On Wed, Oct 26, 2005 at 11:59:44AM +1000, Guang Yu Liu wrote:
>       I know there were some debates before regarding OS choices for NBU
> but I'd like to ask one particular question. This was coming from an
> external consultant.
>       Background: I am a Unix guys so normally are biased towards
> stability/flexibility etc of *nix. But the consultant told us that since
> backups are mainly using I/Os, the buses should be an important deciding
> factor as well. He went out and found that even the most expensive of Sun
> servers tend to have PCI buses with 66MHZ only (most with 33MHZ) and most of
> the Intel boxes have 133MHZ PCI buses. He strongly suggested that we pick
> Windows for that.

Find another consultant.  Seriously, if he's basing his recommendation
on specs rather than reality, replace him.

Solaris systems have better throughput capabilities than Windows systems
and will cause you MUCH less headache to administer.  The Windows I/O
subsystem isn't that great and recommendations from people who have
worked with both always say to run Solaris and not Windows.

We've got one of each.  As soon as our budget dollars allow it, we'll
toss that Windows media server and replace it with another Sun box.

Whenever we need to do any work on our tape drives or the fiber-scsi
bridges, we need to reboot the Windows media server.  The last time we
added tape drives, I think it was 3 reboots before they were ready to be
used.  The Sun systems never need rebooting for any Netbackup
maintenance.

        .../Ed

-- 
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org