-2k server? Answering this question took Sun a few years, but now they seem to have answered that question.

Re:Commodity hardware

[drinkypoo]

Please review what UNIX is... http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix.html [unix.org]

That defines what UNIX(tm) is, but not what Unix [catb.org] is. Please realize the difference:

Some people are confused over whether this word is appropriately 'UNIX' or 'Unix'; both forms are common, and used interchangeably. Dennis Ritchie says that the 'UNIX' spelling originally happened in CACM's 1974 paper The UNIX Time-Sharing System because "we had a new typesetter and troff had just been invented and we were intoxicated by being able to produce small caps." Later, dmr tried to get the spelling changed to 'Unix' in a couple of Bell Labs papers, on the grounds that the word is not acronymic. He failed, and eventually (his words) "wimped out" on the issue. So, while the trademark today is 'UNIX', both capitalizations are grounded in ancient usage; the Jargon File uses 'Unix' in deference to dmr's wishes.

So in other words, UNIX is a trademark, while Unix is a style of operating system. And Linux is Unix. So is UNIX. So is *BSD.

As for databases, I think SQL Server isn't that bad but for very large deployments there are a few other options that make more sense. Most people don't need Oracle, SQL Server or DB2. MySQL or Postgresql are adequate. You can get them to run on almost anything.

If SQL Server is the answer, it must have been a stupid question. Not because there is actually anything wrong with mssql itself, but because it only runs on Windows :P

Seriously though, MySQL and Postgresql are missing some features and do not scale as well as all of the alternatives. Luckily you can run DB2 or Oracle on Linux as well.

The first person who figures out how to make a SQL server that clusters, automatically replicates, and blah blah blah to make a cluster perform and behave in most cases as well as a monolithic database server is going to be a hero to all. Of course it won't fit all types of data. But right now that's a horribly hard problem and one of the applications really keeping big iron going.

Re:Image is still something...but learning curve..

[jguevin]

No conflict in gp: he says they have a misconception that it's _much_ ("infinitely") harder to use, but that in fact Linux has a lot more of a curve than a windows server guy would like. I'd agree--many do have an overblown sense of how hard Linux is to learn/work with, but in fact it is _somewhat_ harder to learn than Windows.

Re:Solaris runs on x86, free as in beer

[E-Lad]

folks dont change schedulers as part of minor patch releases

As an aside, you can actually run different schedulers concurrently in Solaris... each process or process group can be assinged a specific scheduler other than the default one (which is Time Share, or the "TS" scheduler).

For example, you can run your Oracle db processes with the FX (fixed priority) scheduler, and/or another set of processes with the RT (real time) scheduler. See the priocntl command man page on how to manipulate this and details on which schedulers are available.

Re:Read it again

[Doctor Memory]

That's a pretty damn good price for an opteron workstation, especially one with a name like Sun on the front.

It's OK, I wouldn't go so far as to call it "good". It wasn't bad for the time (I bought an Ultra 20 a year or so ago), but you could get comperable performance with an Athlon board for ~20% less money. The Suns did have the nice features, though -- SATA drives, PCI-X, ECC memory. I actually went with the mid-range system, which added an nVidia graphics board (NVS280) and a full gig of memory. I haven't priced Sun's new systems lately (they now have "M2" models which feature dual-core Opterons), maybe they're a little more competitive. One thing that honked me off was the fact that Sun pre-announced these workstations waaay in advance. I think I ordered mine around the end of April (when there weren't too many Opteron systems available), and it finally shipped mid-August. By then, there were a few more choices available, and I might not have gone with the Sun. Oh well, that was my lesson on dealing with a "big-iron" vendor.

Re:Solaris runs on x86, free as in beer

[BrianRoach]

"You paid for $1k of support for a *workstation*?

Sorry - re-reading my post, it was worded badly.

The $1k included the workstation.

I don't know what the current pricing is on them (You could look at sun.com), but they are now always running some sort of special on various hardware.

- Roach

Re:News at 11: if you don't innovate, people move

[CompMD]

Ah, the young and naive. Its not that there are people "moving on" but that more people who don't know the old stuff are entering the work force. Our company used to be a unix shop, with HP Apollos, HP PA-RISCs, Suns, SGIs, and RS/6000s. Along came the late 1990s, and some new engineers were hired. They said, "hey, look at these super Dell machines we can get! They run Windows! Everyone loves Windows! We don't have to pay for OS maintenance, and they cost $10,000 less than our current workstations!" And so the Windows migration began. We have gone through three generations of Dells in that time. Sadly, most of the old unix stations were trashed before I got here. Remaining are an SGI Iris Indigo R3000, a Sun Sparcstation IPC, and a Sun Ultra 1 C3D. Although they do not see a lot of action these days, when I do need them, they work flawlessly.

In this day and age where linux is starting to become a real engineering and commercial OS, more people are saying, "we want software on linux." With Apple slowly gaining market share, people are saying "we want software on Mac OS X." Did the people in our company ever think that once we ported our software from unix to windows we would ever be faced with the possibility of going back? Probably not. However, all these years later it isn't that far fetched now.

Radical innovation is irrelevant when you need reliable systems. If you are an IT manager that believes consistent radical innovation is key to developing reliable products, you are wasting money and should be fired. It is irresponsible to assume that something new is reliable. Who cares that X is 23 years old? Apple is using X11 on BSD and they are laughing all the way to the bank.

Where have you been the past 15 years? SGI _invented_ photorealistic 3D graphics, did you not see "Jurassic Park"? Sun systems have been able to do high-performance 3D CAD for almost as long. Heck, my two year old Dell Precision 670 runs the EXACT same CAD software as my Sun Ultra 10 C3D (UGS NX5) complete with photorendering. The Sun isn't much slower. Matter of fact, when I had Vista on the 670, NX5 actually ran FASTER on the Sun. Not bad for a computer I bought for $40. Half the software we need to run on that 670 won't run on that machine whether in XPx64 or Vista. Investing in radical innovation when we needed reliability got us NOTHING but a bill from Dell for $3,600.

For robotics control, perhaps you are not familiar with the Sun SPOT. Nifty little self contained computers, with sensors, ADCs, and communications. When they hit the market, I'm considering using them to drive a UAV.

Innovation and reliability are two completely different things. If you need reliability, why does innovation matter? When you need your data, you need it, nifty features be damned. Now, I have some FORTRAN programming to do. Time to fire up the SGI.