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CA Announces Program Ports to Linux
December writes "CA has announced that they will port ARCserveIT, InnoculateIT, MasterIT and NetworkIT to Linux.
The full press release is available online. " Computer Associates and Red Hat are teaming up, according to the press release. They'll be making a package aimed at "mid-market" customers.
My friend Spankey says it is a good thing. He keeps all of his shared image files on a Linux server (that way anyone can look at his pictures. Why anyone would want to look at pictures of my friend Spankey's old toaster over is beyond me). My friend Spankey says he doesn't want his toaster over pictures infected with any virus, so my friend Spankey says its a good thing. But as I've said before, my friend Spankey is silly, so I wouldn't listen to him.
-A Friend of Spankey's
Never knock on Death's door:
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
Heh i can see it now...the invincible Linux box hands out a virus to a Windows client, which then procedes to delete every file it has access to on the samba server. Sorry, but your non-root user privledges wont help your data here.
For now it is for Red Hat Linux. If my memory is correct, Computer Associates has announced agreements with other Linux distributors so you can expect that soon.
I am working with CA/Cheyenne FaxServe for NetWare and it SUCKS! They have a 32-bit client program that they tell you not to install because it doesn't work, so you have to use the old 16-bit program. The tech support department has apparently been subcontracted to another company. They don't understand the product and every one of them has such a thick accent that I can hardly understand them, IF they ever call me back. -- Pissed Off CA Customer
so what are you gonna do now tough guy? huh?
CA is the most egregiously arrogant company I have dealt with in over 15 years of doing computer support. Besides the support issues that have already been mentioned, just trying to *buy* their products can be a nightmare. Several years ago they tried to sell me Unicenter. The salesman and I went round and round for months over one central issue: Pricing.
It wasn't that the pricing was too much, it was that they couldn't tell me what it was. I insisted that I wasn't going to invest any time in evaluating Unicenter until I was convinced that it would fit in my budget. I wanted a price schedule -- you know, like a price per server of various sizes, and a price per client, a price per management station, etc. They wouldn't give me any prices until I'd given them a complete inventory of all the hardware on our network, identifying which machines were servers, which workstations, etc., etc., etc. I tried to explain that this was a Sun environment and, what with NFS and all, just about *all* the machines could be considered servers, and that for the purposes of determining affordability, he could just assume that all of our approximately 150 Sun machines were servers. I explained that doing the kind of documentation he wanted, in the form he wanted, was exactly the kind of thing I didn't have time for until I knew that I could afford the product. After a long time of this, I finally told him to just stop calling me.
We went through the same thing again a few months ago with ARCserve. We'd been using ARCserve for NT since the Cheyenne days -- Cheyenne was actually a pretty good company before CA slaughtered it -- and we wanted to (a) upgrade it to the latest version and (b) buy copies for our Unix machines. It boggles the mind, but we never, ever did get a price for it. There appeared to be no one in CA who was authorized to give us a price, and we tried, repeatedly, for months to get this information out of them. At one point they sent us a single license for evaluation, but by that time we were pretty far along evaluating an alternative, Backup Express from SyncSort. Backup Express works great, and SyncSort's service is excellent.
Really, CA offering products for Linux is a very mixed blessing.
Yes I definately agree. ARCServe, FaxServe and InnocuLAN sucks rocks, big time! Their support for NetWare (who put them on the map in the first place) was literally non-existant. I just hope people don't get sucked into buying it.
I have worked at CA for three years. This is a strange company indeed. Smoking is forbidden at company sites. Smokers must leave the property. In many offices, you have to scan in AND out to come and go from the building (headquarters has turnstyles like an amusement park or subway). Overtime is expected. Bonuses? Maybe - once a year. Internal politics are horrible. SUpport staff (hr, payroll, facilities, etc) are rude and mean to employees. Overall - I think the place sucks. Why am I still there? Salary is good - plus, you have to stay at least 3 years to get any bonus money (at 3 years you get 20% - you must stay 7 years for 100%). I could go on and on...I think it is ok to start here. Get in 3 years (if you can stand it) and run like hell.
Now there's a nice piece of code. Clean, fast and easy to use, at least at the server. Automated backups on stackers was great, at least in a NetWare environment. Support was awesome too, but they've got to do something about their manuals...
All backup software sucks. I sometimes hold forth the position that it is cheaper to do without backups and when the hard drive on a server crashes- re-type everything in manually. :)
:(
I developed an affection for Palindrome but Cheyenne bought them and then stopped development on it. We would still be using it for our own servers but it won't work after y2k.
About 20% of our customer support time is spent troubleshooting backup problems. I can't recall ever getting a solution to a problem from a supplier support technician. (Well, once with Dell)
Arcserve is a swearword around our shop. It is the Microsoft Windows of backup software in my book.
Thank god! Every time I had to deal with arcserve (or arcsolo *shudder*) I thought it was just me who hated it.
You think the NT flavor is bad? Hah! try the netware version!
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
CA software is a pain in the ass. And they cannot even manage to resolve conflict issues with their own software [Arcserve and Inoculan frequently will not play nicely together].
And their software is by far the worst in the industry when it comes to the process of licensing. It is a nightmare! Tell them to keep this junk to themselves.
all persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental. - Kurt Vonnegut
Computer Associates are notorious for their business practices. They make Microsoft's monopolist moves pale by comparison. Besides what can you expect from a company of which the president is famous for claming that the best way to hurry up a late project is to fire half the programming team? (that makes the other half more productive in his view). Give me Microsoft over them any day!
Since a lot of use Linux boxes to serve files for Windows machines, yes, a virus scanner that can identify and remove Windows viruses is a good thing to have. And there are already several available.
However, if CA really wanted to impress me, they would make a virus scanner that integrated in to samba so that it could scan files as they are sent out and received in.
Forward-looking statements in this press release are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Investors are cautioned that statements in this press release that are not strictly historical statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding management's plans and objectives for future operations, and management's assessment of market factors, constitute forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, Red Hat's dependence upon an open source business model, reliance upon independent third-party Linux developers, management of growth, reliance upon strategic relationships, expansion of Red Hat's business focus and operations, the possibility of undetected software errors, the enforceability of the GNU General Public License and other licenses under which Red Hat's products are developed and licensed, the scarcity of Linux-based applications, the risks of economic downturns generally, and in Red Hat's industry specifically, the risks associated with competition and competitive pricing pressures, the viability of the Internet, Year 2000 compliance efforts of Red Hat and of third parties on which Red Hat depends, and other risks detailed in Red Hat's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which may be accessed through the SEC's Web site at http://www.sec.gov.
I'd say anyone who runs a linux box as a fileserver for windows boxes would appreciate the virus scanning.
I used to run a similar product on a nightly basis on a number of novell servers, Netware doesn't have viruses but the clients that connect to it and store their files on it most certainly do.
Another use would be to scan the mailstore for all those pop3 users to make sure none of those word attachments have annoying macro viruses in them.
This kind of product is very useful to anyone using linux boxes as a server in a mixed platform environment.
--
I am not a Frog. I am a Free Womble!
If RedHat keeps this up, they'll have more closed source software in their box then open. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or a good thing, but I wonder if that's the only way for a distro to 'stand out'. I guess I got the wrong idea, and thought RH would of wanted more to push the software as OSS. Again I'm not passing judment and saying this is bad or good. But it does make me wonder. Oh well, just my two pence.
I can see your point about scanning for Windoze viruses with Linux, and I'll grant you that would actually be useful.
However, we DO NOT need virus checkers to protect our systems or our own data from viruses or Trojan horse applications. You only need those things when you run closed-source binary applications. Nobody in their right mind would use closed source when they can get the source code and check it themselves before they compile it. If I can't get the source, then I don't use it.
If you use binary-only software, then you deserve whatever Hell it unleashes on your system.
(You know, I'm starting to feel like Richard Stallman, here.)
Anyway, virus checking software will not stop Trojan horses, and it will only give the user a false sense of security. The people who *need* anti-virus software are the ones who are the least likely to keep it updated.
What newbie Linux users really need are friendly, easy-to-setup security software, or a distro that comes preconfigured to be secure and has a simple interface to give the root user control of the various security settings.
I also take issue with folks who think GNU/Linux will have arrived when there is all this shrink-wrapped software available for it. That is not what I want, nor what most of you are going to want if you stop and think about it. Shrink-wrapped software means locking people out of their own systems. It means becoming more like the enemy. If you become the enemy, even in order to defeat them, you haven't won, just replaced the enemy with yourself. The whole fixation with trying to turn GNU/Linux into the next Windows with shrink-wrapped software and comparable software will destroy the community in the long run. I see us heading in that direction and I don't like it. For the good of the community, the fixation with Micro$oft has got to stop, and this desire have all the same tools as them has to end. To win, we need to transcend the commercial software mentality and come up with something truly innovative to move the computing world in a new direction....
Uh, sorry for the rant. I'll stop before I get too far off topic, but you get the point.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
The company offers great products/services that will be welcomed by all Linux users. It may even attract MS loyals to switch to Linux. For instance, the game market. Many users stick with MS because of all the game titles offered. Take away the dependence on MS software and users will flock to Linux. Soon these new users will discover Slashdot. There they will be dumped on by the moderators. Then they will understand the dark side of Linux.
Welcome!
The last time you downloaded an open-source program, did you read ALL the code? Even the boring stuff? Hmm?
If I see something I think particularly interesting, I'll post a pointer to the story and let the /. "editors" write it up nice if they want. And I rarely bother with even that much effort anymore. Doesn't seem to be much point.
I'm not interested in wasting my time over it.
Wow! I am so glad we don't run Redhat or somebody might decide it is a good idea to buy this stuff.
My impression of CAI is that they are the slumlord of software. They seem to buy old programs, market the hell out of them, add an IT to the name and provide crap support.
Good to hear. Hope more companies do the same..
Not!
There have been me and two other Admins (well, one was only kind of an "Admin wannabe") that have been burned by BarfServe in the recent past. As for me: BarfServe was the last straw. I told management to get that damn server-wannabe-toy NT the hell out of my computer room. The next person in line got so disgusted with BarfServe that he kicked it off the box and used whatever lame excuse for backup support that came with NT. A colleague of mine roped into Admin'ing NT boxes got burned by it next. (I warned him he would.) I think that was the final straw for him, too. He quit his job and got a real job as a contract Unix Admin.
The only people this announcement will impress are PHBs that think NT is "enterprise class computing."
Pah.
(Yes, this is a rant. "Moderators": do your duty! I'll only say this in my defense: after spending months giving NT and lame products like BarfServe the kind of loving attention I give my 'nix boxen, I received nothing in the way of [improved] reliability and performance for my efforts. I don't dislike the Windoze environment because I don't know it, but rather the opposite. In my experience: Unix and NT require about the same amount of effort to do well. The difference is: Unix is worth it!)
Anyone who has used arcserve on SCO can tell you how good their unix ports are.
Try and buy a licence for a product on a low end Alpha, and look at the price for the same product for an 8400. The same thing has been going on for years, you pay different rates for a higher system grade- workgroup or Enterprise...
Posted by NJViking:
I hope they clean up the ArcServe interface up first before they port it. I had to support ArcServe on 8 NT servers at my last job and it was not a pretty picture.
Arcserve appears to have horrible support for library tape devices, and their instructions for installing patches (as well as figuring out which patches are pre-requisites to others is a nightmare.)
The tape device I was using was a Magstar B10. It had support for 20 tape cartidges and was a fast little machine, however, Arcserve would often leave the tape device in an unwritable state.
When I left that job in June, I had found out from a colleague in November that they hadn't had a full backup since August.
NJV
Yah, I had to deal with Arcserve on a Netware server when I was working at Unnamed U. It didn't help matters much that the server had some flaky hardware in it to begin with, but that is what makes a good backup all the more important.
ArcServe was the wrong choice for the job.
The UI was horrible, consisting of a scattering of programs, some loaded on the server, some on the client. Only backup software I know of that forced you to load a program on another machine just to eject a tape.
It used to go off the trolly somewhere into a la-la land that only ArcServe could find. It would keep spitting out useless console messages and eating up CPU time. The only way to fix it was to forcibly kill the program, which is not good for the health of your Netware server.
And it was always spewing error messages like "Unexpected error nnnn" or "Tape server error nnnn" where "nnnn" was some number not found in the manual. You'd call tech support, sit on hold for an hour, and that get a tech who'd look it up and say something like "It means your backup is toast, try it again" or "Oh, we don't know what that means, either. It wasn't documented by the engineering team, and they haven't had a chance to go back and find it yet."
Geez, am I glad I don't have to deal with that POS anymore.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
InoculateIT for Red Hat Linux, which provides complete protection for Linux machines deployed as components of the eBusiness infrastructure from all kinds of virus threats
Yeah, right. Do we really need that?
The rest of the stuff are things that any decent SysAdmin could cobble together with scripts or even get free scripts to do.
And, have you noticed that all this stuff is "for Red Hat Linux?" I say, "No, thank you" on that count, too.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
I also found the support excellent: when I called once on a weekend, I was forwarded to the person who wrote the software, who came in from mowing the lawn to take my call. Now that's *support*!
Yep, it's a stinker. Bad UI. It used the ancient "raimer" database for logs which was prone to corruption in the only other case I've used it (PVCS Tracker)
I found that even the ntbackup program that comes with NT is better - it backs up Exchange too.
The main sysadmin at our site was constantly complaining about it too. It dumped some of our backups.
I heard that Backup-Exec is better?
stay frosty and alert
RANT
These companies are so political it's unbelievable. Did you know it labels BackOrifice as a trojan? That's cool, but why don't they tell you pcAnywhere or MS' SMS is installed covertly? Or what about that "for law enforcement purposes only" tool that is effectively BO with another name?
END RANT
OSS is a generalization when describing "better" software. ESR knows this, his philosophy background shows that his writing never generalizes into a single sect. OSS software is
:)
often
better. In other words, plug apache as a better webbrowser, but don't nessicarily push KDE over BeOS because it's OSS, (well, I guess that changes now, but you get the idea) because if KDE falls to pieces, the person that you're trying to prove this to is going to trust your opinion less.
For instance, I found that instead of telling people about linux, and what it is, what it means, I just give them the hard facts as of now. They ask about novell support? I tell them it's not very good. Recommend Novell itself of a WinNT SNA sitation or something like that. Same goes with things like X.25 FRAD-based connections and soforth.
The point is, is that the person that I'm talking to is rarely concerned with the message as a whole, they just want me to tell them what pieces together are going to get the best bang for my buck. If they like my linux scenario (as I have going with a client right now).. I tell them more about as we go down the line, and get them interested. (although my boss doesn't like hearing I told a guy we could get him Linux for free over a $1600 copy of 10 User WinNT SNA.. and he probably won't for a while
After all, if you got a client or a friend you're consulting and supporting, are you really going to want to come back every other day because X crashes when he moves his PS/2 mouse?
The biggest question between linux vs. windows or windows vs just abuot anything, is a question of what is "better". A good explanation for this can be found by joining #linux on efnet and typing "best?" in the channel. The reply essentially comes down to this:
"What is best? Linux is best, FreeBSD is best, Windows is best. Who cares as long as it gets the job done the way you want it to."
So that would explain why Melissa was a huge anticlimax because, of course, every company just restored from backup?
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
but what the hell are those programs?
I'm not going to complain. They have to sell it not me. But isn't 99.9% of your potential problem solved by disallowing email+.exe at the mail server? Windows has shit security, but you don't have to lower yourself to that level.
Thanks, but no thanks CA. I purchaed ArcServe for our company over a year ago to back up our NT servers using an Exabyte tape drive that they had listed on their HCL.(the purchase was based on a favorable review in a "popular" pc magazine) I spent the better part of a month trying to get it working. It would cut out in the middle of a back up for no apparent reason. The tech support was no help. Miracuously after an update it suddenly worked - even though they never acknowledged the problem. Doing a restore was a serious pain. Their licensing scheme (which seems to change every 6 months) is a pain - everything is an option (disaster recovery, backing up open files, clients other than MS, backing up more than one server, etc). I am truly happy that another company is jumping on the bandwagon, but I just hope people don't blame cruddy apps on the OS.
For email servers this is particularly useful.. Something to scan email attachments and never allow a doze box to get ahold of them. We did some scripting that would email sysadmin(me) whenever a virus was found on or in an email... Pretty nifty if this is in Linux.. Its been missing for a while. *shrugs* Use whatever works.
This is a MUST READ!
was the biggest waste of cash. No CLI, and it was software that tried to be smarter than me ... ugly mess. Virus scanning software would rock but not ArcServe! I'll be excited when Legato Networker server runs on FreeBSD.
I think the next slashdot poll should be 'your fav backup software'
o Bru
o Networker
o Tar
o dump
o pen & paper
Let me begin by saying that I've never used anything from CA, so I am in no position to make judgements on their products. But after reading through the comments so far, I see a disturbing trend -- they all seem to be rather negative. It is unfortunate when companies port junk software to Linux and tarnish our image, but at the same time, this is a sad fact of life. With all the popularity Linux has been receiving, everybody will at some point want to port their software to Linux. And with so many companies doing this, it was only a matter of time before we started seeing a few bad apples.
What surprises me is seeing RedHat's name on all this. If the product is as bad as everyone is making it out to be, why would RedHat buy into it? Is it because they don't know, or do they have plans on improving it? Maybe they just got a good price. My thought is they just want to beef up their Enterprise package with anything they could throw in it, and in this case, the price was non-prohibitive to do so. Sometimes I wonder about the idea of "value-added" software.
--
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
I spent the better part of three, count 'em THREE days after installing ArcserveIT trying to get the product licensed with LicenseIT. Apparently, CA never anticipated the possibility of an NT server NOT running TCP/IP, and LicenseIT only works properly on a TCP/IP network. CA's tech support was abysmal (worse even than Microsquish), and I finally had to threaten them with bodily harm to get them to stop subjecting me to the hold recording featuring Sherri Shithead and her fake New Orleans accent. Not to mention endless patches that, after more than a year, STILL haven't managed to get the product working properly, its complete failure to send notifications via Lotus Notes (except, strangely, once after a reboot then never again) and the enormous debacle of VirusIT (or whatever they are calling that product these days) that had to be turfed wholesale because it steadfastly refused to detect viruses. I regularly tell management that I will die before I agree to purchasing another CA product. I will copy out the contents of the server hard drives longhand before I will use ArcserveIT. Linux? HAH!
I realize that this post is pretty redundant, but we spent so much precious time and energy trying to get that POS to work, that I just had to get my 0.02 Euros in.
Linux community, go invest in LinuxOne before you waste any time with Arcserve. Its truly a POS.
I have not taken the time to contact their support
line, but I can say this:
AimIT - worked for awhile, was unable to relocate
the ever-expanding database.
ShipIT - worked with only non-MS product, which made it useless for the most part, ime
InoculateIT - only one that seemed to work well and still does. Although I think it is corrupting the mailserver even though it is 'Exchange-aware'.
I was tempted to get ArcServeIT because of the
Linux support, but I reckon I will skip it and
go with something else since the NT machines are
the ones that need regular backups. Especially
the Exchange server - arggh, don't let me start!
Miles Lott
HE ASKED ABOUT ENTERPRISE SOULTIONS AND YOU GIVE HIM SOMETHING THAT CAN'T HANDLE FILESYSTEMS LARGER THAN A TAPE??????
Get a clue. Please. Please. Please. Can everyone remember that Enterprise doesn't mean "One step up from my little ISP where I did my first job after college". It means "The largest 20% of companies in the world".
This little program is probably great, and it probably fits the bill for loads of companies but
IT IS NOT A FREAKING ENTERPRISE SOLUTION FOR ANYTHING AT ALL.
I am aware of three Enterprise backup solutions:
Veritas Netbackup, Legato Networker, ADSM
These programs are so far beyond Amanda it's not even funny, so can we all stop flinging the word 'Enterprise' around until we've worked in Enterprise environments and actually know what we are talking about?
Please? Can we? That way we'll learn instead of spouting vaguely pro-Linux FUD all the time.
Thanks.
-----
I am confident that Arcserve will turn a Robust Linux box running Tar into a cranky, unstable server much like what Arcserve did to Netware and NT. Dont bother flaming me, I speak from direct experience on both Netware and NT platforms (and have the ulcer to prove it)
...
That being said, I openly wonder how they will be doing the cataloguing on Arcserve for Linux. On the NT Server version, you had a choice of either using their own proprietary (buggy) database, or SQL Server 6.x. Will we have the option to use MySQL or Postgres as the database for the catalogue? If so, I might actually have good things to say about them!
JB.
... If there are no flames shooting out of it, then it is a software problem
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
Yes, the subject says it all....
Red Hat is the virus.
Couldn't resist.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
IMHO, It strongly seems that the anti virus companies write the virus that they supposedly stop, so that they can claim they had the cure "first". This is similiar to the problem years back of Volunteer firemen that got paid by the job, going out and starting fires. How better knows how to write a virus then a programmer that is writing a program to detect them, and who has the most to gain from a virus? ahha I see the light is dawning for a few of you old timers. My prediction, with the release of CA antivirus for Linux a small trickle of LInux viruses will be "discovered" and make frontpage news, which M$ will widely publicize. Now if I could only prove it.
I bet 90% of the people here download the source and compile it without even looking at it.
Oh dear, I seem to be on a Veritas advocacy mission today.
If you want good backup, get Veritas Netbackup. It's good. You pay for it. About 6000UKPS for the server license and about 120UKPS for each client license.
It's the best there is IMHO and so far above anything open source that it's not even funny.
Sadly, there seems to be nothing good in the middle between Veritas and the like at the top and BRU and the like at the bottom.
-----
They are really porting ArcServe to Linux? And I hoped they would do something good to the linux community...
Disclaimer: I do like some veritas software including Volume Manager and VxFS.
Veritas NetBackup is *crap*. It's an old product made by a company called OpenView in the 80's which has never been properly integrated with modern Unix. The interface is a nightmare, it installs 3 tons of shit all over your filesystem in places you don't want it. It installs 3 dozen new services into inetd (a service for each tape drive ro something like that!!!). The GUI is woefully inconsistent and counter intuitive. Overall, I find it very inflexible and difficult to automate. On top of this, the documentation is pathetic. Oh, and don't go on the training course, you just get to sit in front of a power point presentation for three days. And guess what the course documentation is? Copies of the powerpoint slides. *bangs head against desk*.
I have looked at this several times over the past year and each time, I have gone back to plain old gnutar.
Also, I note that they are violating the GPL by including an old version of GNU Tar (1.09, so old it doesn't use --help, but +help instead) with modifications, but no source code available.
It's a shame, but I find this symptomatic of practically every piece of commercial Unix software that I have seen. They treat the system as something to be pushed away and ignored, rather than integrated with. So, I invariable end up going with the open-source alternative if at all possible. Ah well, their loss of sales.
To be fair, I think that the software would work a lot better if I had a tape library available to me instead of the poxy DLT4700 stacker that I have now. You may be able to get a better (and less biased) opinion than mine over at backupcentral.com.
No, you should not run towards NetBackup. See my earlier comment attached to the first thread about why NetBackup is a completely foetid piece of software death.
-Dom
The salary must be very good, given the IT skill shortage.
Either that or there are some wierd people around who enjoy this level of submission.
Haven't lawyers already said it's airtight?
Hardly true is it? Less number than a certain other platform, but then again less dross too.
Oh yeah, unviable - of course.
It *IS* the year 2000!! They'd have already done it all!!
Is there are *free*, open-source, enterprise-level backup program? At one point I thought of starting one, but I'm not that good. I kinda like ArcServe on my netware and NT servers, but Linux really needs something better than BRU or Arcadia [sic?]. Shell scripts barely pass muster, IMHO...
. Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep. Watch your coworkers go nuts.
I perused the press release a bit, and I noticed the same tired-and-true faults in both ported software and Linux/GNU.
Yes, you might say, more ported software to Linux/GNU is a good thing. After all, shareware does have its place...but is that place in a professional IT environment or a college-student's desktop? I think the choice is obvious.
Granted, I have used ARCserveIT in enterprise computing (WinNT) situations before, and will continue to support it. But, and this is a big but, why does the press release say it will only support RedHat Linux/GNU?
Because Linux is becoming fragmented in the corporate setting.
Before you flame me, please understand I have been involved with Linux/GNU for several months now and feel a sense of empathy for both Linux/GNU and its brother OpenBSD. I understand that they have their high points (IE shareware-like liscence, acceptable networking, rudimentary security)....but lets be honest. To a corporate PHB, do you think he would switch his big-iron eCommerce machines to Linux for the simple fact there exists a new port of software to it?
No. If it isn't broken, don't fix it. Plus, the addition of "RedHat Linux/GNU" to the system requirements for new ported software only confuses the IT managers. I have seen many, many, many times a MSCE stand befuddled over the differences in Linux/GNU, *BSD, *NIX, etc.
There's a reason WinNT/2000 is popular in the corporate sector...and its beacuse it appeals the the PHB. I'm sad to say it, but until Linux/GNU acts as more of an enabler in the IT sector, it will be doomed to stay on Joe Hackers desktop at home.
-----Charlie Benante
Arcserve is HORRIBLE.
I was using the version just before it changed to ArcServeIT, though we did get the first version of ArcServeIT. It is poorly programmed and unstable as hell. I nevercould rely on it. Restores were always a scary experience. It wouldn't recover crashed machines at all (apparently you were supposed to pay extra for this very basic capability, and my predecessor hadn't bought this feature). I could get back data files USUALLY. However, I had endless trouble with the catalog. Doing restores on that system was a constant series of barely-dodged bullets. I have never, in my life, dealt with software that was so horrible. I fought it for MONTHS. I almost always managed to do restores when I needed them, but that was mostly due to ingenuity on my part.
Eventually, in desperation, I called up support (which is actually decent) and complained at them about the endless trouble we were having with it. Turns out that the Raima database that they use internally can only support 16 million records. I had over a million files on one server ALONE, and I was backing up over fifty machines to DLT tape. The catalogs were silently corrupting themselves within a few days of being rebuilt. This is NOT DOCUMENTED ANYWHERE in the manuals. And I asked them about this. "Oh, Arcserve isn't meant to handle that much data." Excuse me? This is a multi-thousand dollar package, and I don't remember seeing anything on the box about how much data I could back up with it???
They did tell me I could use SQL Server to store the database files. I went through the whole process of buying a new drive, setting up SQL Server, and configuring ARCServe to talk to it. It did work, and it didn't lose catalog data. However, after a backup, it would take somewhere around TWENTY HOURS to update the catalog in the database. When it was time for the next daily backup, it often wouldn't be finished updating the catalog from the PRIOR one 24 hours before! And if I wanted a restore, even a simple query would take twenty minutes to run (as in, browsing the files that had been backed up the night before from a specific server).
At that point, we just dumped it and bought a real solution, Legato Networker. Networker on NT has a few odd wrinkles but it is mostly solid, and it has saved my rear end several times. When I do a restore with Networker, I get back a perfect machine. Users can actually restore their own recent files without any intervention on my part. And it works. Every time.
Caveat re: Legato: An earlier build of Networker totally ate itself and destroyed the server installation. I was able to rebuild the server from its 'bootstrap' tapes, but bugs in the restore process make it very slow and tedious to recover the catalogs from multiple machines. I don't know if this has been fixed yet. It has not crashed since I went to a more recent patch rev, and has been almost painless. Light years difference from ArcServe, which was a constant, constant hassle.
Conclusion: Don't touch this software with a ten-meter pole. It won't be any better on Linux than it was on NT. Go with something you can trust; both BRU and Arkeia have pretty good reputations.
ArcServe SUCKS.
I have a ca-unicenter disc, with redhat 6.0 on it. doing a plain vanilla "Server" install, on plain vanilla intel-everything server hardware, then installing the unicenter RPM's according to directions, a whole bunch of the stuff doesn't work. The Big thing being the database it uses, so you can't really do _anything_ with it.
It's really a piece of garbage.
Also, IIRC, they have a really twisted pricing model, basically, the more powerful your server is, the more you have to pay to run the exact same executable on it. How fucked up is that? Apparently, if you can spend twice as much on the server as someone else, you should spend twice as much for their product.
However, we DO NOT need virus checkers to protect our systems or our own data from viruses or Trojan horse applications. You only need those things when you run closed-source binary applications. Nobody in their right mind would use closed source when they can get the source code and check it themselves before they compile it. If I can't get the source, then I don't use it.
I admit this is the best way to ensure a lack of viruses.
But, clueful people are not the only ones running Linux anymore. Linux has hit mainstream. Look at all the media, press, etc..
Do you seriously think everyone is going to never run closed source binaries? Hah!
YES, it's a good idea to promote OSS as being free of viruses, and YES, it's a good idea to promote Linux as being virus-free when used with OSS software. BUT, your standard PHB is not going to give up his non-OSS software functionality if there's no OSS project that is as good as or better than the non-OSS. Your average Joe Sixpack could care less about the merits of the way a piece of software is created, as long as the software: a) works, b) does what he needs it to do, c) is cheap and available.
With all that in mind, realize that Linux is not always going to have mostly OSS software being used on it. For these programs, for these people, an antivirus tool is needed.
I also take issue with folks who think GNU/Linux will have arrived when there is all this shrink-wrapped software available for it. That is not what I want, nor what most of you are going to want if you stop and think about it. Shrink-wrapped software means locking people out of their own systems. It means becoming more like the enemy. If you become the enemy, even in order to defeat them, you haven't won, just replaced the enemy with yourself. The whole fixation with trying to turn GNU/Linux into the next Windows with shrink-wrapped software and comparable software will destroy the community in the long run. I see us heading in that direction and I don't like it. For the good of the community, the fixation with Micro$oft has got to stop, and this desire have all the same tools as them has to end.
Stop thinking of non-OSS software as "the enemy" and you'll see something new. The majority of the world does not care about "the community". The majority of the world does not have the same ideals. Reality is not black-or-white, nor even grayscale. Reality is multi-colored. Anyone can play. Anyone can enter. The community isn't building non-OSS projects, the non-community is.
If you want to promote OSS, promote it on its merits above non-OSS. Show them how OSS ensures security through massive world-wide (free) support. Show them how OSS is virtually immune to, say, a virus or a trojan thru thousands of eyes scrutinzing the code. Show them how the OSS process produces superior software thru massive parallelism of coders. Show them how a virus enclosed in one piece of non-OSS code can infect an entire system of virtually bug-free open source, mostly free, software. Convince them that non-OSS, binary only, packages are bad in the long run. All that's fine and dandy.
But don't say that a worthy project like an anti-virus software is a bad thing simply because it's not needed at this precise moment.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
At my previous company, a large-scale NSP, Unicenter and other CA products were brought in by upper management. The product had multiple bugs, and event the agents could poll properly on CPU load without maxing out the cpu. All of their interfaces, which were supposed to be configurable and intuitive were anything but that - no support for importing data, and obscure and deeply nested access via the GUI (checking a simple outage involved going through no less than 5 clickthrus, plus entering plenty of text). Demand on the management stations was VERY high, and the software did not share well with other processes - though orignally designed for NT, their servers ran Unix (as an option) but their management stations wanted win95. I know that this model may have been changed somewhat with the new features, but think of where they were at just 2 years ago...
Their support consisted of nothing at first, but then was scaled to 4 programmers living in our eng area. This was not because they wanted to do this- they had wanted to charge us ungodly amounts of cash for this privelige. The only reason we got them at all was because it would have violated a prior arrangement they made with us. The programmers, however, were uncooperative and generally did not want to work on anything but a very narrow set of parameters on the server side only. Getting anything done with them was about impossible, but we finally got them to compile a Unix client, which we could eventually compile under linux- neither were stable.
Bottom line is this- they did not have product or plan for product under Linux 2 years ago. Even under other platforms, they did not meet the "enterprise" standard of support (everything works, is fully interoperable, 99.9% of the time w/ comprable uptime). Considering how bad their previous "flagship enterprise" products were before, I can't begin to imagine all the hassles of dealing with their product on *nix, plus the added hassles of having to put up with their exhorbitant and lousy support (and VERY obtuse documentation). Maybe if you have only one person assigned for support it *might* work out, but it didn't work well in a multi-staff multi-hat environment.
They are excellent business people. They can sell to management like nobody else- strategic partnerships to increase their stocks has apparently been what they are best at. And they ALWAYS sell with binding, multi-year contracts that tie your hands while leaving them free to do as little as they wish...so I have to wonder if, beyond marketing hype, this is something I would really want associated with a quality product like Redhat, which is THE LINUX in the minds of most business-people and consumers.
'Hail Eris, baby, hail Eris...pfffffffttt.' *cough* 'Yeah.'
> Thank $DIETY they're only releasing ports of their products and not buying up one of the major Linux players.
Exactly. Everyone I've ever spoken to has the same opinion of CA. The term "bottom feeder" comes up a lot. Their business model seems to be to buy dying products and companies and then charge exorbitant support fees to those who can't afford to migrate off those products.
You might want to add mkisofs to that list.
Now, we'll have crappy, bugful software for Linux...
What a sad day!!!!
--
" It's a ligne Maginot-in-the-sky "
The product was CA-Unicenter: TNG. It has a pretty slick three-dimensional virtual reality interface. You can "fly" around the world with your mouse and click down into a particular building/subnet/host/component/yaddayaddayadda. Neat demoware.
I still haven't heard of anyone actually using this instead of the console alerts though. "NIC FAILED ON WORKSTATION xyzzy SUBNET baz AT FACILITY foo" is a lot more useful, but it doesn't look as cool on a video.
It shouldn't work.
Just a thought.. why is Slashdot always a day or two late on their news? I read about this item yesterday probably on linuxtoday, but this it seems more like a trend that news pops up on /. a day or two after it happens. I rarely hear about new stuff on slashdot anymore.
An example. As part of our new marketing program (internally named We're-Linux-savvy-month), all our receptionists are now running Linux (RedHat) on any machines which are potentially visible to our clients.
Fair enough you might say. But there is a big problem. Because all our documents are in Micro$oft Word format. (The marketer in me thinks this is priceless, the NT administrator part of me thinks its fine too, but the opportunist in me sees a problem).
So what to do about it ? We cannot afford to be seen as non-Linux-savvy by our clients. So I am forced to go and pay for several copies of VMWare simply to allow our receptionists to continue working. Meanwhile they're whining because it's one more step for them to learn. And we end up paying 3 times, Microsoft, RedHat AND VMware. All this just so some coked up know nothing advertising executives can see how Linux-savvy we are. What a joke.
Still it seems like the people that matter in the organization are finally starting to realise that Linux = $$$$$$$$$$$$$.
I just hope our marketing agency has not missed the boat.
Wrong. This is bad for Linux.
As you will see from the almost universal dislike of CA in the surrounding discussions this company is not well regarded.
As a linux admin I am get to choosing the best solution. I don't have this choice when I have to look after Netware or NT because the solution was all worked out on someones spreadsheet on the basis of comparing pricelists and reading glossy brochures not on an informed understanding of technical issues.
The standard test applies here. What's in it for us? CA get access to the Linux buzzword that makes shares soar. What do we get? Why should we drop our pants and bend over for every company that ports to Linux? Lets leave the worst of the old software companies in the last millenium where they belong and choose carefully which ones we partner with.
OpenBSD
And no, I *DON't* mean Open Blue Screen of Death.
I think the bottom line is, whether or not you like CA products, it is good that big companies are jumping on the Linux bandwagon. I'm happy to see CA join the "linux team". Whether or not I like their products, it shows others that Linux is here to stay and others should port their products to linux as well.
scanning. Or "Active" scanning. Or whatever the vendor calls this.
They should also have the option to turn this off for performance reasons.
If your current server-side AV package doesn't have this, it's a piece of shit.
Erhm, I believe that it is a virus checker which runs on linux, but which checks viruii for other operating systems.
I have to agree that the quality of most CA products is quite poor. We're trying to implement CA Unicenter here. Basically it's an enterprise "network management solution." It uses SNMP and special agent software that runs on all the machines in your enterprise that are to be monitored. Unfortunately, the agents for Solaris, DG/UX, Ingres, and Novell did not work correctly out of the box. We have been working with support for months trying to get things working. We've been sent patches that have fixed some of the problems. One of the patches completely destroyed the Solaris box that we were testing on. :( You'd think that since they are up to version 2.2 the product should be pretty stable.
Blow up the world!
It is precisely because of the fact that there is no virus-scanning software for Linux (for DOS/Win16/Win32 viruses) that many otherwise clueful PHBs will not adopt it.
Except that's *NOT* a fact:
Sophos Anti-virus
Datafellow's F-Secure for Linux
And that's just the two *I* know of.
Of course you are wrong about there being no virus scanners for Linux. I happen to have a trial copy of McAfee AV for Linux installed right now (also available for just about every other Unix). A couple of other AV vendors make Unix versions of their products, that already or can be easily ported to Linux. Unfortunately many people who run Linux (Samba) fileservers seem not to realize this. McAfee doesn't really advertise their Unix versions and other companies do the same. There are even some native Unix (not ports of DOS/Win utils) AV tools, but these are pretty rare (and usually only scan for DOS/Win and Mac viruses). You are absolutely right about the damage that could be done within one user account, on single user machines. The only thing that prevents this is the fact that most mailreaders don't run scripts in mail and most users don't have '.' or '~' in their path. That doesn't help if you are using a graphical filemanager, it is very easy to run an executable in your home directory from there.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
I'm only using it to back up 2 servers right now, but others will soon be added. It's very nice for a few reasons:
1. It uses your own systems dump program, or gnutar and gzip, instead of proprietary stuff.
2. It uses a "holding disk", so that network bandwidth isn't the bottleneck, tape speed is.
3. It has indexing features, so that it won't overwrite the wrong tape, and knows what files are on which tape
4. Nice CLI interface and hand-edited text configuration files.
If you need to back up multiple machines to one tape drive, it's great!
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
It's strange that they're porting InoculateIT instead of Inoculan though.
Let me tell you *WHY* it's a Good Thing...
Many shops are forced to keep an NT server around to provide virus-scanning services for the Windows desktops in the company. Because "Linux doesn't have viruses", the Linux boxen tend to act as a Typhoid Mary during a Windows virus infection.
It is precisely because of the fact that there is no virus-scanning software for Linux (for DOS/Win16/Win32 viruses) that many otherwise clueful PHBs will not adopt it. Software to scan for alien viruses on email attachments, etc, can only broaden the appeal of Linux.
It's also not a bad thing if they provide scanners for native viruses.
"What?!!?" you say. "Sure there is concept, but for all practical purposes, there are no Linux viruses. Besides, permissions protect us!"
True, my friend. Permissions protect the system from getting hosed. A virus can only affect your own files, or files that you have write permission to. Consider, though: the system, aside from configuration (which, I realize, is not insignificant), is on the original install media. What do you have under your account?
That's right. Your data, which is far more valuable.
It's true, any non-half-assed shop keeps backups... but let's face it, it's a real pain in the ass to restore. And managers hate to be inconvenienced. :)
Reserve some judgment on this, and try to be somewhat open-minded whilst reaching your own conclusions.
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
I don't know about anyone else, but we have tried out a few CA NT products around the office here, mainly their ControlIT program, and it's by far the most buggest set of programs we have ever used. They they almost make Micro$oft products seem stable in comparison.
CA's business model is only one step on the legal side of the mafia's. I've been in two separate companies who ran Ingres on licenses that had been purchased from ASK. CA don't run a "purchase" model, you have an initial license to use the software, followed by annual license renewals. If you don't give them 30 days prior notice before cancelling your license renewal and try to cancel, they'll set the lawyers on you. In addition - their sales people will always try to switch you to their annual license renewal (with a minimum five year contract) on promises of great things. No one - Linux person or otherwise should have anything to do with CA. They're a completely immoral company.
DEDICATED TO COMPUTER ASSOCIATES
Tiptoe to the window, by the window that is where I'll be
Come tiptoe through the tulips with me!
Tiptoe from your pillow, to the shadow of a willow tree
And tiptoe through the tulips with me!
Knee deep in flowers will stray, we'll keep the showers away.
And if I kiss you in the garden, in the moonlight, will you pardon me?
Come tiptoe through the tulips with me!
thank you.
I use CA software extensively.
Besides the just announced effort, Unicenter TNG was available for a while for Linux, as a beta product.
I hope they update that Arcserve... Current release gave me MANY problems. Read: you may want to use your favorite CLI backup utility instead.
NetworkIT is a cool product, this is excellent news for those of us who actually use their products. No need to retrain the staff.
--
Leonid S. Knyshov
Network Administrator
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
Thank $DIETY they're only releasing ports of their products and not buying up one of the major Linux players.
Software Superior by Design? Yeah, right.
I keep this old trade journal article in my files just so I can drag it out whenever someone suggests that we do more business with CA.
A few quotes from the article:
that said by an IS director who followed withOur own experience is that their technical support people have absolutely no clue as to how the software works. My coworkers and I strongly suspect that they've outsourced the support to a totally clueless organization.
We attended a CA ``roadmap'' session last Fall and were fed such a load of bull. The overall message from CA was that we should all be running TNG and Jasmine. The overall message from the customers in attendance was ``When the hell are you going to issue upgrades to these products that you purchased to fix the problems that we been carping about for the last N years?''
Our department has been using several of their products for several years and they don't even have a record of what products we're using. They sent a couple of suits out to talk to us and they wanted to know what sort of concerns we had and then proceeded to show us a list of products that they had on record as things we'd been using. Not one of them was correct. To date, we've yet to get a correct list from them. We actually had to track down purchase order to show them what we were running. They ended the meeting by attempting to pick our brains for the names of managers that they should be talking to. Just great! Turn our meeting into a ``give us some sales leads'' session. The CA tech support website that they made such a big deal about (which took several online attempts and at least one angry phone call before we were registered and allowed in) didn't list any software for which we were licensed. The online technical support database may actually exist somewhere but the information that they claim is available on their website is non-existent.
We used a so-called current release of a CA product that is only qualified and supported when used in conjunction with another vendor's product that has been taken off active support over a year ago. They don't support use with versions of the other software that have been on the market for two years.
Needless to say, we are actively looking for vendors for replacements for the CA products that are running on our large UNIX servers. (Hell, I replaced one of them with a Perl script that took, oh, about a half hour to write. Saved the company upwards of $10K/year in support. We are planning on replacing two other CA products with locally written software to save about another $20k/year.)
Our conclusion based on several man-years of experience with CA is that they don't really know UNIX well enough to be selling products for it. I, for one, am disappointed that Red Hat seemed to think that they needed CA's blessing. I would strongly suspect that some of the people who experience CA's lack of support for software running on Linux are going to get a bad impression of Linux. Third-party software vendors can spoil the otherwise good reputation of a hardware or operating system vendor when they fail to deliver a decent product and then fail to even properly support their customers. (Seen it happen too many times.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
When I submitted this article yesterday, I gave a link to this RealAudio interview with Matthew Szulik, the President of RedHat. He talks about this partnership and general RedHat buisness goings-on. The interview requires G2 or greater; I haven't tried it on Linux, so YMMV.
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
I'm sorry, but I think this was a bad move for Red Hat and Linux. It gives the impression that either something was wrong with Red Hat and now it's going to be OK. OR something is wrong with other Linuxes (Linuces?) because they don't have it. In either case, to many people who see Linux == Red Hat it says "Linux had a virus problem." I think that's a slap to everyone who has developed Linux over the last few years. I've heard of 1 virus for Linux since 1994 (bliss if I remember correctly and I never saw it). There may have been more but I haven't heard of them. Everything I have read has indicated to me that Linux (UNIX) is designed in such a way as to make virii rare. Is there a need for this? I withdraw if I'm mistaken.
Criminalize spam and telemarketing!
Sorry dude, you're just plain wrong.
I worked at NAI (the McAfee bastards) for 18 months. We were too busy trying to make our software work to even know what viruses were out there.
It's sad, but these virus writers are making a fortune for companies like Network Associates, Computer Associates, and Trend Micro. The cash cow gets better everyday with MAPI viruses like Melissa. There's no way ANY AV company would jeopardize this money falling from the sky by releasing viruses to the world.
Just Another Anonymous Coward
JAAC
A few years ago Net Assoc was involved in a HOSTILE take over attempt to buy Computer associates (I think). Given Net assoc previous reputation I do NOT think it is wise to have any association with then whatsoever. Stay away, far far away.
Pick three files at random from your current network. Try and restore them from your last full backup. Kiss the next 12 or so hours goodbye, even if you're successful.
If you like ArcServe's GUI better than a script, you need to read Mike Gancarz's "The Philosophy of Unix." I don't MIND having a GUI front-end to a tool. But after you become intimately familiar with it, you need to be able to tweak it (like via customizing a script).
JAAC
Cut your losses, cutover to HP Openview or any number of expensive SNMP managers. BTW, Unicenter and Solaris don't mix. They have allways had bigtime problems with Solaris, and Novel 4.x and up have been about the same. Don't look to TNG either, same poor results.
Good luck, your going to need it.
Never knock on Death's door:
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
I am glad to see you paying lots of money to support nice things like RedHat and VM. I, however, support computers for a college newspaper, and I don't have piles of money. So, I installed Linux via FTP instead of buying it, and I use StarOffice and Abiword for MS compatibility. Abiword can't write MSWord, but it can read it, and write RTF (and is much smaller/more free than StarOffice). StarOffice can read and write MSWord, Excel, and PowerPoint.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Oh my god, I am getting sick of this. What's the point of having large computer companies switching to the gay pinguin computing whenever I use Windows 95 as my defult operating system?? Have this conclusion comes where all the people and other large companies switch to Linux and more and more programs and game gets released for Linux only and having the other people that uses Windows being left behind the times. I can tell this is pointless.
I interviewed with CA about 18 months ago. They must have spent 30 mintes going over how stuffy and uptight they are, and how they are proud of it. One thing sticks out, is that employees, can't smoke in a CA building, or outside, or in their own car in the parking lot. It seems like a company that needs to control that much of your behaviour can't be trusted. Then there was this whole attitude that any organization they bought had to give up everything and learn how to do things the CA way. It just seemed wierd and controlling. Anyway, when the interview was complete I asked them to not consider me for the position.
What I don't understand about server software being ported to Red Hat only:
:-), and that sucks for servers.
From what I have heard (I'm no expert here) RedHat isn't the premium choice of distro among "real" sysadmins (ie. The ones that care enough to think about virus scanning). It's more on the lines of Debian/Slackware/etc (although slackware has fallen out of favour, nowadays).
Less "glitz" is better (IMHO) for configuring servers. Glitz is fine for end users, but you never know what that config utility is REALLY doing (unless you've read the source... hahaha!
RedHat has, to me, always seemed to me to be more of a "easy configure, super utilities, more glitz" system. Not that there is anything wrong with that, since you can just not use config utilities, but that defeats the purpose of installing RedHat to me.
And the whole idea of binary-RPMs (A RedHat invention [tm]) is useless to any decent sysadmin. Installing binaries is like giving your server the kiss of death. A good sysadmin will always get the source, give it a quick read, and compile it for the machine (preferably on that machine).
(Oh, and if you LOVE RedHat, don't take this as a "dis" to the distro. I've set it up before, and I don't have any _major_ complaints about it. I guess my judgement is just clouded as a longtime Slackware user).
consensus is that the products are crap, and we all know the CA name is synonymous with enterprise IT.. the real linux maiden voyage for most enterprises is still 12-18 months away.. is this the suite of tools that will leave the first impression? scary thought.. can you say severe damage to the linux name?? if the source is GPL'd, then fine.. the world can make it happen, if not.. Redhat is making a big mistake, namely putting money and name recognition before quality, stability, etc.. (the things that GNU/Linux has built a reputation on).. fortunately the rpms will be easy enough to uninstall (though i dont know if the rpm works on damaged reputations).. all the bolt on, closed source, value added stuff is a joke anyway.. the large SW houses smell the open source rat.. they can't compete with it in the long run, so why not try to jump in bed now.... what did linus say about SW and sex?? put your money back in HW, support services, etc.. and remember to free your source
This is just rumor, but IIRC, and old version of Central Point Antivirus came stoned (ie. infected with stoned).
But I might be wrong. Or the original disks at school weren't always copy protected...
I've had a fair amount of experience with arcserve running in a novell, and to a lesser extent NT, environment. Its fairly good software, but at least under novell it has very horrible quality network backup features. Generally times out if its backing up another server over the wire. But then again this is with Arcserve 6.1 which runns IPX/SPX. If IP runs with the same timeout problems and connect() problems then I would stick with BRU.
.02$
Just my
by the way, i'm not ripping CA, its awesome that they're porting over their software. i just dont want to see inferior products jumping into the linux bandwagon and giving it a bad name...
delivering a seamless out-of-the-box management solution tightly packaged for the midmarket customer
This, I know is rah rah marketing talk, but I work with CA products every day and I have never seen a seamless out-of-the-box solution come from them yet. I'm sort of surprised that HP and Harris or even BMC got in on this instread of CA.
On a more positive note, A recent MERIT survey revealed that 48 percent of enterprise customers view Linux as an important component to their enterprise IT strategy for 2000..
I hadn't heard of this survey yet, this is good news.
Never knock on Death's door:
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
While the potential for viruses to do damage is diminished when not run as root, there are still local root exploits that potential viruses could use.
In addition, a trojan need not necessarily be a virus installed by root. For example, a system like the script kidd3z Tribal Flood network could install as a regular user and use a non privledged port. Of course it would not be able to conceal itself from "ps" or "netstat" or hide in some daemon. But there are a lot of novice users out there with RedHat 6.0 on their cable modem doing ip masq. They may not notice for a long time, and they are especially the targets that a trojan might want.
In my experiences using Arcserve, Inoculan, and Remotely Possible (now ArcserveIT, InoculateIT and ControlIT) CA had the worst technical support I have ever seen. We had many problems with Arcserve (a buggy product) and tech support for us (supposedly with a "Platinum" type service contract) would take days to get a callback. It should have been four hours. Sometimes the callbacks never came. The other issue was with sales. We had unlimited licenses for a lot of things, and bought an upgrade license for Arcserve and they still hadn't delivered the product after four months. CA, in my opinion, has the worst customer service in the industry, and I know a lot of Windows administrators that agree.
only thing better than a great plan is watching it happen
Prove that...
>Because all our documents are in Micro$oft Word format. (The marketer in me thinks this is priceless, the NT administrator part of me thinks its fine too, but the opportunist in me sees a problem).
...MS Word files are a problem for AbiWord or Staroffice.
>So what to do about it ? We cannot afford to be seen as non-Linux-savvy by our clients. So I am forced to go and pay for several copies of VMWare simply to allow our receptionists to continue working.
...not mentioning staroffice or abiword doesn't prove you are a troll or moron (take your choice).
>Still it seems like the people that matter in the organization are finally starting to realise that Linux = $$$$$$$$$$$$$.
...linux = $$$$$.
BTW: Vmware is CHEAPER than Win 2k + MS Office (you solution, I suppose. You didn't really tell us). You proved yourself wrong, you spent MORE on the Windows/Microsoft software than Linux. Even without MS Office the price is equal.
>I just hope our marketing agency has not missed the boat.
You boss sure did by not know about staroffice or abiword.
Huh?
The idea of pricing software based on how powerful its host is comes from the Mainframe.
Mainframe software is priced on how many MIPS your machine can chew. This is why mainframers are so proud when their boxes run at 100% utilization 24/7 and would rather fall on a sword than upgrade. When Amdahl came out with a press release saying they had overstated the MIPS rating of their high-end machine, this led many customers to ask their software companies for REFUNDS because of the difference.
Companies like Oracle and Netscape (err AOL) try to continue this stupidity on Unix. They generally charge a flat rate PER PROCESSOR in the machine it will run on.
YES, BOTH OF THESE IDEAS ARE TOTALLY RETARDED.
JAAC
Uhhm, have you ever heard of backup, my friend? Every company that has any clue makes a tape backup of user's data every night. So the fact that a "virus" can destroy you data has exactly zero effect when you can easily restore it from a tape.
And it's not just about viruses. Backup is the ultimate answer to accidental deletion, unwanted modifications and (gasp!) hardware failure. And if you don't make back up -- well, then you deserve to have your data destroyed. Perhaps after this happens once you'll learn -- but you never know.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
You might be interested in knowing that CA openly passes out source code for many (if not most) of their products. It's not GNU, and you can't modify it and pass it off as your own, but you can always make your own improvements.
Never seen more buzzwords outside of M$oft
CA=crap
RPMs only, no source, and RedHat is going to try to support some closed source crap they have no experience with?
I can only see disaster for RedHat.
InoculateIT is only useful on Linux networks running Windos clients. And not much since the typical new Word macro virus isn't in the database until *after* the disaster.
The rest of their junk has open source counterparts that are much better.
I thought RedHat had more savvy than this.
What kind of license is RedHat getting themselves into? When they get frustrated will they be able to offer their customers better alternatives or will CAs legal scum lock them into CAs typically clunky and bug ridden software?
RedHat watch your back, there may well be a knife aimed at it.
.sig : file not found
wow - while new linux recognition and participation is generally a Good Thing; i can tell ya there have been countless times i've worked with their stuff when it was all i could do NOT to 1)pop an aneurism and 2)rip the workstation off the friggin table and toss it out the door.
mas cerveza, por favor politically incorrect stu
Fantastic review!
I think it is good only in the eyes of management. Also....
Why only port to RedHat? Give the other distros the same respect. This pisses me off to no end. Linux is Linux, RedHat happens to have some good tools and a lot of market presence. But let me warn you: If it wasn't for the other distros out there, RedHat would be NOTHING!