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Large Scale Management - Linux vs Solaris?

Posted by Cliff on from the penguins-and-glowing-balls-of-plasma dept.

A not-so anonymous, Anonymous Coward asks: "I work for a college that offers undergraduate computer science classes, and the school would like to add a new lab with about a hundred computers for students to use, for various class projects. After some non-trivial effort, we convinced the school to set up a Unix lab rather than a Windows one. However, we can't decide whether to go for Solaris or Linux. Regardless of the cost of hardware, I couldn't get agreed with my colleagues about the amount of efforts required to manage a hundred of Linux PCs vs. a hundred Sparc boxes. I believe that there are many Slashdot readers are actual managers for labs like this if not in large scales. What are your experiences of managing Linux PCs versus traditional Solaris boxes?"

"My detailed questions are:

1. Compared between these two different systems, how easy to maintain the software for all these machines (including re-installation, patching, and updating)? What software do you use to make these management jobs easier?

2. Are there any fundamental differences between managing a large group of linux PCs and managing a large group of Solaris boxes?"

1 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Why not Mac OS X? by plsuh · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Not to start a flamewar, but genuinely curious about why you're not considering Mac OS X for this lab? It has some nice features for a CS lab.
    • Free GUI dev tools (XCode) built on top of gcc
    • XCode's fix and continue and zero link systems for speeding up debugging
    • XCode's distributed build system
    • Cocoa API for rapid application development
    • BSD-based OS at the lowest levels
    • Perl, Python, Apache, PHP pre-installed
    • JDK 1.4.1
    • Oracle, Sybase, MySQL all available natively
    • Nice low-level PowerPC arch with lots of registers for teaching asm classes
    • Altivec SIMD beats the living daylights out of MMX/SSE/etc in terms of both speed and clean architecture
    • Source code to Darwin layer available for free under open source license
    • Multithreaded OS all the way down into the multithreaded kernel
    • Rootless X11 server that utilizes hardware accel an optional install.
    • Vendor-supported Netboot/NetInstall with Mac OS X Server for easy lab maintenance
    • Panther (10.3) can tie into LDAPv3, NetInfo, NIS, Active Directory, and Kerberos-based directory service networks natively out of the box
    • Tons of open source software available via either Fink or DarwinPorts
    • BONUS - can install MS Office, ThinkFree Office, or AppleWorks and allow non-geeks to use the machines for writing papers, etc.

    Apple's prices for higher education are quite reasonable, especially compared to low end Sun-Solaris-Sparc. What say you?

    --Paul