Re: NT vs Unix

Dan Morgan wrote in message <36911CD8.946716B7_at_exesolutions.com>...

>NT is less secure

Explain. Unix out of the box is also not secure. What type of security are you refering too? The NT Domain concept is an abortion and can easily be cracked because of its weak encryption (as proved by L0pht), but why on earth use that on a database server box!? Database Security is an Oracle issue, not an operating system.

If you are talking about the IP stack implementation, yes it's does have a few bugs (like the notorious OOB DoS attack on port 139), but that has been addressed by Microsoft. To my knowledge there are no new bugs in the protocol stack that can cause NT to crash due to DoS attacks.

NT less secure than Unix. No. What is the problem is bad or ignorant administration. NT can pass C2 ceritification. So can Unix. It all depends on what levels of protection you implement on an operating system.

>NT is less stable

Disagree. I have seen rock steady NT systems. And I have seen Unix systems that crash a lot. The issue often is hardware and not software. Run an operating system on iffy hardware and you are looking for trouble. Does not matter how good and robust you may think the operating system may be. The scariest instability problems I ever had with Oracle were on Unix. And due to the vendor not applying the correct patches to kernel.

Besides hardware problems, the majority of the so-called stability problems should be put at the door of sysadmin. My biggest gripe with this complaint about NT's "instability" is that the people who bitch about this will spent hours installing and tuning Unix and only minutes doing the same on NT. And then they bitch about NT not being stable. I have seen and worked with NT in mission critical corporate installations. Steady and robust as any Unix system.

>NT is not Y2K compliant

According to MS it is. What's your beef?

>NT is not as scalable

Excellent point. Unix outscales NT by leaps and bounds. NT clusters? New technology and really unproven in the general market (though some do sing its praises in "specialised" commerical cluster installations).

>NT is slower

Bull. Compared to what? NT on a 4 CPU Compaq vs a 4 CPU Sun box? How do you compare? What yard stick do you use? If you comparing for example Linux with NT on the same box and you run Linux in console mode then you should change the NT desktop shell from EXPLORER.EXE to CMD.EXE. Running INETD on Linux - well, then you should re-configure the services of NT too reflect that too. It all depends on how you tune the operating system for the benchmark. Speed and performance comparisons can be made to go either way. Been there and done that (used to work for a large European h/w and s/w vendor).

>NT has nothing to compare with shell scripting

Another excellent point. Microsoft has made some feeble attempts at improving the command shell scripting language (FOR and SET commands have been improved). But this is one of the single biggest drawbacks at implementing the server side control/admin scripts DBAs and SysAdmins need.

>NT's upgrade path in a few years will be a nightmare.

Oh yeah. This is going to be another can of worms. Windows 2000. Enterprise Server, Server, Client and heavens know what else. One of the basic things you learn in marketing 101 is that a big product line only confuses customers. "Coke Sir? Yes. Do you want Classic Coke or Coke? Sugar free or not? Flavoured or not? In a tin or a bottle? What's that Sir? Oh, you want to have Sprite instead." ;-)

My gut feel? I'll choose Unix as the operating system platform for an Oracle Server any day over that of NT. But gut feel does not cut it. I keep on harping about this in this ng. Business requirements and limitations. Define the requirements, analysis it and then decide on the technology. And there are many times that NT will be choice due to issues such as IT infrastructure, existing support & maintenance contracts, skill levels of staff and so on.

My 2c's anyway...

regards,
Billy Received on Wed Jan 06 1999 - 02:50:17 CST