Re: Wisdom of a move to Linux?

>>At risk of being flamed as an RTFM or SIOYA, and confessing to >SIOYA? Never heard of that one. >>not knowing a great deal about Linux coming from an RS/6000 AIX >>background, I got back from leave today to find an unexpected >>corporate re-think. >And how! >>I am told that a task that was being aimed at a: >>4 processor RS/6000, AIX, Informix IDS 7.31 client-server, 1 Gb >>memory, 75 Gb (with probable expansion to 5 times that) >>database, 30 users >>is now being aimed at a: >>Dell PowerEdge pentium 3, Informix IDS, Linux Red Hat... >Blimey! Friends! The revolution has started! Hey, at least he's not going to use PostgreSQL! ;) >>Immediate questions in my head (other than 'please can I go back >>on leave'): >>1) Is this remotely viable on a PC under Linux? >Yup. Yes. >>2) How big can Linux handle? I know akin to 'how long is a piece of >>string?' But is an application of 30 users into a 300 Gb database >>relatively small, medium or approaching limits for a PC based Linux >>system? What's your time line? 2.4 of the kernel has been due out "any minute now" for several months. My fiddling shows a very large improvement ~15% if I really start beating the crap out of the box. And it lets you have roughly 2 billions users (and everyone needs that, right!). >It is a bit tricky. Informix Linux can address that much disk easily >enough, it's more of an issue about whether the hardware can allow good access >with hefty caching controllers, etc. I'd say medium. 30 users is small, but >300GB is medium to big. Not near limits, though. Lots of striped disks and a good controller, as always. We use IBM netfinities and IBM serverraid controllers and performance is pretty good. >>3) Any ideas of real application sizes of Informix on Linux >>successfully in the real world? 130 users, 20~30Gb. Netfinity 5500, dual PIII - 3xxMHz. 512Mb RAM. >>4) Any particularly nasty holes/experiences I need to watch out for? >>Not really. Raw disk and KAIO aren't currently supported, I don't think, Redhat 7.0 adds raw devices. They work. And Informix says (of the record) that it's no problem. >>but will be soon. I don't think SMP support is great, but if your Dell has a SMPs pretty good on duallies, so-so on 4x, and theoretically falls apart after that. But SAP did some test and it held it's own against NT up to 8 CPUs, so I think it all depends upon the app. Systems and Network Administrator Morrison Industries 1825 Monroe Ave NW. Grand Rapids, MI. 49505