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Win2k Cheaper than Linux
An anonymous reader writes "According to this story, Win2k costs an average of 11%-22% total cost of enterprise. The study showed that the initial investment takes up less than 5% of the total cost. Linux did beat Win2k in one category, Web-serving." Man did this thing get submitted a lot.
Linux costs me anywhere between 1 hour and 5 hours to download an iso of my favorite distro. Win2k costs me 5 minutes to burn a CD-R and 30 cents to buy the blank disc. Overall I would say that since with a minimum wage job I can make 6 dollars in an hour that win2k is by far the better value.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Finally someone realises that the initial cost does not reflect the TCO. Wonder why Mac OS X was left out of the quotation.
;)
Oh, probably because macs won every other TCO report I've seen
"I tend to think of OS X as Linux with QA and Taste", James Gosling, creator of Java
I can define TCO my own way, but it might prove that BeOS was king (yeah, right); and other's may define it their own way. We'd need to know exactly how they defined TCO to know.
if you only buy a single copy and then install it on your entire network!
From the comments under the article ('BSD user'):
Reference: Here we read that Mainstream support for windows 2000 servers will end 31 March 2005 That's only 2 years and 4 months from now. I don't remember seeing a 'use before' date on any linux servers. Do you?
Readers might wish to balance this article with the rest of the story, found here.
Part of the cost of maintenance on the Linux platform is surely regular installation of upgrades which are freely available.
By contrast, who keeps a Microsoft product for five years without upgrading it? Especially in a corporate environment? That means that two years down the road, it's time to pay for a new version. . .
Just a thought.
Larsal
IBM thinks differently in this paper and so does CyberSource here.
As a technologist I'm very sceptical to economic calculations. I believe that they can be twisted in any direction.
There is a principle of uncertanty. Of the three items cost, time and product you can only know one. So if you want to know what product you'll end up with, you can't know the price or time...
Anyway, it is good to point out that Linux systems has problems in the management area. But still, people are working on it.
keep in mind, we had the full $2k/year MSDN subscription for each developer, paid each year, as well as some very experienced staff on hand... MS charged us $150/h to talk to us about a problem that we were pointing out in their CMutex MFC class (a bug they later admitted to) This was back in 1995 or so before MS jumped on the newsgroup bandwagon. At any rate, i wonder if these kinds of fees factored into the TCO?
Google: IDC microsoft
and you will see taht IDC has a history of tooting the MS horn.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
I love this comment on article on CRN's website:
"It just sounds strange that this article claims a five years study using Windows 2000. As of today, this study should have began by Dec. 1997 ! That means getting Windows 2000 two years in advance. "
So they must using a SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) to come up with it TCO figures.
I also wonder how rough Windows 2000 was in 1997! Could it be that these figures are made up!?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
You get meta-karma, for actually using the word "balance" in the same sentence with a link to the register. I was impressed. If course, it's unbelievably funny, but I was pretty damn impressed at the effort.
On another front, you can get well-balanced news stories here.
Five years of Windows 2000? Let's see, if Windows 2000 came out in 1999, then it's been out for 2000, 2001, 2002...that's only three years. So there must be some extrapolation going on here, even if we allow that some of these shops were using a beta version of Win2k a year ahead of release. Then there is the question of hardware costs, since Linux potentially needs less hardware to perform the same jobs. And finally, it'd be nice to know how the 104 shops were picked.
Insert standard Mark Twain "statistics" comment here.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Firstly, a server license is more than $150. Second, this is a TCO study. You may not agree with it, but you clearly don't even know what TCO means if you just look at the cost to install and configure the OS on a single server.
:)
Considering all the licenses for W2k where I work cost less than one of our tech support guys' salary (and we have several of those guys) the TCO mostly depends on incidental costs from running linux or windows (ie/ if windows requires one competent admin at $60k CAD and linux requires twice as many, which has the lower TCO? But then factor in how much time those admin's are required to patch the servers and it may change - as you can see, it's not a simple thing to calculate!)
I'm no expert on TCO (i'm a programmer/analyst, not a CTO) but you know so little you really shouldn't even be posting on this topic. Shut up and read what some real admins have to say and maybe we'll all learn something
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
It depends.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Linux admins are relatively "new". Let me elaborate.
You have a previously win32 shop where everyone know how to support win32. You either train or hire someone to support Linux. That is where you incurr the cost. From there, you have one person supporting 1-5 boxes (typically in test deployments) and so your divisor is low, with a high numerator.
What these studies don't do is assume that you have the same size install base of Linux as for Win32. Everyone knows that Linux is more reliable (and having worked in IT as a professional for 7 years, (and still working in it now) that is not heresay) so the same person can support more boxen.
Another problem is that the people who train rather than hire have the problem of unfamiliarity. Just like with any other job, it takes newbies longer to do anything.
Finally, the last reason is because it takes more to be a good Unix admin, and their salaries reflect that fact. But fortuneately, the stability of the boxes more than make up for that fact.
We will never have a proper TCO study unless conversion is 100% with proper support staff. The closest thing would be the migration of Hotmail to Win32. But we all know how that turned out...
"Microsoft is celebrating the results of a study..." Hehee. It was about time they found one study to prove how Windows 2000 costs less over a five year time span.
Never mind that Windows 2000 hasn't been around even close to that long.
Never mind that Microsoft stops supporting it in year 2005. Wonder how a six year time span would have looked like...
She could at least have linked to the study itself...
We see a similar effect where I work, an NT box costs us about 30% less to run than a Solaris box.
Why?
There are less mission-critical systems running on NT, so there are less DBAs, less backup, etc. The print server sits in the corner and gets a 3-finger salute if it plays up, so it's cheap to run. The mission-critical boxes, running web servers, databases, etc can't go down, so we have administrators to look after them.
IMNSHO - if we normalized for what each box is doing, Linux and Unix are cheaper to run.
Alan.
Without some details it's impossible to tell either what these results were based on or the specific areas where win2k was found superior to linux. I didn't see a reference to the actual study, so there is no way to gauge the validity of the results. There's just no meat to talk about with this marketing blurb dressed up as a news report.
The story mentions that downtime contributes more than 20% of the TCO of a system. With uptimes of months to years for *nix boxes; whereas you are strongly advised to reboot Windows boxes on a regular basis, where is the logic that 23% of the TCO of a *nix box comes from downtime?
We have linux servers at work that have downtime every 6 months for servicing, and then only for a handful of hours. Other than that, they don't come down at all. I fail to see how less than 1 day downtime/year (planned, at that) can contribute 23% of the TCO of the system.
2 sysadms at ~$70k/yr = $140k/yr. $0 for licensing. That would make downtime cost roughly $32k/day (23% of 140k, assuming 24 hrs downtime/yr). If you house something critical, like your CRM system, on 1 machine, and it goes down, I could see that. Then again, that would be your own damn fault for having 0 backup/redundancy.
There's a lot about that article that doesn't add up, and not just the 5 year study on Win 2000...
No, that's a bullshit comparison. The IDC study (yeah, I read it; you should, too, because it brings up some really good points) essentially says that the costs of administration for Linux are often higher than for Windows 2000 Server because Linux is, basically, a lot harder to use. It has nothing to do with the "weld the hood shut" open-source/closed-source argument (which is bullshit in and of itself, but that's another post).
The first comparison was, while still off the mark, more apt: driving an automatic is easier than driving a stick, and Windows 2000 is easier to set up, administer, and use than Linux.
I write in my journal
Eat it Mac'o !
I am really sick of reading all this rubbish about the cost comparison between linux/unix and windows.For the sort of work that i do which is scientific based, the applications that we need are not available under windows. So it is impossible to run a cost difference between linux and windows, linux is basically priceless. And I am sure that there are some people that it works
the other way for as well.
In order to decide what operating system to use, one should first know what one wants to do with their computer and then decide what operating system to use. Cost should not be the deciding factor (although an important one) when choosing an operating system. If an operating system does not do what one needs it to do, then no matter how inexpensive it is, it is just wasted money.
As for training costs while using computers. It has got to the point now where the basic operation of all operating systems are very much the same. Using a browser in linux is almost identical to using it under windows. So it is impossible to say that training costs are substantially different for any operating system.
I expect a lot of side-taking on this one.
But I cannot see how they can support the argument except that at the moment, there are simply more Windows administrators and techs out there than there are Linux administrators and techs. What's more, I have encountered people who proudly make statements like "Microsoft Only" as if it were some status symbol or major accomplishment and who won't even go NEAR a machine running anything else as if it were diseased and might infect his mind. (Brings to mind certain flavors of Christianity)
But as there are more Microsoft-supporting professionals and so many of them are still out of work, it stands to reason that the TCO is low over 5 years... except one thing-- will Windows2000 still be supported in 5 years or will their license terms change again encouraging [requiring] upgrades to their latest OS? So yes, MS people are more available and will accept lower pay. Linux people are still more rare and generally expect more pay because we know a bit more... and usually know MS in addition to other OS's pretty well.
You still get what you pay for, for the most part. But the TCO figure is a very subjective thing... and has anyone asked if this was also yet another MS supported study?
Well, it did take me about 6 months to learn how to parallel park smoothly. But - once I had learned, it was in fact much easier, because the clutch gives you an added dimension of control as you slip into a tight parking space. I got to the point where I could park the manual in a space 6" (15 cm) longer than the car. No one with an automatic trans could match that.
My experience with Windows products pretty much parallels (ha ha) this: easy to learn. Hard to administer.
sPh
I agree. It's entirely unfair to stretch the TCO out over five years without including the cost of *forced* upgrades. And what about cost savings by enabling managers to move to other (open source) tools instead of being 'locked in' to the Microsoft world ?
Another job well done the IDC advertising department... Slashdot has better editors.
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
According to the analyst responsible for this study; "Linux requires more care and feeding, basically...".
Read more at InfoWorld.
How does Linux require more care & feeding? I don't understand, my experience has been the exact opposite. Whenever I patch a Linux box it continues to function properly, similiar maintainence on a W2K server (with a subsequent reboot) invariably leaves me with a new problem. BTW, patches to W2K servers are far more frequent and require longer download times than any Linux patches -- even when a new kernel is required Linux is still faster.
I think Giga has the right perspective here, if you don't know what you're doing of _course_ it's going to require more care & feeding. I'm eager to read this report, there is another MS sponsored study coming out 1Q2003 that should be equally interesting....
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
It takes a sysadmin every bit as competent as a good Unix sysadmin to PROPERLY administer a Win2K server and its associated workstations. It's a fallacy that you can hire cheap newbies to run a Windows network. Instead of having the problems fixed, scripts written to have certain things get fixed automatically, you get reboot monkeys.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I love when a TCO study comes out and people read and article (not reading the TCO itself) and claim victory, the fact is you have to treat one hundred servers differently than you do 5 servers. A TCO is not scale at a linear rate.
is that you don't get ANY points for installing it. You get 1 MS Licensing point for each copy of XP, 5 for MS Office and 10 for 2000 Server. No points at all for Linux. How can it be good for your business if you can't get any points! And levels. When you reach certain numbers of points you get new levels.
I think the new MS licensing agreement was actually a RPG system that fell into the wrong hands.
For a good headache...
Part of the lower cost comes from the factor of scale. If you're looking to do some consulting, well Microsoft has a massive and undeniable lead in the number of users- so you start up a business to take advantage of this and offer services for Microsoft software.
But everyone else is doing the same thing, so you have to lower prices and they lower theirs. (This is overall mind you, not pinned down to any two support services) Microsoft products are also quite easy to manage on the whole. Especially since Win2K came rolling in, plus with NT4SP6a you shouldn't have too many major server problems either.
Everywhere you go you can find all sorts of Microsoft camp product support. Once you learn one Microsoft product you are well on your way to knowing another.
Many corporate level packages also come on Microsoft (ERP, etc.) so that gets added into the mix as well - if you want a Linux solution you are really going to have to take the long way around for a lot of this stuff.
Linux is doing quite well, but entry into the Linux world is like running into a brick wall for many. There are far fewer Linux users around and the system is totally different from what most people are used to. There is a staggering amount of things to learn when taking on Linux, kernel recompiles, following the chains of dependancies, all of this takes time to learn and internalize. Most Microsoft type products are a matter of getting the latest service packs.
So there are fewer Linux users and fewer people overall familiar with Linux. The cost of finding someone to help you is going to be higher. Plus, I would argue there is *far* more to learn so you're going to pay the high priced people even more.
This presents a massive total cost barrier for those who would seek to save licensing money by switching to Linux. It is far easier to pay out to a software company for support and pay cheaper mainstream consultants and get things done than it is to start entering this whole new world of OSS. And you'll have to keep paying out more money to expensive consultants and employees to keep up-to-date, even though the initial costs are cheaper.
Then there's all of the little things that Linux can't quite do yet. Incompatibilities with the mainstream software products, pieces of software that just aren't available or which just aren't up to snuff when compared to the MS world. Add these in as indirect costs - even if you get the money to start up with Linux these little niggling issues will make management wonder why they bothered. Finance is not going to be happy without running Excel, the VP is going to be annoyed by not being able to access his IE only stock market site.
On the flip side, if you happen to have employees that known their Linux and know it well, there are definitely benefits to be had. If you want to add a new web server, W2K Adv Server is going to cost you more than the hardware and your Linux-savy employee can probably get an Apache server running nice and easy.
The problem is Linux is just not quite popular enough yet so these gifted people are hard to come by. Trying to insert Linux into a corporate world of Windows raised folk via consultants is going to mean huge dollars - basic stuff that everyone at least sort of knows how to do in Windows may require more consultant hours for instructional purposes.
But, even as the article mentions there are places were Linux is making itself cost effective and useful - like webserving. These tasks should be Linux's thin-end-of-the-wedge. Slowly get Linux in there for these tasks, and then maybe it can take over one more job, then another. Sys Admins can slowly learn more about it and become more experienced. Eventually that TCO is going to balance towards Linux.
There is a long ways to go though - and screaming that all MS users are idiots and they just don't realize how far superior Linux is, is counter-productive. The technical snobbery that often goes on (knee jerk MS bashing, even near-religious fervour found within variations on Linux, newbie bashing, etc.) helps nothing. The rest of the world will just ignore Linux even more and continue on doing their business using MS and closed-source products that they are comfortable with and *that work* as often as not. They *really and truly* don't care what software they use as long as it works, and as long as it is cost-effective to use it. Most business need to use computers, but what computers they use are irrelevant to them. They just need to, well, take care of business.
Find ways that Linux helps them to that in a cost-effective and friendly way and I'm sure more and more business will bite.
I have been in shos where there are 1.5 window admin FTE's to support 5 friggen servers a terminal an exchange, a domain controller, a file server, and an application server. In that same department we had 3.5 FTE's to support over 50 *NIX servers (and the *NIX servers were hit far more than the windows servers).
Totally worthless... they will say whatever the company paying for the study want to hear.
... one linux admin can handle WAY more linux servers than 1 windows admin.
I'd like to see this study with 10 windows vs. 10 linux servers, or 100 vs. 100
I find it interesting the way arguments are going around here.
"Well sure any retard can run Windows so of course it is cheaper TCO"
And that is exactly how MS will market their products. Wanna web server? No problem, sure linux/freebsd is free, but the staff to support it will end up costing you more in the long run.
You folks act like being easy to use is a _bad_ thing. While the rest of the world thinks it's a good thing.
You call people who install a win2k server for their small business idiots and they're idiots for not mastering unix. But maybe they don't time to learn all that is needed, because they have a business to run, and it is simply cheaper(in the long run) to run a Win2k server than a linux one.
Think about it.
Sometimes it seems like slashdot folks sits in their geek tower and spews insults at all the morons for using MS. Without ever knowing what's really going on in the real world.
BTW, I use linux/freebsd and love them. But i also love computers in general.
Talking with some of my friends who run their own business they are really nervous about going to linux yet they are interested.
I can't give them support and they are afraid that supports costs will be too high, and Jim down the hall is pretty good with Windows so we will just let him do the administration.
Sorry for the rant I know everyone on slashdot is not this way.
Man did this thing get submitted a lot
We shall see this story again, but with a new title...
Taking bets now who will post the duplicate...
1) Hermos,
2) Michael
3) Taco
4) Taco's Wife (pertending to be Taco)
Tournament Management Online &
'proves' is a strong word. 'implies' is a better one. Let's stick to the facts and stay away from zany assumptions.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
HERE'S WHERE THEY CAN COOK THE NUMBERS: if they say one-admin-per-10-machines, and MS admins are so much cheaper than Unix/Linux admins, then Windows wins. Of course, typically an admin can support many more boxes using *ix than Windows, so the higher cost of the *ix admin is spread out more, so *ix wins (or at least breaks even) vs. Windows.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics?
In my experience it's easier to backup and restore Linux based systems. Fair enough with Windows you can backup the registry hives but that's a lot trickier than just copying a few text files. When Windows NT/2k/XP won't boot (BSOD on bootup) you're often up a creek without a paddle. At least with Linux you can get the system up with a bootable CD or boot floppy.
The thing they don't seem to mention is the volume of staff needed to admin the two different platforms. I think that 1 MCSE (or equivalent) per 5-7 Win2k servers is probably a common ratio at many companies (that's about what my company works with), while you can have 1 *NIX admin manage 20+ Linux/BSD machines with ease (my group has 5 people managing 96 FreeBSD servers). Many companies don't understand this, they think that if you just *throw* more staff at the issue (untrained staff at that), you are getting an acceptable TCO. One good *NIX admin hardly needs to admin his boxes at all.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Dunno, my experience is a lot different, and I've seen both large Unix and large Windows environments.
Without any fancy tools, administering a large number of Unixy boxes is easy, whereas administering a large number of Windows boxes is hellish.
With fancy tools (which are available for both environments - see Tivoli) you can set things up so that operators can do just about anything as long as nothing breaks. When things go wrong you end up having to revert to the standard admin. tools anyway. Unix is fixable, Windows a nightmare.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
You laugh? I worked at a company back in 2000 that put a serious investment into developing a website, with a Windows 2000 back end of course. This was a Fortune 500 company, so of course Microsoft conned them into hiring a bunch of MCSDs to code the thing at some insane price. It ended up costing several million for the whole shebang, which included space at Exodus for a 4 webserver cluster, behind an F5 and dual PIXs, with the database running off two quad Xeon boxen sharing a SAN. This all ran Windows 2000 Advanced Server so they could use the HA clustering functionality.
/.ed I'll be able to take a look =). I'll still take it with a grain of salt, as I would any report comapring the TCO of either of these products. Lies, damn lies, and TCO studies indeed.
Anyhow, I worked a later shift, and got to monitor in the evenings. Every evening, without fail, I watched each and every machine in that HA cluster get rebooted =). "Scheduled Maintainance" I imagine.
Don't get me wrong though, this isn't an MS bash. I'm and MCP, RHCE, etc, and use both Windows 2000 on the server and desktop, as well as Linux on the server and desktop. Each has their place.
Maybe when the server hosting this report isnt getting
It might be worthwhile noting that real studies, which we can look at, unlike this one, and which aren't backed by MS, show that Linux has a lower TCO:
http://www.cyber.com.au/cyber/about/linux_vs_wi
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/RFG-LinuxTCO-vFINAL-
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
In all the discussion about Microsoft TCO, you missed The Register story of the day...
Woman jump starts car with cyber-infant.
Why do all the Wintrolls always assume that Viruses, Troyans and downtime can happen to everybode except themselves?
We can see the great benefits of a MS solution firsthand by the performance of your server.
The site www.crn.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on unknown.
What is the TCO of replacing that smoldering hunk in the corner, guys?
well the original article was about tco of running linux as a server, and not really aimed at developers.
one thing to not about Free software is that the support base from the community is huge. as a result when you are having problems there are many more resources available for you online than there are for proprietary software. also people developing Free software are more likely to admit bugs and problems with their system than those who close their source to the public.
my own personal expirences have shown that developers in the linux community are more likely to respond to you personally than those from say microsoft. take for example a problem i was having with a network card. i was getting strange errors in syslog and i wasnt sure what they ment. i poked around on the net and i couldnt figure out what was wrong. in a last ditch effort i emailed donald becker. perhaps you've heard of him, he writes most of the linux network interface drivers and he came up with a little clustering concept called beowulf.
well i emailed him with the problem i was having, and do you know what he did? he didn't ask me for money, or a credit card number, or a beer. he emailed me source code for a diagnostic program. i emailed the results back. this continued for a couple hours and eventually we determined that the nic was bad. oh did i mention that he responded to my initial query within an hour?
now i ask you, if i emailed support@microsoft.com and asked them for help with my nic do you think the guy who wrote the network card drivers for windows would respond to me personally within an hour to work out my problem for free? this is the difference between support costs in windows and linux. you might not appreciate them, but i do.
-- john
One of the common citations that are bandied about is that Linux admins make more than their Windows counterparts. But, the evidence seems to contradict this "wisdom". Most of the Linux admin jobs that I see posted offer lower salaries than comprable Windows admin positions. Surveys, such as this, also indicate that Linux admins are actually paid less than their MCSE counterparts. This naturally begs the question, are Linux admins truely more expensive than the Windows admins?
Another issue is the "difficulty" of administrering Linux, as compared to Windows. While, there are some valid arguements to support this hypothesis, there are also some important details that are seemingly ignored. That is, the difficulty is in fact due to unfamiliarity. Windows admins are unfamiliar with Linux and it is therefore more difficult for them to administer it. But, were these Windows admins born knowing how to administer Windows? Is Windows truely so simple that they can do it without any prior knowledge?
No! The fact is that the Windows admins have had specific training in administering Windows. They have gone to classes, MCSE Boot Camps, seminars all about how to manage Windows. They also have a bookshelf FULL of Windows administration books that they have studied. Now, after all that, Windows is familiar and relatively easy for them to administer. I challenge anyone who makes the difficulty claim to build a bookshelf of equal size to their Windows one. If these people read just as many books on Linux as they have on Windows Administration, they would not find it any more difficult than Windows. This would likely be true even without any Linux classes or Linux Boot Camps.
It has been proven by a legion of CNEs who find Novell no more difficult, in many cases far easier to manage than Windows. Yet The same Windows admins will say that Netware is MUCH harder to manage than Windows.
Also, on the subject of training etc. These TCO reports always factor in the expense of Linux training. However, they do not seem to factor in the cost of Windows training. Let's not forget that the books and the classes and the MCSE boot camps cost a lot of money. Even if that money has already been spent, it must be factored into the TCO. These MCSEs were not born knowing how to administer Windows 2000. It costed thousands of dollars each to raise this generation of MCSEs. In most cases these training courses were paid for by the companies. How can they be simply ignored by the TCO studies? Are these MCSEs going to live forever, or are they going to be replaced by a new generation that will have to aslo be trained at a cost of thousands per head?
Open Business License:
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Hey maybe they're right!
To install Linux I need the following:
- buy a new computer
- order a Cable net connection to download the CD
- buy a CD burner to burn the CD
With Windows I just need to:
- dial 1-800-555-DELL (free)
- give credit card details
- receive delivery of new PC with Windows installed
So really buying Windows saves me money as I don't need the net connection or the burner!
Ok ok, so that was bad. But it's only 8:21 and I'm half asleep.
83% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
This sig no verb.
Generally these comparisons of number of admins for one type of server based on the OS are nonsensical. The real comparison needs to be focus on what function the server is performing.
Database servers require far less daily change control than File/Print servers. Even less when you consider it's the DBA doing changes, not the server admin.
What if you have one NT admin for every 40 NT servers, but only have one Unix admin for every 4 Unix servers? Isn't that a nonsensical comparison, when the NT boxes are 1U Compaq rack-mounts, but the Unix boxes are HP Superdomes?
And besides, when people talk about administrative functions they are thinking enterprise level. Not your dorm room.
I saw it in IDG.net. It's pretty funny...
Well for nearly 11 years I have been in the fileserver world. I touched lots of file servers. From old ancient LANtastic and Netware 2.15, going through most Novell flavours up to 5.0. For 11 years I worked with, administered, tweaked and crunched so many different file servers that I don't remember all of them. Lots of Novell flavours, OS/2, NFS on Solaris and Linux. I worked also with Windows "solutions", from WfW up to Windows2000 Server. From all these I sincerly prefer Netware. Netware is far better and manageable than any other file server system. Naturally as Novell did it specially for file servers. However there is a problem with Novell. Its prices are prohibitive for many customers. But, if your work highly depends in file server services, surely the TCO is far lower than everyone else.
Among all the systems I used, the most crappy, cumbersome, crash-proned, time consuming and nervestraining was M$ crap. It came up into hanging a whole local network, just because M$ thought it could play at will with TCP/IP stack. But there are tons of stories about the crap. Let's just pick the most recent.
In April this year, I met a medium-sized Compaq server in one highly important organisation. Compaq's dealer sweeted a lot to have that lovely machine there. And sweeted even more to have it working. The thing worked, naturally, on Windows2000 Server. I was asked to tweak the crap so that several problems were gone. And the problems were: workstations loosing connection with the server, Apps frequently hanging up, file transfer working slowly (in a 100mbits network it looked much like 10mbits), and a episodic events with the machine crashing.
After some administration we came up to the conclusion that the machine was going into sure doom. The DNS was crashing every day, WINS and SMB were giving wrong packets into the network, the file system was getting wrong data, user accounts were not freed, CPU never lowered behind 30% and lots of many other problems. Besides we found that, everyday, 30 minutes of workday was lost on backing up data (it was a damn important server) as no one could work while backup was going on.
Well, we created a backup server, curiously on Linux, but with the objective to reinstall Windows2000 on the main server. We lost ONE week trying to do it. As we discovered, the original installer had also huge problems with that machine. The machine was simply unable to work stable with Windows2000.
Considering the pros and cons I decided to use my old weapon The Penguin Dancing Samba, against the huge oposition of many people. However the situation was Hell in Flames and there should be a fast solution. So the bosses agreed the change.
Well I had a whole day of headaches to install it on Compaq's RAID. Also I had lots of trouble creating a secure, stable and automatised environment. In the whole, it took me 2-3 weeks to do all the work.
Today, nearly half-year later, the admin approaches the server 1-2 times in the week. Most work is log checking and some rare tweaks in the configuration (mostly adding users), the machine carries several early warning scripts in case something goes wrong. Backup is completely automatic. With the exception of one single user (some mystic problem), everyone works without hangups, crashes or lost connections. The system lives perfectly in its 100mbps network and the problem of slow connections is forgotten. Besides, the average load of this machine is just 3% and it now carries also a MySQL server that is frequently used and which, in the future, may substitute many file server tasks.
Is this the the higher TCO they talk about?
if you liked the story "Win2k Cheaper than Linux" as posted on slashdot.org, then you'll just love these companion stories!:
"Animal Protein Healthier than Vegetable Protein" as posted on vegetarians.net
"Peaceful Dialog Goes Farther than Violent Conflict" as posted on alqaeda.gov
"Censorship Attempts Actually Lead to Greater Mass Appeal of Target Sites" as posted on scientology.org
"My Uncle was an Monkey" as posted on creationism.com
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intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When you purchase and install a Win2K product, you give Microsoft the right to "audit" you. They performed one of these audits on a company I worked for. I am certain we owned all of the software that was on our machines. We had a corporate policy of no piracy, buy what we need.
We just couldn't produce EULAs for 13 out of over 600 products. Their lawyers also wanted $6000 for the MSDN copies we had. These guys don't seem to even understand Microsoft licensing and appear to be trying to squeeze you for every cent. I had to fax the MSDN user agreement stating that MSDN CDs could be freely distributed within the company. It did not seem to matter to the law firm that we could produce the CD covers for the other products. No EULA, no credit. It cost the company $13,000 to settle. The lawyers got 2/3rds of that for their "work". The remaining third went for purchasing software which I feel we already owned.
I felt scammed and violated. This ticked me off so I looked for alternatives. I discovered FreeBSD. I installed SAMBA and had the same fuctionality as a Windows Server without the risk. I had to buy 2 Samba books to figure it out. I had to reinstall FreeBSD multiple times until I figured out how to do it. I can do it now in my sleep. It is not that FreeBSD is harder, it was just unfamiliar.
If you think this is an isolated incident, it is not. Audits happen everyday. Sometimes, the target really deserves the attention, sometimes it is just Microsoft biting a hand that feeds them. Sometimes, Microsoft's lawyers go over board and put the squeeze on a non profit or school and then people squak at Microsoft. Then there are a number of small companies that, unwittingly, find themselves in a bind.
There are alternatives to some of the Microsoft software. I suggest to everyone that will listen to use the alternatives first.
I'm not going to try to defend the notion that a Linux desktop has a lower TCO than a Win 2K desktop, because frankly I doubt that it does. Linux requires admins which, unlike MCSEs, aren't churned out by the dozens by your local community college.
The problem I see here is that most of these Linux vs. Windows TCO studies hinge on the idea that you are replacing a Windows 2000 desktops with a full-fledged Linux desktops, and that's the wrong way to do it.
I'd like to see a unbalanced TCO review of what the City of Largo, Florida has done. Basically, they've got 800 very cheap thin clients (230 concurrent) running X-Windows applications (KDE, etc.) off of a couple big-ass terminal servers. Very similar to the Linux Terminal Server Project, and very cool.
There are so many businesses paying $200 for Win 2K Pro and $350 for MS Office just so their employees can send email and dabble in Word or Excel. It's insane. They could be saving $550 per machine in software costs alone! Not considering the fact that the thin client hardware costs much, much less than the average desktop. And there's essentially zero administration costs on the clients. Let's see a TCO comparison on that.
I'm starting to get off-topic, but I'm excited about the project so what the hell. I'm currently doing a little in-house pilot of the same thing at my employer. I've customized the KNOPPIX bootable ISOs to basically be X-Windows thin clients. You just pop the CD in a machine, reboot, and you get a KDM login box for our terminal server. Very, very cool. Even free server licenses from Microsoft couldn't persuade me to drop this project.
Reminds me of the last time I read a Microsoft commissioned study in detail.
If I recall correctly, it was NT 4 vs Novell 4. The study came out three years ago. Amusing thing was they disabled several features on the Novell server which were on by default and JUST happen to be necessary for optimized performance. Microsoft had optimized NT4 (things like tcp/ip window size were doubled for example). Things which were not defaults mind you.
The end result? NT wins by a landslide. Never mind that they had to screw the results by messing with the server settings. Basically crippling the Novell server.
I would be VERY surprised if Microsoft EVER did anything that didn't require tampering to get their desired result.
Oh and BTW, 5 year study with win2k? How many of you guys know anyone running win2k that long?
Thought so.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Oh that's crap. If windows craps out on booting up there's still a few simple things left to do that usually will solve the problem. The repair consol tool is decent, you can repair installations off the cd, and of course the venerable emergency repair disk. But in a large netowrk enviroment (since you're smart and redirect the folders to the network shares so nothing will be lost in just such a feather numbering eventuallity) you just pop in a floopy have it automatically throw down what ever image it should have, automagically, and let it do everything itself. The person using the computer returns phone calls for a little while, and everything is just as they left it.
And backing up the registry in windows consists of clicking on windows backup then clicking on the box that says system state.
The truth is pretty mundane. Linux and Windows each have their advantages. When you promote one at the expence of the truth, you're no longer a believer you're a zealot.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
I used to run a win2k network. I installed it too. Other than viral infections the workstations worked great. Win2k server and active directory sucked ass however.
The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity. -- Harlan Ellison
I find it amazing that all these instant pundits and press-release-repeaters haven't noticed that the IDC study was funded by Microsoft; this could call the results into question.
At least at eWeek, someone noticed this:
"Study Finds Windows Cheaper Than Linux (continued)
"Many drivers of cost need to be uncovered in such an examination and evaluation, and the 'risk/return' trade-offs of Linux versus Windows may not be as obvious as they appear at first glance," they said.
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The fact that Microsoft paid for the research is likely to be used as a weapon against the findings by some in the Linux community and will also elevate the debate about how valid calculations of total cost of ownership are for any given comparison.
A Microsoft spokesman confirmed to eWEEK that the firm had completely sponsored the White Paper but said that IDC had controlled the methodology, data and findings. IDC analyst Al Gillen agreed, telling eWEEK that the firm undertook a lot of custom research for individual companies and customers."
And Galli also goes into detail about the methodology, so you can have fun picking that apart.
Using a repair disk isn't quite the same as being able to boot the system proper using a floppy or bootable CD. In my experience the recovery console is pretty toothless, you can't install much from it. It's handly if the MBR screws up and if you need to disable a service, but other than that it's a joke. Suppose (for example) you swap your motherboard and the chipsets are different (eg. Intel to VIA). With Windows 2000/XP if you forget to change the IDE driver to the standard IDE controller driver before switching the board you'll find it blue screens when you boot. With Linux it would just boot and if it didn't you would be able to make a boot disk of some kind with another Linux PC.
Still running NT3.51 and 4.0 over here and I have yet to see the gun pointed at me forcing me to upgrade. I still get support from my vendor, and the machines are (surprisingly) running so well that we rarely touch them.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
These results are based on a *survey* of businesses, and it reflects what they *think* the 5-year TCO is going to be, so all you guys who are fixated on flaws of the study or that Win2K wasn't available 5-years ago are missing the point. The point is that this is what the business world believes, not what reality is. You can complain all you want about MS, but I think of it as a good wake-up call: it tells us what the rest of the world is thinking about Linux and points out where we ought to be focusing our efforts.
I hate to start a new thread on this, but I will. I will not compare ease of use between Linux and Windows in a desktop environment, (although those goddamn GPL violators Lindows are changing that) but I actually believe the Linux is much easier as server than windows. For instance setting up IIS requires mulling through several layers of menus, while apache only requires editing a short text which has simple instructions contained within. User priviledges are more complicated in windows, and don't do as good a job with program access rights as Linux, ie. more processes are going to have Admin/root access in windows than Linux. Hence Linux/Unix generally has by design inherently better security than windows. Backing up a Linux server is much simpler than windows as all than text config files can simply be backed up (along with whatever data your serving) rather than the whole system. Windows does allow the creation of a special recovery disk(ASR), but this complicated and often doesn't work. I digress, as I am running out of time. In a server environment editing text files can be much easier and faster than configuraring layers and layers of GUI configs.
Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it.
And you will see the biggest unrealistic caveat: the study assumed no upgrades over a span of 5 years! M$ tries to force an upgrade just about every frickin' year or so. It is unrealistic to think a company will have the same windoze running 5 years down the line with M$ breathing down their neck AND M$ dropping support for their 5 year old OS after a mere 3 or so.
Another interesting and true point is that those people you hire to administer a linux system setup are more knowledgeable, period, than the MSCE admins for doze so that when something really goes south (on windoze almost anything beyond people forgetting their passwords) the windoze admins are useless while the *nix geniuses can easily whip out a fix - probably without terminating network connectivity while they do it.
An M$-funded study is the same thing as a "study" produced by the M$ marketing department and has the same legitimacy.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
If your environment is setup in a unix/linux friendly way, TCO of unix/linux will be low. If you take an environment setup for windows, and try to plug linux or unix into it, the TCO will be higher.
Interesting to note that downtime was the second highest cost in TCO. Are they saying that windows has better uptime than Linux? (Which is absurd, even if you don't factor in the downtime cost due to viruses). Look at http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/isp.avg.html The first windows machine comes in at 14th place.
This study is just dumb. It's a projection, nothing more. Probably funded by m$.
If you read the article a bit more closly and check the comments for referance, you'll notive the article says that this study was done over a 5 year period of time. Windows 2000 wasn't out 5 years ago making this rather impossible and thus pretty hard to believe. And I can imagine that starting with Linux 5 years ago and using that till now probably would cost more than it would to start now and carry forward 5 uears because so much progress has been made. Were upgrades allowed? This article is very light on the details. Would a service pack be allowed then? Wouldn't this make Linux better because for free, you get better and better upgrades. Win 2000 only gives you a few services paks, unless you upgrade to XP (ha!)
So in the end I am really confused at how this is even possible and sort of able to believe part of it because of the severe age-ness of it. But really. Come on, we need way more detail before I'll actually believe it.
First of all, Windows 2000 is not 5 years old. Second, Linux was not being adopted in a big way 5 years ago either. Numbers over a 5 year span would therefor be meaningless.
Note that Linux has advanced MASSIVE amounts over those 5 years in both performance, reliability, and ease of maintenance.
Second, it depends on WHICH 104 companies you survey. I could probably pick 104 companies that would have a totally different experience.
What's that old saying about statistics again?
That while the price of product A may be cheaper than product B, they both come with their own set of costs.
Lets use an extreme example to illustrate this point.
When you build a bridge, you hire the best talent and use the highest quality resources money can buy. Because no matter how much these things cost up front, they're nothing compared to what it will cost if your bridge collapses.
You make similar tradeoffs every day when choosing between two products.
You may be able to save by economizing on employees or software, but if it results in a huge security compromise where all of your systems are trashed, confidential data is leaked to the world, and it takes you a month to recover from the damage, you'll probably wish you hadn't been so frugal.
Or maybe not. You have to decide which is more important, and if you're not qualified to make the decision, ask someone who is.
Specifically, I would like to know who maintains an Exchange server be 5.5 or 2k, that agrees with this article?
I have administered Exchange boxes in one form or another for about 4 years. (i also admin other stuff:-) And just last night... Stop POP3, Error1053, Service is stuck in "stopping", Start options in "Services" and "Exchange System Mgr" are greyed out. So I try to use the Stop option in the SysMgr (only option avail), Error "POP3 is not running"... ARGH! After a few hour joyride on support.microsoft.com and reading Enterprise "solutions" such as "reboot", and delete the instance and recreate. And last Exchange Support call I did cost me $297 bucks (that was two years ago).
Look I could care less Linux, Windows, WinManix, whatever. If it works, I will use it.
By the way that $297 dollar solution... Extract the ExhPubDb as a *.PST thru outlook, and copy it back to the public info store. This had to be done ONCE a week.
These solutions absorb too many man hours, that could be spent on proactive and productive projects. I'm not here saying that Linux is better, but I can't possibly think that the TCO for Exchange in the Enterprise is an acceptable cost.
And for the record I personally think Win2kPro is still the best client!
peaCe
Awesome!
The problem with this kind of study (and I'm also including the ones by IBM that favor Linux over Windows in this) is that there is no general case that you can model results for. All these studies assume too many specific things about the "typical workplace" and "typical server needs" and "typical staff" that are not universal, and then have the hubris to take their conclusion and make the bold public statement that it applies universally. TCO calculations are especially prone to this since TCO depends largely on the staff's ability and willingness to learn the technology, and that's not the same for every situation. For us at work, Windows would be more expensive than Linux simply because we don't like it, and thus would spend the minimum time necessary to learn how to make it work just barely for us.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Microsoft actually sponsored this study:. htm. Of course, we all know Microsoft to be a bastion of integrity...
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2126953,00
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
Microsoft paid good money for that study. If you take it seriously, that just proves your last remaining brain cell has died. The more you dig for details the more ridiculous their claims are. If you want the truth, read the article on the register, and check out the IBM study a this link... http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/RFG-LinuxTCO-vFINAL-Jul 2002.pdf
For folk who have an interest in the sciences, pooh-poohing a scientific study, with probable extrapolation, without looking at it objectivly is probably about as un-scientific as it gets. You want empirical evidence? Here's some:
I have been trying to break from MS for ages. I can't condone a switch yet. Why? Admin costs. It isn't because myself and the other 2K admins can't understand or transfer our expertise to an archaic CLI based OS. It's not even because we can't work out how to do familiar things in *nix because we're all thick (much as you lot would have us believe).
It's actually the cost of having more staff to administer each machine. If I were to switch 100% to Linux I would have to administer each machine individually at the moment. In Windows I can simply change the group policy for whatever AD object I wish to change for, say, a virus database update or a permission domain wide for installation of a certain program. In *nix I would either have to log in to each machine myself or write a script for a machine to do it for me. Each way faffing about is a process involved. Simply put, *nix hasn't got the group and domain managment facilities that Windows has. Until it has, there's simply no competition. And yes, I love the OSS idea too, but i'm also a realist. Sorry.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
Linux people tend to only think of enterprise computing (and all computing for that matter) as web servers. I think the results of IDC's study. However, web computing is only a fraction of all computing. There are a lot of databases big and small. There are many file servers. There are many print servers. There are many APPLICATION servers. There are domain controllers. etc. Microsoft spends lots of R&D on making it all work together for the end user. They also spend a lot of time and effort giving admins tools to manage end users and their desktops. Novell is the only other company/OS in this arena. NDS and Active Directory ring a bell? Software deployment sound familar to anyone? Clue: Big shops don't send PC jockeys with CDs to install applications. They get pushed down with Zenworks or GPOs. Ask a Linux administrator to setup a plan to convert all the company's desktops with little to no downtime for the users. Now ask a Novell or Microsoft admin to do it. Guess who can't get it done fast. Ask a Linux admin to use his Linux servers to lock down the users' desktops to minimize support calls. You don't think of that one often, do you? Developing these kinds of enterprise tools isn't sexy, but it is critical. Without it, Linux will always be a niche in the server room. The next time your boss decides to go with a Microsoft solution indstead of Linux, don't bitch about marketing. Realize that there is this whole other role to be filled out in the enterprise. Now get coding and fill that role!
Linux is easier to manage (says Microsoft) on a large number of machines. So how can Linux be more expensive than Windows? People who know Linux don't magically get paid 10 times the money Windows people do. They probably make about the same in most cases, given equal # of years experience and equal talent.
This study is a big Troll. The fact that it is "breaking news" ought to raise red flags for most people! tsk tsk