On Wed, 17 Sep 2008, Joe Landman wrote:
Have you ever administered a lab full of these units? You need as much help as you can get to administer the windows machines. Sadly, while claims of there being more windows admins are true (thats not the sad part) you need (far) more to administer fewer windows machines than the fewer admins needed for more Linux machines (that is the sad part).
There was a lot to parse there, but I think I precisely agreee, and sort of said that.
We have seen 2 full time admins handle 4000+ Linux machines with time to develop software to make their lives easier (Incyte), as compared to seeing 10 windows admins struggle to keep 100 machines each up to date.
Yeah, that's precisely our experience here as well. But somehow, in spite of the fact that hardware is CHEAP and it is PEOPLE that are expensive, you never see this actually discussed in a CBA. Microsoft has worked near-miracles of FUD-seeding to convince people that alas don't know any better that it is somehow the other way around.
But that is straying a bit. Large organizations often are not admin rich, they tend to try to cut out costs. Admins == costs. Admins need as much help as they can possibly get. If for $150/machine in a large organization, you can take away some level of their pain, this might be worth more than the cost of the additional healthcare coverage, heartburn medicine, and upper/lower GI series needed ...
I actually do a bit of consulting -- nothing like what you do -- for an organization that runs a lot of Windows boxes. It drives me absolutely nuts. If they were running a set of 40+ plus Linux desktops and a small stack of Linux-only servers, I could manage the entire operation, close to 24x7, in even MY copious spare time (not) with time to spare. If anybody had a problem, I could trivially fix it from home. And they'd basically never crash or (with 40 clients to 3+servers) EVER EVER load the network or the servers to the point where I could detect a meaningful load, given what they are doing. I could be absolutely certain, when problems occurred, where they occurred and why. With a mixed lin-win operation (several key linux servers) it is maddening. The Windows systems crash. They hang, for no reason, even if they aren't "doing" anything. Unless one is ubervigilant (or in spite of it) they get viruses. The primary operational server for the whole LAN is linux, and almost never has a load average over around 0.3, yet responsiveness drops to near zero in resonance with the primary Windows server -- that does almost nothing that any human can see that should be involved with the primary work tool -- peaking in load. Then there is messing with licensing, buying copies of Office where needed, installing AV everywhere, getting the printers to work, configuring the systems to "join a workgroup" and access server-based disk. Windows is "easy"? Cheap to manage? Fast and efficient in a LAN client/server context? I see only two advantages to Windows over Linux these days, and only one of them matters. The one that matters is there is still a lot of software that only runs under Windows. Even for the application that is the core application in this organization, where there actually is a linux version of the server, the clients only run under Windows. That's it, right there. The other advantage is that Windows still has a slim edge in hardware drivers and support -- one is "guaranteed" that Windows will install on anything you buy and work with all the hardware simply by virtue of the fact that it comes preinstalled with Windows already working with it. That is in part why many vendors -- even enlightened ones that do have linux-based servers for their clients -- still require windows for the clients. They can be sure that the printers will work, that (however slow and clunky the configuration) the NIC will function, they can "borrow" things like MS Word and use them in place of writing an actual printer stack of their own (yes, people use MS Word as printer interface/library, believe it or not). They can be sure that their product will run on NEARLY any hardware package a user comes up with. Part of even this is FUD, these days. The last few years, Linux has worked nearly flawlessly out of the box with nearly all desktop hardware, and is doing pretty decently even on rapidly varying laptop hardware. Microsoft has once again broken MS Office relative to all previous versions (while converting to an "open" XML for the docs themselves) , leveling the playing field with Open Office and providing it with a surprising opportunity to pull very nearly dead even. Vista of Evil sucks and everybody knows it even if MS tries to convince them otherwise with their "Mohave" ads. Apple (running basically Unix) openly mocks Microsoft on TV and people believe their ads. Cracks -- some of them quite serious -- have appeared in MS's once invincible facade. It's hard to say what will happen over the next year or two. I've been predicting MS's crash-n-burn for years now, and will readily admit I've been wrong at least about the time frame -- it has taken Linux longer to get to where it is now than I expected, and the mass of all those WinXX boxes out there proved more robust and long lived than I expected (helped considerably by the fact that XPpro, SP2 and then SP3, did not really suck all that much outside of its absurd price and the long waits to update through limited bandwidth lines with arcane license validation tools in the pathway. However, I also remember DEC -- one year it looked rock-solid, then in the twinkling of a year it failed to make a hardware cut and in a year more it disappeared without a trace after decades of phenomenal growth. I remember Apple sinking almost to the point of bankruptcy. I remember OS/2. There is nothing more fickle and cruel than the public when the price/performance of something like a computer OS tips past a certain balance point. Ubuntu, at long last, has even put desktop linux out there with enough hardware support and "stuff" that many former Windows users are finding themselves quite content with it. One of these years RH or some other big player is going to realize two things: a) Desktop Linux, sold for 1/3 or 1/6 of the price of any version of Vista (where the price buys a modest amount of SUPPORT, not the software), can make them small money over large volume and actually be a big source of profit. b) TV ads work. Even as a loss leader, to shake confidence in Microsoft and to convince people that they can actually run linux on a desktop and get all their work and a lot of their play done, with less hassle and expense an ad campaign targeted at consumers is totally worth it. Look at Apple's success at portraying MSWin as the brain-dead piece of trash that it is. Are we at the tipping point? Who knows. MS Windows 7 is supposed to come to the rescue about now and revert to non-suckiness per desktop, but Server 2008 and a LAN full of clients still looks nightmarishly difficult to install, maintain, manage, support. If only users -- or corporate buyers and administrators -- WOULD factor in the $200/month that MS thinks is a "bargain" for lease/management per box into the overall cost of their system, MS might well continue their slow spiral down into V7. I don't see any killer apps on the horizon, and "transparency" (at the cost of 4 GB systems and immense slowness) is obvious hype and glitz without substance. As the marginal difference between Win and Lin functionality on an installed desktop continues to shrink, commercial third party applications may soon by MS's ONLY edge, and I've noted that the commercial 3rd party app aisles for Win continue to shrink at e.g. Best Buy (except for games). After all, why develop for Windows, given the CERTAINTY that any killer app you develop and release will be cloned by MS and that they'll drive you out of business (or if they feel nice, buy you out of business, their option) at any moment? The really good developers work elsewhere, these days, and the entrepreneurial excitement is drained off into Google, into Amazon, into open source, into the web (where MS is far from monolithic and where truly large scale Win-only operations are rather scarce). Things are dicey. The economy sucks, companies look for ways to cut corners. Suddenly that enormous pile of Windows licenses, the one-admin-per-fifty systems looks exorbitant and expensive. Somebody tells them a Linux admin can do 200+ systems with no license fees (and a lot more security and fewer user headaches) and the "luxury" of $200/month Window admin is a real candidate for the block (as in chopping). rgb -- Robert G. Brown Phone(cell): 1-919-280-8443 Duke University Physics Dept, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Web: http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb Book of Lilith Website: http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Lilith/Lilith.php Lulu Bookstore: http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=877977 _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
