Re: WHICH UNIX FOR ORACLE?

Lisa, you're right of course.

I should have said:

1. Sun Solaris 32-bit
2. (Tie) HP/UX, AIX, Tru64, Sun Solaris 64-bit
3. Linux (comparable to above except lack of dependable commercial support can make it scarier. Has anyone purchased commercial support for any Linux and can they please compare it to commercial support from the other UNIX vendors for me?)
4. Windows NT. I am not against Oracle on Windows on principle or anything, but my experience is that managing Oracle on Windows is more annoying and frustrating than on any UNIX.
5. IRIX, DYNIX/ptx. Fears that these platforms are dying fast push them to the bottom of the list, even though in the past I had high hopes for them. IRIX's XFS filesystem and NUMA support promised an excellent Oracle platform, but without the sales I think it's rough. DYNIX of course is Sequent's NUMA platform, and again this had greatness potential. Oh well. :-)

I should also echo another poster that in my experience the most stable hardware for the dollar is from HP. However, HP made a serious blunder by ignoring their PA-RISC chipset in favour of IA-64 that is yet to come... buying an HP server today means buying a SLOW server.

I believe the same will happen to Alpha, although as of now I still think there are excellent buys there. Again, more stable hardware then Sun unless you're using DECSafe, which really should be renamed 'cause it causes many more stability problems than it fixes. ADVFS is a big bonus for Tru64 as well, with the other platforms you need to license Veritas to get a filesystem anywhere near as nice.

Sun's major advantage is that it's got fast hardware and very mainstream operating system software, plust the advantages I mention in my other post. Crappy bundled filesystem means you have to give some money to Veritas though.

IBM's AIX platforms are very stable, and my favourite thing about them is just how tested and trustable their OS patches are. They are easy to apply and I've never had nor heard of any ever needing to be backed out because of failure. This is not the case for any of the other OS platforms... :-) Filesystem-wise, JFS is OK.

Cheers,
Paul

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----- Original Message -----
To: "Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L" <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 1:28 PM


I'm very suprised no one has said Linux.  ??  It is one of the first tier
platforms for Oracle now, isn't it? I also thought I read on this list a
while back that Solaris was no longer the dev platform?

Guess it all depends on what strengths you are looking for.  For my
employer, who is CHEAP, it was Windows.  Who cares that it's not as stable
as I would like.  You should have seen the VP grin at me with this
patronizing smile when he said, "I'll approve $35,000 for this project!",
like he had done me a huge favor.  I wanted to growl.




> -----Original Message-----

> From: Paul Vallee [SMTP:dbalist_at_pythian.com]

> Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 1:10 PM

> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

> Subject: Re: WHICH UNIX FOR ORACLE?

>

> Might as well get my two cents in... :-)

>

> 1. Solaris

> Tied for 2... AIX, Tru64, HP/UX

>

> (leaving NUMA out of the equation for now. If you like NUMA, then look

> into

> the status of IBM's acquisition of Sequent, I'm out of touch with that

> right

> now.)

>

> Different hardware solutions from different vendors have different

> performance, stability and cost characteristics, and so I'll assume that

> all

> vendors have an appropriate solution on these factors, this may not be the

> case.

>

> With these assumptions, the primary factor for me is the timeliness of the

> availability of releases, patches and patchsets. Sun Solaris 32-bit is the

> winner on this factor on the grounds that it is Oracle's internal

> development platform. All other platforms are ported from Sun Solaris

> 32-bit. When that changes, my recommendation would of course also change,

> as

> it did when Oracle moved away from Digital/VMS.

>

> Anyone who has been in a situation where a bug was causing service failure

> and who heard that a patch was available for Solaris but not your platform

> knows where I'm coming from on this one.

>

> Note: for the exact same reason, never use 64-bit Oracle on Solaris unless

> you absolutely need the very-large-sga support. 64-bit Oracle on Solaris

> is

> slow to get patches and releases.

>

> Best,

> Paul

> ---

> www.pythian.com -- vallee_at_pythian.com -- 877-PYTHIAN

> Smarter than adding another team member, Pythian has new services for

> supplementing DBAs: get our help with monitoring, 24x7 on-call, daily

> verifications, storage management, performance and more.

>

> ----- Original Message -----

> To: "Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L" <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>

> Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 12:48 PM

>

>

> What are you planning..? A religious war..:)

> well..here is my 2 cents,IMHO

> 1. HP-UX

> 2. SOlaris

> 3. AIX

>

> in the order of preference. I have worked with all

> three and I found HP machines to be  reliable and

> HP-UX easy to work with. This is not to say solaris is

> not but I had some nightmare stroies to tell about the

> bugs and quality of support from SUN. Again this is

> only my opinion and as everybody knows OS is ,to some

> extent ,a matter of personal choice also.

> ( Running to put on flame proof suit..:) )

>

> Cheers,

> RS

> --- "Bunyamin K. Karadeniz"

> <bunyamink_at_havelsan.com.tr> wrote:

> > We are searching about which unix is best ?

> > We will apply 9ias and 8.1.7 DB . plus Oracle

> > Portal.

> > Can you direct me to a link for comparison about

> > SOLARIS , AIX , HP-UX  for performance and other

> > options ..

> > Thank you ...

> >

> >

> > Bunyamin K. Karadeniz

> > Oracle DBA / Developer

> > Civilian IT Department

> > Havelsan A.S. Eskisehir yolu

> > 7.km Ankara Turkey

> > Phone: +90 312 2873565 / 1217

> > Mobile : +90 535 3357729

> >

> > The degree of normality in a database

> > is inversely proportional to that of its DBA.

> >

> >

>

>

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