Portal Server: Unix or Windows

[former_member318735]

Hi,

We're implementing a Portal Project with version NW04 SR1.

Our Customer asks which platform to implement the project? Unix (esp. AIX)

Technically, as SAP supports both platforms, wee need experience information about both platforms.

What are the technical or integration related advantages or disadvantages?

regards

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

from my point of view a decision could be based on the following criteria.

1) available knowledge - you'd probably have a hard time making a Windows skilled person administering a Unix box

2) available HW/SW - if things are already in-place try to re-use to speed up the project

3) technical implications - i.e. integrated OS logon is easier to achieve if running on Windows

4) strategic decisions already taken by the customer (preferred vendor)

Hope that helps,

rAimund

[Former Member]

Hi Huseyin,

In addition to rAimund's comments...

I was very much involved with my previous implementation

on AIX and was considered a large implementation. SAP has lot of experience and recommendations related to solving performance problems/solutions etc on other UNIX platforms compared to AIX. We could not get really a good reference customer who had the experience on AIX when we had performance issues.

-Venkat

From my experience the support would be much better if more customers running on the platform. Percentage wise AIX/Portal installations are less compared to on other platforms.

Example: Portal on AIX uses IBM JDK. When it comes down to JVM optimization, these techniques are different from Sun's JDK which is widely used. So when we had issues we had to work with IBM and still some of the JIT compiler issues are not resolved. (The portal version was EP6.0 SP2 uses JDK1.3.1 and IBM says upgrade to JDK 1.4 but that version is supported in EP6 SP9 onwards.. )

But if customer has already selected AIX should still be fine as slowly AIX installation base is growing.