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Enterprise Linux: Are We There Yet?
Simon Crosby writes " Network Computing is running an special report on Linux in the enterprise. It evaluates strengths and weaknesses of Linux useage in the enterprise. It also discusses perceptions, roadblocks, security, clustering and other Linux enterprise issues."
...will definitely give Picard an advantage over the Borg.
Are we there yet? certainly not. Linux has shown in the last few years that it is an alternative, although it still cannot compete in every Aspect with commercial Un*x Systems. (Especially Performance)
The greatest drawback for using Linux in your Enterprise is not the Performance issue but lack of Applications. Many Porting efforts are still beta, (Or do you consider Oracle to be stable on Linux?) or simply not done.
It is still difficult to convince the big software firms to actually consider Linux as an alternative, especially in the Enterprise computing field.
There has still much lobbying to be done.
Jeff
I would go so far as to say that Linux is now the choice solution for enterprise web servers - Apache is all its glory, etc.
Doubly so, given IIS's press lately.
In Soviet Russia, sig types you!
Linux is as ready for the enterprise as any other offering (including those already considered to be enterprise platforms). Work with OS/400 or even a commerical Unix for awhile and you'll soon find out that most of Enterpriseness is political. (Some is also legal... if you run into a snafu with kernel 2.6.1, who can you sue??).
Having worked with a large number of platforms, I can confidently say that Linux is up there with the best of them. It's not a leader in all niches (such as home computing or workstation graphics) but it's more than enough for almost all server, developer workstation, and terminal areas. In fact, I will go as far as saying that I would fully trust kernel 2.4.16 + ext3fs for almost any task with in reason.
Linux is at the point where the limiting factor is end user software, not the OS or its libraries. It is time to deploy linux far and wide. Linux will never be the perfect OS... no OS will ever be. It is time to deploy linux.
my thought is that linux will eventually pick up, but it's going to take a while. Why? Linux works great and people will eventually realize that, but there really isn't much marketing as far as I can tell. IBM with it's Peace Love and Linux campaign has probably done a lot, but compared to MS . . .
*shrug*
Once linux's PR is going well, poor MS will probably be in for the fight of it's life . . .
I think MS Word interoperability is perhaps the single most important barrier limiting companies from changing to Linux. Other Office products such as MS Excel and MS Powerpoint are also important.
You should remember that it's not just necessary to have some semi-lousy import filters to Linux word-processors, but also have 100% compatible export filters. It's practically impossible to make a transition in any company that has to communicate with an existing MS Word user base. And that is the case for almost any companies and public administration.
And 99% doesn't do, it must be 100.000%. If there are even small incompatibilities, you have to use genuine MS Word -> MS Windows.
StarOffice 6.0 beta (same as OpenOffice build 638c) has some compatibility in basic formatting. The older StarOffice 5.2 has, in my experience, much better MS Word compatibility, but it also breaks up quite quickly. However, its Excel compatibility is worse than with SO6.0b/OO638c.
KOffice (1.1) is not even worth mentioning with regard to MS Office compatibility. Its Word import filter simply strips all formatting, and it doesn't have an export filter.
I work in an IT company, doing purely Linux work, but have to do all documentation, communication, and administrative tasks with MS Office. I was able to use StarOffice 5.2 for a while in some tasks, but can't rely on it completely. The situation really sucks.
It has been, and will continue to be right for us:
:) We run a Windows 2000 Adv. Server domain that seems to run well for the most part but acts... haunted, as if it's just scared to run stable all the time.
I am one of two people who run the MIS office at a small technical college. We support everything that plugs into the wall for ~500 staff, faculty, and students. We're not huge, but we keep busy
Recently we decided to replace an old outdated MS-Proxy server (don't yell, I know) with a Squid server. Not because squid is more stable, but it was damn near impossible to monitor MS-Proxy cheaply and effectively. We farmed around for sollutions but they were all over $1,500 for anything decent. Any of you familiar with Squid can finish this story yourself. For the others, now we can monitor at any depth all we want for $free (and of course it's more stable).
Last night I sat that same server up with MRTG to monitor all of our switches and the network interfaces on all the servers in our farm. Oh, and it's also a syslog server, watching over the the network printers and the server farm itself ( we have Event Viewer in Win2k setup to dump to a CSV file and then push it to syslog). It's also a planned backup www/ftp server and what-ever-else-is-needed server.
Proxy, MRTG, better monitoring then Event Viewer, syslog, www/ftp: all on one box, at zero software cost. Since it's Linux I know I can trust it to keep up. And I'm not saying that because I'm wearing my shebang(#!) hat and my tux hoodie, I'm talking from experience. You can't beat it.
That's why Linux is here for us now, and it's because of those qualities that Linux will continue to grow with us in the future.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
Somebody please define it, in the context of software. What makes linux any less "Enterprise-ready" than NT, AIX, Solaris, etc?
Does it even have a real definition, or is it just nonsense like the term "supercomputer"?
could this question please die? considering the realities behind shrinkwrap licenses and ever dedicated support contracts, you can't sue anyone. and even if you could - how can you hope to win? the us gov't sued microsoft and look at how victorious it was?
a better question is: if things go wrong with widget x, what are my options to get it fixed? with closed s/w, the only option is the vendor you got it from (and really, knowing that, do you want to sue them?). with free software you can use your vendor, another vendor, your own staff, or private contractors (and knowing that, you could feel free to sue your vendor; assuming they failed to live up to their support contract).
note: i'm assuming in an enterprise situation you'd have some sort of support contract with ibm, redhat, microsoft, suse, sun, linuxcare, apple, etc.
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shutdown -h +10 Self destruction in ten minutes
unless you are running version 2.4.15 greased-turkey this self destruct will be solved when the backup-backup power comes back (at the cost of life support...).
how about: picard:
excute program "sleep 540;echo warn ^g warn;sleep 60;rm -rf / " authorisation root
If MS didn't lose their shirt over putrid crap like win3.x or win9x
And while I'm at it, how about a business app that caused measurable damage in the workplace: MS Word. I don't even want to think about how much time I've lost fighting that piece of shit because a file became unprintable after I inserted a graphic or because a line of '=' characters became some sort of non-deleteable meta-section break bullshit or because the formatting of one file was hopelessly and irreparably ruined because I had the temerity to copy and paste text from another file or....
I've lost days of my life fighting the wierd horse-shit that just happens when you use MS shitware. (All of this would be fixable if they would just implement the "Reveal Codes" function that workdperfect has (had?) so you could get at the formatting codes, but it's clear they never will. 4 years after conversion to MS Word, my co-workers (who are not geeks) still long for wordperfect for this one feature alone.) This, along with their despicable business practices, is why I hate them and all their works.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
> And while I'm at it, how about a business app
> that caused measurable damage in the workplace:
> MS Word.
And one that has caused even more: Outlook'
How many enterprise wide virus scares have shut down communications? All thanks to Outlook and its "wide open and pre-lubricated" approach to security.
dave
Ummm, it's a MacBSD system yes?
(Of course FreeBSD now comes with a 'compatibility layer' which is basically Red Hat Linux...)
dave
I work for a rather nice sized ISP in Michigan, and no it's not AOL. Every_single_server we have runs linux. We have one, count 'em one, NT server in the entire place that belongs to us and that is here only to give the owners son a job as an NT Admin, sad huh?
For the last 3 or maybe longer years we have run Debian exclusively. Is Linux ready for the enterprise? Yes. Is Linux ready for every enterprise? No. But those of us who can, do.
No, because the question itself is wrong, and is really a red herring.
It isn't "Who do you sue?" because instead it's really "Who can I blame and send the heat somewhere besides me?" The IT management structure will take heat for any service problems, but with a Microsoft solution they have the perfect blame target. Between "Everybody uses Microsoft," which absolves blame for having chosen them, and the fact that Microsoft is essentially lawsuit-proof, between their EULA and size/tactics, things are nicely diffused. Doesn't keep the systems up an running, but at least you're suffering in the same boat with everyone else, and there's the general, "Nothing can be done any better," to protect you.
Contrast that with Linux and outsourced support. First off, you've chosen something different, and hence inherently risky. Second, your outsourced support is probably less lawsuit-proof, and therefore maybe something might actually have to be done, rather than sighing in resignation.
Also contrast with Linux and internal support. Now you're to your own resources, and directly and immediately responsible for anything that goes wrong.
Note that NONE of this says a single thing about service levels, outages, or whatever. It's merely about adequate 'diffusion or responsibility' to keep the IT peoples' jobs protected. Microsoft provides a great 'responsibility diffusion sink,' one of the best at that.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Say I paid good $$$ for a Win95 license and a bug in the 'a' version deleted 3 months of hard work. Who do I sue?? Why, Microsoft, of course. Except I won't win because the boilerplate I, you and everyone else in the enterprise agreed to clearly states:
:) INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT, EVEN IF MICROSOFT HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. etc etc etc.
LIMITED WARRANTY
CUSTOMER REMEDIES. Microsoft's and its supplier' entire liability and your exclusive remedy shall be, at Microsoft's option, either (a) return of the price paid, or (b) repair or replacement of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT or hardware that does not meet Microsoft's Limited Warranty and which is returned to Microsoft with a copy of your receipt.
[etc., more limitations of liability, etc, then the rest shouts in ALL CAPS].
NO OTHER WARRANTIES. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, MICROSOFT AND ITS SUPPLIERS DISCLAIM ALL OTHER WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE (i.e., whatever manure the marketing dept. is spreading these days) etc etc etc.
NO LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL MICROSOFT OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS (heheh), BUSINESS INTERRUPTIONS (it's going to take me at least a day to rebuild this database server), LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION (what do you mean last nights backup didn't execute!? I need last month's district earnings report now!!) OR ANY OTHER PECUNIARY LOSS ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR (I like this part
And that isn't just Msft, it's pretty much industry standard boilerplate whether you shelled out ten grand for the SOFTWARE PRODUCT or got it on a free CD at a Linux expo.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
NONE of the publishers of the CAD tools that we use (Cadence, Mentor) are porting to Linux. Mentor ported one of their product lines (not the one we use) and stopped, Cadence never tried, both cite a 'lack of customer demand'.
Ditto for professional graphics tools such as Photoshop and Freehand. Please don't mention The Gimp. There was a beta of Corel Draw for a while, but no more.
Linux will not truely be viable for the Enterprise until it is entirely 64 bit, not just the kernel. We (a major university that works with geophysical data sets that are large - like corperate datasets) have to kludge around the 2gb limit emposed by utilities like gzip. Without 64bit apps, a 64bit kernel is off little use.
Spell check? Why bother. That is what grammer/spelling Nazi freaks who waiste band width posting "spell right" are for.
There are different levels of enterprises. Are they talking about billion dollar companies, or are they talking about mom-and-pop companies?
Where in the enterprise do they see Linux running?
Is it as a printserver, database server, or the desktop?
Personally, I don't think Windows will be replaced on the desktop in the foreseeable future. The average ubergeek/Linux user hates the normal user too much for that to happen (personally I think it's an inferiority complex...)
On the server side, at my work, we still haven't seen any major request for Linux solutions (we write custom management solutions for midlevel enterprises, i.e. adding specific monitoring support into HP NNM, CA TNG, Tivoli etc). Here, Solaris reigns supreme (if you don't have Solaris support, you can forget it). We looked at Linux support about 6-12 months ago, and the thing is, from a network management point of view, Linux is terrible (right now). SNMP is not fully supported (the UCDavis agent that comes with RedHat doesn't have full SNMPv2 support), and it's harder to get to the underlying hardware than for WinNT and Solaris.
It is getting there though. The Tivoli agent (no matter how you feel about Tivoli TME) has been ported to Linux (at least it was, last time I talked to a Tivoli rep at LinuxWorld '99). The new management standard, WBEM, seems to get full Linux attention from people like IBM, although it's still not there compared to what Sun and Microsoft has in place (basically, the frontend (cimom) seems to be there, the backend (providers) is missing).
Quite frankly, I would be curious to see how people like Google is managing thousands of Linux servers (they're not going around pinging each server each day to see if it's up, are they?)
Sorry about the rambling, it's early in the morning, and it's slashdot.
Je ne parle pas francais.
Desktop office applications are a noticable but small part of "the Enterprise" and NOT the main point of the original article.
"Enterprise" usually refers to the core applications running in the corporate data center. Inventory, payroll, order processing. Applications where downtime costs $$/minute. Applications where "No application"=="No business".
Linux is making gains in these areas. The adoption rate appears slow because
Penetration of Linux could still be better, of course. We need better support from enterprise management and backup systems. We need more "mind share". This article helps.
Desktops remain a problem. Out of sight, out of mind. Windows is in everyone's face every day.
This is all fine and good - using Linux for servers is a great business decision. No licensing hassles, stays up like a champ and keeps on performing. End of story. Let's move on.
But what about:
Over the years we've been running RISC workstations that are becoming increasingly expensive from a hardware standpoint relative to what can be got in the x86 world.
We'd like to take advantage of the price performance advantage in hardware as well as the increasing maturity of Linux desktop end user applications (which are getting real close now). It seems like a lot more applications are available for Linux desktop than many of the traditional commercial Unices.
The problem is that everyone I know that runs Linux runs their workstation or laptop as their own cowboy system administrator. They typically don't worry about integrating dozens or hundreds of these things together in such a way that a small support staff can manage them effectively.
You know the kinds of systems.
So what I want to know is:
How did it work? What should we look out for? What is the advantages and disadvantages? Good tools? Web sites?"Provided by the management for your protection."
As far as the kernel goes, I think Linux is there. I DON'T think Linux is necessarily ready to compete with NT or 2000 (though I give it 18 more months), since it is still lacking quite a few easy to use admin tools (think of the NT print manager or DHCP admin and you'll understand what I mean), but it is coming along.
One of the biggest things missing in Linux that I see is software mirroring of hard drives. Are there any projects out there aimed at bringing that to Linux?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Pfft, by that criterion, neither is Msft IIS (given the 'code red' fiasco)
Exactly. That seems to be the general consensus from numbskulls like the Gartner group. IIS has a hole in it (with a patch that's been out for, what, a year?), so don't use W2K. My post was tounge-in-cheek.
Yes, XFS on Linux is relatively immature. Filesystems and operating systems interrelate in very complicated ways involving the VFS, VM, and block-device layers, and this OS-specific code is usually the most difficult part of FS development. The situation is made even worse by Linux's "VFS Layer From Mars"; there's more similarity between VFS layers on AIX and FreeBSD, for example, than between either and Linux. Because of all this, XFS on Linux is really quite a different creature than XFS on IRIX so XFS's history on IRIX essentially becomes irrelevant. Ditto for JFS on AIX vs. Linux. There is simply no journaling filesystem for Linux that has been widely enough used with stable OS interfaces for a long enough time to have that kind of confidence in it. Give it another year or so; there's no shame in waiting for sufficient real-life evidence before making ambitious claims.
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I think Linux will see greater adoption in the enterprise. Why? Java and J2EE.
J2EE is the current wiz-bang development platform for enterprise applications. Looking past the hype, it appears to actually provide some good tools and structure. We're going to be seeing a lot more enterprise applications written on top of WebSphere or WebLogic or some other J2EE server platform. It seems to be the way to go if you don't want to be beholden to M$ and .NET.
The thing is, since this is most all pure Java, all you need is a stable OS that supports your database (Oracle, DB2, etc.) and, of course, has a Java VM. Enter Linux.
How about Synopsis? I interviewed there last year, and they seemed pretty enthused about Linux.
And 99% doesn't do, it must be 100.000%. If there are even small incompatibilities, you have to use genuine MS Word -> MS Windows.
This is silly. Even MS Word does not open up its own documents with 100% consistency. The simpler ones, yes, but when you start getting into large documents with complex layouts, I have found it not uncommon that when I reopen such documents they often have badly corrupted formatting.
Of course, the answer is I no longer do such documents in Word.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Quite often, when talking about "Linux in companies", people concentrate on big-scale employements, "global 500" companies and such.
However, most people (90%?) work in small to medium enterprises with hunderts of "bizcases" online these days, and most of these are form small companies, schools, universities, NPOs... who simply can't afford the cost of commercial software, but can't afford the cost of a full-time linux/unix administrator either.
Link: MandrakeBizcases