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First National Bank of Omaha throws Sun Out

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the penguin-is-in dept.

Grifter writes " First National Bank of Omaha said this week that it's nearing completion of a complete changeout of its distributed server infrastructure for a mainframe and blade-server architecture based on Linux. While only 80% complete, the move is already expected to save the company $1.8 million this year in operating expenses and another $9.6 million through 2011." More proof that banks know how to save money.

2 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. FNBO by two_socks · · Score: 3, Informative

    I worked at FNBO for a number of years - the thing that impressed me most about them was the consistent high quality of everything IT there.

    I went through the rollout of a few software packages, and they always "just worked" right out of the gate. The uptime on all of the systems was just as impressive.

    --
    I can't help it - I'm a 19D.
  2. Re:Convert, but have to fight the sun engineers by nathanh · · Score: 2, Informative
    When you get into the lets buy Linux servers the sun engineers are quick to tout that the sun servers are better and every other excuse in the world.

    The Sun servers are pretty good.

    • Hotswap PSU, hotswap Ultra320, hotswap CPU, hotswap blades, hotswap memory, hotswap PCI-X.
    • LOM standard on every device, ethernet and serial varieties, remote poweron and off.
    • Binary compatibility from a single-CPU Netra all the way up to a 100+ CPU mainframe.
    • Automatic detection and disabling (without downtime) of faulty CPU, DIMM, etc.
    • Dynamic domains on the big iron, including partitioning of CPU and memory.
    • Extensive capacities for hardware expansion from even the cheapest chassis.
    • Enterprise management software; monitor 1000s of servers for hardware failures, capacity limits, etc.

    Sure, none of that says desktop, but in big computing centres those Sun server features are pretty damn useful.

    There are no official "Linux Engineers" in the company so our counter arguements are always brushed off like we dont know anything.

    Well, maybe you're thinking about the problem in a different way. You're thinking about the software. They're thinking about the hardware. It isn't the case that you don't know anything, but rather that you're focussed on problems that they don't think are important.

    For what it's worth, I don't work for Sun. I think Linux is superb. I've been running Linux exclusively as my desktop for 13 years now. I even run Linux on this Apple PowerBook; no dualboot, just Linux. But I'm not so blinded as to ignore Sun servers and Solaris. They're both good too. There are some situations where I would never recommend Linux.