Re: Solaris vs Windows 2000

Mark Leith wrote:
> Firstly, can I say that any NT/2K administrator that feels they need to
> install Microsoft Office (or just Outlook), and feels they need to upgrade
> the web browser for a production Oracle database system should be shot on
> site! The same goes for things like IIS (Microsoft's integrated "web
> server") as this again is a known security flaw.. Apache runs just fine on
> Win2K (Oracle installs it on the windows platform as well). The same also
> goes for Perl, and I believe Jared is most surely a Perl man!
>
> There is also no longer a 4 CPU limit on windows systems. This does of
> course depend upon the version of the Operating system that you buy, but
> Win2K "Datacentre Server" supports up to 16CPUs.
> (http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=7597)

I'll conceed the 4-cpu limitation is past. However, a search of various hardware vendor sites reveals:

DELL:

PowerEdge 8450 -- Max 8 Pentium III Xeon CPUs
PowerEdge 7150 -- Max 4 Itanium CPUs
PowerEdge 6600 -- Max 4 Xeon MP CPUs

http://www.dell.com/us/en/biz/products/series_rkopt_perf_servers.htm http://www.dell.com/us/en/biz/products/series_pedge_servers.htm

Hewlett-COMPAQard:

HP lxr8500 series -- Max 8 Pentium III Xeon CPUs HP rx9610 series -- Max 16 Itanium CPUs

http://netserver.hp.com/products/highlights_lxr8500.asp
http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/rackoptimized/rx9610/index.html
http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/operating/windows.html

I'm kinda curious as to why they don't show any Itanium-based servers on the "Windows Server page" that scale beyond 4 CPUs.

IBM: xSeries 360 -- Max 4 Xeon MP CPUs
xSeries 440 -- Max 8 Xeon MP CPUs

http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/eserver/xseries/ http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/eserver/xseries/x440.html

Unisys, however, does make a 32-way box.

ES7000 Series -- Max 32 Itanium 2 or Xeon CPUs

http://www.unisys.com/products/es7000__servers/index.htm

One thing I'm somewhat curious about. How much do you have to pay in terms of M$FT licensing for Win2000 Data Center on a 32-way box? (I can't seem to find published pricing out there... so I'm prone to believe that it may be heavily discountable).

> I stumbled across the following link a couple of weeks ago Jared, and
> book-marked it for later reading.. I still haven't managed to read it as
> yet, so can't comment, but it looks like it applies..
>
> http://www.winface.com/article.html

And yes, excellent article.

> Apart from the other URLs that you have already posted, I haven't seen any
> decent comparison sites out there.
>
> HTH
>
> Mark
>

Now, as far as "any NT/2000 admin that feels the need to install". Unfortunately, part of the big selling point of Windows as a server platform is that you don't need "those expensive unix admins to run it". The theory being that "any idiot" can administer Windows NT/2000. As a result, many NT/2000 server installations *DO* end up with IIS, Outlook (or at least Outlook Express), Office, and other unnecessary garbage installed on it because the administrators either don't know better or simply don't care.

Now, you know as well as I do that:

1. Nobody in their right mind wants "any idiot" doing it.
2. While "any idiot" can probably _do_ the job (to some extent) Even Windows takes a skilled administrator to properly setup and maintain.
3. The truly _GOOD_ NT/2000 admins are every bit as hard to find (if not harder because of the size of the "talent" pool) as a good Unix admin. And are (or at least should be) almost as expensive.
   • James

<SNIP old posting>

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