HP-UX and Solaris

[Kyris]

I work on HP-UX 9000's but there is a possibility that a new Solaris MAY be purchased to take the Oracle databases.
Does anyone use both systems? If so should I be worried about being able to administer the new system? Are there significant differences between the 2?
Is there a good site to have a quick look at?

thanks
kyris

[Devender Khatana · Accepted solution]

Hi,

All unix are from application point of view. The differences in commands are summaarized in the attached table for various flavours of unix. The same attachment also describes important link for various flavours.

HTH,
Devender

[Luk Vandenbussche]

Hi,


Solaris has no LVM standard in its os.
So don't forget to buy a veritas Volume and Filesystem manager license

[Arunvijai_4]

Hi Kyris,

Some links of this topic.

https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/Resources/KnowledgeBase/Docs/20020202120333
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=810014

-Arun

[Muthukumar_5]

check this:

http://unixguide.net/cgi-bin/unixguide.cgi

administration by command will be different.

--
Muthu

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

I've been through a couple of Oracle training classes that were on Solaris. It took some getting used to, but the oracle part worked really well.

I think HP-UX is a better OS and has a better long term future, due to the strength, financially, etc of HP versus Sun.

There is a lot in common, a lot different. As noted LVM is different, software installation and patching is different. Solaris people are very happy with the OS, all that I've spoken too.

SEP

[Senthil Prabu.S_1]

Hi Kyris,
There are not much difference. And LVM is not supported on Solaris. And sun has come with their own cheaper volume manager then vertias. Better you can try that.

More docs can be found at http.docs.sun.com

And summary of solaris commands equivalent to HPUX can be found at
http://www.hp.com/workstations/risc/standard/operating/easy_hpux11/solaris/reference_guide.html


HTH,
Prabu.S

[Yogeeraj_1]

hi kyis,

if you talk sole about Database and Operating system, it should be quite straight forward.

Performance would be another issue.


In fact, you will get tons of information about configuration on the new environment from metalink.

kind regards
yogeeraj

[Doug Burton]

Look here for a cross ref of commands:
http://www.bhami.com/rosetta.html

[Zinky]

If you're worried you won't be able to venture our of HP-UX - then it will actually depend a whole lot on y.o.u.

Do what's natural - adapt and adjust and seach for "what is the equivalent or how do I do this kind of journey".

In my journey - that was the natural course of action. I was relentless (thanks in part to this forum) in adapting to HP-UX environment having come from Solaris and BSD environments. Many many resources on the Internet - thank you Google! In fact these days you can now pose natural language queries -- i.e. for your UNIX journey -- "How do I mirror Solaris disks". Plus -- there are a number of "Rosetta Stone" types for the various UNIX dialects.

Again.. it'll all depend on you - how diligent you are in adapting to other OS environments. Since you alreay know one OS -- it's just a matter of finding our how things are done in a new OS environment.

As to the long standing debate of which is better --- Solaris, HP-UX or AIX (need I say Linux?) --- Again, it all depends primarily on the "QUALITY" of the admins (unix sysad, storage admin, etc.) that manage the environment.

[Piergiacomo Perini]

Hi Kyis
this

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs

for me, it's a good start-point
(ITRC it's better ;-).

regards

[TEC-HP]

Hi Kyris

Presumeably it will be solaris 10?
If so checkout http://www.learningsolaris.com/

it has some fine online labs you could do

I thought the standard volume manager on Solaris is Solstice Disksuite which is not that simple compared to LVM
Sol 10 has ZFS: (no experiences on that one

[Joe White]

Hey Kyris,
I'm an administrator of Solaris systems but came from an HPUX background. Both flavors have their strengths and weaknesses. Basic commands are similar if not the same (just check man pages for differences in arguments or options). I'd pay particular attention/get training in volume management and disk layout (Sun also has a course on Solaris administration for experienced users if your fotunate to have training budget). I think you'll find patching to be as easy or easier. Probably the biggest drawback I've seen is Solaris doesn't have as good a forum as this one so using the references others have listed on this thread is a good idea.
Best Regards

[Geoff Wild]

Seeing how your company is looking/or going to add Sun system(s) - I would hit them up on a course:

"Solaris Operating System Administration for Experienced HP-UX and Tru64 Administrators (STS-277)"

http://www.sun.com/training/catalog/courses/STS-277.xml

Rgds...Geoff

[Zinky]

Not as vibrant as this Forum but should fit your needs:

http://www.sunmanagers.org/

For Veritas knowledge and tips although somewhat static over the years but is till relevant:

http://vxideas.org/

I also suggest you focus on getting to be familirar with Dtrace (which is the only one of its kind).

And Zfs -- is it out officially already?


HTH.

[Chan 007]

Kyris,

Unix commands are bit different,

Try to familirise with Veritas (Bit trycky one), as we have used plenty of LVM.

Web Site
www.sunsolve.com

Patch Related
patchadd, patchrm and patchinfo

Syslogs are /var/adm/messages

dmesg works even for a normal user.

NFS - use share

Swap - mounted on /tmp

No top command, instead you have to use /usr/ucb/ps -x (options live aux, aw) etc

Oracle - related information are generally given with respect to sun, so no problem with that.

Chan

[John Collier]

Kyris,

I have done some work on both platforms as well and the above information is pretty much right on track. I will never forget the {BEGIN=sarcasm} fun {/sarcasm} I had the first time I tried to do something as simple as a quick reboot. If I could only get the hair that I lost that day to grow back, it would be a much less horrifying memory...

Now it all seems fairly familiar since I have worked with HP-UX, Sun, and Linux quite a bit more since then. I still hit snags on occasion and mix up the commands from one OS to the other, but if you keep an open mind and go back to the basics of Unix in general, it will help more than you realize.

The one book that I am sure that most of the people here either have or have had in the past is "UNIX: The Complete Reference". I know it is a monster of a book and probably a lot of the high-hitters in this forum have possibly let dust collect on theirs (if they have not thrown it out) but I found it to be very helpful in finding the related Sun commands that I needed. On occasion, I still browse through it for one thing or another on any of the various platforms when I don't have ready access to the Internet or the time to search electronically.

Call me crazy, but I still say it is a wonderful reference to have around when you are bouncing from OS to OS.

Take it for what it is worth, but that is my $.02 in the matter.

Hope it helps.

[Kyris]

Thank you all for this wonderful response!!
I will keep this open till Monday.
Does anyone have a list of commands that are needed to say mirror a disk or mirror the boot disk, find out if a disk is faulty etc.
For example we use ioscan -fnC disk, dd=...and then pvcreate, vgcfgrestore etc etc
in this format

"
A) The first step is to determine which drive is the failed drive. Use
"ioscan -fnC disk" command

B) Replacing non-root disks. Use the
following procedure.

Non-root disk:
# pvcreate /dev/rdsk/cXtXdX
# vgcfgrestore -n vgXX /dev/rdsk/cXtXdX
# vgchange -a y vgXX
# vgsync vgxx
# vgdisplay -v /dev/vgxx (To verify the results)

Thanks you all...one thing is for sure there is no better Forum than this one. If I can have the final say in the new system, I will certainly go for HP.

[Geoff Wild]

Boot Disk Mirroring Using Solaris Volume Manager Software

http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/submitted/svm_mirroring.html

As far as bad disks, dd works across all OS'es:

dd if=/dev/rdsk/c20t5d0 of=/dev/null bs=64k

Here's a link for IDE on Sun:

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-5504/6mkv4nh8o?a=view

Rgds...Geoff

[Rick Garland]

Here are a couple that I have found useful

http://www.cuddletech.com/veritas/index.shtml
This provides a good HOWTO when dealing with Veritas Volume Manager on Solaris. All kinds of commands for all kinds of situations. With HP having the option of using VxVM, this is very useful in determining what commands you want.

http://loudermilk.org/software/solaris-hpux.html
This provides a comparison between the 2 flavors.

Can do a search within the HP web sites. There is a document out there regarding disk management with LVM vs VXVM. It provides a detailed compare & contrast between the 2 tools. How to do the LVM equivalent command with VxVM command, if the appropriate command exists.

[Kyris]

Thank you all for your information. I feel more at ease now than what I was before.

Cheers..
kyris