mdv@comtst.UUCP (Mike Verstegen) (10/05/90)
[I don't want to start a religious war with this question, but knowing
how these things can get out of control, I'll keep my fingers crossed.]
We are currently a "mini-computer" based software development organization
using dumb terminals connected to a 3B2/600 running Unix V.3. We have made
the decision to not proceed further on this platform. Hearing the beating
of the networking drum, our next generation of software will be developed
for the network environment. Our application is along the lines of process
control. We have a moderate amount of database queries, but no heavy trans-
action processing. We are not number crunching at all. The only graphics
will be simple block diagrams and color changes on an X interface.
Here is the $64,000 question: Which hardware do we choose? At this point
we are considering Sun, HP, and [34]86 PCs (along with X-terminals where
appropriate).
Here are some of the things I've been thinking about each:
PCs: I feel comfortable with the PC approach because I always have an
alternative -- multiple suppliers of hardware and OS software (ISC,
SCO, Esix). Accessories from the DOS based market are now available
with Unix dreivers such as fax boards, (Dialogic) telephone interface
boards, etc.. We have one 386 with ISC 2.0.2 Unix and X/Motif and our
application does not seem require any performance that the the 386
cannot provide. On the negative side, major SW vendors (Lotus, IDE,
etc.) tend to focus on the Sun & HP platforms first and the PC Unix
versions are way on the back burner (if they are considered at all).
Sun: I don't know much about Sun. I've been to a couple trade shows and seen
various applications on them. I feel that SunOS is a (somewhat) unique
version of Unix and (since were a System V house) we may have problems
porting. After the great V.4 Unix unification, this should be a
non-issue, but when will Sun come out with V.4? When talking to the
local Sun people at shows, we normally get cut off by one of their
major (defense contractor) customers. Being small, what can I expect
of Sun's after sale support if I have difficulty before sale? (I don't
want to blame them -- that's a real customer that they have to keep
happy, I realize that.)
HP: I know equally little about HP. I feel comfortable with HP after years
of buying test equipment from them. Some drawbacks are their direction
of OSF/1 (and we're designing for V.4) and the inference that their
maintenance support is expensive ($350/month/machine vs $75 for Sun -
reference Unix Today 10/1/90 p75) and for a small company, that's a
lot of money.
I can buy a complete stand-alone PC for $5,000 (Dell 325, Color with V.3).
For the same money, I can get a monochrome diskless station from Sun. I
don't think I can get anything from HP at that price. Again, being a small
company, the price consideration is very important, but I don't want to
overlook the "hidden costs" of ownership when making this decision --
maintenance support, software upgrades, etc. Additionally, third party
software packages appear to be cheaper on the PC and I can "soup up" a
486/33 MHz to get improved performance if needed.
Another consideration is our need to ship our vertically integrated system
to both domestic and internation destinations. With PCs there is obviously
no problem. HP has worldwide service available and we can ship in to those
territories directly. I don't know how Sun handles U.S. customers shipping
to foreign countries (some companies strictly prohibit shipping equipment
purchased in the US to foreign locations to let their foreign representatives
extract a premium price and they don't want to step on that profit.)
If it sounds like I'm biased toward the PC, it is only because we bought
one system for testing in the lab so I have some degree of familiarity with
it. My request of those of you interested in responding is to share your
experiences, particularly those of you in a mixed Sun, HP, and PC environment.
Please don't start a flood of postings on the "religious" issues of UI vs
OSF, or SPARC vs Motorola vs Intel -- I'll be glad to receive mail on those
topics privately. I also welcome mail from Sun, HP, etc as long as you
identify yourself as a such, but I am really looking for someone who has
a real world system with various vendors equipment to provide objective
comments.
Though I've crossposted this to the sun, hp and sv386 groups, please
post follow ups to comp.unix.questions if you feel your comments are
of general interest, or more likely send them directly to me and I'll
summarize if there is significant interest.
Thanks in advance for whatever comments you care to share.
Mike
--
Mike Verstegen Domain Systems, Inc Voice +1 407 686-7911
..!uunet!comtst!mdv 5840 Corporate Way #100 Fax +1 407 478-2542
mdv@domain.com West Palm Beach, FL 33407mjb%hoosier.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Mark Bradakis) (10/05/90)
In article <314@comtst.UUCP> mdv@domain.com (Mike Verstegen) writes: >HP: I know equally little about HP. I feel comfortable with HP after years > of buying test equipment from them. Some drawbacks are their direction > of OSF/1 (and we're designing for V.4) and the inference that their > maintenance support is expensive ($350/month/machine vs $75 for Sun - > reference Unix Today 10/1/90 p75) and for a small company, that's a > lot of money. I doubt that these support figures are accurate. An HP375 would run around $30 a month, a 300 meg disk maybe $25, and minimal HPUX support might add another $30. Hardly the $350/month per machine you reference. We have about 100 HP workstations, and get the weekly scheduled maintenence, which is quite inexpensive, less than the numbers I quote above. >I can buy a complete stand-alone PC for $5,000 (Dell 325, Color with V.3). >For the same money, I can get a monochrome diskless station from Sun. I >don't think I can get anything from HP at that price. Oh? How about an HP 400dl, with 50 MHz 68030, 8 megs RAM, 1280 x 1024 mono display, 19" CRT for $4,890? One student lab was recently set up with both HP machines (the latest 400 series) and some Sun Sparcstations (4/110). We have more troubles with the Sun hardware and software than the HP. Of course, to be fair, we run our own bsd4.3 on the HP machines rather than the out of the box HPUX you get with them. And one obvious benefit is we fix software problems ourselves, and don't have to wait for Sun to do something about troubles which arise. mjb. mjb@hoosier.utah.edu "The tank is full, the switch is on. The night is warm, the cops are gone."
tmh@prosun.first.gmd.de (Thomas Hoberg) (10/10/90)
On PC's: They are definitely cheap, although once you got a fully configured system (Super-VGA, Tower, big disk, ethernet adapter, Motherboard, 8+MB RAM) 16" or 20" monitor) the price differences between a [34]86 and SUNs tends to evaporate. If you need color, that tends to be somewhat more expensive on a SUN, because for some reason color on a Sun is a luxury, whereas on a PC it's default nowadays. There are drawbacks however: I have worked at home and on the job extensively with PC's and souped up PC's configured as UNIX workstations (386 and 486, both with and without Weiteks). If have cost the company the price difference to the SUN in maintenance work. On Intel plat- forms bugs abound. There are all kinds of incompatibilities, hardware and software. If have spend a lot of time just hunting up device drivers for all sorts of periferals, everytime we upgraded the operating system. Companies go out of business and perfectly workable periferals end up unsupported. On paper you can get all the features on a PC UNIX platform that might be available on a SUN, but they never quite work. True you got a wide choice of hardware and software vendors, but trying to integrate things into a funcioning whole can be a fulltime job--time that should rather be spent working on the *real* tasks. Once you have into trouble, try getting support: you might be lucky with IBM, AIX and a PS/2 or perhaps with a DELL, but you see, that's because you'll buy everything from a single source. With, say ISC's UNIX and a home grown system the only support available is whatever you are able to supply. On SUNs: I have never administered SUNs, I have only worked on large and well maintained and smaller less well maintained networks of Sun-3s and Sun-4s and working on a SUN when compared to PC UNIX is a joy! SUN sells UNIX workstations, hardware *and* software as an integrate whole and they make sure it works. All those add-ins (networking, X-Windows) are integral parts on a Sun. Any UNIX software is first and foremost available on a Sun. Lots of stuff from FSF and otheres: just say 'make' and you are done. With a UNIX PC or any other System V, that usually requires some work, even if it's officially a supported system. SunOS is now what System V.4 may be two years from now. It's already very much an integrated system (BSD and System V) so for starters you *could* ignore that it's not just System V, but after a while you won't want to. Sun is *developing* V.4, so they are bound to be the first to offer stable implementations of it and it's going to be a much smaller step from SunOS to V.4 than from V.3 to V.4. Sun's aren't really all that expensive, as long as you don't buy hardware upgrades and peripherals from them. Memory, disk space and servers are expensive, but you don't have to buy those from Sun! Get some SLCs (noiseless and pretty) and go buy your memory and disks somewhere else, after all they all have SCSI ports. If you need color and floating-point number crunching you should look somewhere else (e.g. DG Avignon, HP/Apollo, or even 486+Weitek or i860). Sun's for ease of use and a great programming environment, and on the long term enhance productivity will by far outweigh the price difference between a PC and a SUN. Tom