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So I got ugly yesterday in our MIS-ITS meeting when the issue of whether or not to run Workflow 4.2. on a Linux box came up.  My director, Ken, wants to look at migrating towards Linux.  That is the feeling of our Systems team as well.   Currently we run Workflow on a Sun Solaris box, however, since we are due to upgrade our workflow server to meet software and hardware requirements for the next release of Workflow, this issue has bubbled up again.   

As Zach pointed out, we do run other apps on Linux, just no Sungard apps yet.  He mentioned that this shouldn’t be a “religious war” and we should be able to come up with rationale either way while being civilized.  I know he is right, but it feels like a religious war to me.  I guess in technology there will always be religious wars, PC vs. Mac, Explorer vs. Mozilla, Red Hat vs. Sun, Red Sox vs. Yankees….just seeing if you’re paying attention!

Once I cooled down, and became my rationale civilized self again, I took the business analysis approach to the issue and did some research. 

Pros and Cons below as I see them.  I’m not a systems administrator or a DBA, so this is me looking at the situation through my business analysts workflow administrator eyes.

We already run Workflow 4.1.5 on a Sun Solaris box.  This solution has been extremely reliable.  In a nutshell Workflow doesn’t go down and the Sun Solaris box has handled the first year of workflow capacity fine. 

Why fix something that isn’t broken?

Jon, our workflow DBA feels that OAS (Oracle Applications Server 10g), required to run Workflow 4.2, would be easier to run on Solaris.  I weigh this pretty heavily given the already many hours we put into workflow and the additional workflow items we want to accomplish, clustering engines, building workflows, incorporating Xtender etc. 

How much additional time/training is it going to involve of me or Jon? We already have so much on our plates.

Initial responses from a posting I put on a workflow listserv, returned only two results, both institutions were running Workflow 4.2. on Linux without any major concerns. One of these institutions needed to command out something in a configuration file and the other institution had to massage all their trigger scripts that trigger workflows. 

Is this a pro or a con for Linux, I’m still on the fence?  Modifying trigger scripts!  Yikes, I don’t like sound of that, especially since it will involve some of my time.

The actual Workflow documentation hardware requirements list Sun Solaris first and Linux second, even though Linux comes alphabetically first. 

This is just me reading something between the lines that may not mean anything, but I don’t like it.  They took the time to alphabetize the web browser software options but not the Hardware/Operating System options?  Hmmm?

I asked a Sungard Workflow developer for some quick ballpark figures which turned up the following;

• of the institutions currently running workflow, 75% have already migrated to Workflow 4.2.
• of the institutions running Workflow 4.2, 40% are running it on Linux vs. 30% running it on Sun Solaris. 

Those are very loose numbers and I wouldn’t hold Sungard to them.  I asked for a rough estimate/ballpark figure off the top of their heads. Still it is comforting to know that other institutions have already paved the path on either way we decide to go. 

From my perspective, I want to stick with Sun Solaris.  That is the solution that me, Jon, and my Magic 8 ball are most comfortable with.  I don’t want to compromise reliability in any way where I’m still in the initial deployment phase of Workflow and have been marketing it as extremely dependable. My feeling is that adding new hardware, INB upgrades, a new version of OAS, and a new version of Workflow are enough on the plate without adding a new OS (Linux) to the mix of things.

So I’m now deferring this decision to my Director, the System Admin team, and the DBAs to make the right decision for our institution and I do understand that they are keeping the following items, that Ken outlined to me, in mind:

It should be noted that I’m thankful that the equipment purchase has been approved for this fiscal year and we will be making this migration one way or the other to Workflow 4.2 this Fall.  Stay tuned for more..

tags: it religious wars, magic 8 ball, solaris vs. linux for workflow, sungard workflow, workflow

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