Platform Decision: NT or Solaris

I have a dilemma. I'm working with an organization that is trying to decide its long-term strategy for data access. Their current thinking is that they will use Windows NT accross all their systems, and thus lower their administration costs (by hiring only NT people). They will be implementing a rather large set of tables (terabytes) over a period of time. In working with their metaphor of NT everywhere, they want to use Oracle 8i on NT.

I've worked with NT for years (since the first version), and have found it to be risky in "high availability" environments. I've seen too many blue-screens that just appeared to happen for no reason (on servers that had been up for a long time). This leads me to my question: Which environment is best suited for a high-availability Oracle installation, NT 4.0, or Sun Solaris? Any help that is factual (emotions can't sell this one) are appreciated!

When Oracle was asked this question, the reply was that either environment would be fine. I would expect them to say this, since they are selling the product on both platforms. They also said, however, that they didn't have any benchmarks comparing 8i on NT verses Solaris. I find that VERY difficult to swallow.

Having said that, practical experience will be much better. :-)

Thanks!

     Joel Received on Wed Feb 09 2000 - 17:09:19 CST