Re: SQL server Vs Oracle

I suggest that David is correct in his assessment. Judging from your comments, your company is about to make the same mistake it did previously: Buying into a legacy operating system and equipment which will be outdated by the time the rollout is complete.

If your company has a 500 machine base, your IT staff should be able to complete an upgrade in 1 month or less. If that can't happen, then you are understaffed, and need either more IT people, or need to hire a consulting firm to do the rollout for you.

The last rollout I participated in was for 40 laptop machines with imaged hard drives. It took 2 folks in IT 10 hours to burn the drives and do the physical install, and 1 more person to test, pack, and ship the machines to 19 different locations. The last network I installed was done during a working day. I, and one part-time unskilled person, physically installed and completely configured an NT 4 Server, physically installed NIC's and drivers on 16 machines, set up the accounts and shortcuts, and moved 4 gigs of data from the old Netware server. We did this in 15 hours, and never interrupted working personnel for more than 20 minutes each.

I'd wait for NT 5 (Windows 2000) and take advantage of network install servers, and Network PC's which will cost about $800 to $ 900 each + monitor and you should be able to rollout 30 to 40 a day with 2 IT folks. I'd use PII400's with 128 Mb of RAM and 13 to 18 Gb hard drives. Your total cost per machine should be in the $1400 range. In a non-development environment, that should last you about 3 years.
---
Arvin Meyer
onsite_at_esinet.net

Stephen Harris wrote in message <7hrb20$opk$1_at_nebula.mpn.com>...
>David W. Fenton (dXXXfenton_at_bway.net) wrote:
>: [Followups restored because I'll be responding to the non-inflammatory
part
>: of the post]
>
>It really doesn't have anything to do with comp.databases.* does it? The
>only DBMS mentioned was _my_ comment about memory in a SQL server!
>
>However, to the details.
>
>: Any company that was buying DX4-100s with 500MBs of disk space in early
1996
>: was being extraordinarily foolish with their money. They should have been
>
>We had a very good deal at the time, and was only running Windows 3.1.
>These machines were an upgrade from 8Mb 386's with 100mb disk and a 16Mb
>DX4-100 with 500Mb sounded like mega-power. We could get three of these
>for the same cost as a P133 at the time. Heck, our "power servers" were
>being installed with P133's in them!
>
>Remember there are two important _additional_ factors that businesses have
to
>worry about:
> 1) scale! Upgrading 500 machines is VERY man-time intensive, and very
> disruptive to the company.
> 2) standardisation! With 500 machines close to being the same, the
cost-of-
> ownership of each machine drops because "quirks", faults, problems etc
> all become standardised. You don't want an ad-hoc mixture of DELLs,
> Compaq's, IBM's, dodgy-clone etc, and getting different models from
each
> company. It makes support (both software and hardware) a lot harder.
> Until you've been there and done this you just don't appreciate how
> uninformed most of the users are compared to us, and how much easier
> standardisation is, and how well it helps your helpdesk to diagnose
> and fix problems at first-line support level.
>
>Both of these issues have been skipped over by your discussion, yet they
are
>both vitaly important to any medium->large company.
>
>: If you do have 1GB machines attached to a network and you don't have
100MBs
>: of disk space free, those machines need to be cleaned up. There should be
>
>See point 1 above and now apply that to "free thinking" users - eg
editorial
>staff (magazine publishing company). These users are unmanageable in that
>sense.
>
>: Businesses cannot afford *not* to spend wisely. The machine with the
lowest
>: acquisition cost is often the most expensive in the long run. One should
>: always buy workstations that will last 3 years without upgrades, or buy
>
>See point 1 above. These machines _have_ lasted three years, and now we
are
>getting round to the next round of upgrades (64Mb PII-350, 6Gb) but see
>point 1. This time we are planning a 2 year cycle...
>
>: wise and pound-foolish. Over a 3-year lifespan, a $2,000 business PC
costs
>: $2.67 a day. A $1,200 PC, discarded after two years, costs about $2.40 a
day.
>
>Nope, dispute those figures on principle. More importantly is point 2
above.
>
>: Anyone who rolled out Win95 with Office95 two years ago, when there was
>: already a new release of Office, was very foolish. It's important to time
>
>Win95 was an upgrade to Win3.1 at the time, and we were still at Office
>4.3. Indeed, it's _only_ this rollout that we've officially gone from
>support 4.3 to support for 97. We never officially rolled out Office
>95 because of point 1 above. NB: Office97 was very buggy at that time
>and was considered unstable.
>
>: I've been advising clients for two years to evaluate NT as their next
>: client workstation OS. This includes people who were still on Win3.x
>
>Our rollout is NT4 - we're taking advantage of the new machine rollout to
do
>various apps upgrades at the same time.
>
>: not Office97. Dell is already shipping with Office2K pre-installed.
>
>Not on our Dells it's not!
>
>: An upgrade of a 32MB client workstations to 96MBs could get you another
>
>See point 1 above.
>
>--
>
>rgds
>Stephen
Received on Tue May 18 1999 - 06:26:46 CDT