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Hi there,

I wonder if there is a study freely available that compares AIX and
Solaris in a high performance computing environment. I understand that
this can't replace considering my own needs in the decision process but
might be helpful to see what others had chosen as criteria. I searched
the internet but whilst it is full of studies comparing windows and
linux (there is even one of IBM that compares Windows, Linux and Solaris
but has no word for AIX) I found nothing helpful regarding AIX.
To be more objective I (AIX admin) took a one week administration course
on Solaris but was stunned by the fact that there is still a commercial
unix system that comes without a lvm (just to give one example). So I'm
afraid I did not find the real advantage behind the Solaris thing.
Does anyone know of a comparison study between the two of os's?

Patrick

PS: I don't like trolls in this thread. I'm in the process of making a
business decision and have no use for crusaders. PA

Patrick wrote:
> I wonder if there is a study freely available that compares AIX and
> Solaris in a high performance computing environment. I understand that
> this can't replace considering my own needs in the decision process but
> might be helpful to see what others had chosen as criteria. I searched
> the internet but whilst it is full of studies comparing windows and
> linux (there is even one of IBM that compares Windows, Linux and Solaris
> but has no word for AIX) I found nothing helpful regarding AIX.

If you're looking for some numbers, a rough comparison can
be gained from http://www.spec.org The hard thing here is
to find machines with similar specifications/hardware ;-)

> To be more objective I (AIX admin) took a one week administration course
> on Solaris but was stunned by the fact that there is still a commercial
> unix system that comes without a lvm (just to give one example).

Then you wasted your money on a course that didn't even
cover the basics of Solaris. Solaris has a built-in LVM.
It's called SDS (Solstice Disk Suite) or in more recent
Solaris versions SVM (Solaris Volume Manager).

> So I'm
> afraid I did not find the real advantage behind the Solaris thing.
> Does anyone know of a comparison study between the two of os's?

Maybe it'll be helpful to know what you're trying to achieve.
I agree, that it's hard to decide between AIX and Solaris,
even if you know all facts. Imagin how hard it is to answer
such a question on a vague description like "HPC". Maybe
someone around here already did what you're trying to do
and is willing to share the gained experience.
If you're going to spent some big $$$, there's always the
chance that the competing companies will give you access to
a (smaller) test environment, where you can compare the re-
sults.

> PS: I don't like trolls in this thread. I'm in the process of making a
> business decision and have no use for crusaders. PA

Well in that case you're wrong in the news world, because
there'll always be trolls ;-)

Regards,

Frank

Frank Fegert wrote:

> If you're looking for some numbers, a rough comparison can
> be gained from http://www.spec.org The hard thing here is
> to find machines with similar specifications/hardware ;-)

This is not really what I wanted. We did some performance tests with the
target application ourselfs and have good compareable results. But, you
know, managers want facts that decide what platform might be better and
you have Solaris Admins that tell you AIX is "oooold schooool" and you
have the AIX admins that tell you Solaris is nothing but a good
marketing concept. What I'm looking for is a "manager-compatible"
comparison. Something like a feature listing that shows the
corresponding concepts and their pretended advantage as a basis for my
own decision.


>
> Then you wasted your money on a course that didn't even
> cover the basics of Solaris. Solaris has a built-in LVM.
> It's called SDS (Solstice Disk Suite) or in more recent
> Solaris versions SVM (Solaris Volume Manager).

Aehm, I know of SVM but can't decide yet if I want to call _that_ a lvm.
When it comes to the basic filesystems (/, /var etc.) you are bound to
hard partitions. You might mirror them under SVM, too, but if you want
to expand the basic system environment under AIX just add a disk, expand
rootvg and things are done - in Solaris you are dealing with expanding
hard partitions what is much more uncomfortable. But OK, strictly
speaking it's kind of a lvm.

> Maybe it'll be helpful to know what you're trying to achieve.
> I agree, that it's hard to decide between AIX and Solaris,
> even if you know all facts. Imagin how hard it is to answer
> such a question on a vague description like "HPC". Maybe

I agree, that this is a very complicated and delicate process made not
easier by the fact that politics play a role as well. But I wanted to
try everything to gain any information available.

Patrick