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Jas
Asked: 2010-08-12 05:35:42 +0800 CST

solaris vs linux for production servers (many servers like tens in a cluster)

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which os should I choose solaris or linux if linux which distribution? i want to deploy my java app on production servers in a cluster on tens of servers... can someone tell me what are the key points I should compare between the 2 os? which os should I choose and why?

linux unix sunos

6 Answers

  1. Pick:

    1) what you (or your sysadmin) is familiar with. Keeping a cluster up is a lot of work even when you know what you're doing; tossing in a large learning curve will just mean more work.

    2) something that can autodeploy the entire OS and build to a machine. Debian's FAI or RedHat's Kickstart or something; you don't want to have to hand-install that many machines.

    3) something with a good sized userbase so that someone else has done all of this before and you can draw on their knowledge via the documenation/wiki/howto's.

    Personally, I've been using Debian since around '94 or '95, so FAI was the natural choice for me. With the advent of virtualization and cloud computing, these days I might go with a Eucalyptus cluster so I could failover to AWS if necessary.

    If given the choice, however, I'd take the lazy route and let someone else do all the work... are you sure it's not cheaper to deploy onto AWS or some other app-hosting provider?

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  2. Best Answer

    The key advantage of Solaris is mature support for ZFS storage, which, among other things, can increase your IOPS dramatically by providing a means to cache reads (L2ARC) and writes (ZIL) using enterprise SSDs. It sounds like this could be highly relevant to your situation.

    The key advantage of Linux is mature support for practically everything else.

    Of course, no one is stopping you from building your iSCSI storage servers on OpenSolaris(*) and your web servers on Linux.

    (* or OpenIndiana, or Nexenta)

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  3. In my personal 10 year experience as sysadmin, use what everyone uses.

    If you go with Solaris route, you will get more features, but it will be harder to find solutions online or find proficient staff which can handle problems.

    If you go with linux, go with basic debian host and install what you need with apt-get. That way you won't install unneeded software, get more security and more memory for your cluster.

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  4. Solaris is suited for many many tasks, but I believe that damir is right. Unless you are an experienced, old-school sysadmin with a hard on for sun, I would stick to centos (or ubuntu if you so please) because finding support is so much easier.

    That being said, I'm an opensolaris advocate and still would recommend most people go the linux route for things that have to go straight into production.

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  5. Your best choice would be Debian with Apache Tomcat.

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  6. The greatest benefit of Solaris is the SPARC CPU that is based on the RISC architecture. The environment that you support weighs heavily on which to choose. Are you supporting 200 users or 50000 users... Database, app, mail ---- I worked in the telecommunications industry from 1994 to 2006 and was fortunate to be in an environment that was supporting the internet explosion.... LITERALLY !! Only mainframe and RISC based cpu would suffice due to the vast amount of data and network traffic. AIX - HP-UX - Solaris .... When Linux was implemented it was for web based front end systems to replace Windows. Back end systems are still RISC or Mainframe ---- Believe it or not -- The processing power between x64/x86 and RISC cpu's is vast... So if you are a true mass enterprise, Verizon, AT&T, Wall ST, and others -- Only RISC wull do for back end processing.... And enterprise companies save significant sums because electric power consumption is reduced due to SPARC cpu's can handle far greater loads than x64/x86. Now in 2010 Linux (all flavors) has made great strides however it really depends on your environment ******** Solaris SPARC systems are expensive on the front end - But Licensing is cheap and Most administratice software is free..... If you work in a shop that can afford to spend 20k to 40k for servers then choose Sun. You may also want to go on Ebay and purcgase a Sun v490 and setup a test environment against Linux.... Remember Solaris SPARC is not OpenSolaris - However both are free....

    Good Luck all,,,, Steven

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