I've updated this one to include a couple other things.
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)
On our Sun hardware upgrades previous management has required us to contract an outside vendor to perform the upgrades even though we our fully capable of doing all hardware upgrades. This seems like a double standard since were not required to do this on the Intel servers. This drives the cost up.
2: Some specialized software is only available on Redhat Linux while not available on Solaris.
. (i.e. Ncpmount * Allows connections to Netware, Smbmount * Allows connections to Windows, & Wine - Windows emulation (Winzip for making Windows executables))
3: Standard industry software is packaged & supported by Redhat that reduces the complexity, maintenance, & time for building & maintaining a server. (i.e. Bash, Openssh, Perl, Gcc, Apache...)
For Solaris these must be downloaded from a 3rd party Sun site. Not only are they unsupported by Sun but they are typically out of date.
4: Lower 3rd party software costs.
Other products like Cold Fusion, Pkzip, & ChiliASP cost more on Solaris. This is typical across the industry for most software on Solaris.
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.
A Solaris recovery could take anywhere from several hours to several days depending on the severity of the problem & the complexity of the server. If our main web server was hacked then a complete rebuild would be necessary. Backups couldn't be considered reliable. Ghost cannot be used on Sun hardware.
6: Installing the updated versions of widely used software packages requires numerous dependencies complicating the install on Solaris. Redhat regularly updates these packages and others in an easy to install rpm format.
(i.e. Bind, Apache, Sendmail, Samba, Perl, Openssh, Openssl, & others)
7: Lower downtime with updating Redhat Linux.
Redhat Linux only requires downtime for a kernel update. All other updates can be automatically installed without bringing the server down. Kernel updates haven't been needed on any of our Linux installs.
Sun recommends bringing down Solaris for patching. This is a manual process that requires downtime.
8: Additional drawbacks to Solaris.
Your forced to install a resource hungry graphical user interface.
Resource intensive applications that rely heavily on the CPU perform poorly on Solaris. Arcims is an example.
We typically use software raid on Sun servers. This increases the load on the CPU and the complexity of setting up a server. Compaq hardware Raid has a Smartstart cd for graphically configuring the Raid arrays.
Insecure Telnet is installed by default.
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.
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.
Solaris is a closed source operating system. Developers typically use Linux for developing new applications. Solaris ports and updates are becoming more and more infrequent.
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.
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