5 ms·

How does running a different OS than most people can give a company an advantage? Can you elaborate this?

by samoright 9y ago

rhinoceraptor 9y ago
You can run docker containers on hardware instead of on virtual machines.
- Annatar 9y ago
  ...And unlike on Linux, it treats the entire datacenter as one giant machine.
snw 9y ago
In my case illumos provided two things: - zones allowed for a much higher deployment density and better utilisation of our hardware than other virtualization technology would have. - zfs snapshots. We've integrated those into our product and when a customer messes up they now have button to instantly restore to a known good state. Doing both of these things would have been a lot harder on another os.
mysterydip 9y ago
A different OS can solve some of the pain points of the mainstream options. Depending on your business, the features a different OS brings could have a large impact on performance or stability. Potential areas for improvement could be anything from filesystem to process concurrency to virtualization.
- fulminatorz68 9y ago
  I'd see only the pain of migrating applications and learning new administration tools. Solaris was dead long before oracle killed it -- to me.
  - feld 9y ago
    "migrating applications" -- you'd be shocked at how unix software tends to run on... unix OSes with few to no modifications. Things like: * Java * PHP * Perl * Python * Ruby * Apache * Nginx * Varnish * MySqL * Postgres * Node.js * etc all run just fine on a Solaris-clone. Unless your app is using very specific kernel features it will probably work fine.
    - Annatar 9y ago
      They run more than just fine; usually an illumos based OS will run circles around Linux on the same hardware, and the real slap is that it won't sacrifice reliability nor correctness of operation to do that.
    - DeathRabbit 9y ago
      The comment up above in the chain was wondering whether running Solaris (or derivatives) offered any advantage. While I'm sure the packages you listed _run_ fine, how difficult would it be to find support for each when running on Solaris? You can run those softwares on Solaris, but is Solaris on the "supported platforms" list? Not debating here, BTW; I enjoyed my time with Solaris and then its offshoots. Edit: The thinking here only applies to systems running in production where official support is pretty much mandated.
      - feld 9y ago
        What do you mean "find support" ? This is open source software. Your sysadmins are your first line of support. If they can't debug issues, work with the open source community, and write basic patches in C you have the wrong staff.
        DeathRabbit 9y ago
        I've worked in places where "official" commercial-level support is required when a system is in production. In those situations, I didn't have control over the staff at any level, just pointing out it's a thing I've seen at least twice in 20 years and 4 jobs.
whyever 9y ago
I can think of the following reasons: 1. It is less profitable to develop exploits targeting a minor OS. 2. Minor OS may have some specific features that the major OS don't.
Annatar 9y ago
You don't have to get up at two o' clock in the morning to run fsck on a filesystem based on 30 year old concepts, for example. Or when you reboot the system, you don't have to wait 18 hours for fsck to complete because it's been more than 180 days since the last filesystem check. And I've many more examples, if you're truly interested.
reaperducer 9y ago
Ask Google.

How does running a different OS than most people can give a company an advantage? Can you elaborate this?

rhinoceraptor 9y ago

You can run docker containers on hardware instead of on virtual machines.

Annatar 9y ago
...And unlike on Linux, it treats the entire datacenter as one giant machine.

snw 9y ago

In my case illumos provided two things: - zones allowed for a much higher deployment density and better utilisation of our hardware than other virtualization technology would have. - zfs snapshots. We've integrated those into our product and when a customer messes up they now have button to instantly restore to a known good state. Doing both of these things would have been a lot harder on another os.

mysterydip 9y ago

A different OS can solve some of the pain points of the mainstream options. Depending on your business, the features a different OS brings could have a large impact on performance or stability. Potential areas for improvement could be anything from filesystem to process concurrency to virtualization.

fulminatorz68 9y ago
I'd see only the pain of migrating applications and learning new administration tools. Solaris was dead long before oracle killed it -- to me.
- feld 9y ago
  "migrating applications" -- you'd be shocked at how unix software tends to run on... unix OSes with few to no modifications. Things like: * Java * PHP * Perl * Python * Ruby * Apache * Nginx * Varnish * MySqL * Postgres * Node.js * etc all run just fine on a Solaris-clone. Unless your app is using very specific kernel features it will probably work fine.
  - Annatar 9y ago
    They run more than just fine; usually an illumos based OS will run circles around Linux on the same hardware, and the real slap is that it won't sacrifice reliability nor correctness of operation to do that.
  - DeathRabbit 9y ago
    The comment up above in the chain was wondering whether running Solaris (or derivatives) offered any advantage. While I'm sure the packages you listed _run_ fine, how difficult would it be to find support for each when running on Solaris? You can run those softwares on Solaris, but is Solaris on the "supported platforms" list? Not debating here, BTW; I enjoyed my time with Solaris and then its offshoots. Edit: The thinking here only applies to systems running in production where official support is pretty much mandated.
    - feld 9y ago
      What do you mean "find support" ? This is open source software. Your sysadmins are your first line of support. If they can't debug issues, work with the open source community, and write basic patches in C you have the wrong staff.
      - DeathRabbit 9y ago
        I've worked in places where "official" commercial-level support is required when a system is in production. In those situations, I didn't have control over the staff at any level, just pointing out it's a thing I've seen at least twice in 20 years and 4 jobs.

whyever 9y ago

I can think of the following reasons: 1. It is less profitable to develop exploits targeting a minor OS. 2. Minor OS may have some specific features that the major OS don't.

Annatar 9y ago

You don't have to get up at two o' clock in the morning to run fsck on a filesystem based on 30 year old concepts, for example. Or when you reboot the system, you don't have to wait 18 hours for fsck to complete because it's been more than 180 days since the last filesystem check. And I've many more examples, if you're truly interested.

reaperducer 9y ago

Ask Google.