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Buying Unix?
BarefootClown asks: "I'm currently the sysadmin for the University of Oklahoma Aviation Department. (I know the website looks horrible, it's being redesigned right now by somebody with talent.) Our systems here include two Intel-based servers, one running Windows 2000, one running Linux. The webserver is running on the Linux box. We need a new server, as the old one is about to die (I've lost two of the six hard drives, only one of the two processors is working, and it's just old--we got it second-hand). My boss has been very indulgent in letting me put Linux on a few boxes here, including the webserver, and a couple of web-only terminals (weather/flight planning stations), but he's expressed concern that, if I were to leave my job for some reason, having *nix machines would leave the department unsupported, and out of luck if problems were to occur. Our official departmental (one level up) support channel doesn't support Unix (he didn't support Windows 2000 until the end of last year...), though I might be able to talk to Campus support. This is all becoming a concern because I want to replace the dying box with a Sun NetraX1, which (obviously) doesn't even have the option of running Windows. Any suggestions on how I can convince my boss that it's worth doing? The price on that box is fabulous, at just a bit over a thousand (US) dollars out the door. The nearest PC/Linux box from Dell is about $1400. It seems to me that I know enough *nix people on campus who are looking for jobs that he wouldn't have trouble finding support if I were to leave. How do I convince him that Unix isn't that big of a risk?"
If you can convince him that you will have an equally capable replacement, I would guess that it would reduce his fears. Not knowing much about unix I would be concerned if I had to find a good unix admin myself.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Sign him up as an employer on a popular Job Site (Monter or CareerBuilder or something) and do a search for resumes with Linux in them. I think that you'll find plenty.
Go ahead and give him the "Linux/Unix" why it is better speach. I am sure you will hear it at least once. Push all the FUD aside that you will get and you are left with just a couple real reasons.
#1. The fact that it is harder to understand is going to give you at least someone that is "interested" in unix and making it work right. Everyone thinks they are a microsoft admin, but when it breaks they turn into a user real quick.
#2. Academia is one of the best places to find an up and coming unix guy, and you don't have to pay them much.
#3. You don't get everything under the sun installed as default. It tends to be a more secure box out of the cardboard it was shiped in.
#4. I would say from my exp. that once it is up and running, locked down, and doing it's job there is much less "Could you come in a reboot this for me".
#5. You have something that is yours(ie the departments), the guy above you that did not want to support it will keep his hands out of it.
#6. It is a much better learning tool for the people using it. They get broad exposer to things "not microsoft".
#7. You learn fundamentals, not point and click.
#8. Open Source, no purchases. Every manager loves that one.
#9. I would go ahead and introduce him to other places that are using unix in your field. This loosens them up a bit.
#10. Find some things that will help him with problems he has now that are open source. Get them running on the linux boxes and give a little show. This is free on unix!
-- Don't be pushing, there are many things that windows does well. Period. Find the things that unix does well, and show them how you can make them happen for less.
It is about money, don't be fouled. That worry about support is also about money. Show him there are many people on campus that when you move on you personally will make sure that you fill your own shoes as you leave. Take the presure off him about finding a replacement. Hell make it part of your jobs description. Your not going to be there forever, so look at it this way. You can put that on your resume, for a short time you would have had to manage and train someone. That looks good to anyone.
Good luck.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
For less than half the cost of that Sun POS, you can build a box that will handle quite a load if you build it from generic parts.
Check out Pricewatch (or just about any smaller out-of-state supplier) and you'll find much lower prices on equipment.
Second, download one of the many distro's out there - They're free and most of them include an option for building just a webserver.
Third, firewall the living hell out of that box (except the necessary ports) and turn it loose. Should only take a weekend to put the thing together and get it running.
The security might take a bit longer, but there's about a metric ton of stuff out there to help you configure a decently working firewall.
I wouldn't waste state money on Sun equipment and warranties, since most machines don't fail inside the warranty period (personally, I would buy from Sun on principle, but that's another matter).
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Since it will be a server, give your bosses printouts of all the gaping security vulnerabilities discovered in Windows/whatever webserver. Explain that the Sun box will likely be far less hackable, not to mention more stable, and come with Sun's excellent support and more timely patches than Microsoft could ever offer.
:-)
In other words, play the hacker card. Your boss doesn't want his servers hacked because they run Windows, if they would be safe(r) running Unix, does he?
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
> For less than half the cost of that Sun POS, you can build a box that will handle quite a load if you build it from generic parts.
Yes, and then he could get cursed out by his bosses if/when a part fails. Look, I build my own machines for my own personal uses, like most people here. But for a real corporate/institutional server, that isn't a safe, accepted option.
See, if the Sun box dies, Sun will fix/replace it within the contractual period, and Sun will be to blame for the malfunction. If however "IT Guy" builds the server and installs *nix himself, "IT Guy" gets all the blame when something hardware or software goes wrong.
So, Sun [or IBM/Dell/whatever] is safe, while DIY is dangerous, in a real-world server environment--if you're the guy responsible for it.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
convince your boss that windows is a risk by showing how many "windows experts" out there really don't know shit. (MSCE is useless)
I hereby pronounce a ban on the word "currently" except where it really changes the meaning of the sentence.
First, I can personally attest that there is a subculture of Unix users at OU (University of Oklahoma) who use Unix extensively. Most people, at least engineers, eventually get acquainted with it. If student employment is a possibility, they can get someone to work on a Unix box. Second, Unix boxes seem to require less maintenance than a Window box; once you have the server up and running, you rarely have to mess with it except for web content changes. Remind him that Apache has greater market penetration that IIS and has a far better history, security-wise, than IIS. Lastly, 'atlas', which runs our mail and OU's web site, is a big Solaris box.
Look here at an IBM server that runs Linux, is supported by IBM, and is a solution that is ready out of the box. Don't like 1U servers? There are other options. Then take a look at the Education page for information on how your institution can use its status to get what it needs.
Prices are higher, but you are buying the support your boss wants.
(I don't work for IBM in any way. One of my clients just moved to IBM solutions and I've been impressed with the service they received on it. Of course, the ISP is running Windows NT...)
The fact that you know what you're doing, and your boss won't listen or take your advice speaks volumes. You need to *tell* you boss that you know what the best solution is, and if he doesen't have a vaid reason for going with your decision - find gainfull employment elsewhere.
If you *really* know Unix, you can find work easily - in places wheere a $1500 server is cosidered worth it just for experimentation alone.
So unless there are mitigating circumstances - get out of there.
PS: Your *current* website works fine: it meets the goals that really matter: it lets you get information quickly and easily. It appears to be lynx comapatable - so blind people can use it, I imagine.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Of course, for this plan to work, you have to run a tight ship yourself. Make sure nobody's using telnet anymore (go around to each PC installing putty if you need to), keep up with the various updates and follow the basic guidelines when writing your perl cgis and php scripts. This isn't too hard to do. Actually, doing this stuff is almost as easy in Windows, but most microsoft "admins" I've met can't/won't bother with it. It's quite difficult to hide cluelessness when you're a unix admin, but it's very easy to keep your incompetence secret when you work with Windows - so it's a safe bet that in any group there will be a clueless windows admin and he'll eventually get rooted.
Now, for the accountability part - throw up some php/mysql web database that's a "work order" tracking system, a TODO list, or a machine inventory system, etc. Add all sorts of features in your spare time. This php/mysql stuff is so easy that I found it quite a nice break from my real academic work. Basically, create lots of little applications that create a dependency on Linux, and make these things accessible to your bosses. Some perl script that spits out a table is completely useless if you have to ssh into the machine to run it, but once you've made it into a cgi, it becomes indispensible to the PHBs.
Basically, the attitude bit can be summarized by saying that as an administrator, you are a facilitator: the department isn't there to let you administrate, but rather, you are there to ensure the department runs smoothly.
Avoid politics. By no means mention GNU, RMS or any of the lot. This stuff truly scares the PHBs. Linux isn't "more secure" than windows "because" it's open-source: it just happens to be "more secure" because of the higher-quality code. Never, but never, use the word "freedom." Anyone who uses that word in business environments nowadays is considered some left-wing commie nut. The only advantage open-source - and NB, for our purposes, it's always "open-source" and never "Free software" - the only advantage open source has is that you have source code and you can actually use said source code. BTW, you'll need to demonstrate this - dive into the LPRng, Apache or Linux kernel source and find some trivial thing to change. From now on, the only advantage inherent to open-source software is that you can modify programs to better fit them into your environment.
I've had great sucess introducing unix/Linux to a number of MS-only shops. I can't really detail my plans any more than what I've noted above, but I'll only add that attitude is the most often overlooked "secret." Good luck.
Get A G4 with osX server. 1)It's unix, 2)it's user-friendly apple 3)you get support from apple
Excellent post! Thanks.
I did that. I started helping businesses with computers, and it quickly grew to more work than one small company can handle.
However, they are meant to be disposable boxes, targeting data centers where it's desireable to add new identical machine as demand increases. That is, you can't upgrade the CPU, the memory tops out at 2GB, max of 2 x 40GB IDE drives, and no external expansion (unless the built-in USB ports can host drives -- yuck). Specs are here if anyone's curious.
We chose the Netras because the chemistry software required Solaris (well, given the choices, we took the Solaris version). I personally would have perferred Linux servers, and since you have the choie, I recommend the same.
Others may say that the support built into machines by the "big players" (IBM, Sun, Compaq, etc.), plus the turn-key state of the machine out of the box, amounts to a non-trivial savings of your time (which equals your employer's money).
I beg to differ.
In addition to many Athlon-based Linux servers, I manage Solaris, AIX, and IRIX machines, each of which either have or have had vendor support. While it's nice to pick up the phone and have either a new part or a service engineer on-site within 4 hours, the bottom line is that these servers need to be back up ASAP. I have found the the comodity-based solution to be better in that respect.
You see, we use a tried-and-true local PC vendor, who builds to order. If a part goes bad, I can have a replacement in an hour or two, unless it is unusually exotic (rare). So commodity wins in hardware matters.
For software issues, I hit Google. I don't want to toot my own horn too much, but if I get stumped by a software issue, I have never had vendor support get me any further than telling me to apply the next service pack (which I end up doing anyway). Maybe I don't push the envelope, but this guy is replacing a web server -- how much will it push the envelope?
Having said all of that, don't compare apples and oranges. High-end servers have they're place. The IBM system I admin waits until I schedule a downtime, most hardware failures be damned. But the yearly maintenance fees alone could by a dozen of the boxes this guys wants to buy. But I think commodity has proven itself, and I'm planning on replacing our IBM NFS server with a Athlon/Linux solution.
Concerning the Windows 2000 competition... It probably would be eaiser to find a replacement admin who could maintain the status quo -- but that's it. Finding someone who really knows their stuff (in NT or UNIX) will take more time and money. But given a choice between an equal UNIX and NT admin, I'd prefer to have the UNIX guy, as I feel the skillset is more valuable -- but that, of course, is only my opinion. Plus, if the machine is properly documented, any competent admin can come in and take over. Technical merits of the OS aside (I prefer UNIX), I'd push Linux as there will never be a license fee and system requirements for Linux don't climb as quickly as NT as the OS progresses (for server boxes -- try running Win2k/IIS on anything less than a Pentium -- though modern Linux desktops suck up resources, too).
Plus if you buy Intel-based hardware and go Linux, you're employer can convert to whatever version of NT is in at the time (provided it doesn't obsolete the hardware -- snicker). You get no such option with Sun hardware (though you can go Linux or *BSD).
To put my long rant into perspective, I got my NT4 MCSE cert in 1997, while I was in charge of a 60-user windows network for 3 years. As stated in my post, I mostly admin UNIX boxes now. While I don't have a grudge against NT, I think the pros of UNIX and Linux outweigh those of NT, especially for server machines.
the default Unix solution is Solaris running on SPARC hardware. Once it is configured and put into production, it *normally* won't go down unless 1) there is a catestrophic hardware failure, or 2) the power goes out.
/. posting) caused a sudden spike in load, however, it's been my experience that a Sun-branded SPARC box will stagger rather than fall under a load spike.
I think the Netra would be a pretty good choice for your application unless something (like a
If you manage to convince your boss to go the Sun route, however, I recommend that you increase your spending plans to allow for maxing out the RAM on the Netra. The UltraSPARC IIe is designed primarily for the imbedded systems market and is also used in the low-end SunBlade 100 workstation. It DEFINITELY benefits from having more RAM to play with, and in a production webserver, 2 GB of RAM is NOT too much.
utter rubbish
I've used solaris pretty extensively to manage my own systems at home, and I've found it one of the most stable operating systems around. On sun hardware, it is usually flawless.
If you looked around, I think you could find some intel-based servers that would compare favorably with the sun system on price, especially if you don't need rackmount.
But a lot of problems have been solved with the sun hardware. The best part about the Netra X1 / V100 is that you can control the entire box through the serial port. You can power it up and down and boot it remotely. I've never seen a PC do this to my satisfaction. Other good points include dual ethernet interfaces and registered ecc dram (although it is standard pc memory). I wonder how easy it is to upgrade the disk storage.
However, out of the box, it's not really that secure. I would definitely add a firewall. I think the newer versions of solaris give you a limited firewall. Another option is to install ip_filter. I would then filter out everything but ssh and web services.
Another point I'd make is that since sun stopped supporting solaris x86, I've moved some of my home machines to linux and subscribed to the redhat network. Wow, a lot of things sure got a lot easier. Many services that you would have to install manually on a solaris machine were already there. It came with the latest versions of openssh, sendmail with procmail, apache with SSL, iptables, squid, samba and more. In very little time I had a secure system with everything working. Obscure packages could easily be found and installed, which isn't always the case with solaris. The redhat network ($60/yr) keeps you up to date with package updates and security patches, and there's a utility called 'up2date' that will install them all for you. Heck you can update your kernel remotely - it's much easier than windows.
Just from personal experience, unless you have another server to jumpstart from it will be hard to install/reinstall the OS.
I would say get a Sun V100 with a CD-ROM if you want a Sun box. But that will be the same price as an entry level IBM xSeries or Dell PowerEdge.
The Netra X1 was the original $995 1U server. The Sun V100 is a tad deeper, has an internal CD-ROM drive, uses the same logic board, is also 1U and costs $995. The only other difference I'm aware of is the version of Solaris 8 that is shipped with the two machines -- X1 has stock Solaris 8, V100 also has a bunch of iPlanet ("SunONE") software included. If you opt for Solaris 9, you get everything anyway...regardless if you go X1 or V100. Educational price on the X1 and V100 is $795.
Sun replaced the Netra X1 with the Sunfire V100 (for the same price). It is a great value. I bought one of each for my company. Incidentally, you can add any IDE drive into the system easily and non-Sun RAM works fine. I bought the $995 web special (40 GB HD and 128 MB RAM) and added 2 - 512 MB RAM chips ($299 each) and a WD 120 GB HD ($239) to give me a 64 bit Solaris system with 1.1 GB RAM and 160 GB of disk space for well under $2000, including tax and shipping). It even comes with licenses for Netscape Web Server and other stuff. Mine's running a full install of Oracle RDBMS and 9iAS (both the Enterprise Edition). It's a great development system. It seems like a good choice for non-disk intensive production systems also (not for a production RDBMS, need fast SCSI disks for that).
It's very easy to upgrade storage in the X1 / V100... uses basic ATA/66 (or is it ATA/100... don't recall) IDE drives. One major difference between the Sun and a cheap 1U PC is CPU performance... even a 1 GHz PIII is significantly faster than the 500 MHz UltraSPARC IIe. Will you notice the difference depends on your usage. Hell, most of the servers I work on are 75 MHz SuperSPARC and 167 MHz UltraSPARCs... network thruput will be your bottleneck by far... unless *everything* your server dishes up is cgi/perl/php based *and* you're a lousy admin.
As far as security, IMHO it's far better to learn the techniques than to just install something that's supposedly more secure by default. Check out http://fixsolaris.sunhelp.org and/or search Google for securing solaris 8.
1) I have a farm of Netra X1s. Based on my experience, I would not recommend them. They just don't have the oomph. If you want Sun, get something beefier. But your Price/Performance ratio is better on the PC side. Go with a good OEM or VAR and install Linux. For entry-level Sun gear, I like the 280R but that's likely out of your price range.
2) There is an AWFUL LOT of talent out there right now, especially Linux & Solaris. If you left/got hit by a bus/whatever it would not be that difficult for them to find a replacement. Yes, they would be caught unsupported for a while, but it wouldn't be hard to get someone in there to take over.
3) Also, since you're on a college campus there is likely a good sized body of students who'd be able to take over as a work study job. That's how I got my start and I was not the exception to the rule. Tell your boss to stop worrying. If you leave, all he has to do is trawl the CS, math and engineering departments for a (couple of) work study student(s). Most of them will slave away for crazy hours if they get free soda and steady paycheck ($400+/wk for many students is a dream.) It might make sense to get one of these in there NOW so that when something does happen, they have backup.
I'm selling a product called Redhat linux. You can purchase it from me for $100 per cpu. It's quality software, I guarantee it!
Definitely check this book out at its author's site. Plus the links to other articles that Murph has written for LinuxWorld on how to swap out costly and unproductive Windows setups for Unix-driven systems. I don't agree with him 100%, but he's got a lot of useful insights.
--Paul
And buy a Gold support contract.
You will pay alot of money for excellent support. If the system breaks and you leave, the tech support people will walk whatever trained monkey replaces you through the problem.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
You could tell your boss that the University up the road turns out CS majors who are taught Unix from their freshman year.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Then there's one thing that might be important from a support point of view:
#11. Once you learned one kind of Unix, you can (pretty easily) transfer your knowledge on to another flavor of Unix.
I recently tried RedHat and OpenBSD after about 4 years of Debian experience and I found out that the missing pieces were usually found on their respective websites.
In all the reactions I have read so far, I only see comments about how wonderful UNIX is and that this specific department should shift.
However, I think that the boss DOES have a big point. The fact that SUN has great service does not mean that this server and its applications are supported. And the fact that you might know somebody who might also be able to support the machines doesnt sound like a solid solution to me.
I would suggest focussing on the support side than on the hardware/OS side. I think your boss trusts your opinion enough to agree that SUN tecnically offers the best solution. What you need to do is to write a proposal about how you are going to find and involve the others, train them and form a support TEAM. Because only a team is able to ensure support. Of course, if you calculate the costs of all this, it might be more than the costs of a Windows box, but for this money youll have a hell of a box and subsequent servers will be a lot cheaper.
Brain Tags |
You could be subversive about the whole thing, e.g.: Get the new site developed in PHP on Linux. Then it makes sense to run it in production on the same platform.
You could play the security card, but it is really a double-edged sword as both Linux and Solaris get a _lot_ of security advisories. The fact that *most* of the time these are fairly minor, or that a distribution with umpteen thousand 3rd party packages such as redhat is bound to have problems and that might be OK is difficult for many to understand. Quite frankly solaris out of the box takes a 'rape me, please' stance on security, although it can be locked down pretty well. Same goes for windows though.
If you're forced to run Windows, it's not the end of the world. You can still run Apache, and you can get the Cygwin distribution to give you all of your nifty *nix commands. Not nearly as clean, nice, etc. as a 'real' unix, but a lot better than vanilla windows.
You might also look at any of the multitude of web server appliances, that just happen to run Linux. E.G.: the cobalt RAQ (currently marketed by SUN). Typically they are managed through a browser, and if your boss isn't too happy about a command-line driven system, perhaps he would be happier with a purpose-made appliance.
Ultimately, *what* you end up running matters a lot less than execution. A well executed Windows system will beat the pants off of a poorly executed *nix system, and vice-versa. Especially vice-versa.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
Ahh yes very good point. You know that is so true that it has almost become a given. I don't even think about that much anymore. I swing from Solaris to Red Hat now between systems and the only thing that still trips me up now is the ps flags.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
0.25$ an HR, Free coffee, and all the dustballs you can hack up. Turn the resumes that come flooding in to your boss to make him a bit more secure about finding a replacement for you, there are prolly losts of basement linux admins at your university. If not Tell him spend the extra $10,000 on the M$ server that'll need an upgrade in licences in a year that'll only cost $5000, and a mear $2000 the following year.
on Solaris, put /usr/ucb/ in your PATH before /bin and /usr/bin
/bin/ps seems to run faster than /usr/ucb/ps.
but note that
-f
www.blackant.net
Actually, the scenario he laid out sounded like a perfect fit for Linux on x86. Their budget probably won't end up covering a Sun support contract anyway, so they will probably fall back on local resources if there's a problem. It will be much easier to get parts and support at budgetable prices if they go Lintel. The University probably has a healthy *nix user group, too.
If they really want to use something with "Sun" on it, they should look into the Sun Cobalt line. They are pretty streamlined so that they are dead-simple to admin, etc. It would make a lot more sense for his scenario then a general-purpose Sun server box.
Tell him that MS IIS would have been /.ed on the current hardware.
The site's Being redesigned - Why? Just drop the frames and the background image and you're done. It doesn't take "talent" in "webdesign" to make a good website, just content and a text editor.
How about asking him how many alumni made a fortune in the Unix world vs Windows. I know a few Unix alums that are close to billionares and none of those windows guys that made it.
I wish I could remember the professors name but he taught the people who did BASIC for the 1st time-- I don't think he would have recomeneded windows. But that was long ago when OU tried to hire Donald Knuth but decided not to. It sucks when a state school gets so close to the likes of MIT and Stanford but then again maybe windows 2k is right for your department. Sometimes windows does fit in.
Tome Seaver: Hey, Yogi, what time is it?
Yogi Berra: You mean now?
[i]The webserver is running on the Linux box. We need a new server, as the old one is about to die [/i]
/.!
Duh, you just linked to your page from
Incidentally, a few hours after I submitted this story, my Windows server crashed. File system shit itself; box wouldn't boot to save its (or my) life. Tried the boot disk, etc, but I couldn't get it to let me fix the problem.
I love 'doze...
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca