Comparing HP with Sun

[Clarence J]

Hi Everyone,

Need some information on comparing HP servers with that of Sun servers. Are there any website that provides such info?

Is Sun blazing ahead on Unix servers? Is HP shifting its attention to pushing storage boxes?

My management has heard and wants to know why so many people are moving away fr HP to Sun. (We have HP boxes currently). They've been told it's cheaper. You know nowdays it's all cost-cutting measures!! I've been asked to obtain more info on this.

Anyone, pls!

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi:

Take a look at this recent thread regarding views of HP vs. SUN:

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x2ceaf9beca68d511abcd0090277a778c,00.html

If you're interested in comparing TPC benchmark data see this:

http://www.tpc.org/information/results_spreadsheet.asp

...JRF...

[federico_3]

http://www.interex.org/tech/9000/tech/sun_hpux_interop/

[Dan Rosen]

That was a great thread that James posted.

But remember (and so many people fall into this), initial purchase cost should make up 5% of your purchase decision. Software compatibility, upgradability, support, and reliability should make up the brunt of your decision. To some degree your skill base should be the deciding factor in case of a tie. (i.e. if you know HPUX like the back of your hand, but Sun is $2,000 cheaper/box, you had better have a lot of boxes to justify relearning Solaris).

Besides pricing initial cost, price out what service contracts are, if you use them. Go to both web sites for HP and Sun and examine their self-support tools for Unix. ( I have been looking for a minor answer on Sun, and have been unable to get around well in the support center).

Finally, if you are using this in any sort of a database environment (ERP, CRM, pure database), then you should examine the TPC (I believe it stands for transaction processing cost) link that was also provided. Cost means nothing, if the performances are not equal. That goes for discounts as well.

Finally, we bought a refurbished server upgrade and disk drives through HP. They put them both under service contract, and we saw 40% discounts...

Hope this helps.

[Bernie Vande Griend]

I'll add my 2 cents to this since I worked with SUN hardware and Solaris for 6 years and now mainly HP-UX for the last 2. There are a lot of similarities, I think both are good from a support standpoint, this forum however has greatly helped HP, I'm not aware that SUN has an equivalent. HP seems to be more conservative in introducing changes to its OS and hardware and from what I've seen usually means less problems and more stability. HP patches especially seem to be more stable and reliable. I can usually trust the HP pathc bundle to be quite stable, but that wasn't always the case with SUN. SUN is more aggressive in introducing new hardware and changes to its OS, which is good for its customers and the industry in general, but you have to be careful to not be on the bleeding edge with them. I would give a huge edge to SUN in terms on Networking with more tools built in and easier to manage. (snoop for example) HP has caught up a bit now with 11 and 11.11. I also believe it takes a bit more advanced admin to administer SUN especially in regards to disk management. HP's SAM is a much better tool for basic admin stuff than what SUN has (although I rarely use it). Exceptions to this would be networking and kernel maintenance as SUN is easier to manage in those areas. I would say that the #1 difference in the companies is marketing. SUN blows HP away with its marketing and I think that is the biggest reason you see more people using SUN now than HP. I think SUN also makes it easier to get a better price.

[Clarence J]

Thanks for the interesting replies. Very infromative.