RE: AIX vs Solaris

IBM has some very exciting technology in the pSeries line. Their Regatta line (p690) are incredible Unix-based mainframe class systems; similar to Sun's Sunfire and HP's Superdome lines. The really cool thing is that you can get those same chips in a 4-CPU configuration 4U rackmount box for like $50K. Those make VERY nice development systems. :-)

As far as which system to purchase, that depends a lot on how much management wants to invest in re-training. From a Unix standpoint AIX isn't very hard to learn -- it's sort of a mix-match of SYSV and BSD compared with Solaris and HP-UX's SYSV roots (SunOS was BSD-based until Solaris 2.x).

>From the standpoint of configuring physical hardware, adding disk to the
system, doing LVM striping, etc. they've all got similar commands (e.g. lspv on AIX vs pvdisplay on HP-UX; not sure what Sun's using these days, and it probably depends on whether or not you're using Veritas, etc).

The point is that it's just a syntactical re-learning, but the concepts are all the same. HP and IBM both have fairly decent sysadmin assistant tools (AIX uses SMIT and HP uses SAM). In comparison, I've always been less than impressed with Sun's Admintool, though I've heard it's somewhat improved in Sol9.

With regard to price performance, the three vendors seem to leap frog quite a bit, with no clear "leader of the pack" over a long period of time. I think it's a safe bet to go with any of them, although it remains to be seen how effective HP's new Itanium strategy will be... the PA-RISC chips were a very nice line, as have been the Sparc/UltraSparc lines, and the IBM Power-based CPU's. I'm curious to see if Itanium will be able to provide the raw horsepower to keep up with Sun and IBM over the long term, but I don't think they'd bet the farm if they didn't think they could do it....

Rich Holland
Guidance Technologies, Inc.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: root_at_fatcity.com [mailto:root_at_fatcity.com] On Behalf Of DENNIS
> WILLIAMS
> Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 4:28 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> Subject: RE: AIX vs Solaris
>
> Bill - You may want to check with your system administrators. My
> understanding is that the two systems are pretty much identical from
the
> user standpoint, but that AIX is quite a bit difference from the sys
> admin's
> point of view. It may make a difference, depending on your sys admin's
> background, but maybe not enough to change the purchase decision.
> Another thing to consider: what is the timeframe of your purchase.
We
> have gotten very good use from our Dec/Compaq/HP Alphas, but decided
not
> to
> continue investing in the line. We looked around and Solaris seems to
have
> the strongest path to the future. Most Unix vendors, like HP, seem to
be
> planning to switch to the Intel Itanium, the chip without a proven
> "today",
> let alone tomorrow. I don't know what IBM plans for the future in
terms of
> chips. If this is just a single system purchase, then it probably
doesn't
> matter so much.
>
> Dennis Williams
> DBA, 40%OCP
> Lifetouch, Inc.
> dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> [mailto:becker.bill_at_marshfieldclinic.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 12:49 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>
>
>
> Hello,
>
> What are the major differences between AIX and Solaris regarding
> operating system features?
>
> We are planning a new machine purchase; currently we are on a Sun
machine
> running Solaris, but IBM is making a strong proposal to management
> (meaning significantly less cost), and we are wondering what would
need to
> be
> changed. We use korn shell scripts extensively, and features such as
> crontab, background processing, the sqlplus <<EOF ... EOF construct
(not
> sure what this is called). I'm fairly sure these are standard in most
> flavors of unix, but I have never had contact with AIX. Does anyone
know
> what features differ between the two OS's?
>
> If we went with Solaris, we would go with Solaris 9 running Oracle 9.2
> on a Sun 4800.
>
> Thanks for any responders.
>
> --
> Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
> --
> Author:
> INET: becker.bill_at_marshfieldclinic.org
>
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-- 
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
-- 
Author: Rich Holland
  INET: holland_at_guidancetech.com

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