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

The again. . .

[czardonic]

If you rely on Ford or Chevrolet (let alone both), you are going to need a team of mechanics. In addition to not complicating your life with redundancy, pick something reliable in the first place for cripe's sake.

Value Of A Good Admin

[KarmaBitch]

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.

Makes Windows harder to use

[bill_mcgonigle]

Really, the more I use anything else, the more angry I become trying to use Windows. People who don't know there's a better way don't suffer this way. :)