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Cisco IT Manager Targeting 70% Linux
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.'"
That is the worst support ratio in history. I hate Windoze, but no large support org has that bad of ratios. Mine are approx. 250:1 for a Win2k shop, which is pretty average.
- Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral
because Cisco is now a security company?
So when linux reaches critical mass and people spend as much time searching for/writing worms for it as they do for windows, how's that support ration going to look?
I am sure they (CISCO) have some Mozilla/Firefox on these PCs. Question is: How have they decided o manage it? Central managing of Mozilla/Firefox is still not [officially] possible now. Any ideas?
Remember too, they are talking desktops, not servers. My previous position, I had 3 guys supporting 400 desktops and about 200 servers, that in addition to admin voice over IP and 3 locations. ugh. Kinda takes the sting out of my had being laid off. My new job I have no desktops to contend with and only about 50 servers.. for more money. ;-)
Don't Tread on Me
Maybe the success of Firefox will force web programmers to develop for more than one browser, and then we can all more easily switch to Linux.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
It probably depends a lot on the type of user that you're supporting. Supporting secretaries who do nothing but type and send email is going to be a lot easier than supporting engineers who have use a wide variety of software requirements, push their computers hard, and often need new software products installed.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
Yes, 40:1 ratio for windows sounds a bit pessimistic. But so does 400:1 for Linux. I have seen installations with 10 times as many users per sysadmin both in the windows and the Linux case.
I suppose it's all about what level of service you want to provide to your users. The basic message that Linux is easier to admin still holds true though.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
I was a Cisco employee several years ago. I worked at the Corp. HQ in San Jose. My cube started with a Sun workstation and a Win2k laptop. The laptop was soon converted to dual boot Windows / Linux. And as one of my projects ended up demanding a test Linux system, I ended up with another desktop that was also converted to dual Windows / Linux. I never sought out tech support for my machines. And I doubt anyone but my immediate management had any clue what was going on in my cube.
:).
The cool thing with Cisco was that this wasn't uncommon. There are some generalities - most PMs, management, marketing, etc. I met had a single Windows laptop. But when you met someone in a technical role, there was no telling what tools they had aquired to do their work. Cisco took providing their employees the desired tools seriously - "no technology religion". And as far as I could see, it created a very diverse IT environment (and very effective despite the fears of monoculuture IT fans).
This touches on another reason Cisco went this direction. Their employees demanded it. Cisco aquired quite a few startups that were heavily using Linux already. Linux was working its way in to the engineering corp. at Cisco even without these aquisitions. It was very much a part of Cisco's corporate culture to find a way to support any tool their employees needed (which explains the hell they went through to move to Exchange
In my experience, the engineers are fine but it's the secretaries who cause all the fuss - getting viruses from their Hotmail account, clicking yes to popups etc...
If the company can stomach the up front costs for locking down the systems - then yes their ok, and the engineers need more help, but for smaller companies that are more reactive, the AIM using, Arery form printing, spyware downloading secretaries are a pain in the butt.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I work for a school district. We have thirteen field technicians to support 25,000 desktop computers and approximately 2000 network printers. We have at least eight different Apple platforms (5260/5400/5500, beige G3, "new world" G series towers, iMacs of each vintage, and the eMac), and thirteen different PC platforms from NEC (1), Compaq (4), ABIT (1), ASUS (1), Dell (2), and Intel (5), plus all of the proprietary crap that people bring in. Our computers run everything from Windows 95 through XP, MacOS 7.5.3 through 10.4. Somehow we're still averaging 24 hour turnaround on our initial appearance, despite having about 100 sites (85 schools, fifteen or so admin sites) over a 20 mile wide area.
I have absolutely no sympathy for people who can't support their fifty computers because it's too hard for them. I would love it if we were down to less than 500:1 or if we could exchange 90% of the equipment to standardize on two or three Macs and two or three PCs, but it'll never happen.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
That doesn't logically follow. You have expressed two free variables in the statement, so any difference in outcome could be due to either.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
I work on the Unix/Linux side of one of the IT departments at my work. We have about 25 admins for 180+ servers and 900+ workstations, plus a beowulf cluster and associated SAN/NAS devices. And we actually have free time to work on other projects (like in-house software development/support, training, and learning/developing new technologies to roll-out). The PC group has about 80 people to support ~700 PC's and 70 servers. Do the math...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I know this is a bit offtopic, but... AFS's support for backup volumes provides basically this same thing as a feature built into the filesystem. Furthermore, it lets the administrator issue commands (from any node on the network) like "move this volume from partition 1 on file server A to partition 3 on file server B"; the data gets moved, and the clients are notified to use the new fileserver for files on that volume with no further work. You can also have read-only volumes be located on multiple fileservers, and the clients will automatically load-balance between them; further, updates to these read-only volumes can be made by an admin editing a read-write copy of the volume, and then pushed over to the read-only volume as a single transaction.
Making it performant can be a PITA, but from an administration perspective it's really neat stuff.
"Remember too, they are talking desktops, not servers."
They're also talking engineers' desktops at an embedded-hardware company, so most of the usual stories about "we'll give everyone a word processor and a web browser and that will be that" probably change a lot.
Our company is completely different to that of course. Every software engineer maintains their own machine. The amount of time we spend on application or OS problems easily exceeds 1/200 of working hours.
My advice, and that of serious Windows support pros I've worked with: Do it over the network. All of it. Even OS installs. Slipstream service packs and fixes into your build image, along with your base software etc. Install packages automatically on login using AD. You can do all this... and it'll save you a lot of pain. Hell, you don't even need to worry about your CD key, you can do that as part of the automated network install script.
I'm using Linux thin clients for most of my basic needs users at work. They're getting pretty good now, but I'm still running into a frustrating number of stupid bugs. I think I spend about an equal amount of time supporting them and the win98 users - at "near zero". Ditto our one and only XP user now that I've got the bugs ironed out. Most of my time is wasted supporting the MacOS 9 desktop publishing staff due to the nightmarish OS and apps involved there.
If you think Windows is hard to manage, try MacOS. ARRGGGGHHHHHH. MacOS/X is a little better, but still pretty awful IMO.
Microsoft is also pretty reasonable with CD keys etc compared to many companies. QuarkXPress and Adobe Photoshop both scan the network for other copies, interrogate them for their CD key, and refuse to run if they find it's the same. This makes image based installs impossible since they don't provide any way to install and configure the app, then "de-personalize" it so all you have to do to get it working is enter the CD key. (You can do this with Windows, BTW). Those apps are a nightmare and in comparison Windows looks absolutely lovely to manage.
I'm also finding my trials with OO.o and GNOME for our journalists pretty dismal so far. All sorts of weird bugs keep on turning up and I'm about to give up and get them Windows boxes. I use Linux at home without issues, but these uses can and do break stuff all the time.
In the end, I guess it comes down to picking the right tool for the right job. MS desktops, managed well, are OK. I don't like them, but they work. Especially if you lock IE down so hard the user can't even run it, and if they figure out how to run it anyway, can't visit anywhere or do anything. Too bad they cost so bloody much and still insist on bundling IE, Outlook Express (Yes you can remove it, but it'll be back every time you patch the damn OS), etc.
Not really. Even at the largest tech companies the majority of the employees are management, sales and marketing. The actual technical people are a small percentage in the grand scheme, and usually dont require any support.
A 'team' could probably support 200 windows PC's. An individual would run so far behind on updates and fixes to the updates that it would be far too unreasonable for a major firm that has major security expectations to do things that way.
Not to say linux doesnt have similar issues because it does, it just doesnt have has many.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
In my days of tech support I talked to many certified people on the phone, the MCSE's were usually very arrogant, they knew Windows but not networks, the A+ people were barely any better than Joe Users but at least they could use DOS, and the Cisco certified people were generally both respectful and knowledgeable.
I can think of very few, if any cases where someone Cisco certified called me and had the problem be on their end.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Ok, so someone explain to me why Cisco's web-based and desktop-based management tools are almost always Windows-only? Not only Windows-only, but frequently don't run right under anything but Internet Explorer.
Guess I'll continue to stick to CLI and console cables for configuration and management.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"