System News for Sun Users - The Blog

Linux loyalist Real Time Matrix decided to make the change to the Solaris 10 Operating System (Solaris OS) since it provided them with significantly better throughput.

A head-to-head competition pitting the Fedora Linux distribution, which the company uses for production, against Solaris 10 OS proved Sun’s OS had 50 times the throughput.

Real Time Matrix Founder and CEO Jeff Whitehead told SearchEnterpriseLinux.com’s Megan Santosus that his company processes up to 2 million new RSS and XML articles per day through its data service and 15 million Web requests per month for other services.

“On a 64-bit AMD processor and Fedora, we could process approximately 200 matches per second of RSS,” Whitehead said. “With Solaris 10 on the (Sun Fire) T1000, this match rate jumped to 10,000 per second.”

After the head-to-head comparison, Real Time Matrix recompiled its software to run on the Solaris OS.”We were nervous about moving to Solaris,” Whitehead said. However, he reports that it was surprising how easy the OS was to use.

“Developers needed to learn some new shell commands. They also needed to clean up some loose practices with security,” Whitehead said. “The benefits have been worth the learning curve. We invest most of the time [in] tuning and preventive maintenance.”

Real Time Matrix now uses one Sun Fire T1000 Server, a pair of Sun Fire T2000 Servers, and one Sun StorageTek 5220 NAS Appliance for all the company’s data processing, which includes its custom matching service and re-broadcasting engine. The company still runs Linux on standalone boxes.

Read all the details on how and why this die-hard Linux shop has embraced Solaris OS at SearchEnterpriseLinux.com.

So you still think Linux is less expensive than the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS)? Even for web infrastructure? Well, Sun’s Robin Goldfarb has a few basic points she’d like you to consider:

Basic Linux vs. Solaris

Example #1: A study by Crimson Consulting Group highlights why Solaris OS is actually more cost effective then Linux. When doing a cost analysis, you must compare all costs including acquisition, support, implementation and administration. Solaris OS comes out ahead, and this is even without considering OpenSolaris.

Example #2: UNIX Author Paul Murphy explains why SWaP (Space, Watts and Power) impacts the cost of the Solaris OS.

Example #3: Now consider OpenSolaris vs. Linux

Example #4: With x86 platforms, the Solaris x86 is priced competitively with other choices, like Linux, Windows, etc.

Web Infrastructure

Example #5: “…once you’ve accepted that the costs can be the same or lower than Linux,” Goldfarb writes, “you must also include the benefits of using Solaris over Linux for your web infrastructure.” She lists the following Sun references to demonstrate:

• Why use Solaris 10 for your web infrastructure.
• SAMP and More SAMP
• Sun’s MySQL Acquisition
• Sun Startup Essentials offers deep discounts on hardware, storage and hosting, as well as free software and services for startups.

Sun Vice President of xVM Steve Wilson says Sun will soon be introducing software and hardware to create “virtual” Windows and Linux personal computers that can be accessed via desktop machines, laptops and cell phones.

In an interview with Reuters, Wilson explained that companies will be able to host the PCs on server computers at data centers using Sun software, which will allow access via a $200 desktop hardware package that includes a monitor - all offered by Sun.

“It gives you instant access anywhere,” Wilson said. “We are going to announce (it) soon.”