From: Ayson, Alison {Info~Palo Alto} (alison.ayson@ROCHE.COM)
Date: Mon Jul 19 2004 - 15:29:49 EDT
I received many, many responses on this question; thanks to everyone for
responding (and with such candor).
The bottom line seems to be that Linux definitely has it's place in the
future of IT, but it's not the panacea that (some) are touting it as.
Most people who responded have at least a couple of years experience
administering Linux. Everyone seemed to agree that Linux has made great
strides within the last year or so, and has become a bit more stable and
"mainstream". Some felt that Linux was still "not ready for prime time"
(I tend to agree). Some others felt that Linux was equal to, if not
better than, most mainstream OS's.
The applications most frequently mentioned as being good candidates for
Linux were:
1) Web Servers
2) Network services (such as DHCP, DNS, Firewalls)
3) Small Oracle databases
The applications most frequently mentioned as being poor candidates for
Linux were:
1) Large server applications (such as SAP)
2) Large Oracle databases
3) MIssion critical applications (Linux, in general, was still felt to
be a bit unstable..not by all, but by most).
(NOTE: I understand that some may disagree with the above criteria. I'm
only presenting a general concensus based on all the responses I
received. I'm sure that there are "exceptions" out there.)
Just about everyone agreed that RedHat support was severely lacking (the
expression most commonly used to describe RedHat support was "it's a
joke"). The overwhelming recommendation was to purchase HP support if
you plan to implement RedHat Linux in any medium or large scale form.
It's interesting that this issue can create so much emotion; on both
sides of issue (for and against). I, like most people, am suspicious of
extremes. I don't believe Linux will save the Universe, but I also
don't believe that Linux is evil and should be abolished. <--(Well..at
least when I've calmed down a bit after spending hours trying to get a
driver to load.)
I think some of the emotion against Linux isn't necessarily an issue
with Linux, per se. It's more the frustration with having a solution
shoved down your throat solely based on numbers, not on technical
feasibility; and this decision is often made by those who couldn't
compile a kernel if their life depended upon it. Even those who were
strongly in favor of Linux felt that the decision to move an application
to Linux needed to be based on technical merit, and not on financial
savings alone.
I found it interesting (but not surprising) that many who responded
about Linux mentioned "outsourcing" in almost the same breath. In
today's IT world there are some scary things going on; many decisions
appear to be based solely on the bottom line and the human cost is
completely ignored (or simply considered unimportant). Working
hard and being good at what you do is no longer enough; you have to
compete with someone making $5,000 a year, and being asked to implement
a "cheap" solution, with no regard to the amount of work involved to
install and then maintain that environment, only adds to the anxiety,
frustration, and stress.
For myself, I will continue in my struggle to become well-versed with
the Linux Operating system; I can see the writing on the wall and, like
it or not, the words spell out "Linux". Maybe I just don't have enough
experience yet, but I still am a bit leery of having to maintain several
Linux servers. It took me over a week to get the Linux cluster OS up
and running. The network card wasn't recognized so I had to find the
driver at www.hp.com. The instructions to install the driver included
recompiling the kernel (this is why I was concerned to read that
recompiling the kernel can invalidate your support agreement); the
instructions for configuring the Emulex HBA card were 53 pages long.
When I install an HBA card or a network card on an HP-UX server I simply
install the card, run swinstall to load the driver, and reboot....it's
done.
Thanks again to everyone who took the time to respond. I know that
there are many Linux user groups out there, in fact, almost too many;
it's confusing trying to figure out which one to join. I've always
gotten such great responses from this particular mailing list and this
particular post was no exception.
-- Alison Ayson
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