Re: Linux or Solaris? Dell vs Sun for best cost / performance? Oracle 8i.

You cannot get the performance out of Oracle on Linux yet that you can with Solaris on equivalent (not identical) hardware because Linux is still immature when it comes to I/O. SGI and Red Hat have release variants or extensions of the Linux kernel, and these alternate kernels help, but not enough.

I hate to say it, but on identical Intel hardware, Oracle on Windows 2k crushes Oracle on Linux. If you are going with Intel hardware, your performance will be better on Windows 2k. However, I have found Linux operating system (when properly configured) to be more stable than Windows 2k or NT. The caveat "properly configured" is an essential qualifier because it is much easier to set up a badly configured Linux box, and almost anyone can install and set up a windows server.

I use and administer Oracle on Windows, Solaris and Linux (for development). On Linux it is the most difficult to set up and the least stable, but the easiest to manage. On Solaris it seems to perform the best and run the most stably. On NT/W2k it is the easiest to install, and it seems to run the better than Linux, but Windows 2k and NT as operating systems are less stable than Solaris or Linux.

Problems I have seen with Oracle on Linux are as follows:

• The installation is terrible. I had to use strace to debug permissions problems that were tedious to track down and repair. This seems to be less of an issue with each release for Linux.
• The network interface (SQL*Net) can scramble when the tnsnames or listener files are modified. This was very annoying.
• There are some memory leaks that pop up now and again. I have gotten errors like "not enough process memory" doing things like imports even though my kernel parameters and hardware resources were more than adequate.
• Certain Oracle features such as the Intermedia Text engine are partially crippled on Linux and less stable than on Solaris.

This being said, it is cheaper to set up a machine to run Oracle on Linux than equivalent Solaris box. Moreover, Oracle seems pretty committed to seeing Oracle succeed on Linux if only to spite Bill Gates and Windows.

Chris Weiss
Chief Scientist for Database Engineering PureCarbon, Inc.

"simon redfern" <simon_at_musicpictures.com> wrote in message news:977011786.6505.0.nnrp-13.9e98e660_at_news.demon.co.uk...
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking in to buying a box for Oracle 8i for a web application (with
> Coldfusion). Which hardware / OS will give me the best results for my
 (small
> amount of) money? The Dell servers seem pretty well speced for the cash
> compared to Sun, but is Linux OK to go with instead of Solaris which is
 now
> "free"?
>
> Any thoughts much appreciated.
>
> Simon.
>
>
Received on Sat Dec 16 2000 - 23:11:18 CST