Re: RS/6000 vs. HP9000 for SAP

In article <7chvdo$ri7$1_at_nnrp1.dejanews.com>,   cyber_asterix_at_my-dejanews.com wrote:
> We are planning to implement the SAP system (Enterprise Resources Planning)
> in our manufacturing plants and we are in the process of evaluating the
> hardware configuration. There will be 300 concurrent users, and we'll use
> Oracle for the databases. For some reasons (too long to explain here), we
> narrowed our choice down to two systems: IBM RS/6000 (AIX) and Hewlett
> Packard HP9000 (HP-UX).
>
> I have always been using Intel-based PC servers (running NT) and have never
> used any of these two systems. SAP representatives in my country gave us some
> advices, but I wonder if their advices were very objective as they may have
> recommended *their* preferred vender, not necessarily the most suitable one
> for us.
>
> Therefore, I would like to hear from you the pros and the cons of these two
> systems in term of performance, ease of use, reliability, availability,
> integration with SAP, upgradability (for future expansion), etc. I would
> particularly appreciate to hear the opinions from people who have SAP
> experience on both systems.
>
> Also, I shall be very grateful if someone could tell me where I could find
> comparisons between RS/6000 and HP9000 on the net.
>
> Thank you for your assistance.
> &#137;
>
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Greetings,

  In my experiences in supporting Oracle on HP (HP 800/K470, HP-UX 10.20, Oracle 7.3.4) and IBM (RS/6000 S70, AIX 4.3.1, Oracle 7.3.4), I would have to say that they're pretty equal. Currently I'm supporting a PeopleSoft 6.10.20 database on a RS/6000 S70 running Oracle 7.3.4 on AIX 4.3.1.

  I would give a slight edge to the RS/6000, because the LVM (Logical Volume Manager) on AIX is very easy to use and gives a great deal of control and flexibility in where to place things on the disks. This is very important with Oracle, because Mr. Ellison wants you to spread things out when you use his database. Oracle is happiest on about 22 disks (but, depending on database size, etc, anywhere from 7-16 disks is fine). If you go with IBM, make sure you use SSA (Serial Storage Architecture) disks - you'll see a real performance difference.

  The IBM 'smit' utility is very powerful and easy to use as well, especially if you're not up on AIX commands, which do differ from HP-UX, Solaris and IRIX in many ways. Until eight months ago, I'd only ever used HP, Sun or SGI; AIX took me some getting used to, but I've come to appreciate it more all the time.

   If you get the right kind of service contract, I've had equally good experiences with HP and IBM when it came to needing repairs or maintenance.

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own Received on Mon Mar 15 1999 - 00:00:00 CET