Windows versus UNIX for Cloverleaf Integrator

This is a top religious discussion.  I have never seen any hard evidence to support it either way. I have dealt with both operating and cloverleaf.  I can’t give you hard evidence just that on windows it was difficult to do many things that were easy with AIX.  Windows seemed to be constantly in need of attention to keep up with the volume of messages.  Second we had continuous problems with the database on windows but I have heard that is fixed or being fixed.

If you find any hard evidence I would really like to see it.  

Me I’m just not convinced that I would ever run a system as critical to my operation on windows.

Look in release notes for your version and search for Windows.

You’ll see some known issues that may be important.

You may also want to publish your experience with uptime for the AIX box vs. the uptime for your other windows platforms.

The Cloverleaf platform was initially developed for UNIX/AIX and later ported to Windows.  I believe UNIX/AIX is still the preferred platform to run on, and I get the impression that Windows requires alot more “care & feeding”.  While the hardware may be cheaper, I think the overall long term cost will be more if you look at the man-hours associated with supporting the Windows platform; especially with the volumes you are dealing with.  Just my $.02 worth.

Jim Cobane

Henry Ford Health

Bob,  I would start out with a comparison of the stability of the different operating systems available…..Windows, AIX & Linux.  As for Cloverleaf on Windows, we have several versions that vendors have supplied with their applications and when we have a problem with the interfaces, it is usually directly related to Windows.  We end up rebooting the windows servers and sometimes rebuilding the databases……if you are looking for more work to do (care & feeding) then windows is the way to go.  

As for processing power, you could run Cloverleaf on p-Series Blade server (JS-20/21) from IBM and still have a fairly low cost of hardware.  You could not get this much power from a comparable server running windows…..as for Linux, there are several users on Clovertech that could add greatly to this thread and hopefully they will respond.

Good Luck on your discussion with management, one of my most compelling comments is whether you want a system that is able to run for a year without rebooting or have to reboot monthly with 30-60 minutes of downtime (or more), depending upon the number of interfaces you support.  

Also, I have found that the development of interfaces is easier on the AIX side rather than Windows.  It takes me less time to develop, debug, test and implement interfaces on AIX vs windows.

Hope this has been of some help………

If you do a couple of web searches like the following

and

you will find many discusions and some might even give you the costs.

In the past when I had looked for the cost difference the cost that is often overlooked according to the studies is that Windows tends to be used to its lowest functionality because it breaks so easy; while UNIX tends to be used to its full potential because is so robust.

We have Cloverleaf running on both a Unix and a Windows server.

I just wanted to add that we’ve been running on RedHat LINUX for over a year now and we love it.  Has most of the advantages of UNIX and has a cost similar to Windows.  Again you have to consider what your support staff is familiar with.

We currently run a fairly small operation about 1 million messages a month. We are currently on Linux and love it. Linux affords us the low cost of x86 processor family hardware and the power of Linux. We are fortunate to have 2 licensed Cloverleaf Linux servers one for development and one for production.

Again you will have to partially base your decision on the support staff you have in-house that know either Windows or Linux.

Jim

I agree with the uptime discussion / presentation.

We run AIX and the ONLY time I need to take it down – is when I want to (yes, I know I just jinxed myself).

My current uptime is 81 days – b/c I upgraded the HACMP – prior to that was ~ 1 year.

The product is very stable on UNIX.

My $.02.

Currently 130 days on Red Hat LINUX.  Would be longer but we had a SAN upgrade.  Sorry, but I can’t remember what it was before that.

Two live sites:

 Site 1: 9 Processes, 52 Threads

 Site 2: 6 Processes, 20 Threads

This was out ‘best’ uptime on AIX (4.3.3) in 2002 before we upgraded to the new HA and were requested to perform regular failover tests and OS update installs etc.

This server sat in one of the hospital data centres and was left alone!  

magnus

 09:25AM   up 1003 days,   7:51,  4 users,  load average: 0.52, 0.40, 0.37

My $.02  When we purchased Cloverleaf in 2005, the reason we went with a Windows box vs UNIX was that given the very small number of IT staff here, a whopping 3.5 FTE, we decided that there was a better chance of having someone with Windows experience on staff to support it.  The stability of Win 2003 also influenced our decision.

Mark makes a good point about the impact of cost and knowledge availability.

But in the case of 100 Million msgs/mo the shop might have the $$/expertise.