Journal DarkMan's Journal: Caveat Emptor - Unix is not Unix 1
This will probably go down as either an over reaction (if you've never met this situation before), or with a sage nod and a sigh (if you have).
I do number crunching. I crunch numbers. For various reasons, the 64 bit machines have an edge for the code I use, over 32 bit machines. So, when comparing machines of different architectures, it's a little complex.
A couple of years ago, we were looking at expanding our crunching capabilitiy a bit. So we looked at a bunch of systems. In the end it came down to either Sun Blade 100's, vs Athlon. The Athlons were slightly faster on paper, but the Blade's held the edge with ECC ram, and the 64 bitness seemed to make them the same in practice.
Plus, Solaris was felt to have a slight edge in proven relability over Linux. And proven reliabity was the clincher in the end, as expected run times were (and are) measured in days. A local Sun resealler was offering a good deal on the blades, and that was that.
It's worth pointing out that we have 3 rs6k's on AIX, a dual Alpha, on Dec Unix, and various PC's on debian (for crunchers / servers, and my desktop), or windows for a couple of other desktops.
So the Blades came. And worked. But, every so ofthen there were these niggling little things, that ment I had to delve into Solaris. Quite deeply at places. At what with the rest of the disparate OS's, it's turned into a pain. A lot of pain.
If we had more Solaris machines, it would be easier (the investement of time would give more return), but it's not. And that's the rub.
Don't split your OS's without serious thought. I reckon that a PC with debian stable, at 80% the raw speed of the Blades would have been worth the same money. For the same money, we could have got about the same speed, maybe a little under.
TCO. Say it again, and often. It's not the purchase price, it's the TCO (and include learnin' time as well as money costs there too).
Call It Out, Brother! (Score:2)
This is one of the reasons that teaching Linux skills to CS students in college is so important. If they come into the workplace knowing Linux, you've just made Linux that much more attractive an option for that office.
Jouster