[pca] Missing sconadm on Solaris 10 1/13

[Lee, Jarrett]

I wouldn't go so far as to call Linux junk, but I certainly understand the difference between Solaris and Linux. The big thing folks have to understand with Linux is that you don't run one big, reliable box. You run scores of smaller machines, usually virtual, and have it so scaled out that you can lose several nodes and not care. This also requires excellent configuration management tools and practices and heavy automation in addition to an application that supports being scaled out in that manner. Solaris, on the other hand, you can have a few really good and solid boxes and not have to worry about it as much.

Someone mentioned OEL/OVM earlier in the thread. Please let my pain convince you to avoid it at all costs! OVM just does not work. It's unbelievably buggy and we have several OVM Servers, virtual hosts, that will randomly fall off and reboot themselves. The VMs will boot up on another node automatically, but they're cold booting rather than continuing to be up. OEL is also nothing special. It is a recompile of RedHat with a slightly newer kernel that is tuned for IO. Unfortunately, most of the hardware vendors out there seem to lack support for OEL and force you to use the RH compatible kernel instead of the UEK kernel. Also, while the OEL product itself isn't bad, Oracle's support for it is atrocious.

Bottom line, if you're going Linux, go self-supported CentOS or RedHat on VMware. It's more stable and reliable at the VM host layer and you're either getting the OS for free or you're paying for decent support. Our shop is OEL on physical and Solaris 10 migrating to OEL on OVM and it's painful because of the issues with OVM and the lack of decent support on OEL. We are keeping a few Solaris boxes around for a few things and I'm grateful for those few.

One more thing, there is rollback capability, LVM snapshots, it's just a much more manual process, so pick your pain. Either go through the painful Solaris patching, where packages and patches are two entirely different things, but there's easy rollback or the easy Linux patching with rough rollback.


Thanks,
Jarrett


Jarrett Lee
CedarCrestone, Inc.
UNIX Administrator, Server Technologies
Managed Services
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From: pca-bounces at lists.univie.ac.at [mailto:pca-bounces at lists.univie.ac.at] On Behalf Of Jeremy Loukinas
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2013 10:02 AM
To: PCA (Patch Check Advanced) Discussion
Subject: Re: [pca] Missing sconadm on Solaris 10 1/13

Solaris 11 is a much better alternative for a number of reasons. I work for a large organization that has 1000's of Redhat / Suse linux servers. Managing them is a mess, yes they are easier to patch yum update etc.. but with Solaris 11 you have pkg update? It couldn't be easier.

Suse and redhat just got finished racking us over the coals for our "free" linux to the tune of about $500,000.

The trick with Linux is you have no rollback capability if your patches go to shit like you have with solaris live upgrade.

Linux is junk meant for running startup dot coms in someone's basement.

On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Glen Gunselman <ggunselm at emporia.edu<mailto:ggunselm at emporia.edu>> wrote:
It is my understanding that Red Hat is not as generous as they once were.

I will be surprised if I use Solaris 11 in any significant way.  It looks like we are moving in an x86/Linux/VMware direction.

Have you looked at OEL/OVM? (very off topic - but it is Friday :) )

Have a good weekend,
GlenG

-----Original Message-----
From: pca-bounces at lists.univie.ac.at<mailto:pca-bounces at lists.univie.ac.at> [mailto:pca-bounces at lists.univie.ac.at<mailto:pca-bounces at lists.univie.ac.at>] On Behalf Of Martin Paul
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2013 3:22 AM
To: PCA (Patch Check Advanced) Discussion
Subject: Re: [pca] Missing sconadm on Solaris 10 1/13

Am 21.03.2013 17<tel:21.03.2013%2017>:48, schrieb francis picabia:
> The strange thing is, I had this misplaced optimism that Ian Murdock
> would fix Sun's wacky series of patch tools with something fast and
> robust like dpkg or pkg-get.  I was totally wrong.

To be fair, they kind of did that in Solaris 11 (IPS/pkg).

Unfortunately I will never use that - for us, the next Solaris version
after 10 will most probably not be 11, but "Red Hat".

Martin.


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