Re: Oracle Selects Sun As Reference Platform ... again

From: Rodrick Brown <rbrown[_at_>
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 22:06:11 GMT
Message-ID: <2005112417061016807%rbrown@doittnycgov>

On 2005-11-24 15:05:12 -0500, DA Morgan <damorgan_at_psoug.org> said:

> Rodrick Brown wrote:
>> "DA Morgan" <damorgan_at_psoug.org> wrote in message 
>> news:1132854115.922381_at_yasure...
>>

>>> According to the November 21 issue of eWeek, page 13, Oracle has
>>> decided to drop Linux as a reference platform, at least in the 64
>>> bit space, and once again embrace Sun Microsystems.
>>>
>>> Any comments Mr. Townsend?
>>> --
>>> Daniel A. Morgan
>>> http://www.psoug.org
>>> damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
>>> (replace x with u to respond)

>> 
>> 
>> No surprise there, I really dont see how anyone with a half a brain 
>> could choose Linux over Solaris in the enterprise.
> 
> I have numerous times. But then maybe I just self-classified as not
> having half-a-brain. Sun machines, for years, have been overpriced
> boat anchors compared with the competition from HP, IBM, and Apple.

I do admit Sun did drop the ball when it came to performance and overall pricing on the Sparc line of hardware in the past, but that was years ago, Sun's new offerings is really superb, much better price and performance than anything you can get from Dell, HP, and IBM today.

Do remember hardware is just one factor in the overall equation, Solaris is the only UNIX OS that thrives on being innovative today in the Commerical UNIX space, with technologies like ZFS, Zones, & dtrace the ability to scale your system from 1 CPU to 106CPU's w/o changing 1 lick of code on your application still makes it one of the most robust systems today.

I do respect Linux and I believe it has a place in the enterprise just not in the high performance database arena where every transaction is mission critical, LInux just has too many issues to be taken seriously where its essential that systems stay up, we have been bitten by so many kernel, driver, and application bugs its just riduclous. I blame the linux kernel developers for this how many times are they going to rewrite critical parts of the kernel subsystem? Right when things are getting stable a new kernel is released which changes major components in the kernel which in essence causes application developers to pretty much port and rewrite their apps to adopt the new framework that replaced the last one, this is just ridiculous.

A major rewrite happened during every kernel milestone 2.2 -> 2.4 -> 2.6

And it still boggles my mind why people think Linux is free?

Sun did alot of stupid things in the past but Sun 4-5 years ago isnt really the same company Andy Bechtolsheim is back and leading all server engineering efforts if anyone remembered him designed the earlier sparc/motorala systems which made Sun what what it was in the early 90's, and ever since Jonathon Swartz took the helm the company has been really shaping up.

-- 
Rodrick R. Brown
Unix Systems Engineer 
The City of New York (DoITT)
http://www.nyc.gov/doitt
rbrown[(@)]doitt.nyc.gov 
http://www.rodrickbrown.com

Received on Thu Nov 24 2005 - 16:06:11 CST