Solaris vs. Linux: Ecosystem-based Approach and Framework for the Comparison in Large Enterprise Environments

Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov

Notes:

Readers with strong allergy to grammar and syntax errors should probably avoid reading this paper until later, supposedly more polished, versions. The current version is pretty raw. English is not the native language for the author. Treat it is as a preprint
This is not a scientific comparison per se but more of an attempt to formulate (and for the author to understand himself the issues involved ;-) the framework for comparison of two complex and successful OSes. This framework might be used by future researchers of this problem as well as business decision makers.
Please pay attention to the version posted. This paper covers results of the research in progress. If you consider a particular part of the paper biased/incorrect please provide feedback. Opinions of the author change as he deeper understands issues involved in the process of this complex research. The topic is too complex and some errors are inevitable in a paper written by a single author. Actually the fact that a particular person is interested in the theme to the extent that he/she wrote such a paper is a strong argument against his/her depth of knowledge in one or both OSes that he/she tries to compare ;-).
As large enterprises are slow adopters of new technologies and as the paper is a volunteer effort it can be substantially behind the curve and most results are applicable only to enterprise versions of OSes that were current in 2006-2007. This was the time when the bulk of the paper was written. Amount of time that the author can devote to research of the topic is currently very limited and things are moving slowly (but they are moving). As of July 2008 some parts of the paper looks already outdated (the success of Oracle Linux as another enterprise edition with its own ideas (port of Suse YAST, BTRFS filesystem, etc) is not reflected in the paper; Solaris 10 developments after the acquisition of MySQL are also not fully reflected in the current version of the paper. Advances in hardware which increased the value of ZFS (solid state disks) are also missing. They might speed up widespread adoption of ZFS as new enterprise-class filesystem.
The paper was written with the explicit goal to serve as an antidote to primitive reviews on Linux self-congratulation sites styled like "I found old PC in the closet, dusted it off, tried to install Solaris on it; my God what a crap Solaris is in comparison with Linux". Such reviews are not only misleading, they disorient open source enthusiasts (especially among staff of large companies) conditioning them against a more stable and in several areas (virtualization is one; Java applications performance is another) more advanced server OS that has a lot to offer. The role of paper as an "antidote" to overselling of linux in enterprise environment somewhat influenced the style making the paper more polemic, then it probably should be. Please note the author consider Linux and Solaris to be two best enterprise OSes out of for variants available, the tandem which can replace other enterprise Unix cocktails ;-)

When you open your Windows
you'll see a light blue sky filled with clouds.
If you look past the clouds, you'll only see the Sun.
-- Alan Orndorff

"The rumors of SPARC's death have been greatly exaggerated"
USENET sig

Abstract

Introduction

Nine factors framework for comparison of two flavors of Unix in a large enterprise environment

Four major areas of Linux and Solaris deployment

Comparison of internal architecture and key subsystems

Security

Hardware: SPARC vs. X86

Development environment

Solaris as a cultural phenomenon

Using Solaris-Linux enterprise mix as the least toxic Unix mix available

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

Webliography

Abstract

It is important to understand that operating systems kernels are a side show of open source movement or open distributed collaboration movement in a broader sense. Scripting languages and applications (especially scripting languages) are the key components of the open source movement and at the same time enablers of other forms of open collaboration exemplified by Wikipedia. So it's Perl, PHP, Python, Apache, Jboss, bind, postfix, Postgress and MySQL that are flagships of the movement with LAMP stack (for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python) as open source one of the highest achievements. I would like to stress it again that the essence of the movement is in utilizing and, simultaneously, enabling distributed collaboration.

Linux kernel is just a side show, a new "SuperBIOS" on which open applications run and from the technical standpoint it has all the attractiveness of the good old BIOS (which is another way to say that it's pretty boring). Moreover, Linux is just one of many interesting open source kernels, which (for unrelated to its technical merits reasons) gets all PR ink. FreeBSD and other BSD kernels are equally important, less bloated and for some subsystems are more technically interesting. They can substitute Linux in LAMP stack and nobody will ever notice the difference. Actually the difference can be positive: FreeBSD pioneered jails -- a light weight virtual machine in 1999; OpenBSD pioneered integration of SSH and firewalls and defines the state of the art of secure X86-based Unix; NetBSD still defines the standard in Unix portability although Linux recently doing pretty well in this category too.

This article suggests that opening of Solaris as well as Sun efforts to put Solaris 10 on Opteron on equal footing with Solaris for UltraSparc further moved the pendulum from the Linux kernel on the technical side of the open source operating systems arena. As opening the code enabled distributed collaboration Solaris on x86 is quickly maturing into "better Unix then Linux" which can be used instead of Linux in LAMP stack. The latest impulse in this direction was Sun acquisition of MySQL. That makes tandem of Solaris and Linux probably the best enterprise Unix cocktail out of other mixtures of four ingredients available for large enterprise environment (AIX, HP-UX, Linux and Solaris). While some specialists (including the author) prefer Solaris and other Linux there is no question that this tandem is the most potent tandem of enterprise-class OSes currently available and should be treated as such. Polemical style of the article should not over-shadow this very important fact.

From an political standpoint the assimilation of any alternative sub-culture into the mainstream signals both the success in reaching much wider audience, as well as the abandonment of radicals within the movement and dramatic watering-down of key principles leading to the identity crisis. The latter is already impacting the OSS movement in general and linux in particular. In this sense open source Solaris is a nail into Linux exclusivity coffin. Also the pace of development considerably slowed and "the guard is tired" effect is fully in place. Due to this Microsoft managed to counter the challenge and even re-vitalize itself in the process (MS Server 2008).

At the same time process of aging of IT, especially dilbertalization of IT leadership created trend toward excessive bureaucratization and, naturally, a powerful counter-trend. Despite becoming establishment OS supported by such a stalwart of IT establishment as IBM (aka "death star of innovation") Linux plays a extremely important role of a weapon countering growing dilbertization of enterprise IT, a "rebel OS". This is one important area in which the author see Linux as definitely superior to Solaris.

When one tries to provide a sober assessment of relative merits of those two OSes in large enterprise IT environment and concentrates on the nonpolitical, real world issues of administering multiple flavors of Unix servers one fact emerges as really startling: there is a hidden resistance of such an environment to changes to the extent that savings from the introduction of any new flavor of Unix into existing enterprise Unix flavors mix are essentially non-existent. That happens because proliferation of Unix flavors in large corporate environment has its own significant costs especially if the number of flavors exceeds two. Unless the number of existing Unix flavors are cut with the introduction (a new flavor of Unix is not added to the mix but replaced one, or, better, two existing flavors) only open source applications and first of all scripting languages can produce sizable benefits for a large enterprise from adoption of open source. Operating systems are peripheral to this issue as long as they can run of the cheapest hardware available (Intel architecture). It is possible to capture lion share of open source benefits using Solaris X86 or even Windows (it's funny the Windows with SFU 3.5 is POSIX certified while linux is not). As the key is open collaboration and not the availability of source code or the usage of specific license, Linux is neither necessary nor sufficient for producing financial or other benefits from open source adoption, especially for system administrators who need to deal with the increased complexity of the environment due to an introduction of a new OS.

The scope and intensity of such side effects might surprise many readers, especially in case when the number of Unix flavors increases from two to three or even more. This is not a small change, because for sysadmins quantity turns into quality of work environment. For example, the author have found that due to the current complexity (or, more correctly, overcomplexity) of Unix environments most sysadmins can master well just one flavor of Unix. Better one can survive supporting two (with highly asymmetrical level of skills, being usually considerably proficient in one flavor over the other). But skills of sysadmins can even deteriorate from the mental overload if they need to support more then two flavors of commercial Unixes. In system administration the devil is in the details and details for each flavor are completely different. Complex issues also arise in solving many IT infrastructure architectural problems as different flavors of Unix have different mechanisms to resolve them (identity management is one good example).

Despite having important "home field" advantage for open source software deployment, the saturation point for Linux in large corporate infrastructures exists and might be lower then generally assumed. This might be due to limitations discussed in the article and first of all problems with stability. Few IT managers want to put all open source eggs into one basket, especially if the basket has holes in it. Thus Linux tends to increase, not decrease the variety of Unixes in the large enterprise environment. Road to hell is paved with good intentions and the replay of Unix wars that linux initiated undermines the Unix Renaissance that we experience and of which Linux is important part. This "cuckoo egg" quality of Linux has both positive and negative aspects that we will discuss in the paper using Solaris as an example.

The paper carries a strong pro-sysadmins and thus "counterproliferation" of Unix flavors stance. Interests of system administrators should be a priority consideration in any new OS introduction in large enterprise environment. As the hero of famous O. Henry story "The Roads We Take" quipped in slightly different from large enterprise IT circumstances "Bolivar cannot carry double." ;-) [O.Henry1910]. The article warns potential adopters that it is very difficult to capture value by just adding a new rider on the system administrator horse independently of which operating system we are talking about: be it Linux, Solaris, AIX or even Windows. The key finding of the article is that enterprise mix of OSes behaves like a complex ecosystem and that in such an ecosystem the introduction of any new Unix flavor invokes side effects and compensatory mechanisms (including political) which tend to nullify or even reverse savings.

Contents

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Created Jan 2, 2005. Last modified: July 29, 2008