Solaris versus NT

my management is considering (against the dba's will) to move the existing Enterprise Oracle databases from Solaris to NT.

I need any support ie. urls, benchmarks, testimonies, or general tidbits of knowledge that some of you experienced dba's that run enterprise applications on Oracle have about making a decision to move my database to NT.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

By sticking with Solaris, I'm trying to save the performance of Oracle Applications for 70 users in over 40 different locations campus wide.

I'm at the point in this battle that I need hard facts (an adhoc survey if you must ) to present in an upcoming meeting

So here it goes.

1. How many users does your database serve: ( )
2. Which platform would you install 11i -- Solaris ( ) NT( )
3. Years of experience as a DBA ( )

*** reply in thread, or cut and paste, sending an e-mail to [email protected] ***

thanks for your help, any additional information would be greatly appreciated.

[Edited by blurry on 01-12-2001 at 07:12 PM]

1. Update resume
2. Post resume on hotjobs.com
3. Give 2 weeks notice...

Your management didn't realize potentials downtime, performance due to NT instabilities. NT is only good for a small development or prototype environment, all production should be on Sun. Are they prepare to reboot NT servers regularly and put up with slower response? Any any rate, NT will make you job much harder especially if you are a Unix guy not NT. It's much hard to diagnose on NT. Update your resume might be a good idea. It is sad to deal with management who doesn't understand or don't care about technology and try to play their own politics.

One of our company´s NT Server just died a couple of days ago without anyone doing absolutely anything to it, the server had a whole division´s development database. We have another development database in HP-UX, I think the last time we had to reboot it was about 8 months ago because we updated some OS patch and it´s still strong after 4 years of continuos work in that machine, I have my doubts if NT could achieve the same availability.

this url may be give some unix vs NT issues

http://www.unix-vs-nt.org/

I would think that the partnership between Oracle and Sun, along with Larry Ellison's personal rivalry against Bill Gates is enough to tip anybody off that Oracle will work better with Sun(or Unix OS in general) than with any Microsoft products.

I believe Oracle's website has testimonials on their partnership with Sun.

There is no comparison between NT and Sun. But NT guys think NT is the greatest future for the human being.

you can tell your mgr - how much you pay, how much you get. if they want cut their budget to save money they will suffer what they cut.

Hi, thanks for the responses. It will help my assembling of data to convince our department to leave Oracle on a Solaris platform.

In our organization we have a core group of Oracle technical and functional people that want to stay on the unix platform. We have two higher level managers that want to convert to NT.

I understand that Oracle for NT may be good for smaller, non-enterprise applications. But this project is mission critical, with a user base that could reach 100 users located at 40 to 50 different sites.

*** this post edited to take the survey to the top of the thread, i really need those surveys ***

[Edited by blurry on 01-12-2001 at 07:10 PM]

1. How many users does your database serve: (70+)
2. Which platform would you install 11i -- Solaris (X) NT( )
3. Years of experience as a DBA (1)

1. How many users does your database serve: (300-500)
2. Which platform would you install 11i -- Solaris (X) NT( )
3. Years of experience as a DBA (6)

It is not that NT is worst or things like that.
Sure for all major ,high critical ,24 * 7 jobs SUN is for sure.

I have worked with medium scale application with oracle ,oracle fail safe and SIEBEL itself ON NT ENTERPRIISE edition.I will not say that it was bad .we gave 98 % uptime.
the reason for the 2% downtime was various reasons like hardware failure ,memory upgrations etc.. and for sure two or three times NT problem also

One guy in the group was trying to do test and i asked him why he is risking his name.

He simply told that if anything happens he wikk tell that as NT problem .And it is NT bug.And damn anyguy on the world will simply belive.

It all depend only on the application, nature of the business etc to decide upon the OS.

NT is not that bad as you guys think...Might be you would not had a good NT system administor to work with..

NT is not bad as many think, as earlier I worked with one DOT COM, it had NT as their server because of their budget constraints. It really worked well. But as the DB size is growing then we felt it is doing that good. And if you want to compare with SUN definetly Sun is always supeiror than NT not only for Oracle for any Database.

1. How many users does your database serve: (1000+ on each database)
2. Which platform would you install 11i -- Solaris (X) NT( )
3. Years of experience as a DBA (5)

Any idea what will be the database size ????

Our database size will grow as a normal Oracle Governmental Financials implementation does throughout the course of several fiscal seasons. Currently the database is less than 15Gb, but with the additional modules (we are adding) will increase the size.

My concern about NT is not in DML performance, but yet the realiability of the database server staying up without a reboot. Much of what I have read indicates that there is a lot of server bouncing when you migrate to NT. With solaris, we never bounce the server and it is very stable.

I had handled more than 50 GB database in NT environment.
Absolutely no problem.

The question is not technology but how much money ($$$$$)can the organization spend for maintaining 50 GB DB in NT or in UNIX box. Then take up a decision.

In fact I had more problems with SUN machines than any other machines I used in my life.

Microsoft will survive longer than Oracle, because Windows OS is the heart of the system. Oracle will certainly not ignore Windows OS.

Quote:

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Originally posted by tamilselvan
The question is not technology but how much money ($$$$$)can the organization spend for maintaining 50 GB DB in NT or in UNIX box. Then take up a decision.

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The question should be how much time and money can the orginization lose when the database is down. All of a sudden, an extra $20K spent on a reliable server/OS is spare change.

Quote:

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In fact I had more problems with SUN machines than any other machines I used in my life.

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You must have had a bad batch or something. I have worked with Oracle on a wide variety of platforms (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, NT, Solaris x86, Netware). Sun/Solaris is, by far, the most reliable plaform for running Oracle databases. Out of those I have worked with, NT & Netware tie for the worst.

In an environment with 20 users and 50G of data, you might be able to get along with NT. If you schedule reboots every 7-10 days and put the data on a reliable RAID system you might be up aproximately 90% of the time. When you are talking about 300 users and 3TB of data that has to be accessed 24x7, it's a whole different story.

Here this user does not terabytes of data.only 15GB and it can grow max of say 50Gb which NT can handle.

Now with enterpise edition you can give 99.9% uptime also for the server incase you need.

I will not go for a SUN system if the database size 15GB or so ...

NT can do the job ...

To Marist89

The reliability of SUN machines is lost today. I had worked with SUN 6500 /4500 /450 /420 servers and still am working with SUN. When ever SUN Enterprise Servers crashed, we did not know the reasons because the core dump could not be read by all IT staff. Later, one hardware specialist found that it was due to ECC problem, which was known to SUN before the machines were delivered to customers. After this news appeared in the Internet, SUN admitted that they knew the problem a year ago, but did not reveal to customers. So SUN delivered the faulty machine and the OS with bug. To our surprise, there were no patch available.

If I am wealthy, I drive BMW car, if I am not wealthy, I drive Toyota car.

Same way, if an organization gets good revenue and good profit, then it will buy IBM servers not SUN machines. SUN machines are suitable for medium size organizations where they still want to work with UNIX even though they are not reliable, and they can afford down time. NT is suitable for medium /small organizations where the database is around 50 to 100 GB.

Please go the following news:
http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW20001109S0002

[Edited by tamilselvan on 01-12-2001 at 06:27 PM]

I think that a lot of my concern comes from the fact that my organization has no MCSE's in house, and our system's support staff has never professionally administered Oracle on NT, but yet has two qualified SA's in the Solaris world that have experience in Oracle on Solaris.

To me the dollar for dollar savings would be to remain on the initial platform (solaris) for the upgrade to 11i since there are no qualified NT professionals on staff to properly configure the server.

Someone made the point that MCSE's are a dime a dozen nowadays, but that doesn't make me feel confident that the Oracle Server will be properly maintained.

Iam neither NT/UNIX guy, but Oracle Guy just like you... guys.
See the following link

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2000/1113/6613068a.html

We do have a server which goes down whenever it wants. Sun say`s it will fix next time it happens. I think 2/3 times its happened.

Still our guys goes for Unix not NT. DBA group feels good about Unix Platform (not in particular SUN/IBM/HP) from scalability/capbility/reliability/manageability perspective.

So, Our DBA group think Unix paltform is best for Oracle. Limitations are applications requirements again. Like the Oracle classified which says Internet e-business suite, one platform for every thing that you need. Moderate business and front end(VB,ASP) and Middle tier (IIS) and other Microsoft products then NT would be cost effective solution from integration of the products perspective.

As we know there will be pros and cons for everything and sometimes the experiences you have with that platform chages your mind.

Applications requirement, $$`s,user volume are the primary factors in deciding the right platform for enterprize.

Iam dealing with the same in recommeding the right platform for one of our 100GB database which can grow upto couple of 100`s in couple of years.


[Edited by sreddy on 01-13-2001 at 01:08 PM]