Use of Solaris for Domino servers

October 22 2005

As I travel around to user groups and Notes/Domino 7 launch events, I often ask the attendees at these events different profile questions about Notes deployments.  I ask about versions in use, I ask about use of instant mesaging, and I ask about server platforms.

One interesting thing I've noticed in asking about server platforms in the last two or three months is that I'm not drawing many hands for Sun Solaris.  Among my (mostly American) audiences, Windows continues to be the server platform I see most frequently.  iSeries and Linux tend to be the next two.  And while I see the other platforms with some frequency, I haven't seen a hand for Domino on Sun Solaris at any meeting I've done in the last two or three months.

Now, market watchers shouldn't necessarily read anything into this.  But I am kind of curious whether there is a reason for this lack of show.  Since IBM sells a platform-agnostic license, it's sometimes hard to track how servers are deployed in the real world.  I know of a customer in the Netherlands that consolidated 110 Windows servers down to two Sun Solaris boxes, so it's definitely deployed.  I'm just wondering why I am not seeing more of it.

Ed Brill Columbus, OH USA Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [16]

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  1. 1  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 10/22/2005 2:43:42 PM

    They don't come to your events obviously. I know more companies on Solaris (+Windows) than on Windows alone.

  1. 2  Gregg Eldred http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf | 10/22/2005 3:17:51 PM

    I agree with Volker, the people must not attending your events. I know quite a few sites that run Solaris.

  1. 3  Mike Lazar  | 10/22/2005 3:52:31 PM

    I moved at least 2 companies to it, and I work with Sun on bids all the time. Frankly, I find it to be the most cost effective choice, far more so than iSeries or AIX, and definitely Windows.

  1. 4  Jerry Glover http://www.jerryglover.com | 10/22/2005 4:11:49 PM

    I know of a couple US Solaris customers - one I was involved with has ~4500 mail users deployed. I see far more iSeries (and Windows of course). I know of one pSeries (AIX) install.

  1. 5  David Bell  | 10/22/2005 11:42:12 PM

    An interesting benefit of Domino 7 specifically on Solaris, that I saw in a presentation recently, is the ability for it to address the full 4GB of RAM, not the artificial 2.3-2.5GB cap seen in previous versions and on other platforms.

    Not sure what changed in Solaris to allow this.

    Domino user concurrency per partition is typically limited by memory so this could prove to be a big benefit, especially combined with the lower CPU usage of Domino 7.

    I see a lot of Domino on AIX in the larger enterprises. Very solid, very good performance.

  1. 6  Stephan H. Wissel http://www.wissel.net/ | 10/23/2005 5:26:55 AM

    There is a lot of Solaris in government and big enterprises here. Most of them are rather secretive about their platform and typically don't go (lack of management permission) to outside events.

    :-) stw

  1. 7  David Vasta david.davidandkelly.com | 10/23/2005 1:39:51 PM

    I would have to be one of the iSeries hands. You can't beat it for running Domino and Lotus and IBM have made an obvious effort to make it the platform of choice. I don't see how anyone could run on anything else.

    There is no Linux Standard and the distros are still to clumsy. If anything as a Lotus customer you need to look at who IBM is going to support top to bottom and that would either be the iSeries or the pSeries. Eventually there will just be Power5 and you chose the OS, but until then there are two real choices both from IBM. We tried to look at Solaris at one time, but even Sun seems reluctant to be of any help to get there foot in a shop that wants to run Domino that is already running it on iSeries. Just about everyone I have talked to @ IBM and Lotus said if they needed to choose an platform they would pick the iSeries over all the choices......

    Lastly...why would you put it on Windows at all?

    I am not trying to stir the pot, but the obvious combo of iSeries and Domino is just to stable to walk away from.

    -David

    I know I am going to catch heat for this one, but I can back it up.

  1. 8  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 10/23/2005 2:44:50 PM

    David [7],

    "Lastly...why would you put it on Windows at all?"

    Because that's what your staff know how to support.

    Look through the job ads, and you'll find banks specifying familiarity with hardware vendors (HP/Compaq, IBM, Dell, Fujitsu) for their support drones. To my mind, Intel hardware is Intel hardware - you know one server, you know 'em all.

    But then, I'm the Domino admin. If I have a hardware or OS problem on my Domino server - and can prove it as such - I just pass it to the relevant team/person. It's not that I can't fix it - I used to be pretty hot on Windows back in the NT4 days - it's that I'm managing hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands of users and many servers, in a complex environment. I don't have time to distract myself by the platform under Domino, even if it might be fun to do so.

    Where I work currently, everyone in the IS department knows Windows to some extent. A couple of guys have touched Linux, nobody really knows anything else to the depth we'd need to get it supported.

    It might not be the most stable of platforms, or the best performing, or the one that's the most resilient. It might run on pretty generic hardware which, in terms of fancy redundancy features, is a century or two behind an iSeries or a zSeries.

    But at the end of the day, many organisations see it as the most cost-effective solution for them, especially when they take into account training and supportability. The reliability and scalability of Domino itself makes up for many of the platform's shortfalls, for instance.

    (As an example, I have a server I inherited which likes to completely lock itself up at the console. No keyboard or mouse input works - but the file/print/Domino services continue. Wierd, but as the Domino server is part of a three server cluster I don't care. Rebuilding the OS to get rid of this small annoyance is a minor thing for me - because I can completely manage my Domino server remotely, and I can always use shutdown.exe to arrange restarts rather than use the Windows console. If this were not a Domino server, we'd have rebuilt if months or years ago, but the resilience of Domino means that it's almost a non-issue for me.)

  1. 9  Randall Shimizu  | 10/23/2005 3:50:28 PM

    I don't think Solaris has been very strong in the Notes market to begin with. There other factors is that for one Sun has been losing marketshare. Plus that Sun is has been pushing it's own Sunone products. The other problem is that Notes has some Windows software dependicies for other apps like Sametime.

    I think IBM see's Solaris as more of capbility feature so therefore they see no reason to push it. In other words IBM sees Solaris as needed basis marketing model. You can't really blame IBM since they have their own hardware.

    So I think that Workplace will be more suitable on the Solaris over time.

  1. 10  David Price www.kbnconsulting.com | 10/23/2005 8:22:53 PM

    @7

    I echo you comments on the iSeries. I was in charge of what was at the time the largest Domino on iSeries consolidation outside of IBM. For large envionrments, it is outstanding and cost effective (assuming your TCO formulas account for all costs) platform. I have spoken to and worked with companies in a variety of industries and the iSeries fits their needs.

    IBM has also made tremendous strides in dropping the price of disk, which was made the early implementations a tougher sell.

    @8

    Most IT people do know Windows but generally not to the level that iSeries staff do. I work with both platforms and come from a large corporate environment (94,000 Notes users in a single domain). I disagree that one Intel server is like another, having lived through SCSI controller, backup unit, etc. issues. I do agree that if you can hand the hardware issues off, then as a Domino person you don't need to care. What you do care about is the number of Domino servers you need to support. You can drive higher densities and reduce your points of administration, which you do care about.

    With multi-versioning one can run multiple versions of Domino on the same piece of hardware and have QA, Test and production environments running concurrently. I have also seen QA budgets reduced and the hardware used in QA is often too old for production. This means that QA has a fraction of processing power compared to production. For some tests that matters greatly.

    Like many of us, I have had a number of CritSits. The ability for IBM support to examine both the OS and application is a tremendous advantage.

    One puts Domino on Windows because it is easy, because you don't want to support multiple OSes, because ones mind set is that good enough reliability is all that is needed. There is a price for higher availability and some companies don't need it or don't recognize they need it.

    A number of my Windows clients have looked into Linux but never moved into production. Their logic was that they could not completely replace MS and they don't want the overhead of two OSes to support. That same logic is why most companies run Domino on Windows, because they cannot afford to be proficient in a second OS.

    There is a visceral feeling in the ability to reload the OS and 'make the thing work' that I have done with Windows servers as a last resort. It fixed the problem but I will never know WHY it fixed the problem. Some clients accept that, others don't.

    To me the iSeries is a great platform for the right company.

  1. 11  Alexander  | 10/24/2005 3:54:33 AM

    Which company is that in the NL where you have seen this?

    Sounds familiair..

    Our three major countries in europe is running Sun solaris on domino..

    Thanks

  1. 12  Chris Whisonant http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com | 10/24/2005 9:09:06 AM

    @7/10 - I'm with you on the iSeries! You can already order an i5 with OS/400 or Linux as the default OS. I'm not sure if AIX as default is available yet, but I can see it coming (since you can already run it in an LPAR). Word on the street (from Dr. Soltis himself...) several years ago was that once Windows was able to run well on 64-bit that IBM would like to offer Windows in an iSeries LPAR as opposed to the IXS.

  1. 13  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 10/24/2005 9:43:22 AM

    @11 I am not sure if it is you or not - thought it was a different company. It isn't a public reference, so even if I follow up and find out, I'm not sure I could say.

    Glad to hear that there might be more than one such server consolidation story!

  1. 14  Kevin Leicht  | 10/24/2005 7:42:23 PM

    @3 I'd agree with you whole heartedly. When we did a cost comparison, Solaris came out far ahead of Windows and iSeries. Windows doesn't scale well, and (even if you can swing a deal on the purchase price) the iSeries maintenance cost is a killer. Solaris is exceptionally stable and dealing with Sun globally is so much simpler than dealing with IBM globally (for maintenance, disk upgrades, etc.). IBM acts as independent 'Ma & Pop' shops in each country/region, whereas Sun is organized much better to handle global customers.

  1. 15  Tyrone Lobo  | 11/24/2005 5:59:15 PM

    I know of one Domino on Solaris installation in Toronto.

  1. 16  Frank Barnidge  | 5/30/2006 8:14:27 AM

    We are currently running 16 Domino 6.5.5 servers on an iSeries 820. I love it, come from the Windows world and had to learn the v4.5 iSeries O/S from scratch. Our server just runs and runs and runs w/o issues. However we are migrating to Sun from the iSeries currently and it is the obvious choice for us. Looking at the non $ numbers supplied by IBM the iSeries seems to be the best choice. Sun is noticably but not significantly behind in their numbers by comparison. Then some quotes arrive for each system and Sun jumps to a significant lead. The T2000 we are evaluating has a $35k cost vs. a single iSeries replacement box at over $290k. At the very least the cost adds clustering and removes a single point of failure to our environment with $ to spare.