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

[David Mandala]

On Wed, 2003-01-22 at 11:33, Jeffrey Pyne wrote:
[snip]

At one time the scaling issues you mentioned were true (not scaling well
past 4 CPU's) that however is no longer true, take a look at the SGI 64
processor systems running Linux. Very fast wide bandwidth. It is true
that a Sun high end box will kill a PC but if you need that type of
database bandwidth one would hope you would be willing to either use a
cluster of cheep PC's or spring for a bigger box.

Lots of people would rather spring for a cluster then huge single
machine now a days.

> 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?"
> 

Currently Oracle says that Linux/High End PC's can provide rock solid
availbility. But you get what you pay for, if you want rock solid you
are not going to be purchasing white box clones. But you will still save
$$$ over SUN.

> 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.
> 

Get an LPI cert, it's cheaper, community supported, and covers more
distributions (RH, Debian, SuSE, Turbo and others. http://lpi.org/ for
more information. The RHCE only covers Red Hat and very heavy into the
install methodology.

> 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
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David IS Mandala
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