Best Unix

[Shivkumar]

Dear Sirs,

Is hpux unix best unix when compared to aix and sun Solaris etc ?

Thanks,
Shiv

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

That is certainly a loaded question. I'm sure everyone on this site will tell you that HP-UX is best. I certainly think it is, but it is certainly the OS I have worked with the most (currently 13+ years and about 8 as a full time HP-UX admin).

Each OS has its own opponents and proponents. You have to decide what is best in your own environment and for your applications.

[Eknath]

Hi Shiv,

Tricky question! As i mainly worked on HP-UX i would say it is the best unix i have seen. But it again depends on our knowledge about that operating system. For me HP-UNIX is best.

Cheers !!!
eknath

[Devender Khatana]

Hi Shiv,

It is a difficult question to answer for a system administrator working on multiple platforms. Yes it indeed depends on your requirements finally to decide for it to be best or not. But if you see the powerfull backend support factor you will find HP as best.

HTH,
Devender

[Ralph Grothe]

This question cannot be answered unbiasedly.

But at least at one point, as is immediately obvious to ITRC Forumers, HP-UX is unprecedented.
There's simply no such thing like instant HP-UX support by expert fellow admins through a forum such as ITRC for Solaris, or any of the other commercial Unices.

[dirk dierickx]

for me, hpux certainly is not the best unix available. i like solaris much more, but one thing where hpux excells in is the hardware support for troubleshooting. for example, if you have a hardware problem on a solaris box, it is a bit of a guess and tell game while trying to pinpoint the exact cause of the problem, in the worst case the machines needs to be brought down and an HW check needs to run from the openboot prompt.
but if you look at the design, i would say solaris wins, it is cleaner, faster, more logical and well, is still the most suported unix out there.

[MarkSyder]

I am a relative newcomer to HP-UX (two years) having spent several years on AIX. It didn't take me long to prefer HP-UX, mainly because of sam which is, in my opinion, more user-friendly than smit.

But that is balanced somewhat by the AIX command errpt (error report) which I still miss after two years.

I fear there is no right and wrong answer here - a question like this can only produce opinions.

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

My personal preference indeed is (also) HP-UX. By far. Most stable unix like platform I've ever worked on.

Maybe when you ask that question here, you should have added what platform and/or OS version would be the `best' :)

My personal vote then would go to HP-UX 11.00 on PA-RISC-2.0
I now have experience with 8.xx 9.xx, 10.xx, 11.00, 11.11 (11i pa-risc) and 11.2x (Itanium), and I cannot say that Itanium (or Itanium2 for the matter) has impressed me at all. What I've heard, you need a machine with at least 4 CPU's and the dedicated Itanium compiler to get the best out of it, but for now, I still prefer 11.00

I also work with AIX, and have experience with AIX 2.x, 3.x, 4.x, and 5.2. Up to and including 3.1.5, AIX was bad. Very bad. Dead slow and unpredictable. In AIX 4, a new LVM was introduced that beats all other LVM's I've seen so far, including HP-UX' LVM. As seen from the admin point of view, AIX 5.x is a big improvement over 4.x. There are a lot of Linux influences that improved the system's consistency, but they still use their sucking printing system and performance is not up to HP. I also loathe their illogical 32/64 bit approach. Not that HP's approach is flawless (just read this forum to see what problems people have with it), but at least HP's approach is consistent and predictable.

I also work with Linux, and it depends on where you want to position your system, how serious you want to use it. IMHO, it's perfect for workstation use, but if you have to ship applications to customers, think again, especially if you are into graphic UI's. There is just too much difference and version incompatibilities in the shared libraries, libqt being the most problamatic. I'm using SuSE on my laptop and workstation, and am very hapy with it.

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Yogeeraj_1]

hello shiv,

Depending on the purpose and scale of your implementation, the answer may vary.

Is it for a database server, application server, what is size of the site?

lots of questions need to be answered.

regards
yogeeraj

[Pete Randall]

Well this is obviously completely biased, since I've never even seen an AIX machine and only touched a Sun box once or twice, but I have to vote for HP. HP's support alone should make it everyone's first choice. I've dealt with IBM support back in my mainframe days and never really had any complaints about them, either, but I really think HP's support is top-notch.


Pete

[Rick Garland]

This is more of a personal opinion answer.

All the flavors have had their successes and right now I see it as HP. I also believe HP has provided more of a long term commitment, past and present, to provide something really good for the future...

[Geoff Wild]

I have worked on just about all flavours: AIX, BSDI, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, SCO, Solaris, Ultrix...

They all are interesting and have their places...

I like HP best - support is second to none...OS very stable..

Like most things, if you use something a lot - then you are more comfortable with it - I have been using HP-UX since version 8.04...

I found Irix pretty cool to work on - just not a lot out there...

IMHO - Solaris is near the bottom - I can't understand why so many people like it - root's shell is still the old original bourne shell - OS is NOT posix compliant...compiling sucks on it...etc...etc...

Now, even HP isn't perfect - it would be nice if some things were free - like Online JFS - it is in AIX for example...but of them all - I find HP-UX easier to work with.

"HP's UNIX® business is highly valued, critically important, and thriving. HP-UX 11i provides a key foundation for HP's Adaptive Enterprise strategy. This real story brings you the facts about HP-UX 11i with supporting documentation from analysts and researchers."

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/eNewsletter/cache/133391-0-0-39-121.html


In case you havn't seen it - here's the "Sysadmin's Unixersal Translator"

http://bhami.com/rosetta.html



Rgds...Geo

[Olivier Decorse]

Hello,
working 7 years with hpux, et one year with aix, now, i can say that i prefere Aix.
For me, it is more flexible, more strong and more open that hpux.

Olivier.

[David Child_1]

I have worked with Solaris 2.6 up to 9, AIX 4.3 & 5.2, and HP-UX 10.20, 11.00, and 11.11. As many have said it is more of a preference, but I can give you a few personal experiences.

In our shop we had ~75 Solaris servers ranging from E250's up to Sunfire 6800s. We also had ~65 HP servers (V, N, L, K, SuperDomes, RP7410's, etc.). Our HP enviroment was more stable than the Solaris environment both in terms of hardware and software. The Sun hardware failures were not high, but they were double the HP. The larger problem we had was with storage. Solaris is way behind the curve when it comes to volume management. Your only real option is Veritas which is a good product, but I definately think they need to work on their support.

We also had an large fabric attached STK silo and when the tape drives were replaced they had a new WWNs (not a problem with newer libraries). The HP boxes were up and running with a couple of commands. With Solaris we had to modify the proper config files and reboot. Solaris 9 and 10 are suppose to work better in this department, but I never had a chance to check it out.

We only had a few AIX boxes and they didn't change much. I find that AIX masks too much stuff behind smit and the ODM. I prefer config files I can manually inspect. Thats just me.

HP is stable, performs well, has a wide range of applications and features and is very well supported, both by the vendor and the user community.

David

[Nguyen Anh Tien]

It is hard to say which is best. HP is goot at some features but others isn't.

[Vibhor Kumar Agarwal]

Well Well Well,

I think it will be better if you tell your exact domain of work.

I am associated with C++ and have worked in HP and Solaris.

In it HP is better in case of performance ( building time ) but lacks with Solaris in case of some object editing commands like mcs.

[R. Sri Ram Kishore_1]

Absolutely.

Here are some links that might be of interest to you:
a) http://rhea.redhat.com/bboard-archive/webdb/0005Hq.html
b)http://www.sans.org/rr/whitepapers/unix/936.php
c) http://www.softpanorama.org/Solaris/Whitepaper/index.shtml

HTH.

Regards,
Sri Ram

[Mahesh Kumar Malik]

Hi Shiv

Depends on what prospective this statement is made. In spite of excellent support through ITRC forums and HP, there are few features such as clustering utilities are considered to be better in Tru64 environment.

Regards
Mahesh

[Jan van den Ende]

My time to offer a completely different (and completely biased) sound.

Of course, it all depends on application availability, but if you can pass that hurdle, you should have a look at VMS (Official name: OpenVMS).

In the above, things like adding disk or tape were mentioned. Just connect, tell the (running!) system to find it, and start using it.
ALL diskspace is usable from ALL cluster nodes SIMULTANIOUSLY. (compare the way Oracle addresses its database disks, but that concept for all types of files, from the command line or any application).
BTW, the only thing to do in changing a standalone system into a cluster system is enter the license key (you pay for that!) and set the cluster parameter ON. Now add or remove nodes as suits you.
In setting up a new system VMS is relatively expensive, but the Total Cost of Ownership over a 5 year period is less then half of ANY unix.
OS upgrades are relatively rare. (We did 3 in the last 8 years). Patching needs to be done about 2 or 3 times per year.
Software upgrades, hardware replacements etc can all by done WITHOUT downtime.
Our current config has un UNINTERRUPTED uptime of more then 8 years, although ALL hardware, up until the last screw and connector, has been added (some much) less than 4 years ago. All older hardware has been removed.
The cluster is spread over 2 sites, 7 KM separated. VMS does not do data replication, it uses Volume Shadowing. The data at both (if desired, all three) sites is ALWAYS current, and active.
The site has about 5000 users, running (some or all of) 20 different applics. There are about 300 mutations in personnel or personell-autorisations per week.
All of this can easily be managed ("adminned") by 3 people.

But it is NOT unix.
Although many of the underlying priciples are comparable.

Maybe it is an idea to work through a number of threads in the OpenVMS forum to get some feel for it. (Actually, that is what I am doing in the HPUX, TRU64, and Linux forums!)

hope this helps a bit,

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Kent Ostby]

One thing that has become clear through various surveys and awards is that HP has some of the leading e-support types of features of the various providers and I think you can see by the participation level at this site just how many HP-UX problems can be solved by your friends and fellow HP-UX users here.

I also think that hp-ux has a clear growth plan within the company despite some additional forays by HP into Linux.

Best regards,

Oz