[SLL] Linux defector says RHEL zero, Sun Solaris hero

[Mr.Scrooge]

It reads like one of Microsoft's "success" stories.
I wonder what kind of price break they got? Maybe Sun
threw in free hardware too. Give them a year...they'll
be back....
--- Jerry Horvath <jerroldhorvath at gmail.com> wrote:

> The following article seems to be in harmony with
> recent SLL posts
> relating increasing the volume of SLL discussion.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jerry Horvath
> 
> 
> After years of Linux loyalty, a New York City-based
> open source
> company called Sapotek Inc. switched to Sun
> Microsystems Inc.'s
> Solaris 10 operating system with no regrets.
> 
> Sapotek develops open source Web products and
> applications and
> provides free online desktop services to more than
> 200,000 users. The
> company's CEO, Joshua Rand, started the company with
> the free Fedora
> Linux distribution. That worked well enough for a
> small startup, but
> as business scaled, Fedora's effectiveness declined.
> So in 2005,
> Sapotek moved to a commercial version of Linux: Red
> Hat Enterprise
> Linux (RHEL).
> 				
> Rand purchased the licenses and support for the
> company's five-compute
> node system -- all 64-bit Intel-Xeon based Dell 1U
> servers, plus an
> EMC Corp. storage unit -- to include patches and
> upgrades, but snafus
> persisted, he said.
> 
> "The problems we encountered were because Linux
> doesn't scale all that
> well," Rand said. "We had to maintain logs and
> partitions, and we
> devoted so much time to doing that manually. As a
> small team, we were
> wasting time on routine tasks when we should have
> been able to focus
> on developing."
> 
> Rand wasn't a fan of Red Hat's Global File System
> (GFS), either.
> Sapotek used GFS to store several different system
> configurations
> settings, such as crucial user files and its apache
> hosts.
> 
> "We had issues with GFS locking files at random. We
> couldn't isolate
> the issues, so we had to look at each configuration
> on each server,
> and every issue had a ripple effect that slowed down
> the system," Rand
> said.
> 
> After two years of trying to make RHEL work, Rand
> had to move on. He
> looked closely at Solaris 10 and, after speaking
> with Sun engineers
> about a possible migration, decided to give Sun's
> Startup Essentials
> program a try.
> 
> "Being Linux people, we were hesitant to switch," he
> said. "We didn't
> even consider [Microsoft] Windows, because we are
> open source," said
> Rand. "Sun set up some virtual servers for us to run
> tests, and we
> ported all of our apps onto those virtual servers.
> We did load
> testing, saw that it worked well and decided to go
> ahead with the
> migration."
> 
> Sapotek now runs Solaris 10 OS on Sun 4200 servers
> with 64-bit
> Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Opteron quad-core
> processors, along with
> Sun's x4500 storage unit.
> 
> The improvement is significant; with four compute
> nodes instead of
> five, Rand has more computing power and 99.99%
> uptime, compared with
> 97% uptime with RHEL, he said.
> 
> "With this switch, we've gone from playing in the
> sandbox to getting
> our doctoral degree. You can't even compare Red Hat
> GFS to Solaris
> ZFS," Rand said. "We no longer need to do all those
> chores we had to
> do with Linux. I can't even quantify the number of
> man-hours we freed
> by moving to Solaris. We have so much more time to
> develop our
> software now."
> 
> The report indicates, for example, that while
> Solaris x64 and Red Hat
> Enterprise Linux are free and comparable in terms of
> implementation
> cost, Solaris ultimately has a lower acquisition
> cost because it
> includes features that users are likely to purchase
> separately in a
> Linux environment.
> 
> Of course, the Linux camp disagrees that Solaris is
> more
> cost-effective or performs better and points to
> market data as proof.
> 
> A November report by Framingham, Mass.-based
> research firm IDC shows
> that customers are migrating from Unix to Linux.
> Between 2006 and 2009
> overall operating system revenue for Unix is
> expected to decline by 5%
> a year, while Linux revenue is projected to grow by
> 21% per year,
> according to IDC's "Worldwide Operating Systems and
> Subsystems
> 2007-2011 Forecast."
> 
> The story with all links is here:
>
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1286507,00.html?track=NL-795&ad=617695&asrc=EM_NLN_2772749&uid=1757084
> 



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