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We have an APM based solution (Apache, PHP, MySQL, GD, and JpGraph) currently on an IBM box. It has been proposed that this be moved to Solaris.
Question: Is this a good or bad idea? Difficulties, especially pitfalls
My gut reaction is to oppose the move, but I want to be educated and enlightened :) about the topic.
Beside your valuable opinion, kindly if you could, do point me to some articles, etc.
Regards,
Tre
Hello great folks:We have an APM based solution (Apache, PHP, MySQL, GD, and JpGraph) currently on an IBM box. It has been proposed that this be moved to Solaris.
Question: Is this a good or bad idea? Difficulties, especially pitfalls
My gut reaction is to oppose the move, but I want to be educated and enlightened :) about the topic.
Beside your valuable opinion, kindly if you could, do point me to some articles, etc.
Regards,
Tre
It really depends on what the reasons that you're moving to solaris are... Do you have a sunbox (a good one), that you'd be moving everything to? If that's the case, I'd say yes, since Sun Hardware works best with Sun Software, and vice versa.
If it's Solaris x86, that's another matter. Solaris x86 is a little more difficult to manage and set up and tweak the "usual" ways, since it is a very different setup than the linuxes.
Have a look at www.sunfreeware.com - there you can download all your normal apps in convenient binary packages that people have built. Pretty handy, so it helps you in terms of setup, so that you don't have to actually recompile a whole bunch of stuff just install something like nedit or vim. :)
In terms of AMP, we've never had a problem with it. Basically just built everything from source, with a few exceptions like libjpeg, and png, etc. Each upgrade we do, we compile openssl,openssh,mod_ssl,apache and php from source. Rarely do we actually upgrade GD, and jpgraph is not being used here. It just takes a little getting used to, if you're used to RedHat-style binary RPMs that install everything, with nearly every option turned on. Building from source can be a frustrating endeavour at times, especially if you're on a platforms that isn't hugely supported. Not to say you can't find support for things, but not quite as easily as FreeBSD or slackware, etc.
If your organization is set on using Solaris, I would do it with SPARC hardware. It'll cost you more on a per-server basis, but if you're looking for cost savings, Solaris was built for Sun gear, whereas the x86 Solaris just kinda feels... well, flaky. But that's just MHO.
I don't have any articles or documents to point you to other than sun.com. They have lots of information available there with peoples' solutions to their problems, and scripts, how-tos, etc...
Also, I'd recommend going with Solaris 9, not 8 (some people are religious about it)... Little things like SSH being included in the base system are now included in 9, and make life *much* easier than in 8.
HTH,
MM
Sincerely,
Tre
