Re: Oracle 8i on Solaris Intel -> Enterprise Ready ???

Hi,

I cannot reply to your query about 8i since we are still in the land of V7 oracle but I can add a note as a person who is supporting Oracle for Intel in a corporate setting.

Our biggest problem is with performance and access to third party applications. Finding commercial backup software, commercial source code control, word processing packages etc.. for Solaris on Intel has been a big problem for us. We have also had support issues because we end up in the situation of having one group support hardware and another support software. Neither group seems to know anything about the other. Our hardware vendor doesn't "have anyone running Solaris on Intel" and our software support organization only has solaris on sparc. Thus, when we call it is a hit or miss deal. Half the time solutions they give me work or are for sparc only.

Our latest problem has come about because Sun no longer supports our server hardware. This hardware is only 1 year old (and cost probably as much as a mid-range sparc does now) and we cannot safely upgrade to 2.7 because we are off the "supported hardware" list. After only a year it is hard to go back to management and say "gee, we need another $65K so we can buy a new server now".

If you have the money try to go for the official sparc hardware. I really think that even a low end sparc platform is a better compromise than Solaris on Intel. Look at refurb if you must but try to not go the route of Solaris on Intel in a corporate oracle environment. It just doesn't seem to size well.

Solaris for Intel itself has been a stable software platform for us and is REALLY close to Solaris SPARC. I would call the changes minor. Our biggest issue has come from the support side of things and the ability to add functionality to our server with commercial products. I cannot really say I have any complaint about the OS other than lack of 3rd party software.

Christine Cooper

Michael Cretan wrote:
>
> Hi All
>
> I was wondering if anyone had any experiences with 8i on Solaris for Intel
> v2.7
>
> I'm thinking of using the intel platform to save costs, but I'm worried that
> it won't be as robust as the Sparc platform.
>
> Any advice would be greatly appreciated
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mike Cretan
> (mcretan_at_ozemail 'dot' com 'dot' au)
Received on Sun Jul 25 1999 - 22:24:41 CDT