At 3:30 PM -0400 6/11/02, Ranga Nathan wrote:
>A customer is interested in migrating from mainframe to unix platform. I am
>trying to steer them towards open/free software. I need to propose a robust
>unix implementation (net BSD has been suggested, Linux on HP or IBM is fine
>too, I in fact like that) that can take the workload of the mainframes. Not
>that I doubt it, but I should be able to convince the customer of it!
[snip]
>This customer is currently spending in excesss of $100K on mainframe
>hardware alone ( it is a college with some 35,000 students) and an equal
>amount on software. They have a staff of 12 including a DBA and system
>programmer.
I smell a Banner system there, or a home-grown student management
system. Anyway, I used to admin systems for the Oregon University
System that did this sort of thing. I know these sorts of systems,
and I know the requirements.
First off, you're going at it from the wrong angle. If you're using
some sort of ideological pitch for it, drop that fast. You're doomed
that way, because they will just *not* *care*. Nor should they.
Ideology's a damn fool reason to choose hardware and software for
systems of this size, and about equivalent to the "We'll go
all-microsoft" that you get after PHB's have been given a good wank
by the MS salesdroids. (If ideology's why you're doing this, please
leave them alone--you'll do them as much damage as them moving to an
all-WinNT/SQLServer solution would)
The three main factors in this choice are:
1) Support
2) Reliability
3) Cost
in that order. The open source route gets you a win on #3, but that's
only useful if the support and reliability end is taken care of.
Important safety tip here: They'll likely be dropping ~$50K per year
in hardware maintenance regardless of what they do. You can't get
proper support for much less, and suggesting they do won't fly.
Being dispassionate, their best option is probably an OpenVMS cluster
with an Oracle database. (With the cluster split in two physical
pieces with a fiber interconnect, if they're concerned about
catastrophic physical damage, which they might not be)
That gets you #1 and #2, in spades, at the expense of #3. It is,
however, likely their best technical solution. You get
Digital-designed hardware (which rivals IBM big iron for
reliability), 24x7 4-hour on-site hardware support, database
mirroring, fault tolerant hardware, rock-solid OS support, a database
that's fast with good mirroring, backup, and tuning capabilites.
VMS, though, is likely out, mainly because it'll probably be tough to
scrape up enough talent for it. And I expect you won't want that
anyway. :)
A good alternative would be a set of AS/400s running DB2, which has
similar advantages, though the clustering is nowhere near as good. I
expect you don't want that, either.
Anyway, you have only two hardware vendor options here, either IBM or
HP. (Well Digital really, but they've been swallowed twice now) You
don't have to go with x86 hardware--that can be generally swapped in
later, they both make systems that you can do that with.
Given that Tru64 is on the way out (it'd be my choice for a Unix)
you're probably best off with AIX on IBM's systems. Possibly Linux,
but I don't think the support you need is there yet. You don't need
to bother with x86 hardware--1U or 2U rackmount hardware can be
swapped later, and the big expense will be in the drive arrays
anyway, and they're shareable.
For a database, I'd go with Oracle, Informix or DB2. Yes, they're a
bit expensive. On the other hand, it's got the features you need for
this. (My personal bias is for Oracle because, while it's damned
pricey, it has the tools and capabilities for the job) Whatever you
do, make sure it's an SQL database. That will make the migration to
Postgres (and it *will* be postgres--while it isn't up to this, it's
as close as you'll get) easier when (if) it has the features needed
to handle this.
So, looks like IBM, with AIX and Oracle or DB2. (I think I'd go with
Oracle) That'll give them a migration path to open source while still
properly protecting them now.
--
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
