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Linux Replaces Sun At Weather.com
cwebster writes "Linux running on IBM Netfinity servers will be replacing Sun Enterprise 450 servers at weather.com. Sun will still have a place though, running IBM's websphere application as a back-end on Sun E4500 servers. You can read about it here at CNet." This is actually more than it sounds like, and gives a little glimpse into what IBM is thinking.
Linux isn't secure. It's not fast. It can't bloody well handle mission critical anything. Besides it's so incompatible with everything that you simply can't migrate any system to a Linux platform.
Ohh.. wait. This is the real world where servers simply need to run all the time no matter what and technical staff is allowed to choose the best tool for the job at hand.
When weather.com went online initially Sun was the best choice for a high traffic web site. Now Linux is the best choice. This includes price/performance and stability measures.
The big question is: How do you explain all those NT web sites out there? If Sun and Latter Linux are the best choices for doing big sites and Linux costs less than NT for small sites. It's not all about FUD and tricking suites into forcing NT on Nerds either.
You see if you are a suite and are building the site yourself, NT will probably let you get online with very little technical help. Fortunately Linux is heading in that direction. I just hope the Distribution companies remember that it should be locked down by default.
As for weather.com They have nerds paid to know this stuff so it's not such a big deal what distributions ship. They customize the hell out of it.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I would much rather have heard about Linux
replacing Solaris on the E450's, than about the
hardware changing from Sun to IBM.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Last time I checked, Suns weren't overpriced. Their machines are very well engineered, with great I/O throughput, quality components, easy maintenance and upgrades, and responsive hardware support services. Their pricing isn't all that different from Compaq and IBM given the same quality hardware.
At the higher end--say, the 6000 series and up--you can hot swap and hot-plug CPUs. What Linux-friendly x86 vendors (or Linux distros, for that matter) support that?
Mom-and-pops and boutique vendors like VAResearch and Penguin Computing make cost-effective servers for the low to mid range.. with a constantly-shifting product line and component mix that drives engineers nuts. It's sometimes nice to be able to buy the same model configured the same way with the same components twice more than a year apart.
What are you comparing this pricing to? Dell's cheesy desktops in server cases?
Next question: if you're running a 100GB database for a $400 million company, would you put it on Linux, with a filesystem that will need 20 minutes to fsck in the event of an emergency reboot? Is "experimental" support for a shared fiber-channel disk array good enough to allow you to sleep soundly? Calling Sun or another "expensive" high-end vendor starts making more sense here.
Linux is forcing sun to beef up the services side of its business for revenue, as IBM has, and has hurt them--and everyone else--on the low end (1-4 CPU machines), for good reason. But where there's a big database or a heavy-lifting server application, nothing beats the so-called expensive stuff.
How in the world did IBM, famous for its entrenched monopolist corporate culture, manage to turn itself around so quickly and fundamentally?
Placing Linux on front ends (read: webservers) is a no brainer because you can slap together a few PIII's, put 'em behind a local director and be done with it, and you can do it for the cost of ONE Sun Enterprise 450.
Linux has a formidable barrier to overcome, though, before it's a realistic alternative to Sun in back-end architecture. The volume management isn't there, the shared memory performance isn't there and the heavy artillery hardware support (big fargon disk arrays, etc.) isn't there.
Of course I like to see that Linux is gaining market but these peices walk a fine line between truth and FUD for those who aren't determined to read the fine print. Sun actually understands the Linux market and is opening. Solaris media for $10 shipped? I don't see Microsoft doing that. A better story here would be a discussion on the technology gap between Linux and Sun/Solaris and how it is gradually closing. It's not a Sun vs. Linux story.
ozone pilot
Okay, I agree Linux is great and all, but replacing the Sun?? Isn't that a bit ambitious?
---- I made the Kessel Run in under 11 parsecs.
CmdrTaco on 1:47 AM -- Tuesday June 4 2000 /.ers. In a related story, hell froze over and monkeys actually flew from RMSs ass.
from the say it isn't so dept.
CmdrTaco writes I've decided to change over to a Microsoft solution and deploy Win2k on all the web servers here. This is a very large investment, but I believe that this will lead to better security, better speed, and a better user experience for
___
But anyways, having worked with all the OSes mentioned above, I can tell you why Sun is still great. Their server solutions work. And work _great_. You don't have to be a magician to make Solaris run well on Sun hardware. And if you ever do mess anything up, you call up Sun's tech support and they help you fix it. Contrast with Microsoft $9/min tech support - "Oh no, you don't have to call back, I'll wait while you reinstall Office". Or with Linux support, which until recently has consisted mostly of IRC, Usenet and FAQs (this is great for the hobbyist and someone with time on his hands, but for the sysadmin whose mission-critical database just went down, it's not quite a sure thing that you'll get your system up in no time). Availability. Guaranteed availability.
Of course, there's a price to be paid for the kind of solutions and service Sun provides. Their high-end stuff is priced accordingly. Why? Well, because there are obviously enough people in the world willing to pay for it. It's the beauty of the market economy. For the same reasons that Windows hasn't yet died a long-overdue death (and somehow controls the home OS market), Sun continues to sell mission-critical hardware for a premium: people think it's worth it .
Besides, you can hardly say that the Linux/Netfinity solution here is cheap. $1 million. And I'm pretty sure that's not all hardware.
I guess they should have gone with Windows 2000, the price/performance leader.
--
Ah Well. So much for getting all sides of a story on this forum.
This guy is right: check out tpc.org and you will see an industry standard ranking of database servers. Windows 2000/SQL Server does indeed blow away all other contenders, running the heaviest IBM and Sun iron and Oracle.
However, I don't think Sun is really in trouble. Rather, Microsoft is. The are still the belligerent company they always have been, and I for one have developed a severe distaste of having to deal with incompatible software and devious methods to hook people into staying their customers. So what if it performs better, I need software that works well with everything else I use.
Take a lesson from IBM, and quit trying to dominate the world. Treat people as humans rather than competitors to be crushed, and perhaps the anti-Microsoft sentiment will fade. Until then, expect people to go with other solutions.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
This move on weather.com's part is not incredibly surprising (although auspicious for open source/free software's continued growth) as the parent company of weather.com is Landmark Communications, which has relatively deep connections to the open source community. The chairman of Landmark Communications, Frank Batten Jr., was personally an early angel investor in Red Hat, and now his company has funded ($25 million) a subsidiary, Great Bridge LLC to provide commercial support for the advanced BSD-licensed PostgreSQL. The press releases detailing the connection between these companies can be found here.