I am currently gathering information for a presentation contrasting the pros and cons of various server platforms in comparison to our current one (NT 4 Server) I could really use a little input from some real Solaris users. Any thoughts you might have would be helpful. Thanks

Solaris has stabilty and the price is right, it's free on computers with less than 8 processors and a certin amount of computers , in these areas it kicks windows ass. but NT has the ease of use but from what I have seen it is far less stable and costs much more. Hardware would REALLY be another thing to consider, Solaris is picky when it comes to certin Video cards (if you really need to use X windows)If I were you I would go with solaris but like I said there is a very strong learning curve if you have no UNIX experience, Hope this helps. Vi Guy

This is fairly a large and sensitive subject. I suggest you look at http://www.unix-vs-nt.org/kirch/ for a comprehensive view of the subject. Anyway, these are some of the points in the article that stand out. 1) Performance: UNIX rules as a server platform and on mission-critical environments, especially where extreme performance and reliability are critical. Windows NT/2000 is best suited for small to average businesses that do not run mission critical processes. Rationale behind: BSODs are a fact of life (if you don't know what this means, its Blue Screen Of Death, those cryptic error messages with a blue background that appears when NT crashes). You can't afford to crash when millions of dollars of revenues are lost due to an hour of downtime or worse yet, when people's lives are at stake i.e. computers that control space stations. 2) Cost: A licensed 50-user version of NT server costs about $4,799, while you can freely download a full-blown version of Solaris that supports tens of thousands of simultaneous users. Or you can obtain the CD media for just $75 - a price that Bill Gates find difficult to beat! Traditionally, UNIX really has a steep learning curve but that has changed bit with the introduction of the Common Desktop Environment or CDE. Now you can administer the system with ease as you would with an NT system. As a conclusion, I don't see any reason why one should not switch over to Solaris or any UNIX system for that matter. As for the hardware issues, clearly the benefits far outweigh the costs of upgrading your hardware. Notwithstanding the dropping price of PC hardware these days. Remember Solaris not only runs on high-end SPARC architecture but on off-the shelf PCs as well. -xynopsis ---- "Of course Unix is a user-friendly OS, it is just very picky about its friends!"

OK Ok, I've been reading a few post, and I've finally decided to respond to this one. Bottom line...choose Solaris! I wont verbate what was already said, but there are many reasons one would opt for Solaris over NT. One of which you guys failed to mention... Architecture. Windows NT is built to perform on the Intel Architecture (Alpha support was dropped as of WIn 2k). The Intel Architecture is bottom line only suitable for a relitivly small amount of load. What about the fact that hot swap is just not available? I recently purchased a new Sun 4800 with the new Fireplane interconnect a 1TB T3 disk subsystem, 9.6GB/sec sustained transfer rates...can you possibly see a NT machine do this? Does Bill know what dynamic reconfiguration mean? I'll explain...I can rip (literally) out processors, memory, drives, power cables from my Sun (SPARC...I dont really consider X86 Sols as enterprise class Solaris) and still the system runs...the 600gig Oracle database didnt even hic-up. On the downswing however, SPARC power comes at a preminum. The hardware is very pricy..while you can get a hooked up dell for about 8grand, a PCI FC network adapter under SPARC cost a cool $2000. The system I described was only short of 1 million bucks (got a great discount on leasing though) Got Root? Wanna be cool? `kill -9 init`