Heavy-Duty System Administration Utilities?

leandrod asks: "I am in the process of helping a small software company define the infrastructure for their major client's new system. It is a big country, and it is a medium-sized client planning on going big. We are planning to standardize on Debian GNU/Linux. I am aware I can have IBM Tivoli Maestro for GNU/Linux for production scheduling, and BEA's Tuxedo TP monitor, but they are unsupported under Debian. I am also aware of one or two free TP monitors, but they are either incipient or stagnating. I couldn't find a production scheduler. I know I can do lots with the standard tools, but keep in mind I am targeting a transaction-processing bureau for a big operation with hundreds of thousands of terminals and millions of users, something like a poor man's Wal-Mart, or even Visa. Are there vendors out there willing to support Debian or just GNU/Linux in general? If not, are there free software projects that accomplish the same thing?"

Comments

UserLinux - "Debian Enterprise"

[Humble Legend]

Bruce Perens is leading the UserLinux project with the specific goal of creating a global "co-operative" if you like, of Debian GNU/Linux service provider companies (and consultants), with a completely Debian (ie. 100% Free Software) core. Additionally, the GNOME desktop has been standardized upon specifically to simplify custom/ proprietary development on top of UserLinux. See the homepage. The only thing might be the release-ready (version 1.0) timing; depends on your deployment timetable of course.

My .02

[abrotman]

Debian is a great choice. Everyone complains about the old software, but the advantage for enterprise is the long release cycles. This is exactly what RH is shooting for with RH AS/ES. At my company we have a mix of RH and Debian. The Debian servers don't crash for no apparent reason(seems to be a kernel oops related to swapping, dumb on a www server with way more ram than it uses).

Using debian for commercial stuff isn't as easy as it should be. Many companies don't support debian and seemingly have no desire to. One of those is Oracle. Oracle can be installed on Debian, and there are tons of docs out there to do it. In the end, if you really want debian, stick to your guns until you run out of bullets.

Another option, tell these companies you're gonna buy X dollars of thier stuff, but only if they make it run on debian on your hardware. If you're willing to spend a few million on Oracle, I'm sure oracle will make it work. The same goes for IBM. I know IBM does tons of software sales, and says they support RH/Suse, but theres no reason they can't make it run on debian.

I really dont understand why companies dont support debian(please no RPM vs. DEB), in spite of the long release cycles. IMO, it makes it the perfect candidate. Once something is released as stable, it will generally stay that release for at least a year, sometimes two. Oracle could begin to certify Debian/sarge now, and when its released they would have a deployment platform for quite a while. Hell .. They could even setup thier own apt repository with Oracle specific software/patches.

scheduling tools

[cavehobbit]

Scheduling is a lot more complex that I have seen anyone give credit for so far.
Add in : multiple platforms, vendors in different countries with different time zones, holidays, cultures and calendars, (try matching our Julian or Gregorian calendar to a Lunar calendar), with varying schedules, such as cyclical/hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual. Matching them to accounting needs like a fiscal year that does not match the calendar year, production schedules that cross week and month boundaries, and online systems that are up or down different days of the week and things can get very crazy very fast.

I can point you to 2 companies that seem to offer the most complete solutions for multiple platform shops, other than IBM's Tivoli, which works fairly well from what I have heard:

First:
Cybermation in Canada makes a product called ESP:
http://www.cybermation.com/solutions/jobsche duling

They have a cute little site at:
http://www.replaceyourjobscheduler.com/sitele t.htm l .

I was at a very large company when they swapped over from the CA7 tool to this one on their MVS systems. I was impressed with the product and the company's support. That was 8 years ago or so, so I cannot vouch for the product or the company now, but I have heard only good things about them currently.

Second:
BMC markets a product called Control-M, with all kinds of modules including an Enterprise Manager: http://www.bmc.com/products/productlist/0,2831,190 52_19429,00.html

I currently use this product in an MVS/Unix/WinNT/Oracle/SAP environment. It does work. It has it's issues and shortfalls, and we have some problems with support, but we have managed to complete our schedule across all platforms every day, with only a very few exceptions in the past 3 years I have worked with it. We run in excess of 10,000 batch/background processes per day across many platforms.

In all 3 cases, Tivoli, Cybermation, BMC, licensing can be a bit pricey. But if you research the products closely, and only license what you really need as opposed to what you think you need, you can get by.

I also strongly suggest you hire an experienced scheduler to help out. This is a very undervalued and complcated specialty. Like programming, many can muddle through but few are truely good at it.

Tom