Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Cisco IT Manager Targeting 70% Linux

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the big-switches dept.

RMX writes "LinuxWorld Australia has an interesting article discussing Linux Desktop adoption in Cisco. Cisco "already converted more than 2,000 of its engineers to Linux desktops...plans to move many laptop users to the platform over the next few years...the driver for Linux on the desktop is not cost savings, but easier support. Manning estimates that it takes a company approximately one desktop administrator to support 40 Windows PCs, while one administrator can support between 200 and 400 Linux desktops.'"

12 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. 40:1 ? by Heem · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ha, 40:1 ratio for desktop support personell for windows? Tell that to alot of IT managers, in particular, my former employer. Try 200:1

    --
    Don't Tread on Me
    1. Re:40:1 ? by Radical+Rad · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Ha, 40:1 ratio for desktop support personell for windows?

      I used to work in an all-microsoft shop back when Nt4 was new and at that time the ratio for us was about 20-30 users to 1 support person. However we did more than just helpdesk support. But when I left to come to a NetWare shop I was amazed at how many more users were being supported per number of IT people. It was at least triple. And to top it off, at the NetWare shop we are responsible for much more than at the other place. In addition to data we also handle phone and security and support users at remote locations. So I think the ratio will differ from company to company depending on various things but I know from experience that Windows is support intensive.

    2. Re:40:1 ? by flithm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      All of you people who are balking at the 40:1 ration need to grow up. No offense to you or your little piddly-ass companies, but this is an article about Cisco.

      Every company is different, and I guarantee you most of the people at Cisco are doing a hell of a lot more interesting things that answering email, writing word documents, and scheduling meetings.

      You really have to consider all the factors involved, of which we don't have many, so if the IT manager at Cisco says he need 1 support person for every 40 machines, he's probably not lying.

      Maybe instead of merely slamming his numbers you could try to extrapolate and learn from.

    3. Re:40:1 ? by LnxAddct · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It really depends on the company and skill level of the admin. The typical person on slashdot is not the typical windows admin. I've seen plenty of shops where the ratio was as low as 1:12 and the admins were still freaking out and had no idea how to handle themselves. On a side note however, not only is the ratio of admin to user better for linux because of easy administration tools and things that just work(tm) but its also much easier to just say "okay here is your home directory, have fun" Lock them from the rest of the system (every distro I've seen does this by default more or less). Do an incremental rsync of their home directories everynight and if something ever goes wrong just delete their home and replace it with a good copy. The nice thing about linux is that once it gets running, it stays running. This is from experience of setting up shops with Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Desktop depending on their needs and level of necessary suport etc...
      Regards,
      Steve

    4. Re:40:1 ? by captwheeler · · Score: 3, Insightful
      so if the IT manager at Cisco says he need 1 support person for every 40 machines, he's probably not lying.

      Because no manager ever fudges the staff numbers to make a case, right?

      --

      Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.

  2. TCO by Docrates · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wonder if those microsoft studies that show Windows' TCO better than Linux's account for the "productivity" of a linux engineer...

    What i'm sure it doesn't show is that a linux engineer handling 200 computers can provide a much better service (due to the fact that more is "known and controllable" in linux than windows) than a windows sysadmin handling the same amount of computers, resulting in lower costs of security, less costs related to spywares, viruses, user support calls, etc.

    --

    There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
  3. Cost Savings by p0rnking · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "... the driver for Linux on the desktop is not cost savings, but easier support. Manning estimates that it takes a company approximately one desktop administrator to support 40 Windows PCs, while one administrator can support between 200 and 400 Linux desktops."

    Isn't this still Cost Savings, when you don't need to hire as many admins?

  4. License management... by DrDribble · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apart from the ease of creating a company software update ftp (apt-get, yeast, swaret, slapt-get, etc), I really think the license and CD administration to be a pain in the Windows admin's butt.

    My Windows co-workers often need a CD either because they need new software, or due to their computer requesting a CD due to some function not already installed. Finding the RIGHT CD (they are like 1000 cd's every month, and they are neatly marked in INVISIBLE, but very fancy, writing) is a total pain. Then, there is the issue of which key is used for this one (oh, you used the english version!) really turns this into a nightmare.

    Folks running windows run all kinds of different versions of their software. Why, upgrading costs time and money. On my Slackware machines, swaret has done all upgrades for me, totally automatically! Just upgraded one PC from Slackware 9.0 to 10.1 - swaret --upgrade wait for a while (was a 200mhz...) and reboot when all is done. No keys, no CDs, no cost. Totally brilliant!

    --
    A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein
  5. Re:Critical mass... by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 3, Insightful
    and what exactly is going to happen when a non rooted user executes that worm?

    Little if any functionality of most worms requires root privileges. They could run just fine as a user process.

    about the worst thing that can happen is the home directory to be wiped out

    Which is usually the only directory on a workstation that contains any information of value.

    Delete all your home directories, rsync or rdiff your backup in and magically things just work.

    You could restore the entire filesystem on any computer to achieve the same thing.

    There are many factors that make Linux less worm-prone than windows. Taken together, they add up to a huge disparity in malware prevalence between the two OSes. However, no single factor is a magic bullet, and that includes the relative difficulty of running with root privileges. It's just one small piece of the puzzle.

  6. Right, by warrax_666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    but usually patches for OSS vulnerabilities are not bundled along with all sorts of other updates. This means that far less testing is usually needed for OSS security patches. (Or, that's the theory, anyway.)

    --
    HAND.
  7. Look at a vulnerability by warrax_666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    lists and you'll find that most vulnerabilities are either buffer overflows or string format vulnerabilities. There are very few circumstances where fixing those with a one-liner patch would change behavior in a way that other code depends on. If there were any such code then that in itself indicate possible data corruption bugs in the currently running software.

    In short: When you don't bundle fixes you typically have one-line fixes which don't break code which isn't already broken (by relying on buggy behavior). Hence, testing time is minimized.

    --
    HAND.
  8. Re:Different perspective... by cduffy · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "Windows is hard because we haven't bothered to do so."
    More akin to: Windows is hard because users have expectations, gained based on home use, which are broken by proper security policies, and IT doesn't have the political clout to transitions those users to an environment that breaks their expectations. There are also cost issues -- getting Windows equivalents to some of the functionality we use for managing our Linux systems would imply going to Windows Server 2003, buying a bunch of Windows licenses, buying a bunch of 3rd-party tools with licenses for those, etc. For the time being, we're a fairly low-budget operation.
    In other words, you guys are proposing a technological solution (Linux) to a political problem (user desktop control, admin saavy).
    Damn straight, but it works! We sit the user down in front of a Linux desktop, and they don't expect to have administrative rights, so the political issue is entirely circumvented.