Re: Solaris vs AIX

Cydrome Leader wrote:
Bob Jones <email@xxxxxx> wrote:
"Cydrome Leader" <presence@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:ea461i$915$3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Bob Jones <email@xxxxxx> wrote:
"Rich Teer" <rich.teer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Pine.SOL.4.64.0607232147430.27567@xxxxxxxxxxxx
On Mon, 24 Jul 2006, Alexander J. Maidak wrote:

I can't really think of any features that Solaris has that AIX doesn't.
DTrace and ZFS for starters.

Plus Solaris can run on x86 systems. How is that for low cost training? It
is the best OS for Java and networking applications. There are much more
java is hardly the best for anything other than NOC techs who have to
reboot stuff at night and RAM manufacturers.

Hmmm, I wonder why it is running everywhere including AIX and mainframe.

Hype and useless managers dreaming of being on the cover of IT week. Java is garbage. It's not that horrible apps cannot be written in other ways, but the "hey this is easy and faster" java approach just encourages a mess.

Nobody reboots a mainframe nightly, but restarting weblogic daily is not considered all that absurd. That's really sad.

I don't reboot any of my Suns nightly, I restart Apache nightly though, it's for log rotation you see ?


x86 support is nice. There's no other way I'd run out and get a sun built
server though.

That's why Solaris give you more options. If I don't want to get IBM built server for AIX, do I have a choice?

The options IBM restricts are running AIX on trash hardware. You don't get to anymore. The last intel release was AIX 2.

So the answer is "No, you DON'T have a choice, unless you can get an ancient copy of the OE that's now unsupported" ? As you say later on, "it's not 1988 ..."
How about AIX V5 ? That was available for the Itanium, only in a beta version though ...
Personally I've never even accessed an AIX system, I'd like to, it'd be another feather in the cap. If I wanted to learn AIX though, how much would I have to pay out to buy some hardware to learn/practice on ?
I can pick up an Ultra 2 for around £30, run Solaris 10 on it and learn at home. What are my options with AIX ? A thinkpad running AIX4.2 ?

You'll notice lots of the problems people have with stuff like solaris 10 are non-issues on solid hardware (machine that's not some garbage pile special) My favorite is somebody having problems with a ne2000 network card. Toss that *** out. It's not 1988 and you're not running a novell network. Get an Intel card or something that costs more than $5 and is supported by most OSes in the first place. Embedded NICs on servers from Sun/IBM are work. Plenty of other mainstream NICs also work just fine too.

I've never struggled to locate a network drivers for any card that is supported in an AIX server, ever. Good luck trying to figure out what Marvell or Realtek chip you have on a came with the calble modem network card. I'm surprised those things don't have jumpers.

I've never had problems locating drivers for ANY hardware that is supported in ANY server that is supported either, no matter what server and what OS, if "it's supported"

Bull*** hardware just wastes everybody's time. If you're downtime optimized, go for it. Otherwise, there's no point. Does it really matter how open a system is? Do you make your own PCI cards, and write your own disk firmware? Probably not.

Hmm, me thinks this is irrelevant, maybe ask on alt.comp.hardware

Granted, IBM and Sun can do fairly obnoxious things like make sure standard drives don't fit in drive cages etc (some old RS/6000s), but in the end you're better off using a supported disk than Corpsys remanufacturered scraps that was $25 and has a 15 second warranty.

Especially these days and in a business environment, people cost more than the hardware. If I even suspect a IDE disk is bad, it gets thrown out and replaced. There's no reason to fire up Seatools/DFT and waste 45 minutes seeing if it's really bad or not. 45 minutes is more than the cost of new disk and it's a total time waster if the drive is even still under warranty. Throw it out and move on. The days of $2000 hard disks is long over. Even top of the line FC drives arent't that costly.

applications available on Solaris than AIX. CPUs with different speeds can
run in the same box, and how about the ability to run 32 threads in a single
IBM had that first, not even counting the purchase of Sequent.

Had what first?

support for mixed processors.

Anyway to answer the OPS original question, Solaris is easier to get hold of and easier to learn just for the fact it runs on various hardware, just about anything that people have at home.
Thus if you have a crap Admin or a good one that's leaving, he's easier to replace.
.