[ale] IBM to buy SUN?

Jeff Lightner jlightner at water.com
Thu Mar 19 11:26:17 EDT 2009


I think that is amusing to say "HP on the low end".   HP's big servers
are used in large data centers (we use them here,  Cisco uses them,  and
a phone company I used to work for uses them.

 

In fact for "low end" (read application servers as opposed to DB
servers) both Cisco and my current company moved to RedHat Linux.
Cisco did it on HP Intel systems and we did it here on Dell systems.
However in both places the DB servers continue to be on HP-UX.

 

So far as the current UNIX flavors go I prefer HP-UX by far over Solaris
and AIX.   However, to me UNIX is UNIX and even Linux is UNIX so I'm
happy with all of them and the preferences are just that.   Just don't
make me do Windoze.

 

Your comments about the Weather Channel are interesting.  I know you
were on the web side of the house.  I have a friend on the other side
who said they went to Solaris briefly but found it couldn't perform for
their needs and went back to HP-UX.   That was a year or so ago.  Not
sure what they're doing these days but assume they still have the HP-UX
systems.

 

________________________________

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
Jerald Sheets
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2009 10:50 AM
To: ale at ale.org
Subject: Re: [ale] IBM to buy SUN?

 

I don't think AIX would be dumped any time soon.  

They have a LOT of things built in for government clients (like triple
authentication and such) that were built specifically for agencies that
I can guarantee you won't be changing any time soon.  (although I can't
tell you why)  ;)


Also, think about the medical market.  Generally speaking, the medical
market does AIX for mid-range and HP for lower-end.  (superdome
notwithstanding).  Most off the big guys out there (Cerner, Lawson,
McKesson) generally support AIX & HP and only grudgingly support Solaris
(unless that changed within the last 4 years or so.  I left healthcare
in 2005)

>From a personal preferences perspective, I like AIX over Solaris because
it was my first commercial UNIX, my first UNIX classes, my first
consulting UNIX, and then Redhat followed close behind.  (I had used
Slack previously)  Right as I stopped using AIX, they were at 5.2L and
had a very nice method of handling the FOSS stuff.  Add Bull Freeware
and UWA to that, and you've got a nice set of tools.  Anything you don't
have, though, just go to the LInux world and roll your own.  

>From what I saw in my time at The Weather Channel, you should be able to
build much more resilient hardware solutions for serving of enterprise
apps over Linux/Oracle or Linux/Mysql (clustered or replicated) {Hi
Sid!} that can handle MUCH more capacity and processing need than you
can get with standard mid-range gear.  (since I'm from an IBM
background, I think S70, S80, P690, etc. when I say that)

There is *nothing* in the medical space that requires the IBM or HP or
Sun gear, but the medical establishment is doing "one source purchasing"
and wants things with contracts and maintenance and frankly, the Cerners
and Lawsons of the world aren't yet going toward Linux in a big way yet,
only (from what I've heard) is McKesson trying to get into some of that.

If I had my druthers, I'd rather keep AIX, but like vi vs emacs, that's
an argument that'll be around a lot longer than either of those OSes
will be in their current respective forms.

--j




On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 9:50 AM, Jeff Lightner <jlightner at water.com>
wrote:

We have two SCO boxes here but they are running in Legacy mode.  On one
I don't think anyone but me has logged in for the last 4+ years and the
other one they've told me I can decommission.

It's a shame.  SCO UNIX (especially after 3.2.4.2) was a rather good
UNIX implementation for PCs.   Part of its beauty was they only sold the
OS so worked hard to insure they worked on a variety of hardware.  The
evil powers that later took them over and pretended they owned Linux
source code gave them a really bad name.


-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Mike
Harrison
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2009 9:02 AM
To: ale at ale.org
Subject: Re: [ale] IBM to buy SUN?

> On a related note, it appears that another UNIX OS will eventually
join
> SCO in the tarpit.  Killed by linux?  I can't see IBM keeping both AIX

> and Solaris.

At least I actually know people who use AIX and Solaris in production at

real businesses. I haven't seen a SCO machine in a while.. Except for
one
running a local medical practice (green screens on serial terms).
Their "upgrade" is RedHat and a web browser interface.

I even did some DB2 on Linux a few years ago, ran well
and there are lots of weird custom business things that
use it, love it.

I'll contend IBM will support them as long as there are paying
customers.
Maybe they will merge the two into a new future OS: SolarAIX,
SlowlarAIX..
SIX, SAIX .. the possible acronomyms are endless..

Overall, it might be a good thing for the FOSS community if they
continue
their combined support for it.





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-- 
---
Jerald M. Sheets jr.

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