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Unreliable Linux Dumped from Crest Electronics
nri writes "The Age writes, Linux misses Windows of opportunity. Crest Electronics chose a Linux operating system, then seven months on, the company chose to abandon it for Windows.
Mr Horton says. ".. the machine would basically, putting it in Windows terms, core dump or blue screen at random. It would run for weeks or so and then just bang, it would stop....I fully support Linux but if I had to make the decision again I'd pick Windows. A big reason is the fact Windows was up and running in two hours at all the right patch levels. The installation of SAP took two days on Windows, the installation on Linux Red Hat took two weeks. The total cost of ownership is actually lower in this case than with Linux because of the hidden costs of the support.""
"The Best Run Businesses Run SAP" is a true statement... SAP says it over and over again. What they're really stating is that only the best run businesses can survive a SAP implementation, the rest run out of money or patience, or worse, end up being driven out of business by the enormous cost and disruption it causes. SAP has a HORRIBLE track record on linux. They claim support for linux and other non-MS platforms, but that's only for their core products. Everything outside of CRM and R3 is riddled with technotes and disclaimers about needing MSSQL and WINDOWS. They don't really write cross-platform systems, they just make claims and back them up with fine-print disclaimers.
I just left a company that was $10M and 2 years behind on their "$2M" SAP implementation. It's a joke. Once SAP gets their foot in the door, they flood your company with incompetent consultants and rebuild your business around SAP-approved procedures and architecture. At the end of this clusterfuck you end up WAY over budget and desperately looking for a scape goat. Clearly Crest Electronics chose Linux.
SAP products require patch after patch, and take MONTHS to really install. We had a team of engineers working around the clock (literally) for 5 months to get our base systems set up to SAP specs. Even then we would receive "mystery" patches, frequently resulting in system crashes as they weren't designed to work with other patches. Bottom line - SAP is the problem. They churn out highly unstable software and have armies of consultants who will sweep problems like this under the carpet or find something else to blame.
Blue screen is a Windows thing but core dump is not.
Crest Electronics is trialling Microsoft's Windows Server Update Service, which allows automatic patching for the operating system and other Microsoft software on servers and desktop machines across a corporate network. Its benefits are one of the key reasons why Mr Horton stands by his decision to switch from Linux to Windows.
"We run Linux on our web server and for an accounting package with great success and we do use the auto-patching in those environments,"
I work in a Windows shop but we don't do automatic patching. We don't patch until we've done extensive testing on our own to make sure it works in our environment first. SUS/WUSS/whatever is great in the sense that it allows you to control how patches to your Windows workstations are distributed. You can change the workstations' auto-update behavior so they only update from your SUS servers, etc. But the automatic update thing, from what I've heard, is rarely used in a production environment. In fact, Microsoft gives you a considerable amount of control over its behavior, probably because in recognition of the dangers of auto updating in a production environment.
Mr Horton disagrees: "It might be fine for things like security patches, which don't impact SAP certification rules but with some patches you still actually have to check the release levels and then check against the SAP site. Otherwise SAP might ask you to roll back to the previous version before they will support it."
Give me a break! The same thing happens in the Windows environment. It took Bloomberg and our other vendors a while before they supported Windows XP SP2. When SP2 first came out, a lot of vendors blamed SP2 for problems that may or may not have been SP2's fault. It took Windows vendors a while to adpot SP2 as well.
In any case, the whole patching issue he takes with Linux seems absurd. Just a few days ago, I think our server guys patched their cluster with a Microsoft service pack. Now the cluster refuses to fail over properly. Patching in a production environment is ALWAYS a big headache if you want to do it right. Unfortunately for our server guys, we don't have a spare cluster sitting around for them to test patches on like they normally do with other servers.
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A good friend works as an SAP and Retek consultant for Accenture. His installs and integrations have lasted almost 2 years (Nordstrom took 3).
My
It's a German company that sells quite rather a lot of software. Whole large businesses run on it, and a cheap installation starts in seven figures and goes up from there. It's a serious suite of software. Check "SAP Specialist" in your favourite job search engine and check the rates they're getting for clue 2. They're big, as in first-page-of-Hitchhiker's-Guide big.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
SAP is one of the biggest software companies in the world. Very, very heavy duty business apps for large companies. Factories. Big retailers, etc. All sorts of "vertical" apps in everything from apparel to insurance.
One doesn't usually run anything from SAP without a small army from SAP (or one of their annointed consulting firms) completely stroking the install. They don't usually tolerate failed installs. And there's usually a LOT of money involved in these installations, and a lot at stake. SAP products are rarely used with modifications and customization to both the infrastructure and the apps themselves.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
from TFA: "We asked the customer to do a diagnostic test and the customer never responded, so it was impossible for us to address the issue," Mr McLaren says.
Only an absolute moron would admit to that. You have idiots working for you fire them immediately! With absolutely no experience with any unix/linux system and very little windows experience, I setup a mail server, webserver and started creating a website for a company. I did that back in 1996 with RedHat 5 & a Linux for Dummies Book. Linux has come a long way since then. If they can't figure out how to install a modern linux distro in less than 4 hours, you should not be let near any computer ever! I could build a PC clone system from parts and install Fedora Core 4 configure it with apache, mysql, ftp and secure it before lunch. I've done it several times at work.
Wow, this is just so uninformed. SAP is just as easy to install on Linux (for those that know Linux) as it is to install on Windows (for those that know Windows). SAP development started on Unix. It is more mature there - always has been. SAP's Linux product comes from the same codebase as it's Unix product. Windows is not the same codebase. You tell me which you think is more "mature". I've been running SAP on Unix for 10 years now, and on Linux for over 3 years now. Never a single issue that wasn't already documented somewhere.
And the Red Hat engineers asked the customer to run a diagnostic, and didn't hear anything further. Can any engineer fix a problem on a machine they don't have access to without someone to follow their instructions?
Do the same applications run on each of the *BSDs without recompliation? I tend to doubt it, but I haven't tried it ...
No, it's not. Is it Apache 1 or Apache 2? The two are very different. Which modules are configured? Default configurations vary wildly. Yes, if you know what you're doing you can easily bring them under control, but for an amateur who's just using the Apache that came with his installation, things can be VERY different from distribution to distribution. (Personally, I find myself installing my own Apache and similar daemons, even if one is provided for me, on *BSD, whatever Linux, Solaris, etc. -- it just makes things easier, starting from a known quantity. And more secure.) It's not up to Stallman. Call it whatever you want. Your *BSD box has a lot of GNU stuff on it tooIn any event, certain hardware devices have buggy drivers, even in the latest versions of whatever Linux kernels and distributions you prefer. The vendors generally make Windows drivers, where the Linux drivers are often reverse engineered, and it often shows in the quality.
For the *BSDs, the drivers you get are generally more reliable than those in Linux, but if you've got some new device, where Linux would support it (and the driver might have some issues), *BSD is likely to not support it at all.
But I do agree with you too -- FreeBSD does make a better server than any of the Linux distributions. However, the commercial application support is very spotty. However, I've heard that the Linux emulation is quite good, and it can run most Linux applications with little trouble. Though that just sounds so ... wrong ... to use it for a production server. But if it works ...
I'm a *nix (FreeBSD & Solaris preferred, but Linux too) admin, but in this circumstance I would have switched to Windows too. TCO is really more important than ephemeral "but you can fix it yourself" claims. Especially since, if you RTFM, they can't - they can't get support unless they are running a certified operating system. So they can't tweak it, they can't just automate their patches - it's an admin's nightmare! Good on him for switching to the OS that works. Sorry, RedHat.
;)
Right tool for the right job. Most of the time I think Unix is the better tool, but sometimes you don't need a swiss army knife. Sometimes you need a hammer. Windows is a very effective hammer
I like to experiment with software a lot. I end up installing lots and lots of software on my machine. I find that windows always ends up getting slower and slower with the amount of software that gets installed. The registry ends up getting really bloated when you start to install lots of applications, and is just about impossible to clean. Linux on the other hand, doesn't slow down that much from installing other apps. The config for each app is kept in its own space, and is easily removed. I can even install apps in my own user space, without affecting the core system whatsoever. There are a lot of linux apps that make it act weird, but they are a lot easier to get rid of than windows apps, which fill up the registry, and insist on putting files in system directories.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.