Re: Recommended OS for Oracle

"Marc Thomas" <admin_at_prismatic-effulgence.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message news:<aqbs5t$vhl$1_at_newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk>...
> Seeing as everyone else is supplying their two cents here's mine: if your
> supporting the Oracle implementation then your as well picking an OS that
> you are familiar with *OR* that your sys admin team can support. To be
> honest I think I'd probably lose all my hair if I were a 100% Microsoft man
> and I ended up managing a Linux Oracle installation.

Hey, we're all losing our hair (and I still can't find that darn book from 1979 that has a cartoon of a bald DBA in it - it must be under the punch cards)! However, my boss is quite the MS man, having inherited the hp-ux from his predecessor, and having the option to go to MS since the apps run on both, he recently decided to get a new (well, generation behind, which is an order of magnitude cheaper) unix box, because he understands what his limitations are, and I think he probably makes the usual TPC misapprehensions... :-) He did try the Portal solution on a supermicro, which got, er, unused due to lack of familiarity by the users and no budget for people like me... users want to do everything in Excel, but they don't know why, and they don't know Excel...

>
> All the points made previously are valid:
> Familiarity and confidence with the OS
> Cost (Linux is reliable and stable for very little expenditure -
> additionally, Intel based PC hardware is cheap compared to Sun).
> Fit for purpose - take the example above, why install a Linux server
> amongst my Win NT server farm? (Unless of course the situation demands it)
>
> Well, there you go! Personally, I prefer Linux - if money is no object I'd
> probably pick Sun hardware and run Solaris but how often do you get an open
> budget to spend??? Last on my list is Microsoft - but I shan't rant about it
> here ...

Total life cycle costs, man.

>
> Regards
>
>
> "Brian Peasland" <oracle_dba_at_peasland.com> wrote in message
> news:3DC933E3.D65C32EC_at_peasland.com...
> > While I don't disagree, there also comes a time when one's familiarity
> > with a specific technology is one of the lowest concerns. Otherwise,
> > we'd never have converted to Unix systems at all! We are IT
> > professionals and as such, should make an effort to choose the "best"
> > technology for the task, taking all constraints into consideration
> > (familiarity is only one). If my boss tells me that we need to use mySQL
> > for project XYZ, and mySQL makes sense to use, then my lack of
> > familiarity doesn't mean squat. It might be cost that is a driving
> > factor. That being said, we are an Oracle shop and we try to use Oracle
> > at every opportunity, because we are familiar with it.
> >
> > Just my 3.14159265 cents worth,
> > Brian
> >
> > > Niall makes an interesting point. I once read about a study of the
> > > various GUI client-server development tools in the early 90's which also
> > > included some more traditional tools e.g. COBOL, to find out if some
> > > tools were more 'productive' than others. Turned out that the choice of
> > > tool was almost insignificant compared to the degree of familiarity of
> > > the programming team with their tool.

I remember that. At the time, I had spent a good part of the '80s being expert in development productivity with command line environments, and was quite disappointed with Forms 2.x...

jg

--
@home is bogus.
Stupid dog!