Hopefully this looks a little better.
Solaris to Redhat Linux comparison
1: Lower Hardware costs.
Special & higher grade hardware can be purchased at a lower cost with an Intel server. (i.e. Hardware raid, Multiple processors, more harddrive space, video encoding cards, & more memory)
2: While a numer of 3rd party software is not avaiable on Linux the following are needed that are not available on Solaris. (i.e. Ncpmount * Allows connections to Netware, Smbmount * Allows connections to Windows, & Wine - Windows emulation. (Wine is available on x86 Solaris but not Sparc & Sharity lite is avaiable on non linux systems but smbmount isn't available.) Sharity Lite does allow for Solaris to connect to windows shares but I think the code has stagnated. Can anyone confirm?
3: Software packages like Bash, Openssh, Perl, Gcc, Apache... are available for Solaris in an easy to install pkgadd format but Sun doesn't offer support for these packages as part of there normal OS support. Also a number of packages on sunfreeware are not the latest. For example Apache is currently at 1.3.23 but on sunfreeware it is at 1.3.12. The Redhat Linux apache rpm is at 1.3.22. This makes it easier to reduce the complexity in maintaining a system. While compiling from source is necessary at times it adds complexity.
4: Lowered software costs.
Other products like Cold Fusion, Pkzip, & ChiliASP cost more on Solaris. This is typical across the industry for most software on Solaris. As a counter argument a large number of packages that are available on Solaris are not available on Linux. But that is quickly changing. Arcims for example will not work on Linux but the next release will be supported.
5: Simple server recovery.
A Linux server can be recovered quickly using cd recovery software (mkcdrec from sourceforge). This eliminates the need to do a complete reinstall of Linux and reconfigure any special software. Recovery time will vary from 30 to 60 minutes and cd images are created nightly. Mkcdrec allows for you to build an iso image of your server that can be burnt to a cd. Then you boot the server off the cd and it will rebuild all the partitions and make the system bootable. The bottom line is to enpower a lesser experieced Administrator to quickly recover a server if I'm gone on vacation.
Ghost cannot be used on Sun hardware.
I'm having trouble trying to pull up an example. If I can't find a valid example I'll remove this point.
6: Some of the software we use requires numerous dependencies that are not always available in pkgadd format. While this can also be true of rpm it's much less of a problem.
7: Reduced downtime with updating Linux.
Linux only requires downtime for a kernel patchs. All other patches can be installed without bringing the server down. Security related patches are applied automatically.
While the same applies to Solaris Sun recommends bringing down Solaris when applying there cluster patches.
8: Additional drawbacks to Solaris.
Your forced to install a resource hungry graphical user interface. X can be disabled but eliminates the ability to use multiple shell sessions.
Performance-wise, SPARC chips cost orders of magnitude more than Intel chips. (I can buy a
brand-new Athlon 1.33Ghz chip for somewhere around $150, while it costs
something like $15K to upgrade a middle-range Sun box with another CPU -
more or less depending on your relationship with your Sun vendor.)
Insecure Telnet is installed by default. While an effective Administrator should not install what is not needed but not everyone is an effective Administrator. As a standard Telnet should be going away in favor of Secure Shell.
On Solaris 7 and below insecure root access to ftp was allowed. This was finally fixed in Solaris 8 but only under pressure from customers. The reason why I included this is it is another example of how Sun is slow to react to changes. This relates to the telnet example above.
Login passwords are limited to 8 characters. Even if you set the password to "thispasswordislong" Solaris will only allow you to login with "thispass". This allows for reduced time on brute force password crackers. This applies to Telnet, FTP, Secure Shell, and anything else that relies on the Solaris login facility.I was able to do a brute force crack on my shadow password file some time ago and was able to crack my password within 20 minutes. The password to 9 charactors long and had two numbers in it. But the last number was at the end of the password. All our new passwords have more random numbers and letters to help alleviate this but in practice a very powerful PC could crack a shadow password file quickly.
New Sun servers come with non standard keyboard and mouse connectors. Two 280Rs we have need a special USB adaptor, another two E250s need a special vga adaptor, and the remaining E450 uses a proprietary Sun connector. All of our Intel Compaq servers relies on industry standard PS2 keyboard and mouse connections controlled through a central switchbox. We do have a KVM switch that is geared for Sun servers but we still need the adaptors for everything except the E450.
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