On Oct 18, 2007, at 10:41 AM, Grinsell, Don wrote:
They have done some Linux deployments on various other hardware, but their biggest concern is that Linux isn't AIX:
We are running it today in a few limited instances, and it has its gotchas, like needing down time to add disk space to file systems.
This is just plain flat-out wrong. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ ext2resize/ (I don't know whether the mentioned kernel patch is in the mainline kernel or not; when *I* grow a filesystem, I *do* take it offline: adding space to a filesystem is something I don't do outside a scheduled maintenance window anyway).
Ten years ago, AIX was the same way, but it has matured a lot - Linux still has a long way to go. Several years ago, admin x was troubleshooting AIX and had IBM support on the phone. The IBMer told him to type in a data collection command, and the command knocked the system down. Today it doesn't. That is the same type of maturing that Linux is still going through.
In other words, "AIX used to suck, so therefore Linux still must" ? I mean, that argument *makes no sense*. Read it again: "several years ago, AIX did something bad, but it has matured. Linux is still maturing." The last sentence doesn't follow.
It doesn't matter whether it is on the mainframe or on an Intel server - you don't want to trust Linux with mission critical jobs. We can run it, as long as we are willing to accept the outages that are normal to any immature technology. Apps like Service Center come to mind, because not many people consider it a crisis when that is down." Bearing in mind that I'm a zSeries software guy and know only enough about Linux and AIX administration to be dangerous, how do I answer that argument? Are his concerns well placed? I know there are lots of larger organizations than ours putting their eggs in this basket, so what influenced the choice of Linux over AIX?
Price. You can buy a lot of x86/x86_64 cycles for the cost of a pSeries. On the mainframe, well, Linux runs, and AIX...doesn't, really, anymore (you there in the peanut gallery: we don't want to hear about AIX/390! Thank you). There are a lot of things (like, anything using TCP/IP services) where Linux is much more pleasant to use to get your work done than the equivalent function in z/OS or z/VM. Also, Linux is the de-facto Standard Unix Environment these days. *Everything* is written to be built on a Linux box using GCC (usually an x86 Linux box, which does cause some heartache in the s390x world). AIX, like it or not, is now a pretty marginalized niche player. Linux has all the development momentum. Porting stuff to Linux on other architectures (like s390x) is usually easier than porting from Linux to some other OS. There *is* some validity to his arguments. AIX has had a lot of bulletproofing applied, and its problem reporting tools are more mainframey than Linux tools tend to be. And say what you like about mainframe environments, they really *do* tend to pay attention to robustness. If you *really* want reliability, z/OS is probably a better bet than any Unix-like system (hey, whoever's about to muddy the waters by shouting "UTS", pipe down!). Adam ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
