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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> RE: *nix vs MS
Just giving my tuppence worth, so take it with a pinch of salt...
I prefer *nix or Windows systems, as the inbuilt support for third-party scripting is usually slightly better, alright so you get Perl and Java on MS, but you need to learn a language to get something done. Most admins don't want to learn another language syntax just get capture a few backups and run a few simple maintenance jobs. The O/S design on *nix tends to be able to support minor changes and patches without the need to reboot, for want of a better description, the OS file locking on *nix is less restrictive than MS, so being cheeky, you can almost pull everything out bar the kernel, and the system will keep running, but on the other hand pulling running components out of Windows is a lot harder, so it's slightly safer. Swings and roundabouts.
Of course from a management point of view, hiring a good MS admin over a *nix admin is usually cheaper. The percentage of good admins in both OS types seems to be about the same, but I suppose because the MS OS is so prevalent and so easy to work with on a basic level, there are more MS admins about, but there does appear to be far too many people who helped fixed their cousin's PC and now think they are qualified to run a 16 node MS cluster running a 750Gb Oracle DB! MS make some very good solid software most of the time, lots of people get to use computers now, who never would have should a chance years ago, but just because it can run server type apps, doesn't mean it should be used for mission critical ones.
Let's face it, when the big DB makers come to start work on their new shiny version of the product, it's usually *nix that gets the test bed. It's easier to get underneath it and find out exactly what is going on in memory, when that complex sorting algorithm or disk writer keeps failing. Plus how many of the huge companies, run their multi-terabyte warehouses on MS? Maybe a handful, but not that many I can imagine.
Of course the one thing that does always get me is, the MS admins thinks nothing of rebooting to fix a simple problem, the users just accept it, like they do on their PCs. The Unix admin always considers the reboot the very final, last straw after trying everything else and you ask the users if you can reboot the main *nix DB server and it's "Can't it wait until after hours?" or "Why now? This is just not acceptable.".
Rgds
-----Original Message-----
From: Robyn [mailto:robyn.sands_at_gmail.com]
Sent: 06 Oct 2005 22:59
To: Oracle-L_at_Freelists. Org (E-mail)
Subject: *nix vs MS
Everyone,
We have a fairly large, truly mission critical database (Oracle 9.2.0.6) at a remote site that is currently running on Microsoft. In the past, others have tried to convince mgmt that the system would be more reliable on a unix os, but no one has ever been successful in obtaining a project to make the change.
To my way of thinking, the strongest case for moving this database to unix is the track record of this application; it has had far more than it's share of issues (bad backups, system crashes, corrupt blocks, hung processes, cpu spikes and so on) even though it already gets more care and feeding than other databases. (majority of our databases are *nix) This is one aspect of what will be presented.
That being said, for those of you who prefer unix, what are your best arguments for choosing unix for an Oracle database? What are the drawbacks? We'd like to make sure we uncover all the pros and cons.
Any input is appreciated,
Robyn
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Robyn Anderson Sands
email: Robyn.Sands_at_SciAtl.com
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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
Received on Fri Oct 07 2005 - 02:14:02 CDT
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