Linux/Intel vs. Solaris/Sun (WAS: RE: LAMP web server)

[Jeffrey Pyne]

On Tuesday, January 21, 2003 9:15 PM, Kevin Brown wrote:

> At my current job it looks like we'll be using RH as the 
> distro of choice for a large cluster (512 node).  ...it is 
> also going to be used for... a number of other servers along 
> with Oracle (which means RH's Advanced Server). Unfortunately 
> this isn't displacing Windows, just reducing/keeping out Sun. 

Could you keep us (especially me) periodically updated on your experiences
with this?  I've been a UNIX admin (mostly Solaris) for the last 5 or so
years.  From what I've read, gleaned from conversations with various people
in the SAN industry and seen in real-live performance tuning, I've come to
the conclusion that, while Linux on Intel works well for many applications
(e.g. web servers, DNS servers, etc.), Sun's hardware is still better for
serious database applications.  Sun's I/O backplane is still way faster than
Intel's (up to 21.6GB/sec for Sun, up to 3.2GB/sec for Intel), and
historically, I/O has always been the bottleneck for databases.  And Solaris
scales really well on systems with 10, 20, and even more CPUs, where Linux
has traditionally not scaled well past 4 CPUs.  

But perhaps it's gotten to the point where these things really only matter
if you're a really large shop, doing millions of transactions per second.
How many shops really NEED 21.6GB/sec of I/O bandwidth?  How many shops
really NEED 24 CPUs with 20GB of RAM?  Perhaps it's gotten to the point that
95% of the shops out there don't need the extra horsepower that Sun
provides.  If that's true, could this be the death knell for Sun?  I mean,
why pay 4 times as much for Sun hardware if Linux on Intel hardware would be
"good enough?"

I currently work for a 120-employee NFP company.  We have 3 Oracle
databases, all on Sun hardware (2 with 4 CPUs and 2GB RAM, and 1 with 2 CPUs
1GB of RAM), and the performance is rock solid.  Availability is extremely
important, too (we had 99.9938% uptime last year).  But could we be getting
equivalent performance and availability from Linux on Intel hardware for
less money?  It's hard to find really objective information about this,
since mostly what you read is marketecture.

Ahhhh.  Time was, you couldn't swing a cat without hitting a want-ad for a
Solaris admin.  But maybe it's time to look into getting my RHCE
certification....

~Jeff