DCS Foxboro I/A Series : Solaris vs Windows

DCS Foxboro I/A Series : Solaris vs Windows When it comes to the significant points:

1. Windows high point - Microsoft OS is the most used OS in the world and many great people are trained on it and the tools that are based on it.
2. Windows low point - Microsoft OS is the most used OS in the world and many evil people are trained on it and the tools that are based on it.
3. Unix low point - Not many people are familiar with Unix so it is tough to hire an experienced Unix person.
4. Unix high point - Not many people are familiar with Unix so it is not attacked or played with. Hackers will leave you alone.

From a Foxboro AW point of view both computers work well as CP hosts and as long as you keep all of your control in the CP's both hosts would give you good service. There are slight differences but nothing to get really excited about. I would never recommend control of a process in the AW whether Unix or Win based. Supervisory control is OK as long as your CP takes control when the AW fails. Some of the differences as I see them (if anyone knows differently please let me know - my experience is still mostly with 51 series):

1. You can easily do tape backup/restore of the Solaris boxes. Windows it's fairly straightforward to do backups but full restores are not possible - need to re-install windows, re-install I/A, re-commit and then restore custom files.
2. On Solaris, you can use ICC from any workstation to any control station no matter which workstation you are working on and which host. On windows boxes you can only use ICC for a given control station from it's host AW. If you use IACC this does not appear to be an issue.
3. All Solaris workstations are servers. It is easy to open a remote DM/FV from any workstation to any other workstation. Telnet, ftp, rmount, rcp, rlogin, rsh, nfs all just work. SSH can be made to work. XP boxes are not really servers. FTP works pretty well. Telnet under the Nutcracker suite has some issues. If you remotely access an XP box it's a shared screen. The P91 boxes running Win2003Server largely offset these issues.
4. The nutcracker shell on Widows workstations gives an approximation of a Unix shell to try to preserve compatibility of many Foxboro and user software and scripts under Windows. All the user friendliness of Unix and all the reliability of Windows.
5. I've had problems with AHD on windows WPs. Not sure if this can be made to work. We had off-platform AIM* and Solaris AWs - Windows WP could not retrieve AHD. My understanding is that Windows WPs can't retrieve AHD from any other workstation.
6. Commits and QFs on a Windows box are more of a hassle than on a Solaris box. With Solaris you can do them remotely, and often don't need a reboot at all. Windows you can't do remotely. You have to reboot with I/A off, do the commit/QF, and reboot again with I/A on. If memory serves, some require extra reboots.
7. Multiple monitors on Solaris are very simple - each has it's own desktop. Multiple monitors on Windows are actually a single desktop across two windows. Managing things so they stay on one monitor or the other can be a pain - like warnings and install menues which often pop up centered on the desktop spanning monitors.
8. If you shut down a Foxboro Windows box using the traditional Start -> Shut Down sequence you will hang the box. You have to use CTRL-ALT-DEL -> Shut Down.
9. In Solaris, switching to the appropriate environment can give you full administrative access to the workstation. If you want to secure the box from Operators using Windows you can boot to FV only, but then you have to reboot to FV+Windows to get full administrative access to the workstation.
10. Because Foxboro has to qualify all the Microsoft patches, the patch levels of I/A boxes will be well behind current. This is true of Solaris also, but your MIS department is likely to be far more concerned about Windows patch levels on boxes connected to their network than about Solaris patch levels on Sun boxes connected to their network.
11. Anti-virus software is available on the Windows boxes - this may be a pro or a con depending on your point of view. Managing updates for this software is not automatic. After the initial license there will be an ongoing license cost. If your MIS department already has a McAfee Corporate license this may be easy, although the version running on the I/A boxes (Enterprise 7 I think, maybe 8) may not match the Corporate version.
12. I've had problems with frequent shell windows popping up and closing too quickly to see what they said on the windows boxes. Appears to be related to the OPC server and/or AIM*. I've seen this on both off-platform AIM*/OPC server boxes and on P91 I/A servers.
13. A failed process can be easily restarted on an UNIX box. A failed process on a Windows box is far more likely to require a reboot of the workstation. Having said this, I rarely see failed processes on either platform any more. XP and Win2003 appear to be far more stable than NT.
14. If you run a mixed system with both Solaris and Windows, maintaining graphics across the system is not trivial. Most of us have some version of a copy script that lets you change a graphic on your workstation and copy it to all other appropriate workstations. With the new FV, all changes must be done on the Windows platform.
15. Changed files can easily be copied to other Windows workstations but need to be changed to .g files to copy to Solaris boxes where they have to be changed back to .fdf files under Solaris. This can still be scripted but it is more complicated.
16. If you are using a V7.x system, telnets to F boxes across the switches seem to be extremely slow sometimes. I haven't seen this problem with the Windows boxes (and it may be fixed now for the Solaris boxes).

If you guys would just quit requesting windows. Foxboro could focus their development effort on something we wanted. Here are a couple more vs.

1. Windows documentation for MKS/NutCracker is largely non-existant. You will need to go to the internet to get & understand them. Unix provides cryptic man pages for the various commands. You will need to go to the internet to understand them.
2. Windows hardware costs less. Whether it's a keyboard, kvm switch, monitor, or cables PC hardware generally costs less than the equivalent Sun hardware. Typically not a lot, but if you have a large installation it can add up.
3. Microsoft offers some "administrative windows scripting" languages that you can download, but they are not certified by Invensys and from my limited experience tend to be lacking. Think Microsoft's version of applescript. (Zune vs Ipod?) Doubtless these are improving, and seem to get updated on a fairly regular basis. Also there are the Microsoft Services for Unix or SFU. I would be very afraid to run these with the MKS/NutCracker installed, but hey, it's your plant. Unix system administration can become very automated, but you have to be willing to invest a lot of time up front to learn to do it. If you want to see what Microsoft thinks of scripting read this. (It's short, and hilarious if you do any shell scripting at all.) http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/beginner/firststeps.mspx
4. Windows has the registry. A one stop shop that can render your computer useless. UNIX doesn't.
5. Windows has services that must run as a specific user, with a specific password. Unix has daemons that must run as root, but you are able to change the root password.
6. Windows has any development language you like. Unix has any development language you like as long as it's not VB.
7. When installing other programs either purchased or self written, Unix does not suffer fools gladly. Windows will gladly fool you. It can introduce subtle errors to other programs making it nearly impossible to determine the root cause of failure. DLLs are like Unix's shared libraries, but for some reason windows programmers are less disciplined about stomping on previous versions of DLLs.
8. Unix does not ask for confirmation of rm -r /*. Windows will ask you "Are you sure?" so often you will hit OK regardless of the question like format C:

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