This paper tries to compare Linux vs. Solaris. Its author comes to many conclusions, among which this is one of the more interesting: "All-in-all Solaris is a powerful, stable, conformant-to-standards OS that can run many open source applications as well as Linux, and some (mainly multithreaded applications) better than Linux. Like in the cases of Red Hat and Suse, the cost of support is extra, but it is more reasonably priced. Security patches are free which makes Solaris similar to Windows."
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Member since:2005-07-08
Member since:2005-07-06
I think the bigger question is this; if everything is purchased based on performance, then by going by the latest TPC benchmarks, wouldn't it be true to assume that everyone is moving to Itanium based machines either running HP-UX or Windows 2003?
According to reality, as we all know, that isn't the case - Sun's server sales, especially their x86 ones, have been going gang busters in the last quarter; so if that rumour is anything to go by, there is more to life than just raw performance.
Member since:2006-04-17
So HP can run Linux on an Intergrity server in the lab, point to a production instance.
Well they sell and support Linux on 64 way superdomes,
like IBM sell and support Linux on 64 way pSeries.
http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/cache/342254-0-0-0-121.html
And Linux on POWER beating Solaris is based on what, show us that as well if you don't mind.
Almost anything you'd care to look at. The E25K with
its FirePlane interconnect and US CPUs is a dinosaur.
Everybody except Sun zealots will readily tell you
that.
On SPECjbb 2000 (a benchmark of Java performance),
Linux on a 32 core POWER5 scored 1,076,309. A year
later, Solaris on an 88 core E25K managed only 732,742.
Results submitted at the same time of a 64 core
POWER5 1.9GHz running AIX gets 2,505,245. More than 3
times faster with fewer cores. Assuming linear
scaling, the POWER5 is nearly 5 times faster than the
US, core for core. The number for a 2.2GHz POWER5+
would easily exceed a factor of 5.
SPECjbb 2005 shows a 144 core E25K with a score of 1,164,995 (not comparable to 2000 numbers). OK,
Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER is a little better, at 128
cores it gets 1,251,024 running Solaris.
However an SGI Altix with 128 cores running Linux gets
1,828,349.
Sun's best SPECint/fp results for SPARC are 845/1353
IBM's best for POWER are 1765/3513.
Sun doesn't submit many benchmarks that can be easily
compared with other systems or software, but whenever
you can fairly compare a POWER or Itanium with an
ultrasparc, the ultrasparc is going to lose.
Throw something back at me.
Member since:
2006-04-17
According to HP:
http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-1247/ch03s01.html
Linux is only supported on Superdome for a maximum of 16 CPUs.
Windows (surprisingly) supports up to 64, and
HP-UX up to 128.
It will run on at least 64 (HP published some tests a
while back).
Linux only supports a maximum of 128 GB of memory (which is much less than the hardware max).
Linux has run with at least 4TB on SGI Altix systems.
Probably the most memory of any single system image
ever built. Far more than Solaris would ever have
run with.
As for pSeries, AIX is by far more popular than Linux on this platform. I don't think you'll see many p5-595's running Linux.
Besides, AIX provides more features when using LPARs (live memory reallocation etc. compared to Linux on POWER), among other benefits. IBM will probably try to sell you AIX over Linux anyway for pSeries.
Sure, as the OS designed and built around that
platform, it is definitely a bit faster and more
scalable on it. Linux on pSeries still destroys
Solaris on anything that it can run on.