I'm investigating AIX/HP-UX/Solaris for use in a research environment. Although there is plenty of technical documentation online, some important questions can only be answered from long user experience. I'd like to hear whatever you can contribute if you can compare at least two of these.
To get more specific, the proposed deployment is workstations for lab work. I suppose this case is quite different from server use. On the workstations, there will be no commercial software other than the OS; most of it will be data analysis tools written by subject specialists. Instead of setting up one machine to run unchanged for a long time, the workstations will have frequent changes of configuration by users of varying levels of skill.
I have four main areas of concern about which I'd like to hear your comparative evaluation of the three platforms:
Ease of building software developed on other *nix platforms.
Most of the tools we install would be only available as source code. So a major convenience factor will be how much effort is required to get things to build properly on a particular platform. I suppose the two main factors to consider are how "standard" the Unix flavor is and availability of debugging tools.
Stability against application crashing.
The workstations will be used for long computation and compilation jobs as well as productivity tasks. It is very important that a crashing app hangs nothing more than itself.
Convenience and stability of OS level virtualization
Virtualization is I suppose the strongest strategy for isolating a process. It should be quick to set up, be lightweight and stable, and completely prevent unwanted interaction with the host OS.
Ease of maintenance.
When things go wrong (buggy app, bad driver, stupid user, etc.), how much effort to pinpoint the problem and find/implement a fix? I'm thinking of the combined effects of opacity of the system, quality of documentation, community help, etc.
Any other points of comparison between AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris I'd be glad to hear also.
I don't have much experience with AIX or HP-UX, but Solaris seems very good choice for those requirements.
If you will go with Solaris 11 Express, then standard Solaris development tools like Sun Studio are available, as well as GNU tools (gcc, gmake etc). Dtrace is great for debugging misbehaving applications, but it requires some time to learn.
I think any of those three systems pass this requirement.
Read about Solaris zones. It has all the features you are talking about.
One more thing that you should consider is ease of running the system on workstation hardware. Solaris can be easily installed and used on regular consumer level x86 PCs, while AIX and HP-UX are restricted to POWER and IA-64. I guess you won't find many workstations running this kind of processors
You dont mention anything about the platforms that this *nix is going to be running on. In my view there are other factors that contribute to the final selection.....
Are you using specific hardware? ..... Some flavours of Unix are more "Portable" than others and would lend themselves to workstation use alot better depending on the hardware / use requiremetns. When you say "varying levels of skill" are your colleagues biased towards a particular flavour - the learning curve from one particular unix to another (while they may be similar) is not always a smooth one.
Is there going to be a cost involvement? I believe HP-UX / AIX are still commercial products and will need to be purchased. Solaris is (legacy) designed for the Sparc family of processors and so will run only on specific hardware (cost?) - while there are open source versions of Solaris now - you have to ask what benefits you gain from using it, rather than going for Linux etc.
i know it runs on x86 - and has done since way before solaris 10
my comment was aimed at sparc requiring specific hardware, hence (legacy) comment and the fact that the intel version "solaris express" now open source & branching away from "Oracle Solaris" is in a similar league to linux anyway.
was just trying to get a handle on hardware / costs / uses etc.... not knocking any of the choices.
I think you didn't have much exposure to Solaris either SPARC or x86. Comparing Solaris running on x86 to Linux is.. funny. It is still Solaris, with all the things which Linux doesn't have, like ZFS, Zones, SMF, Dtrace, FMA, etc etc. Those things are identical (for the end user) on both Solaris versions...
you say in one quote that you don't have much experience in AIX / HP yet you say in another that all three meet the OPs needs - strange?
Absolutely, but you've missed the point i was trying to make & we're getting away from it here....which is hardware versus cost versus functionality.
AIX = Proprietry
HP-UX = Proprietry
Solaris (Sparc) = Proprietry
Solaris (express) / Linux / Bsd = Open Source - that was as far as my comparison went, & is why i made the comment no system hardware was specified - comparison can be difficult if some of the details are amiss.
Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 Express is free to run on any platform for development purposes. If you want to run Solaris on SPARC, you just have to get some second hand SPARC server install Solaris and you are set.
Cmon guys, gimme a break here - it's been a long day!
Bartus - Bingo! Sound like the OPs setup to you? The clue here is in the sentence "Workstations for lab work" - i'm assuming that second hand sparc servers are not in scope here - maybe i'm wrong that's why i mentioned hardware....
Jilliage - I know.... <see above>
<sigh> all i'm saying here guys is the choice of hardware will have an impact on the OS. 95% of "workstation" lab work that i've been involved with - you could discount AIX & HP-UK off the bat......
I think you didn't understand what I said. You CAN use Solaris on SPARC for development, but if you don't have really really good reason to do it (developing for some bigger SPARC machines etc), then Solaris on x86 will be as good. And x86 = 99% of the workstations on the market, so here you have a choice of the platform to use. With AIX or HP-UX you don't.
agreed - i know it can be used FOC for development. Problem is though, Intel Solaris (before the branch) has always been picky about the hardware it supported - nowhere near 99% of the PC Workstation market. It's got a lot better now with the advent of open source branching and it's getting better all the time. My comparison to linux was merely from an open source standpoint depending on the hardware/solaris version...
The comparison between linux & solaris is another discusion topic me thinks......
So Solaris 11 Express is just taking good things from Linux world (hardware compatibility), but keeps all the great technologies from Solaris 10, adding even more nice things (Crossbow, IPS, etc). And it still runs on SPARC But saying that Solaris 11 Express is (and I quote) "a similar league to linux" is a big misunderstanding.
Several have pointed out that we seem to be ignoring the matter of cost. In fact, TCO is one of our main motivations.
We have been a strictly Linux shop. Over the years, we have gathered the impression from colleagues using commercial Unixen that we were spending much more time on maintenance and recovery than they were.
Since workstation use has fallen dramatically over the past decade, you can find some really good deals on second-hand IA64/POWER workstations. As for licenses, Solaris is free for noncommercial use, and HP-UX and AIX licenses are tied to the machine.
But saying that Solaris 11 Express is (and I quote) "a similar league to linux" is a big misunderstanding.