Very Computer

Rather a vague topic I know, but I'm only looking for general (but
knowledgeable) opinions.

We need to get a large, highly scaleable Unix system for one of our clients
and the choice is down to a big Sparc running Solaris 2.3, or an
HP9000. I'm not to familiar with the various models or options that these
ranges provide but our requirements would indicate a very high-end model.

Do you have any pointers to comparative studies of these systems or have
you any advice/warnings which may be of help?

Personally, I'm tending towards HP due to the O/S's maturity and reputation.

Any input much appreciated,

Thanks.

This is simply not true, at least in the type of environment we're
running.  With a single developer running X and doing C++ development,
our HP 715 is _much_ slower than the equivalent setup on a Sun IPC,
which is a significantly older machine.  Add one more user, even
one not doing development, and the 715 becomes basically unusable.
The 735 is usable for 4 or 5 developers.

Of course, your interactive response tests on the machines may vary,
depending on what you're doing.  We have a huge, bloated pig of a
program.

I am _not_ promoting Sun, I've just found that some of the statements
made in Tony's post really aren't true in our particular environment.

Quote:>I would rather have an HP Fast-wide
>SCSI II striped array running at full speed on a machine that could
>process the data like the HP735 any day!

Well, geez, who wouldn't, when you compare it to an HP 712 or even a
SPARCstation 10?  But the 735 is not a $4K machine.  (And the SS10 is
not Sun's high end.)

On the other hand, HP's high end appears to be (for our environment)
faster than Sun's high end.

Quote:>>Personally, I'm tending towards HP due to the O/S's maturity and reputation.

Maturity?  Reputation?  Hmmm...  If the only thing you're comparing
them to is Solaris 2, you're right.

Quote:>HP X doesn't crash.

It does.

Quote:>   Suns' X server crashes easily.

It does.  About as easily as HP's.

Quote:>  Some Sun programs
>won't even display remotely, since they aren't X!

Some HP programs also won't run remotely.  But there aren't as many
of those as the equivalent Sun programs.

Ever run HP's "RemoteWatch" and had it tell you that you couldn't run
the X display remotely?  Then wonder why it was named "RemoteWatch"?
--
Bryan Curnutt                                  Stoner Associates, Inc.

A big SPARC is the same as the low end HP, CPU speed, Disk I/O,
graphics, multi-user loading, etc...  The lowest price HP is the
Gecko (712) at $4K, which eats Suns for lunch!  Try them for yourself!

If a high end HP will be necessary, be sure to look at the upgrade
pattern for the two companies.  All HPs have an easy to remove
and upgrade processor board on a slot card.  We have upgraded our HP
machine twice without buying more peripherals.  Can you do this with
Sun?  Nope.

Quote:>ranges provide but our requirements would indicate a very high-end model.

High end does not mean high money!  SS10 == Gecko !!!  Really, we
benchmarked the two machines side by side.  Assuming you just want
to match performance, that is.  I would rather have an HP Fast-wide
SCSI II striped array running at full speed on a machine that could
process the data like the HP735 any day!

Quote:>Personally, I'm tending towards HP due to the O/S's maturity and reputation.

In a mixed network, HPs are an island of stability.

Sun users are not going to move to Solaris, according to Sun user
magazines.  Sun now has two alien operating systems that may or may
not re-merge, who knows?

HP X doesn't crash.  Suns' X server crashes easily.  Some Sun programs
won't even display remotely, since they aren't X!

Try running 4 high-cpu use operations on a Sun.  Then, do a "ps -aux"
while the jobs are running.  Sun multi-user performance is slow, due to
a genetic defect in the SPARC architecture!

Tony Burzio
AETC
San Diego, CA

There is no doubt that Sun doesn't have the fastest processor.
But Sun's high-end graphics, multi-user performance and I/O is
better than average.

Quote:>If a high end HP will be necessary, be sure to look at the upgrade
>pattern for the two companies.  All HPs have an easy to remove
>and upgrade processor board on a slot card.  We have upgraded our HP
>machine twice without buying more peripherals.  Can you do this with
>Sun?  Nope.

Huh?  All but the low end Suns can have processor upgrades.
The processor is on a seperate card.  You can add processors
or switch to faster processor while keeping the same machine.

Quote:>>ranges provide but our requirements would indicate a very high-end model.
>High end does not mean high money!  SS10 == Gecko !!!  Really, we
>benchmarked the two machines side by side.  Assuming you just want
>to match performance, that is.  I would rather have an HP Fast-wide
>SCSI II striped array running at full speed on a machine that could
>process the data like the HP735 any day!

It seems unlikely that a Gecko will do anywhere near as well as
a SS1000 or SS2000 in a multi-user environment.  Suns
have fast/wide SCSI II too.  Besides, if you run VUE, you have already
removed any speed advantage the HP has.

Quote:>>Personally, I'm tending towards HP due to the O/S's maturity and reputation.
>In a mixed network, HPs are an island of stability.

If you asked his question a year ago, I wuldn't have recommended
Solaris for stability and performance reasons.  That has changed.
(Even with 2.2 we didn't have crashes or hangs)

HP/UX still isn't matured enough as an operating system to
consider.  It lacks many, many features commonly found in
other current Unices.  Which standards does it conform to?
AS far as I can tell, it doesn't have kernel threads.

Quote:>Sun users are not going to move to Solaris, according to Sun user
>magazines.  Sun now has two alien operating systems that may or may
>not re-merge, who knows?

Sun users will eventually move to Solaris.  It will take time,
because it is a big move.

Quote:>HP X doesn't crash.  Suns' X server crashes easily.  Some Sun programs
>won't even display remotely, since they aren't X!

Solaris 2.3 X won't crash anymore either.  (not that easily
anyway)  If we're talking about Solaris 2.3, Sun has programs
that rely on certain x extensions.  Sun no longer has programs
that ``aren't X'' [[NeWS is dead]]  Of course, a number of
vendors uses non-X protocols next to X.  (GL/OpenGL)

Quote:>Try running 4 high-cpu use operations on a Sun.  Then, do a "ps -aux"
>while the jobs are running.  Sun multi-user performance is slow, due to
>a genetic defect in the SPARC architecture!

Bull.  We have no multi-user problems on SPARCs (nor do most people,
as far as I can tell).  You didn't mean Alphas by any chance?
Those can only run one job at a time.

Casper

Quote:>There is no doubt that Sun doesn't have the fastest processor.

No kidding!  Sun hasn't had the fastest processor this decade,
and it's not about to hapeen next decade either!

Quote:>But Sun's high-end graphics, multi-user performance and I/O is
>better than average.

Compared to a DECStation?  Sun's performance is the *worst* if you
don't count the non-players...

Quote:>It seems unlikely that a Gecko will do anywhere near as well as
>a SS1000 or SS2000 in a multi-user environment.  Suns

Try it!  That's a problem with Sun users, they don't try
new things...  Get a demo of the new machine and try out
multi user operations.  HP reps are *very* nice in general.  Much
better than the Sun reps... oops!  I'm sorry, there aren't any Sun
field reps, so this isn't a fair argument! :-)

Quote:>have fast/wide SCSI II too.  Besides, if you run VUE, you have already
>removed any speed advantage the HP has.

Beg pardon?  Vue doesn't slow graphics calls, it only needs more
RAM.  Besides, Suns will have Vue soon also, so be ready for
the extra RAM requirement! :-)  By the by, Vue improves user
productivity compared to OpenWindows, but that's a side issue... :-)

Quote:>>In a mixed network, HPs are an island of stability.
>If you asked his question a year ago, I wuldn't have recommended
>Solaris for stability and performance reasons.  That has changed.
>(Even with 2.2 we didn't have crashes or hangs)

How about the mega-patches of the last year for SunOS for the
window manager and the NFS services?  How many bug-fix releases
for Solaris last year?  If Solaris is sooo great, why did I get
a patch release for SunOS 4.1.3???

Quote:>HP/UX still isn't matured enough as an operating system to
>consider.  It lacks many, many features commonly found in
>other current Unices.  Which standards does it conform to?
>AS far as I can tell, it doesn't have kernel threads.

I said HP UNIX is stable.  If I wanted the most up-to-date
operating system I would have to pay for it in reliability.
The cutting edge of technology...

Quote:>Sun users will eventually move to Solaris.  It will take time,
>because it is a big move.

Oh?  Why are your users fighting and rebeling?

Quote:>Solaris 2.3 X won't crash anymore either.  (not that easily

Sure?  Is this a challenge? :-)

Tony Burzio
AETC
San Diego, CA

You really should consider SGI (Silicon Graphics). We looked at HP, SUN, IBM,
SGI, and DG when we wanted to buy a server. The SGI had the best balance
of processor performance, I/O performance, and a standard S5R4 UNIX
operating system.

SGI now offesr many multi-CPU configurations with fast SCSI I/O. We
didn't really care about graphics, but they do make some capable
graphics options also.

Specifically, the SGI was much easier to attach all kinds of 3rd party
peripherals (Exebyte, magneto-optical, etc) than the HP because people
in SGI will help you figure out how to install just about anything.
The compiling and debugging support was superior to all other vendors,
particularly HP (xdb barf!!).

We have HP 735 workstations that are very fast floating point
boxes. But we are thankful we ended up with an SGI as our server and
not (lint = core dump) HP.

Dan O'Connell

Seismotectonics Group, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
Denver Federal Center, P.O. Box 25007 D-3611, Denver, CO 80225
"We do custom earthquakes (for food)"

                   /\
                  /  \
                 /    \        /\            /\
    /\          /      \      /  \          /  \    /\  /\/\  /\/\
___/  \  /\/\/\/        \    /    \    /\  /    \  /  \/    \/    \  /\_______
       \/                \  /      \  /  \/      \/                \/
                          \/        \/

 It's not stellar, that's for sure.. I do feel that Sun's reputation is
no longer deserved, and I hope their market share reflects that soon. A
company (look at Big Blue) can only go so far on past successes. Suns
hardware is definitely no longer up to spec.

Quote:>>It seems unlikely that a Gecko will do anywhere near as well as
>>a SS1000 or SS2000 in a multi-user environment.  Suns
>Try it!  That's a problem with Sun users, they don't try

 They do seem somewhat traditional.. Kind of the mentality of those that
bought IBM just because it was IBM, but that's not very accurate, and I
don't want to insult Sun users - the fact that they didn't buy IBM shows
their insight. But it doesn't matter what brand you buy, as long as you
feel you got your money's worth. Of course, if you didn't really
evaluate the options, how are you to know if you really DID get your
money's worth or not?

Quote:>new things...  Get a demo of the new machine and try out
>multi user operations.  HP reps are *very* nice in general.  Much

 If you can get AHOLD of your rep, they're nice.. I've been trying to
call mine for two weeks. I leave messages, etc. No reply.

Quote:>better than the Sun reps... oops!  I'm sorry, there aren't any Sun
>field reps, so this isn't a fair argument! :-)
>>have fast/wide SCSI II too.  Besides, if you run VUE, you have already
>>removed any speed advantage the HP has.

 By the way, whatever happened to IPI/IPI-II? Do they still use these on
server-clas systems?

Quote:>Beg pardon?  Vue doesn't slow graphics calls, it only needs more
>RAM.  Besides, Suns will have Vue soon also, so be ready for
>the extra RAM requirement! :-)  By the by, Vue improves user
>productivity compared to OpenWindows, but that's a side issue... :-)

 Side issue? Nonsense.. My users depend on VUE and they like it very
much. They couldn't get along without it, in fact, and if they had to
use something like the OpenWindows, they're productivity would be shot.
(I have proof!) :)

Quote:>How about the mega-patches of the last year for SunOS for the
>window manager and the NFS services?  How many bug-fix releases
>for Solaris last year?  If Solaris is sooo great, why did I get
>a patch release for SunOS 4.1.3???

 Now just a minute.. Have you looked at THIS WEEK'S HP patch list!? This
month, there was a SECOND X server patch and several Kernel patches and
at least one NFS patch. Now mind you, these fix very minor and rather
unusual problems, but there are tons of patches. On the up-side, I'm
glad that HP provides "instant" fixes rather than make you wait months
and months for an important fix.

Quote:>I said HP UNIX is stable.  If I wanted the most up-to-date
>operating system I would have to pay for it in reliability.
>The cutting edge of technology...

 That's for sure..  Kind of like initial Solaris users did, right? :)

Quote:>>Sun users will eventually move to Solaris.  It will take time,
>>because it is a big move.
>Oh?  Why are your users fighting and rebeling?

 That's what I would like to know..

Quote:>>Solaris 2.3 X won't crash anymore either.  (not that easily
>Sure?  Is this a challenge? :-)

--



* (606) 257-2368                * ukma!ukecc!justin        (UUCP) *

Every now and then on the Sun boards I see "Sun is Crap, HP is great"
or "We're moving to DEC" or whatever.  I'm pretty convinced *all*
of the big UNIX players are bad in some ways, good in others.
Fed up with the Sol 1 -> Sol 2 move: check out DEC: they're moving
processor architecture *and* OS at the same time.
Fed up of your poor relation SPARC performance, and fancy PA-RISC
clout?  Well, our radiotherapy dept. have an 800 series HP server,
and it's *great*.  So great, in fact, we're told it's not binary
compatible with the 700 series workstations, and we'll need a
floating point co-processor to get decent FP performance.  HP told
us that, and they also told us how much a 1Gb external drive would
cost us to expand it. 3240 pounds sterling, -10% discount.  Sun
want 1120 pounds sterling for same, but with 20% discount, and
they deliver in under 5 days.  HP say 9 *weeks*.
When we asked why the difference, the woman at the other end of the
'phone laughed.  Great company, HP: great service and commitment to
their customers, as long as you don't mind waiting forever and
being treated like dirt, that is.

There are bound to be similar horrors Sun have perpetrated on some
of their customers: the point I'm making is that IMHO the big
players are, in the long run, more or less equal on points, so
stick with what you have and at least save problems learning
more OSs, firmware etc and having several disparate maintenance
deals/sets of binaries etc.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch                            University of Dundee
voice 44 382 60111 x 2050               Department of Medical Physics
fax   44 382 640177                     Ninewells Hospital

Quote:>A big SPARC is the same as the low end HP, CPU speed, Disk I/O,
>graphics, multi-user loading, etc...

What about VM and networking?

Quote:>and upgrade processor board on a slot card.  We have upgraded our HP
>machine twice without buying more peripherals.  Can you do this with
>Sun?  Nope.

Huh? On VME machines, swap the CPU board.  On MBus machines, swap the modules.

Quote:>High end does not mean high money!  SS10 == Gecko !!!  Really, we
>benchmarked the two machines side by side.  Assuming you just want
>to match performance, that is.

Doing what?  Machines vary widely depending on the application.

Quote:>>Personally, I'm tending towards HP due to the O/S's maturity and reputation.
>In a mixed network, HPs are an island of stability.

If you use only HP-supplied binaries, perhaps.

Quote:>Sun users are not going to move to Solaris,

What do you think they're running now?  Sprite?  Lynx?

Quote:>HP X doesn't crash.

It has for us.

Quote:>Suns' X server crashes easily.

That's why you don't use it.  You build R5 from MIT.

Quote:>Some Sun programs
>won't even display remotely, since they aren't X!

Answerbook, pageview, jet.  Nothing irreplaceable.

Quote:>Try running 4 high-cpu use operations on a Sun.

Try killing and restarting AMD on an HP.

--

======================================================================8--<

Quote:>>>HP X doesn't crash.
>>It has for us.
>>>Suns' X server crashes easily.
>>That's why you don't use it.  You build R5 from MIT.
>Well, it's been 5 years without an HP crash for us.  Suns crash
>all the time.  You could get MIT X for the HP if you wanted.

Ha.  I've been running HP's X server for three weeks now.  Hasn't
crashed, until today.  It seems it was just waiting for the most
opportune moment, and it picked a good one.  I was in smit on an IBM
diskless workstation, converting it to a dataless workstation.  The
server crashed right in the middle of an lvm command, hosing everything
nicely.  Can't install the disk because it is partially installed.
Can't delete the disk because it isn't completely installed.  IBM has
recommended I delete and reinstall the diskless client.  Grrrr...

--
                                             Jeff Stehman

Ah ha!! I knew it!  Tony has been pulling our collective leg and left
his smilies off.  Five years without a crash is like saying that
I have never farted after eating beans!  Har, har, har.

                                Good luck, and hold your nose,
                                Lewie Wolfgang

Not only that, but you may buy a SPARC CPU chip from Weitek that internally
doubles the system clock frequency.  This works on SparcStation 2's and
others where the CPU is not soldered to the motherboard.  You may also
buy CPU upgrades for your SparcServer 6xx from Ross.  The point is that
not only can you upgrade gracefully, you have a choice of non-Sun suppliers.
This is called competition in an "Open" marketplace.  

We have seen scathing attacks against Sun in this thread.  One should be
skeptical where such passion is used to defame.

We have been using Sun systems since 1986 and have been pleased with them.
When I was tasked to determine how to replace/upgrade our old Masscomp system
I selected Sun after researching the then-existent market.  The determining
reason for selecting Sun was, oddly enough, PC-NFS.  We could integrate
existing Pee-Cees into a Sun network, no fuss, no muss.  NO other supplier
was even thinking about this at that time.  From my experience, Sun
defined the "Open" movement and set the pace.  HP at the time was
EXTREMELY closed, you couldn't even interconnect between their own product
lines!  I recall them having different recording formats for their DC-100
data cartridges, cartridges that you had to buy from HP because they
had to be pre-formatted and the formatting program was not available.
HP didn't even have workstations, as such.  They were high-end desktop
calculators.  Networking?  Hah!  And I know HP, we used their mini systems
for many years, since 1973 or so, if memory serves.

Quote:>>Try running 4 high-cpu use operations on a Sun.  Then, do a "ps -aux"
>>while the jobs are running.  Sun multi-user performance is slow, due to
>>a genetic defect in the SPARC architecture!

>Bull.  We have no multi-user problems on SPARCs (nor do most people,
>as far as I can tell).  You didn't mean Alphas by any chance?
>Those can only run one job at a time.

I agree.  I have a feeling that the only genetic defect is in someone's
brain architecture.

Choosing a new system should be done in the cold light of rationality,
try to look at all the factors.  The only real down side for Sun that I
see at this time is their relative uniprocessor performance, a problem
that I don't see lasting too much longer.

                                Good luck and happy computing,
                                Lewie Wolfgang

I don't use HP's myself, but from what I have seen and from my wife's
description of VUE it doesn't seem to be anything special.

I use vtwm running from either a Mips or a Sun (and 386BSD at home),
this gives me a "virtual screen". I can move my view into the virtual
screen around as I please. As far as I understand this is what VUE
provides as a "multiple workspace".

The one thing that I could see that VUE actually does it simplify the
user interface to setup and configuration. While there may be other
X11 tools out there that collectively come fairly close, I suspect none
of it is rolled together as a consistent GUI.

Apart from some of the simple things HP left out of their X distribution
(like xmkmf) they have done a reasonable job. It doesn't take an X expert
to run X terminals from a HP and users can (mostly) set themselves up.

If someone wants to run PD X11 software, HP could have made it easier but
I suppose that was their policy decision. In the long run if you have the
intelligence to get what is missing from the ftp site, then you should
have the knowlege to not require HP to hold your hand if/when any problems
occur.

Quote:>PS - sorry for this minor excursion from OS wars, and I hope that I
>haven't started a GUI war!

As always people will have different opinions, that is what stops life
from being boring.

Just my $0.03 worth

--
Darren Bock               Snail: Department of Employment Vocational Education

Ph:  +61 7 227 5726              c/- GPO Box 69
                                 Brisbane, Qld, Australia, 4001

 January isn't recent in this industry. :)

Quote:>I would still recommend against HPs for software development
>or general puprose workstations.  Number crunching, fine.

 We didn't buy ours to jump through hoops.. :)

Quote:>We have little or no Sun crashes.  HP/UX wasn't reliable
>until recently.

 Here here! Under 8.07, I couldn't keep it up more than two days at a
time, until it was patched to death (like my 9.01 is, actually, but
that's just because I'm a firm believer in preventative maintenance -
it's NEVER crashed), and that's when I upgraded.

Quote:>Next question: which major unix vendor doesn't
>have DPS in its X server?

 I wonder why, actually..  <I really do>

--



* (606) 257-2368                * ukma!ukecc!justin        (UUCP) *

Name names and name violations.  This kind of *isn't
productive.

Quote:>Yes, there are cards to replace the processor, but they are
>recent additions.  I want a company with a *history* of upgrades.
>I have no assurance that Sun won't require a new box for a new
>processor, even if the old one was supposedly upgradeable.  DEC
>used to do this to it's customers all the time...  It's a matter
>of trust.

Two or three years isn't ``recent'' in this industry.

Quote:>Oh, you actually mean, "software particularly written to use SunOS
>features/bugs will not work fine on an HP?".  Most public domain
>code is now up on HP platforms, once the Sun bugs were worked out
>of the system... :-)

I would still recommend against HPs for software development
or general puprose workstations.  Number crunching, fine.

Quote:>Well, it's been 5 years without an HP crash for us.  Suns crash
>all the time.  You could get MIT X for the HP if you wanted.

We have little or no Sun crashes.  HP/UX wasn't reliable
until recently.

Quote:>Just the productivity stuff?  I still remember the X conference
>at MIT where the Sun Rep was boo'ed off the stage...  :-)

Next question: which major unix vendor doesn't
have DPS in its X server?

Casper