How Hard is it to Manage Different Unices?

vrmlguy asks: "Where I work has several Unix-based servers, all running the same vendor's OS. We are getting ready to buy another big server, and management wants to get bids from other vendors. However, our staff is only familar with our current vendor's OS. Yes, I know that any two flavors of Unix are more alike than not, and yes, I know about the Rosetta Stone for Unix that makes it easy to transfer skills. I want to know about the down-side: What's the difference in the cost of operations between a mono-culture and a shop running two or more vendors' OSs?"

Comments

Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the difference in the cost of operations between a mono-culture and a shop running two or more vendors' OSs?

$32,593.12

Now can we stop with these stupid, inane questions? I would rather read Jon Katz than these awful Ask Slashdot questions of the past 3 months or so.

All the good Sysadmins are retired or dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a flippant post.

The quality of Unix sysadmins has declined so much over the past decade that what passes for a sysadmin right now is what I used to call "an operator".

We have 5 unix sysadmins (major transportation company). Not one of them could write a shell script if their life depended on it.

They insist on doing everything by hand and then complain there are no automated tools to them. Their definition of an automated tool really means "graphical front end to those grubby text commands".

They have no appreciation for the modularity of unix, and they look longingly at Windows servers.

Meanwhile, they're all getting paid twice what they're worth because apparently as dumb as the Unix sysadmins are, the NT ones are apparently on a different evolutionary scale where "rock" is considered the most intelligent life form.

So my point is that getting these sysadmins to switch won't happen. They'll piss, bitch and moan about the opportunity to learn something to enhance their skills, then complain the application is screwing up "their" servers.

If only ASPs would take off, my life would be much better, because sysadmin skills suck so bad, black holes pale in comparision to the event horizon of these so-called admins.

Re:All the good Sysadmins are retired or dead

[Amarok.Org]

We have 5 unix sysadmins (major transportation company). Not one of them could write a shell script if their life depended on it

Seeing as how I'm a senior admin (who *can* script), in a team of 5, for a major transportation company, I wonder if you're my boss? *grin*

Re:All the good Sysadmins are retired or dead

[Subcarrier]

You're right. A really good sysadmin will probably get all the Score:5 posts as SMSs on his cell phone (except in the States, where they still have to use beepers).

*BEEP* *BEEP*

"Damn! Sorry boss, I'm afraid you'll have figure out how to change the color theme by yourself, the file server just went down."

*receding sound of footsteps*

Re:All the good Sysadmins are retired or dead

[RealisticWeb.com]

the question is, are you getting payed twice what you are worth?

Rosetta Stone

[PsychoSpunk]

So, is it just me or does it bother you that the "Rosetta Stone" states "This custom drawing feature requires IE 5"?

Re:Rosetta Stone

[Drachemorder]

It actually says "Requires IE 5 or better". So, I installed Mozilla.

Re:Rosetta Stone

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many thousand people will click on
that link, and whether anyone at Microsoft will
notice it in the logs and wonder where _that_
little flurry of activity came from.

It depends...

[swagr]

What's the difference in the cost of operations between a mono-culture and a shop running two or more vendors' OSs?

How much of a raise are you asking for?

Rosetta Stone

[Hector73]

Apparently the Rosetta Stone can survive 4,000 years of Mother Nature's worst, but cripples in minutes under the power of the Slashdot effect.

It's definitely not a problem

[ftobin]

"What kind of unixes do you run?"

"Oh, we have both kinds. RedHat and Debian.

Re:I see it like this...

[EnVisiCrypt]

TOC? Like a table of contents?

I think you mean TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)

Unless you mean table of contents, I guess two vendors would have two different manuals, which would theoretically double the Table Of Contents you have to deal with. And don't even get me started on indices... ;)