Networker

Re: [Networker] Linux vs. Solaris

2007-03-08 06:36:32
Subject: Re: [Networker] Linux vs. Solaris
From: Adrian Saul <asaul AT HOME-BOX.ODS DOT ORG>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 22:33:02 +1100
We run a shop comprising a something like 17 NSR servers (down from many more though) with some several hundred clients. The majority are dedicated NSR servers running RHEL3 going to RHEL4, but there are Solaris, Tru64 and HPUX ones in there as well which are standalone or support a few related applications. In general the only time the non-Linux servers give us issues is from hardware failure.

The biggest pain we have is not Networker itself, but the Linux platform and mostly around device management and drivers. Things like zoning in and out libraries, drives and storage pretty much require reboots to be sure devices wont change order on the next reboot, which has happened a number of times to the unwary. Not terribly hard to take care of when you are aware of it, but painful when you know cfgadm can take care of it easily in Solaris without the hassle.

The other aspect is getting meaningful debugging. We have linux boxes acting as AFTD storage nodes that have performance issues with their storage. Simple things like reliable iostat output are a tall order. Error messages which are either missing, abrupt and require manual decoding also hamper diagnosing device issues. RH support isnt much help either - on occasions we were talking to people who didnt know what a SAN was.

There were random hangs of our SAN based /nsr filesystems caused by someone running "changers". In diagnosing that we installed a different driver for the NICs to get netdumps, which caused certain Tru64 clients to hang the NSR server with stuck sockets. We couldnt do disk dumps because the driver to support that on our SCSI controller hung the box on boot.

Why Linux then? Its one of our "strategic" platforms and cost based. A reboot here and some nashing of teeth there by the admins doesnt amount to much of an argument against the counting of beans.

Disclaimer: yes, I am unashamedly pro-Solaris, but if linux didnt cause us trouble I would not have cared... :)



Stan Horwitz wrote:
Can someone point me to any documentation that compares the features of the NetWorker server for Linux vs. Solaris? I am trying to convince some people that migrating our NetWorker server from Solaris to Linux is not in my employer's best interest.

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