Dear Dan:
I beg to differ. Solaris is difficult to administer especially the x86 version. Linux wins hands down. And it offers a better hot swap than Solaris 8.0. It's nice when you pull a CPU and the system keeps on running. It's nice when you plug another one in and the system keeps running, but even faster. It's nice to reconfigure on the fly without going down. Solaris 8.0 does not allow hot swap without a driver written by the system supplier (I know this because I worked to build hot swap drivers for telephone switching boards and Solaris 8.0 x86 did not support the Motorola Chassis version I had to make work. Only manually controlled replacement was able to be performed. Once the customer allowed Linux to be used, no problems with fully automatic (manual was also allowed) hot swap of both boards and CPUs (SMP capable out of box).
Support for the x86 versions from Sun is a laugher. They reluctantly give it after giving one the royal run around. They can't even give you the proper service contract for support when one is willing to pay for it (the niceties of being able to charge it to a customer for custom hardware, software and drivers). Even as simple a thing as replacing a bad CD (the software had bad checksums between the list and the actual files on the same CD), took three weeks due to some snafu at Sun.
No, the support from Sun leaves a lot to be desired. The best support I ever had was from AT&T before the breakup. A $5,000 server (a lot of money in those days) came with a 4 hour 7 days a week one year maintenance contract included. It was DOA. When I called AT&T, the technician was there inside of a hour. He found a bad motherboard and he replaced it and we were up in 2 hours after the call. During the repair, I asked if he did not have a part to fix it or where the repair would take longer than 3 hours. He stated and I quote "It will be fixed within 4 hours of your call, even if we have to take the next unit off of the production line and ship it here via corporate jet!" Now that is service! Sun does not come close! They probably would take 4 hours just playing telephone tag to authorize the repair. BTW, Sun defines the 4 hours as the maximum time between the point at which you get through the line to a service call writer to the first call of a technician to you even if it is the wrong person or covers the wrong area (I have been handed to an hardware tech on a fatal compiler error).
Solaris on x86 is a joke compared to Linux. Compared to Windows, NT and beyond, it is much better. And Linux runs on many 64 bit architectures (I have heard it runs on at least 1 72 bit one) and you can get that enterprise quality, and so on, but you pay for it (you just need to know where to go).
Pete |
