HP-UX and other o.s.

[manfred unterkircher]

Hi all.

I'm relatively new at hp-ux. In the past I had the opportunity to familiarize myself with other Unix flavours (such as Solaris, Aix and Linux).

I don't know if this is the correct place to ask such a question, but I would like to know what are the main differences between these o.s.

I know this sound a bit generic, all I want to get is a piece of advice (that is, if I had to recommend one of the o.s. below:

- HP-UX
- Linux
_ Solaris
- AIX

Which one is worth to choose, particularly as far as future perspective is concerned?

Many thanks

Manfred

[Pete Randall]

Manfred,

That's an interesting question to ask in a HP-UX forum. I wonder what the answer will be???

In my own opinion, HP-UX wins, hands down!


Pete

[Steven E. Protter]

Remember Mr. Scott from the Enterprise?

"The right tool for the right job"

HP-UX which I know well is an industrial strength, highly scalable proprietary OS. You won't be re-writing OS componenents there. You will get great reliabilty. ]

The hardware it runs in is expensive but built like an Abrams tank. Its very good for high stress high availability applications.

Linux, which I've used for years and run a webhosting business on, is not quite up to the HP-UX standard. Its good, eminently patchable, and ships more secure than HP-UX.

When the project can't afford PA-RISC or expensive Itanium hardware, Linux is a good alternative. With LVM its a good option.

Solaris is the market share leader. I know little else about it, though I have some stick time as an admin. AIX, I know nothing about.

SEP

[MarkSyder]

Hi Manfred,

I have nine months' HP-UX experience, having previously used AIX for several years.

Admittedly, I wasn't using the most up-to-date version of AIX, so it may not be a fair comparison, but I find HP-UX much more user-friendly.

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[Patrick Wallek]

Manfred,

I think you are going to find a big bias towards HP-UX in this forum. I have worked with Solaris and AIX in addition to HP-UX and I like HP-UX the best. I think it is easier to do a lot of sys admin tasks in HP-UX than it is in Solaris or AIX. HP has some great tools, some of which are FREE like Ignite/UX, and the support from HP is generally pretty good.

As far as the future goes, I think HP is pretty committed to HP-UX especially with regards to running it on the Itanium processors. The PA-RISC lifetime is limited (maybe another 5 years or so for HP manufacturing PA RISC processors -- support will be around long after that) so we will all be forced to Itanium eventually.

I would always recommend HP-UX unless an application forces me to something else.

[RAC_1]

HP-UX, because I love it and love working on it.

[Mark Grant · Accepted solution]

This will be a personal opinion but I have used all of these operating systems for some time. Everyone will have their own ideas.

Linux, linux, linux everywhere! This is the fun operating system and is getting better and better all the time. However, it is really only on the x86 architecture that it shines. It is good elsewehere but not as good. It is free and nowadays well supported. It is a worthy contender for any task though still can't match the commercial three for stability across it's interfaces to applications. Something works on AIX, it will probably always work on AIX. Not true for Linux.

AIX this is probably the best commercial unix which is odd becuase I hate it so much. It dynamically tunes itself, the volume management is just great and you get onlineJFS equivalent for free. It is rock solid, the hardware is incredibly reliable too. "mksysb" knocks Ignite into a cocked hat. However, any unix that doesn't have a gettydefs file, uses a service starting application to get things running and dares to remove the "lp" print spooler and instead leave a revolting virtual printer concept deserves to die!

Solaris is absolutely rock solid and is pretty much true to unix roots. It is unix and it has always been a source of innovation but it is very limiting for the inexperienced system administrator. You need to add a lot of tools if you want to do things. It doesn't even come with "traceroute" by default. I realise that HP is going the Veritas route but Solaris volume management was an absolute joke by comparison to the others though seems to be improving. However, I quite like Solaris for some reason.

HP-UX seems, to me, to be a good balance between the two other commercial offerings you mention though it is a bit backward when it comes to kernel tuning. For enterpise level computing I would still choose HP-UX. Linux is probably the future though.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Mark, how beautiful said. I fully subscribe.

Two more remarks.

We have about 30 clients with HP-UX and 4 with AIX. We've had 4 machines with disk crashes, guess once what brand that was ... right the first time: AIX
I agree AIX' volume manager rocks. It outperforms HP's volume manager by factors. And smit is much better than SAM, but there it ends. Gosh how I would love our customers to swap AIX for HP-UX.

HP-UX also scalus much better than AIX when many users are concerned. At least in my experience.

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn [ who wonders why nobody mentions that OSF system Tru64, that should die a horrible death, because it only supports commands that nobody can remember ]

[MarkSyder]

Can I be a dissenting voice? I much prefer SAM to SMIT!

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[Ralph Haefner]

Here is a site you might find useful to translate your current knowldege into the new OS.

http://www.bhami.com/rosetta.html

I went from 4 years of Solaris only to a place where there are all 4 types of Unix you mentioned, and I find this very useful. "Ok, I want to do a ptrdiag -v but it isn't available on HP/UX, what is the equivalent command?"

[Alzhy]

Manfred,

First, the basic difference among the dialects is its scalability. The big Unices (Solaris, AIX, HPUX) has far more scalability that where Linux currently is (rarely can you see more than 4-way Linux systems.... although Linux kernel 2.6 is supposed to go more than that..). If you're an admin - basic administration is practically the same... Differences will be encountered in volume management, disk subsystems management, monitoring tools, etc.. which should be easy to adjust and adapt to if you want to be a "multi-dialect" administrator. I would agree though that HP-UX is the easiest to administer with more tools to boot that the rest.. I would also call it more "conservative" compared to the others.

As to which I would pick from a "future-proofing" perspective - I would pick in the order:

1.) Solaris
2.) AIX/Linux
3.) HP-UX

I pick Solaris because it is the only remaining true UNIX shop, true to its roots and have concrete roadmaps. And with its "commoditization" move (aka Solaris on Opteron/IA64/IA32) - they are on their way to further lowering the costs of systems -- true to the evolving thinking of "IT Does Not Matter"...

As far as NOW (or deployment time frames of 18-36 months), I will choose HP-UX on the PARISC platform still. Why? because of their Complete Partitioning Continuum - nPars, vPars, PSETS -- with emphasis on vPars (virtual partitioning) which is so rock solid and stable and which have allowed enterprises to lower costs somehow...

[Chris Vail]

I'll concur pretty much with the others evaluation of the other unices.
HP-UX, like AIX and Sparc Solaris, is propeitary and runs only on the hardware sold by the vendor. This is convenient in large commercial environments: it gives you only one "neck to choke" when something breaks (and it always will).
Solaris X86, the various Linuxes, FreeBSD and OpenBSD are all non-propeitary. If you are NOT skilled in Systems Administration, and don't want to be, then stick with one of the propeitary versions. Support for these is highly dependant upon YOU, the sysadmin. You have to be a lot more resourceful to solve problems. The exception to this is the Linux sold and serviced by IBM--they'll sell you hardware, software and all the services you need to make a large commercial system work, and again you have only a single neck to squeeze when it breaks. However, this is pricey and gets away from the low-cost nature of Linux.
So, like everything else in life: "There's an easy way, a cheap way, but there is no easy cheap way to do it". Easy is to get one of the propeitary versions. Its cheapest to get Linux or one of the BSD variants.
My favorite OS is AIX, but I haven't done serious work on this in 3 years. I love smit. I wish IBM would port AIX to the X86 environment. In any case, IBM has the reputation of providing mediocre performance for premium pricing.
HP-UX running on PA-RISC is probably the fastest. I really think HP is behind the technology curve in developing the OS: both Sun and IBM have better implementations of a 64 bit OS. But HP is a good all-round player.
Sun/Solaris on Sparc also has some advantages, but I don't know how long Sun as a company is going to be viable. Further, even their fastest machines are not as fast as HP's in the same price range (although they'll dispute this). Sun products are the most popular, so they maintain a better value on the used market. There was a time when Sun was synonymous with unix, so there is a huge emotional committment from sysadmins and corporations to Sun. I think that is this more than anything else that helped Sun survive the last few years.
Dishonorable mention goes to HP/Compaq/Dec for Tru64. It is true that these machines have the fastest floating point speed out there. And clustering for this is the very state of the art. But nothing runs on it, and no one has ever heard of it. I must've looked through 1000 resumes looking for a senior T64 admin, and then had to pay a premium for him when I did make him an offer. Its very expensive and nearly unsupportable now--never ever don't have a support contract. If you have an app running on T64, you will be very wise to port it over to ANYTHING else as soon as possible.


Chris

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi Manfred,

Well it depends. There are performance metrics at

http://www.tpc.org

Note that all the software vendors may not participate.

From an SA perspective, I would like to get hands-on atleast two proprietory OSes and Linux. As Linux is real cheap and does seem to have good future and it has been under consideration by many companies due to it's cost.

-Sri

[Robert Kerr]

Same kinda thought here, AIX has done an excellent job with volume management but HPUX has a myriad of excellent utilities and I like the feel of their command set. Linux is definitely one to watch, especially with a tighter budget. It all comes down to the server's purpose. I've only used Solaris and Linux for smaller, more dedicated purposes thus far, and find both of them rock solid to a point that I almost forget they exist.

On mid-sized and larger operations I really favor HPUX.

My order of preference with future perspective in mind:

0) HPUX all the way! (biased maybe?)
1) AIX - Simply great now and likely for many years to come.
2) Linux - Good bet down the road as everyone is embracing it or on thier way to.
3) Solaris - Sun as a company seems to have some issues but is ambitiously bustling about to stay above the fray - and they will(no profits in some time but available cash).

Just my opinion

Rob

[Geoff Wild]

I have(and are) worked with - HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, Linux, Irix, BSDI, SCO, Utrix.

I like HP-UX the best. The support is excellent. O/S is easy to navigate.

IRIX has/had a cool GUI, and a great text editor - jot.

Solaris - I can't stand - non posix root shell just sucks....though I havn't looked at Solaris 9.....

AIX is all right....

For the most part, it depends on what you are comfortable with and what you want to servers to do.

Here's a link to the Sysadmin's Unixersal Translator (ROSETTA STONE):

http://bhami.com/rosetta.html

Rgds...Geoff

[Ian Kidd_1]

I personally like working with HP the best, although the more familiar I'm getting with Linux, the more I'm liking it.

(1) HP - if you want a bullet-proof sytem, HP is the way to go. I've hade uptimes in excess of 500 days. The hardware is extremely reliable and the customer service sets the standard. If you need guaranteed uptime and reliability, this is the way to go. Of course, you'll have to have a budget big enough, 'cause it ain't cheap!

(2) Linux - cheap and flexible. If you have Internet connectivity, patching is a breeze. Customer support may be an issue. Not with software - you can find all sorts of forums with members willing to help with any questions - but with hardware. Since one of the more common HW platforms for linux is intel-based servers, you may have to deal with vendors who require you to reset cables, jiggle hardware, etc. before sending a field engineer (this is what I'm going through right now - jerks!).

(3) AIX - any SA tool (SMIT) that has a running man that either raises his arms when the task is successful, or falls on his face when the task bombs is pretty cool. AIX also has great customer service and pretty reliable hardware. I find it harder to use though. There's a lot of logic to their command names, but it's DIFFERENT (ex: mkuser, chuser,rmuser)

(4) Solaris - the benefit of Solaris is more in resume-building. Since they have the market-share, if you can put Solaris on you're resume, you're almost guaranteed not to be out of work for long. As an OS it's not bad, but I've had some nightmares dealing with SUN hardware. Support has been spotty. Sometimes it was great, sometimes they came up with dumb ideas, like waiting until 3 panic reboots associated with a CPU before coming out to replace it. I hope they stopped that policy!

As far as the future? Both HP and IBM have invested heavily in the Linux effort. One has to wonder a little about the future of HP-UX and AIX. Linux on HP hardware! That's the future I'm seeing!

[manfred unterkircher]

Guys,

Thanks you all for partecipating to this thread.
I have appreciated it very much and I think my mind is clearer now.
But if anyone else wanted to add his point of view, I will be glad to read it!


Manfred