Re: Sun vs NT

"Daniel A. Morgan" <dmorgan_at_exesolutions.com> wrote in message news:3A653B64.45399F87_at_exesolutions.com...
> > Hey all I need to provide justification for moving our Oracle platform
 from
> > NT to Sun. I don't think resume building is going to fly. Any ideas or
> > sites that would have good information?
>
> How about trying SECURITY and STABILITY?
>
> The risk to your data from viruses and hacking is very substantially
 increased
> being on Solaris.
>

I presume you meant that last word to be "NT".

I can't agree. Well, OK, I'll agree that the *risk* of viruses is higher on NT, because NT is an extremely popular operating system and you'd have to be something of a headcase to write a virus that will affect nobody. But the threat from viruses is manageable, provided you are ready to manage. The threat of being hacked -manageable, with suitable firewalls, routers, security policies and so on. I just can't accept that NT is, per se, more prone to bad management than Solaris.

> And while it is normal to run a Solaris-Oracle box 7x24x365 I have yet to
 find
> any NT server that could last 30 days without a reboot or a crash and
 burn.
>

My W2K Proxy Server has been up for 143 days without a reboot. My domain controller has been up since February 17th 2000 with one exception: I installed a new SCSI card, and had to manually reboot as a result. W2K may not perhaps be NT4, but as NT5 under the hood, I'm going to claim that unstable NT installations are probably because of dodgy NT administrators.

> You might also point out the fact that Fortune 500s such as Boeing, US
 West,
> AT&T, etc. all put their Oracle onto Solaris, HP/UX, Sequents ... some
 version
> of UNIX. And that they are doing it for a reason.
>

I don't know. At the end of the day, I wouldn't trust my enterprise-critical database to NT4, but I might just be tempted to on W2K.

I think the real problem is that if you stick a GUI on the front of anything these days, every man and his dog think that it must be a doddle to administer. After all, you only have to click OK, don't you?! So you get a lot of crappy NT administrators out there. And hence a lot of dodgy NT installations. Solaris, and Unix generally, having a monumental scare factor, means only the brave and the skilled tend to bother -so naturally, you get skilled results.

I think suggesting that an NT house should adopt Solaris is just asking for trouble. I should know: it took me 4 days to get to the point of printing utter crap from my test Linux installation. Clearly, I need to develop my Unix/Linux skills before I take the plunge for real!

Regards
HJR
> Daniel A. Morgan
>
Received on Thu Jan 18 2001 - 02:10:09 CST