An IT Manager’s Strategy Guide to Solaris

“The kernel of the issue seems to be whether you want to use the
features provided by the Linux kernel or the Solaris kernel. A few
things quickly come to mind when thinking about each:

“Solaris gives us DTrace and ZFS. Linux provides GFS, DRBD and
many options for high availability. Not strictly kernel-related,
but requiring the set of tools that Linux has; Red Hat is also
developing oVirt, which is basically a VMware ESX replacement. Both
Red Hat and SUSE have their cluster services offerings, but so does
Sun, in a much more limited capacity.

“Alright, we aren’t going to get anywhere by comparing features.
Linux definitely has more choice, but Solaris still has benefits.
If you want an extremely high performance and high capacity NAS
device, the Sun x4500 series (AKA Thumper and Thor) is where it’s
at right now. Because of ZFS, the throughput on these is stunning.
Linux can’t touch its performance without something like ZFS,
and your only other option is a NetApp. I bring this up because at
my day job, we’re running three Thumpers. We frequently yearn
for DRBD and other Linux technologies to build services that are
more resilient without resorting to Sun Cluster, but running Linux
on these is out of the question.”

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