Here are my comments, speaking from personal experience as an Oracle DBA for 3 years on Tru64 UNIX and NT databases. I am also doubling as the NT administrator now. There is another Oracle DBA (more experienced than me), and there are 3 UNIX system administrators. 10 NT servers (2 old OWS 3.0.1.1., 2 iAs 9i, 1 used to have 5 7.3.4.4. instances on it, one has 3 8.1.7. instances on it), with 5 Digital (sorry, Compaq) Tru64 UNIX servers, with 1-3 instances on them).
This is my perception at this point. Microsoft marketing is very strong. Managers use Windows9x/ME, so they think WindowsNT/2000 is easy too. Heck they know little about computers and they can run MS Office and Outlook no problem, imagine what the techies downstairs could do with the server OS from Microsoft! Most managers don't use computers - they need the latest laptops etc. for office status purposes, but they don't use them for much more than running MS Office and Outlook. They read ComputerWorld and they see PC Magazine and PC World in the pharmacies, that's about it. They also notice that none of the UNIX vendors ever advertise on TV (what's up with that?). The people who decide where to spend the money are not the people who have to work with the systems. In a good shop they would consult the people below, but often they end up deciding first and arguing (or delaying purchase indefinitely) if the techies down below question their decision). Do they take into account replacing all their servers to keep NT/2000 running? I imagine their existing machines can't run NT or Windows2000. The point someone else made about training is a valid one, management may be thinking that training is not required at all for NT because it's a Windows OS and the techies can do anything, or that MCSEs are a dime a dozen now so staff costs will be lower. Problem is, they will need more staff to keep the NT servers going than for an equivalent number of UNIX machines - once a UNIX box runs, it runs reliably. UNIX machines are not affected by the likes of NIMDA, BackOrifice and other tools out there. Most hackers don't have grudges against UNIX systems, but they certainly do against Microsoft. Have you updated your virus files lately? If using McAfee, is your engine up to date? Have you checked your Event Viewer security log? Has auditing even been enabled on your system? You realize that auditing is shut off by default on NT. (also not taught in the NT4 MCSE classes). Anyone with a copy of a server's ERD can crack the passwords of all the user accounts that server has seen since the OS was installed. If someone gets the ERD from your BDC or PDC, you are royally screwed. How many ERDs are lying around in your computer room? Do contractors / term / casual employees ever go in there, and do any of them have any reason to be unhappy with the way your company is treating them? If one ERD is missing, how long will it take for anyone to notice? The attitude that "NT is just Windows" doesn't help security at all, the OS has to be taken seriously. If your machines have to be secure, get ready to spend time doing it. More time than if it was a UNIX host. Web servers should use something other than IIS, IIS is popular because... it's freeware. The Gardner Group earlier this year advised people not to use IIS, because it is not secure. iAS went with Apache on Windows, which is a bit of an oxymoron, Apache should be running on UNIX. iAS made the right decision, but it illustrates that the OS ends up running a UNIX web server ported to NT. Like it is used to run a UNIX-based database (Oracle) on NT. Why not just use UNIX? To do remote admin, they will have to purchase a 3rd party tool like PC Duo if they are using NT. NT assumes an administrator would be at the server. You can't telnet to NT systems because NT behaves like a home operating system, it assumes you are sitting at the machine (may be possible with Windows2000, not sure). You can purchase 3rd party telnet software, but you won't have access to the desktop. Scripting on NT is not as "user-friendly" as it is in UNIX. Retrieve from archives those old DOS scripting books. NT and Windows2000 offer more commands, but at the core the scripting is still the same. The AT command used to run scripts on schedule in NT 4.0 is 99.9% reliable, but not 100% reliable. I ended up having to install a 3rd party utility called crontab for Windows to keep my backup scripts running reliably. The time clock keeps slipping back, esp. if your CPU is busy. So you will have to hook up the machine to a time server somewhere. Every time there is a new version, you have to purchase it and upgrade the hardware. Much of your 3rd party and your in-house applications will have to be ported to the new version. I don't know if this is the case with UNIX variants. NT carries along with it a huge kernel, and a thick layer of graphics on top of it. To make all that work at a speed equivalent to UNIX, it needs a lot of resources. A dual- or quad-CPU helps. I would not run an Oracle on NT database with less than 2G of RAM on the server. Because much of NT is inaccessible to the system administrator, tuning becomes an issue - you will probably have to surf the 'net to find info on how to speed up NT (e.g. www.arstechnica.com <http://www.arstechnica.com> had a whole section on this topic, because people were frustrated with the OS). To improve performance, and to secure an NT server, you must make many changes in the registry; are you comfortable doing that? What will happen when you apply the next service pack? More time for administrators. Maybe they will give up trying, which means higher hardware costs for the same performance, and less security. Because much of NT is in the kernel, it is inaccessible to system administrators. When things go wrong you tend to either see a Blue Screen of Death or you get cryptic errors with generic messages. Because of this (this is bad practice) many places believe rebooting is the first thing to try when trying to fix a problem on NT servers. If they reboot and the server now runs, the system administrator usually has no idea what went wrong and whether the problem will reoccur. It doesn't help either that one of the oldest pieces of code in NT is the Event Viewer, it has a different API than the rest of NT - programmers don't like programming for the Event Viewer. Many 3rd party applications don't report errors in Event Viewer very well. Oracle on NT has more info in the alert log file than it does in Event Viewer... because it makes more sense to use an alert log file. I strongly suspect that disk I/O is much slower in NT than it is on UNIX. Especially if they plan to buy "high-end" PCs instead of purchasing real servers. You do not have as many options for the file system as exist for UNIX (advfs, etc.). The registry fragments. Disks fragment. Even if you are installing software on a new system with empty disks. More administration required. Fragmentation is not as much of an issue on UNIX systems, if at all. Oracle on NT doesn't like NT virtual memory very much, I find I always have to have more physical memory than Oracle requires (rdbms + sessions) for the server to run reliably. This is probably because Oracle keeps refreshing the data block system change numbers, NT can't send Oracle to virtual memory. Oracle develops the rdbms on UNIX, then ports it to NT. The developer tools are written on NT (I think). Better to be on the platform Oracle is developing the database on, to be ahead in terms of patchsets and to get better Oracle support. UNIX on the back end and for medium to large-sized databases, Windows for smaller ones (perhaps, because why can't you place them on a UNIX server since you will have them for the back end). NT does not allocate memory very quickly. If you are running an Oracle database on NT, you can open the Task Manager and look at Memory Commit Charge, then start the database service. How long does it take for the OS to allocate the memory Oracle requires? Do this, just as a test. It allocates memory in little chunks. Its' almost fun to watch. It's not fun if you are in a hurry. I don't know why it doesn't just say "you want 1G of memory? All right, here it is, go wild. Done." Registry fields have a fixed maximum length, which poses problems for people who plan to put many Web applications on one web server. There may be a workaround (?) but here we have to map drives to local shares to reduce the number of characters we put in FORMS60_PATH and REPORTS60_PATH in the registry. Given a choice, I would go with Oracle on UNIX every time because of reliability issues. NT should be used only to serve smaller groups of people, not for backend databases. Perhaps use NT for smaller or front end databases (middle tier servers). Even with iAS, I would prefer if I had it running on Solaris instead of NT, so far iAS 9i 1.0.2.2. on NT (with 8.1.7. and the OEM on the same machine) has given me a lot of headaches. If you have any other experiences with NT v. UNIX, I would like to hear them. Correct me if I missed something or if I don't understand something. Regards, Patrice Boivin Systems Analyst (Oracle Certified DBA) Systems Admin & Operations | Admin. et Exploit. des systèmes Technology Services | Services technologiques Informatics Branch | Direction de l'informatique Maritimes Region, DFO | Région des Maritimes, MPO E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com -- Author: Boivin, Patrice J INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- (858) 538-5051 FAX: (858) 538-5051 San Diego, California -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists -------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
