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From: t...@jade.spctrm.com (Tim Fry)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp.misc,comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.unix.solaris
Subject: HP vs. Sparc servers -- comparisons please.
Date: 29 Jan 1994 19:08:13 -0500
Organization: Spectrum Investment Systems Inc.
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Rather a vague topic I know, but I'm only looking for general (but
knowledgeable) opinions.
We need to get a large, highly scaleable Unix system for one of our clients
and the choice is down to a big Sparc running Solaris 2.3, or an
HP9000. I'm not to familiar with the various models or options that these
ranges provide but our requirements would indicate a very high-end model.
Do you have any pointers to comparative studies of these systems or have
you any advice/warnings which may be of help?
Personally, I'm tending towards HP due to the O/S's maturity and reputation.
Any input much appreciated,
Thanks.
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From: a...@nic.cerf.net (Tony Burzio)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp.misc,comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.unix.solaris
Subject: Re: HP vs. Sparc servers -- comparisons please.
Date: 30 Jan 1994 05:30:25 GMT
Organization: AETC, San Diego, CA
Lines: 41
Sender: Tony Burzio
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Summary: HP low end is Sun high end
Keywords: compare
In article <2ietpd$...@jade.spctrm.com> t...@jade.spctrm.com (Tim Fry) writes:
>We need to get a large, highly scaleable Unix system for one of our clients
>and the choice is down to a big Sparc running Solaris 2.3, or an
>HP9000. I'm not to familiar with the various models or options that these
A big SPARC is the same as the low end HP, CPU speed, Disk I/O,
graphics, multi-user loading, etc... The lowest price HP is the
Gecko (712) at $4K, which eats Suns for lunch! Try them for yourself!
If a high end HP will be necessary, be sure to look at the upgrade
pattern for the two companies. All HPs have an easy to remove
and upgrade processor board on a slot card. We have upgraded our HP
machine twice without buying more peripherals. Can you do this with
Sun? Nope.
>ranges provide but our requirements would indicate a very high-end model.
High end does not mean high money! SS10 == Gecko !!! Really, we
benchmarked the two machines side by side. Assuming you just want
to match performance, that is. I would rather have an HP Fast-wide
SCSI II striped array running at full speed on a machine that could
process the data like the HP735 any day!
>Personally, I'm tending towards HP due to the O/S's maturity and reputation.
In a mixed network, HPs are an island of stability.
Sun users are not going to move to Solaris, according to Sun user
magazines. Sun now has two alien operating systems that may or may
not re-merge, who knows?
HP X doesn't crash. Suns' X server crashes easily. Some Sun programs
won't even display remotely, since they aren't X!
Try running 4 high-cpu use operations on a Sun. Then, do a "ps -aux"
while the jobs are running. Sun multi-user performance is slow, due to
a genetic defect in the SPARC architecture!
Tony Burzio
AETC
San Diego, CA
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp.misc,comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.unix.solaris
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From: a...@dvorak.amd.com (Anthony A. Datri)
Subject: Re: HP vs. Sparc servers -- comparisons please.
Message-ID: <CKGuuB.8qM@dvorak.amd.com>
Keywords: compare
Sender: n...@dvorak.amd.com (Usenet News)
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Distribution: inet
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 23:34:58 GMT
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>A big SPARC is the same as the low end HP, CPU speed, Disk I/O,
>graphics, multi-user loading, etc...
What about VM and networking?
>and upgrade processor board on a slot card. We have upgraded our HP
>machine twice without buying more peripherals. Can you do this with
>Sun? Nope.
Huh? On VME machines, swap the CPU board. On MBus machines, swap the modules.
>High end does not mean high money! SS10 == Gecko !!! Really, we
>benchmarked the two machines side by side. Assuming you just want
>to match performance, that is.
Doing what? Machines vary widely depending on the application.
>>Personally, I'm tending towards HP due to the O/S's maturity and reputation.
>In a mixed network, HPs are an island of stability.
If you use only HP-supplied binaries, perhaps.
>Sun users are not going to move to Solaris,
What do you think they're running now? Sprite? Lynx?
>HP X doesn't crash.
It has for us.
>Suns' X server crashes easily.
That's why you don't use it. You build R5 from MIT.
>Some Sun programs
>won't even display remotely, since they aren't X!
Answerbook, pageview, jet. Nothing irreplaceable.
>Try running 4 high-cpu use operations on a Sun.
Try killing and restarting AMD on an HP.
--
======================================================================8--<
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From: cas...@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp.misc,comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.unix.solaris
Subject: Re: HP vs. Sparc servers -- comparisons please.
Date: 31 Jan 1994 17:11:02 GMT
Organization: FWI, University of Amsterdam
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Message-ID: <2ije36$o7g@mail.fwi.uva.nl>
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<CKGuuB.8qM@dvorak.amd.com> <2ijbh1$pi7@news.cerf.net>
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Keywords: compare
a...@nic.cerf.net (Tony Burzio) writes:
>In article <CKGuuB....@dvorak.amd.com> a...@dvorak.amd.com (Anthony A. Datri)
writes:
>>What about VM and networking?
>Virtual memory works quite well. Same for networking. Some SPARC
>software companies get better ETHERNET perfornace by violating
>the TCP/IP protocol, but this is a problem, not a feature!
Name names and name violations. This kind of crap isn't
productive.
>Yes, there are cards to replace the processor, but they are
>recent additions. I want a company with a *history* of upgrades.
>I have no assurance that Sun won't require a new box for a new
>processor, even if the old one was supposedly upgradeable. DEC
>used to do this to it's customers all the time... It's a matter
>of trust.
Two or three years isn't ``recent'' in this industry.
>Oh, you actually mean, "software particularly written to use SunOS
>features/bugs will not work fine on an HP?". Most public domain
>code is now up on HP platforms, once the Sun bugs were worked out
>of the system... :-)
I would still recommend against HPs for software development
or general puprose workstations. Number crunching, fine.
>Well, it's been 5 years without an HP crash for us. Suns crash
>all the time. You could get MIT X for the HP if you wanted.
We have little or no Sun crashes. HP/UX wasn't reliable
until recently.
>Just the productivity stuff? I still remember the X conference
>at MIT where the Sun Rep was boo'ed off the stage... :-)
Next question: which major unix vendor doesn't
have DPS in its X server?
Casper
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp.misc,comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.unix.solaris
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mnemosyne.cs.du.edu!nyx10!jmaynard
From: jmayn...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Jay Maynard)
Subject: Re: HP vs. Sparc servers -- comparisons please.
Message-ID: <1994Jan31.191230.29196@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
of Denver for the Denver community. The University has neither
control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Keywords: compare
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Date: Mon, 31 Jan 94 19:12:30 GMT
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In article <2ije36$...@mail.fwi.uva.nl>,
Casper H.S. Dik <cas...@fwi.uva.nl> wrote:
>I would still recommend against HPs for software development
>or general puprose workstations. Number crunching, fine.
Oh, you mean things like the Gopher server, that built and ran first time on
HP-UX and OSF/1 but wouldn't run at all on Solaris 2.3?
>We have little or no Sun crashes. HP/UX wasn't reliable
>until recently.
Making things run on Solaris has been frustrating. Making things run on OSF/1
has been a breeze. I hope to try the same things firsthand on HP-UX...that is,
if our local HP rep will follow through on a promise to get us a loaner
machine (we haven't heard from him in a month, and his slot is coming up)...
--
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jmayn...@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu | adequately be explained by stupidity.
"The difference between baseball and politics is that, in baseball, if you
get caught stealing, you're out!" -- Ed Shanks
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp.misc,comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.unix.solaris
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From: e...@peewee.chinalake.navy.mil (Erik van Bronkhorst C02313 939-1421)
Subject: Re: HP vs. Sparc servers -- comparisons please.
Message-ID: <CKM6GJ.IFz@avalon.chinalake.navy.mil>
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<2inpuo$kqo@lorne.stir.ac.uk> <2ioe6o$r96@news.cerf.net>
<CKLy1z.CwC@sunspot.nosc.mil>
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 1994 20:33:53 GMT
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"I'm not one to go pointing my finger, when I radiate more heat than light."
-- Peart
I am currently evaluating whether to purchase a system, most likely HP
or Sun. We currently have a 9k370, an IPC, and a 10/51. This thread
might have been of immense value to me except that there has been lots
of heat and no light so far.
Rather than argue history and (perceived) company philosophy, how
about some hard figures, like benchmarks? We want floating point
number crunching power first, but graphics performance is important
as well.
Heck, just throw out some *valid* numbers, preferably with
references. I will pick through them for comparison. At this point I
don't care about standards, being Open or which flavor of OS is better
for this or that reason. I don't care at all about windoze, X or
otherwise, or NFS or clustering or any of that mess, just one-on-one
standalone system comparison. By "system" I mean the combined CPU,
peripherals, OS, compilers, and performance specs. By "system" I
don't mean just the architecture nor just the OS. Price/performance
is an important consideration to us.
Any such info at all will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
--
Erik van Bronkhorst KC6UUT DoD#4342585443 AMA#438054 BARF#002
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp.misc,comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.unix.solaris
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From: jmayn...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Jay Maynard)
Subject: Re: HP vs. Sparc servers -- comparisons please.
Message-ID: <1994Feb3.170313.22519@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
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<CKLy1z.CwC@sunspot.nosc.mil> <CKM6GJ.IFz@avalon.chinalake.navy.mil>
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 94 17:03:13 GMT
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In article <CKM6GJ....@avalon.chinalake.navy.mil>,
Erik van Bronkhorst C02313 939-1421 <e...@peewee.chinalake.navy.mil> wrote:
>I am currently evaluating whether to purchase a system, most likely HP
>or Sun.
This is the position I'm in as well, but our emphasis is markedly different:
We're looking for a testbed to learn about Unix as a way to enhance our
existing mainframe applications base. We're not interested in benchmarks. What
we *are* interested in is standardization and ease of use. We've had a SS10/30
and a DEC 3000/400, and we'd like to get an HP9K8xx (we've talked to them, and
they've expressed interest, but haven't said anything to us lately). So far,
the Sun (running Solaris 2.3) has been considerably less standard than the
Alpha, and nearly everything we've tried has required hacking and tweaking to
make run - and at least one thing, the Gopher server, didn't run at all. The
Alpha has been, by comparison, a piece of cake. My experience with HP on a
9K735 has been pretty good, but I haven't had to administer the thing.
--
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jmayn...@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu | adequately be explained by stupidity.
"The difference between baseball and politics is that, in baseball, if you
get caught stealing, you're out!" -- Ed Shanks