Re: Need help buying : Solaris vs Linux
From: Andrew Buckeridge (andrewb_at_ab.bgc.com.au)
Date: 12/15/04
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Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 08:48:56 +0800
Go with the SPARC. V210s are cool.
Nikola Krgovic wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I need help in making a purchase. Basically I'm trying to make an
> educated choice for an Opteron machine.
>
> What we want to purchase in start is either a Fire V20z machine
> fully loaded, or a V40z, but half full (room for expansion). Both machines
> are to be dual Opteron's with 16GB of RAM, a single boot disk, and a
> SCSI/ RAID PCI adapter. Externally we want to hook up a 3310 SCSI array,
> for start probably in JBOD configuration. The idea is to be able to add
> (later) another machine and more disks in the 3310 - so that both machines
> can use the same array. Array is to be configured as RAID 0+1.
We use both AMD and Sparc. The Sparc run cooler and are more
reliable. We have a small cluster of v210s running Solaris,
however I personally prefer Debian GNU/Linux. (I don't know if
Linux will run on v210 as I have not tried it.)
The reason we run Solaris is that we have a large investment in
SunRay which needs the horsepower of Sparc v9 as the sunray
server is the GPU. (Debian lessdisks turns a diskless low power
embedded PC into an X terminal and uses the distributed power of
GPUs on the desktop.)
On my other SunBlade100 I run Debian GNU/Linux. This is fine as
a desktop, but I could not serve i386 thin clients via
lessdisks.
>
> Machines will be used for processing of database data (MySQL,
> unfortunately), and the large amounts of RAM will, hopefully be
> used by the OS for disk caching. When the second machines is added
> there will be no need for any type of cluster - they will each
> have their own database, and just use the StorEdge for fast disk
> access. Also, some custom software is to be run on it. The software is
> running on Linux right now, but a recompile / port to solaris shouldn't be
> a problem, and LSB 1.0 compatibility in Solaris 10 should also help.
MySQL (32-bit) is a ready made Debian GNU/Linux package on sarge
sparc.
Opt misc mysql-common 4.0.22-2
There are a few packages that build on sparc, but do not run.
If so then post a bug. Lessdisks was one I posted recently.
A RDBMS is one of the few things that is helped by 64 bit.
Debian packages are 32 bit, but a 64 bit kernel-image will be
installed on anything that not an antique.
It is too easy to make 64 bit packages on Debian with debuild at
top of source package tree. I.e. you must remember to use
sparc32 debuild if 64 bit is not needed. Add -sparc64 to the
name so it won't be clobbered by a later Debian version.
>
> Now - documentation says that the supported software would either be
> Enterprise Red Hat with Veritas, or Solaris. As far as I can see there is
> no Veritas for 64-bit Red Hat, and anyways I would like to go for Solaris,
> but Solaris 10. I need someone to tell me :
>
> - Would this still be considered a supported usage? If I put Solaris from
> software express now, and get full Solaris 10 once available - could it be
> done with just patches, and without a full reinstall?
Support does not mean much thats why having open software that
already works helps. This is why Debian causes me less problems
and less worry.
>
> - Can anyone confirm that Solaris 10 from s.express runs in 64-bit mode
> on an opteron machine?
>
> - If you partition the storage system with Solstice Volume Manager (or
> what's it called now) and use two machines on the same storage it should
> work, right? You could get access from both machines to the storage? At
> least in the form of each machine having it's own partition? I'm pretty
> sure this works with UFS, but does ZFS change this? Is, in fact, ZFS even
> supported through Volume Manager?
Veritas is shrink wrap it is not a GNU. I would not run this on
Linux. There is a Debian package vrms that will warn you if you
install non-free software.
We run jfs and ext3 on Debian GNU/Linux. The NAS is Intel with
Adaptec AAC-RAID. This provides user homes for sunray and pc
users. It is also the NIS authentication server.
On a GNU system if you want support use the main part of Debian
distro. I know from experience that it is much better than the
support we pay for.
If you want proprietary software then Solaris on Sparc and
Blastwave may make it functional. If a shink wrap vendor goes
through stringent requirements of Debian packaging then they are
worthy of consideration. If they can't do it properly then they
should at least know how to make a static binary.
>
> - Also, can anyone confirm to me that there is no Veritas for Amd64 Red
> Hat, so that I can scratch that option from the pool :) ? I'm guessing
> that OS level disk caching is much more efficient in Solaris that Linux,
> and that it would indeed give me a performance boost on a machine with
> lots of RAM dedicated to disk caching.
One of the benifits of just a 64 bit kernel is i/o buffering,
but I would want to cache the expensive RDBMS queries too so the
data source should also be 64 bit.
>
> - Does anyone now - with RAID 0+1 when you move from JBOD 3310 to a real
> on-storage array controller can you do so without re-formating the array?
>
> Any other suggestion would also be appreciated.
>
> Thanks in advance!
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