| Oracle FAQ | Your Portal to the Oracle Knowledge Grid | |
 |
 | |||
| Oracle FAQ | Your Portal to the Oracle Knowledge Grid | |
|
| |||
Home -> Community -> Usenet -> c.d.o.misc -> Re: Does anyone have serious databases on NT?
Preface my remarks with the understanding that I am a consultant, so I am frequently brought into a project or situation after something bad has happened or something good is expected to happen and hasn't yet.
When I read about "Total cost of ownership" regarding NT vs other platforms, I never see anyone try to take into account the hidden cost of NT. When it falls over, what does it cost your business or your client in terms of being deprived the use of their data. For example, if your database drives a customer relationship package like Vantive or Siebel, you cannot take support calls with any real effectiveness if the system is down.
NT will not be taken seriously as an enterprise tool while BSOD jokes still have currency. If the "suits" push it under some mistaken idea that it will save money, the techies who might possibly make it work will leave rather than deal with the frustration.
NT is only "cheaper" if your resource on it is non-critical to your business. Enterprise-level stability and security is not Microsoft's primary concern, and it shows in the products they produce.
I'm glad that you have had reasonably good results with NT deployments. I gently discourage my clients from using NT for server applications, but frequently that decision has been made before I am part of a project. I *will* say that I make a significant part of my income assisting them during difficult crash recoveries, or recovery of unfortunate actions that some employee has performed because "NT is easier to use" than Unix.
The employment is good, but I would rather build new things than constantly clean up messes caused by shoddy, bug-laden software from Redmond.
Chris Weiss wrote:
>
> A recent poll on the Team DBA web site showed that over 70% of the
> respondents where using Oracle on NT. However, the overwhelming majority of
> those who said that had not used Oracle on NT claimed they would never do
> so.
>
> I maintain databases on both NT and Unix, and the difference is scale. Big
> databases go on Unix. Small to medium databases go on NT. Unix (Solaris)
> is significantly more stable, but the hardware is more expensive and the
> personnel needed to administer these databases or servers command higher
> salaries. NT is cheaper!!!!!! The Oracle claims concerning a lower cost of
> ownership are misleading because these assume large databases in a
> distributed environment. For the **majority** of databases (< 4GB and < 50
> users), NT is the best choice for both cost and ease of management.
>
--
You can have it fast, good, and cheap. Pick any two.
 |
 |