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Message Posted: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 @ 22:21:18 GMT


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Subj:		Re: Linux and Teradata

From:		Charles Farley

Hi again-

I'll try to be intelligent in my responses here, I haven't read all of the DHBrown report, just a bit of it. So, correct me if I'm wrong...

--- Jose Lora wrote:

HP is a leading supplier of commercial UNIX solutions. HP-UX 11i is the latest release of their UNIX operating system.

I agree, HP makes a good product, just not my favorite, and not the favorite of a lot of real world IT people I know.

Today, the industry views Linux to possess RAS (Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability) deficiencies, which prevent it from being used as the foundation for business critical applications such as Data Warehousing. The Open Linux community, with the help of some major system vendors, is taking steps to evolve Linux into an enterprise class operating system. If and when this is accomplished, and the market demands it, Teradata will be made available on Linux.

I will like this, but I agree that Linux has some growing to do. This is where the gauntlet gets thrown to the vendors who "want" to see Linux as a industrial strength OS: If you see places for improvement, and you support Open Source initiatives, then MAKE the changes.... opens Source functions on the idea of someone seeing a better way and making that improvement, for everyone to use. Linux is NOT going to be allowed to go proprietary, and it is not going away, why not go after it early and get in and accepted as a force with Linux?

Teradata's architecture and implementation readily enable porting to other operating systems. Through its single source base and advanced IA64 enabling, Teradata is well positioned to deliver on its Open OS Strategy

I agree and can't wait to see what it will allow me to run Teradata on.

Linux support by the Teradata Client and Utilities is in development. NCR is continually extending the reach of Teradata by providing seamless client access to and from Teradata from standard and emerging operating environments such as Linux.

I await these eagerly.

Until recently, HP-UX was only available for its own or OEM'd PA-RISC based systems. HP-UX now supports the Intel architecture (IA), effective with Intel's release of the Itanium Processor Family, or IPF (64-bit). HP in fact was co-developer of IPF with Intel Corporation. As such, HP-UX should benefit (e.g. optimization) from HP's intimate knowledge of IPF. HP-UX does not and will not support IA32.

I see no reason that they should, but I do see HP being in the same position here as Sun is, and we know what happened in that storybook...

When speaking of or considering an enterprise class UNIX operating system, most industry analysts rank HP's HP-UX, Sun's Solaris and IBM's AIX as the leaders.

This is true, but I can also show you a number of analysts that will rank Win2K over [your favorite *nix Os here], I've seen that far too often to buy the analysts ideas of what is good for me or anyone else.

In a recent DH Brown report ("HP Renews Focus on UNIX for Web Application Infrastructures", September 2000), HP-UX was rated superior to both Sun Solaris 8 and IBM AIX 4.3.3 in Reliability and Scalability, critical areas for business-critical Data Warehousing.

I will give you that HP-UX took this competition, but again, the competiton was Hp-UX, Tru64, Solaris8, and UnixWare7.1.1 and AIX. I didn't see *BSD or Linux in there anywhere. I would advise a quick trip over to the NEtcraft site for some up-to-date stats as to who is running what. On Intel platforms, you will see that the top uptimes and most traffic are run through FreeBSD system, and with good reason, this system is designed to run on Intel, faster and cleaner than any other Intel based OS. You can run specific test with apps where a given app is faster on this or that, but the facts are that FreeBSD is a faster OS, with better memory management and better structure (unfettered by a lot of the crud in some prop. Oses), than many out on the market today. Go ahead, setup two identical boxes, tweak them both, the FreeBSD box (if the playing field is fair) will beat the other OS. It's stable and has a tremendous history.

I won't stay on that point, it's not germaine (sp?), but I will say that second to *BSD on Netcraft are Linux and Solaris. HP makes a fine product, and it works well for many things, but I see issues here (as I do for Sun on IA64), and I think that any vendor, when asked to stack up their proprietary OS/chip against their Proprietary OS on a commodity chip, they will weigh in favor of their chip/OS any time in the lot. I don't blame them, there was a lot of money put into that development and production, why not make it the best of the heap?

Also, one final bit, relating to the above, HP-UX was tested on the PA-RISC box for the DHBrown study, this does not relate to the issues that may be seen when the port to Intel goes GA.

Jose, thank you for the information, there are some things here that I did not know and I agree with you on many of the points above, I thank you for your time and effort on this.

In the end, I still have my reservations about HP-UX, I have seen too many technical and support issues in our organization to consider it the best of breed.

The other part that was portrayed to me by my "source" is this: "Where else could NCR go? There are only so many vendors out there with a 64-bit Intel OS that are ready to go and work with Intel..."

I agree, but I still think they could have looked at more alternatives (if my source is right and NCR goes to HP-UX), I don't see the need to hang on to a proprietary OS that is a first port over to a new architecture. HP is very skilled and has great resources, I have no doubt that they will put out a good product, it just is not what I would have liked as an NCR customer. No offense to HP, these are my opinions, and no offense to NCR, they did what needed to be done. I just have my opinions and disagree with their direction. I hope to see more to this thread, I 'd really like to hear from anyone that really wants to see HP-UX running teradata, I'm curious about their ideas as to what might be better/worse.

Until then,

loadc


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