Thanks for the info!

I appreciate that the conversation hasn't degraded into a mud-slinging battle of which version is better. Makes it easier to put some weight to the opinions presented.

Regarding HPUX/HP hardware, I did look at it and currently, it appears very solid. My big concern is the imminent (?) change over from PA-RISC to IA64. I wouldn't want our development group to have to re-engineer the platform shortly after implementation if we decide to scale up.

It's been a definite struggle trying to get real answers to the performance and stability questions on each platform. From what I can tell so far:

- IBM Power4 based systems perform significantly better than equally equipped Sun UltraSparc III systems.

- Sun UltraSparc III based systems perform better than equally equipped IBM RS64 IV systems.

- IBM fault correction appears to be better

- Sun electrically isolates partitions from each other so a fault in one can't impact any others (Enterprise level systems)

- IBM partitioning is much more granular going to the level of 1 CPU/256MB RAM regardless of its physical location.

- Both vendors like to compare their Jaguars to the others Hyundai's and gloat about performance and features

- Sun potentially has fairly widespread memory board failure issues that I can't tell whether are resolved or not yet.

Basically, to sum it up in a word... Idunno??!?

I'm working the angle of Oracle performance and support now to see if I get any further ahead.

Cheers!