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Windows vs. Linux Study Author Replies
Last week you submitted
questions for Dr. Herb Thompson, author of the latest Microsoft-sponsored
Windows vs. Linux study. Here are his answers. Please feel
free to ask follow-up questions. Dr. Thompson says he'll respond to as
many as he can. He's registered a new Slashdot username, FFE4,
specifically to participate in this discussion. All others claiming to
be him are imposters. So read, post, ask, and enjoy.
1- A
better way of putting it:
by einhverfr
It seems that your study attempted to simulate the growth of an internet startup firm on Windows or Linux. One thing I did not see in the study was a good description of assumptions you made. What assumptions were made in both the design of the requirements and the analysis of the data? What limitations can we place on the conclusions as a result of these assumptions?
Dr. Thompson
This is a really important question. I think there are two sections of the study: the assessment methodology and then the experiment we undertook to illustrate how to apply that methodology. I'll answer the assumption question for both parts:
Methodology - For the methodology, we wanted to provide a tool that organizations could use and apply their own assumptions. Maintaining a system is all about context; some environments favor Linux, others Windows. The question is, how do you know what's likely to be the most reliable (which includes manageable, secure and supportable) solution for your environment? We proposed a methodology a recipe - that looks at a solution in its entirety instead of just individual components. Policies like configuration control vary from organization to organization and to get something that's truly meaningful in your environment, the methodology needs to be carried out in your context. Enterprise customers can and should do this when they are about to trust their critical business processes to a platform. That said, the basic assumptions of the methodology are that patches are applied at 1 month intervals and that business needs evolve over time. How those business needs evolve depends on the scenario you're looking at (in our experiment we looked at ecommerce for example). The methodology doesn't cover steady state reliability, meaning the uptime of a system that is completely static. While this is important, our conversations with CIOs, CTOs, CSOs and IT folks lead us to believe that this was a smaller contributor to pain in a dynamic environment. In an appliance for example, though, steady state reliability is king, and I think an important limitation of this methodology is that we don't capture that well, and I think it's amazingly difficult quality to measure in a time-lapse way.
The purpose of the experiment was to illustrate how to apply the methodology and to begin to get some insights into some of the key model differences between two platforms. For the experiment we picked the ecommerce scenario, for no other reason than there has been a clear shift in how ecommerce sites have serviced their customers in recent years moving from static sites to personalized content. Some specific assumptions were:
* The transition from a basic purchasing site to a personalized portal based on order/browsing history takes place over a one year period.
* The period we looked at was July 1st, 2004 to June 30th, 2005 (the most recent full year at the time of the study).
* A configuration control policy exists that mandates OS version but not much else meaning administrators had fairly free rein to meet business requirements.
* All patches marked as critical or important supplied by the vendor are applied.
* We assume the system to be functioning if the original ecommerce application is running and meets some basic acceptance tests (same for both platforms see Appendix 1 of the report) and the new installed components are also running.
* To add new capabilities, we use leading 3rd party components as opposed to building custom code in-house.
* The business migrates operating system versions at the end of the one year period to the latest versions of the platform.
* The administrators that participated in the experiment reflect the average Linux (specifically SuSE) and Windows administrators in skill, capability and knowledge. While this was strived for, it's important to recognize the small sample size in drawing any conclusions from the data.
As far as limitations, the experiment looks at one specific case with a total of six administrators. I'd love to have done it with a hundred admins on each side on a wide range of business requirement scenarios and my hope is that others will do that and publish their results. Our experiment, however, shows that for this particular, clearly documented scenario, experienced Linux Admins had conflicts between meeting business needs and a recommended best practice like not introducing out-of-distribution components. If one is aware of potential conflicts and challenges upfront, I think you can put controls in place to make reasonable tradeoffs. In the linux case, a precise and specific configuration control policy may have prohibited the problematic upgrade of one of the components that the 3rd party solutions required. This would have likely reduced the number of failures but would have put some hefty constraints on 3rd party solutions. To understand the implications for your environment you really need to run through the methodology with the assumptions and restrictions of your organization and I hope that this study either prompts or provokes people to do that.
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2 - Meta-credibility?
by Tackhead
Where I come from (non-management, grunt-level techie), appearing in any of these analysts' journals *costs* an author more credibility than it gains him or her. For example, if $RAG says that $CORP has the best customer support, I immediately assume that $CORP has such horrid customer support that they had to pay someone to make up some research that proves otherwise.
To be sarcastic, I'd ask "who the heck actually takes these studies seriously?", but obviously *somebody* does. Who are these people, and why do these people take these industry analyst firms/journals/reports seriously? Are they right or wrong to do so? This isn't an attack (or endorsement :) of your research -- I'm talking about the credibility gap in industry research, and my observation that it's an industry-wide problem.
The meta-credibility question is this: Given the amount of shoddy pay-for-play research out there, does being published in an analyst journal tend to cost (a researcher, his consulting company, his financial backers) more credibility than it can gains him/her/them? If not, why not -- and more importantly, if so, is there any way to reverse the trend?
Dr. Thompson
This is a really interesting question because it cuts to the heart of what a real research study should provide to the reader. It should provide a baseline and I think research should always be questioned, scrutinized and debated because one can always find reasons for bias. Particularly, if a subject of the study (vendor for example) is behind its funding, whether directly (as in this study) or indirectly (meaning that they are big clients) I think it's critical that the study not provide just a baked cake for readers but the recipe as well. The recipe has to be inherently fair and simple, meaning that it has to map directly to a the quality or pain one is trying to measure without taking into account how the subjects try and provide that service or mitigate that pain. I think slanted opinion pieces, with no backup for those opinions, seriously hurts credibility, at least in my book. If you're presenting facts though and encouraging others to question them then I think that actually helps credibility, even if the search for those facts was paid for.
I agree though that one is tempted to dismiss research a priori though because of funding or some vendor tie. I think a good way to reverse the trend is to open the process up to public scrutiny; that's probably the main reason I came on Slashdot. To use this specific study as an example, some folks disagreed with several points in the experiment from counting patches, to reasons for upgrading key components, to the ecommerce scenario we used. For me, the study's key value is the methodology. Could different applications/scenarios have been chosen: absolutely!
The value I think that this study gives to the practitioner is arming them with a tool to help measure in their own environment. By applying the methodology, the results should take into account things like administrators skillsets, support policies, configuration control policies and the tradeoffs between customizability, maintainability, visibility, security and usability. It's only by looking at this stuff in context can one make a sound judgment; and a true research paper, especially one where funding is in question, needs to fully disclose the method and the funding source. In our case, the methodology has been vetted by industry analysts, IT organizations and several academics. That doesn't mean much, though, if you don't find the methodology meaningful for the questions you want answered. One reason I've come on Slashdot is to get the thoughts, opinions and assessments of the methodology itself from administrators in the trenches. I'm really pleased with the great questions and comments amidst the inevitable flames and I'm looking forward to this being posted so that others can weigh-in with their feedback and I can jump into the threads to get some discussion going.
If the research helps give real insight, and the methodology makes sense, I think there's real value no matter who paid the bill. At the end of the day, you need to decide whether or not you can extract any value from the information presented to you. In the case of this study, my hope is that it will leave you thinking hmmm.... maybe we should actually run through a process like this and check out how this works for ourselves. My more ambitious hope is that you'll implement it and tell me what challenges you faces on Windows, Linux, OSX, BSD, whatever platform you choose to compare. It may not even venture into the perennial Windows versus Linux battle; maybe you're a linux shop trying to decide between multiple distributions for example. Either way, if it's got people thinking about the topic and asking questions, well, that's all any researcher can really hope for.
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3 - Weak setup
by 0xABADC0DA
If I understand the study correctly, the windows side had to do nothing but set up a server to do a few different tasks over time and run windows update. The linux side had to have multiple incompatible versions of their database server running simultaneously on a single system and had to run unsupported versions of software to do it.
Why wasn't the windows side required to run multiple versions of IIS or SQL server simultaneously? In real life if you need to run multiple database versions you use virtualization or multiple systems, especially if one requires untested software. You don't run some hokie unstable branch on the same system as everything else. Why was a linux solution picked that required this level of work? My other related question is, did any of the unix administrators question why there were being asked to do such a thing? For example, did they come back and say they need a license for vmware? If they did not they do not seem like very competent administrators in my opinion.
Dr. Thompson
The Windows Admins and Linux admins were given the exact same set of business requirements which doesn't necessarily translate into the same tasks as they went about fulfilling them. The 3rd party components installed were chosen solely based on their market leadership position and any upgrades of OS were unknown at the time of selection. That said, on the Windows side, it turned out that no upgrades of IIS were needed (except for patches) and SQL Server was upgraded to SP4 as part of patch application. On the Linux side, at a high-level there were two main classes of upgrades: MySQL and GLIBC and they were both prompted by the installed components. After the experiment, the administrators were asked on both sides if this kind of evolution of systems met with their real-world experience. They said yes, with the caveat of if they were asked to install a component that required an upgrade of GLIBC that they would likely upgrade the operating system as long as their configuration control policy allowed it.
You make a great point about installing components on some sort of staging system (which is almost always done) as opposed to live running systems. That still means that the problems that the administrators had equal real IT pain. If something weird had to be done to get the system running but it does run and it's then put into production it's like a fuse that gets set on a bomb. A careful configuration control policy would almost certainly help and thats why I think it's so important to conduct this kind of experiment in your own environment with your own policies.
As far as selection of the Linux administrators go, they all had at least 5 years of enterprise administration experience, and two years of experience on SuSE specifically. With three people there's certainly likely to be a lot of variability and to get some conclusive results, I'd love to get a huge group of administrators across the spectrum in terms of experience. I'd also love to do it across multiple scenarios, beyond the ecommerce study. For this experiment, basically the bottom line is that we Illustrate one clearly documented scenario with six highly qualified admins that we selected based on experience. We cant ensure equal competency levels, but there was nothing in our screening that would lead us to believe there were gaps in knowledge on either side. When it comes down to it though, the really meaningful results are the ones you get when you perform the evaluation in your environment. Hopefully this study provides a starting point for asking the right questions when you do that.
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4- Who determined the metrics
by Infonaut
Did Microsoft come to you with a specific set of metrics, or did you work with them to develop the metrics, or did you determine them completely on your own?
Kudos to you for braving the inevitable flames to answer people's questions here on Slashdot.
Dr. Thompson
Great question! The metrics and the methodology were developed completely on our own and independent of Microsoft. They were created with the help and feedback of enterprise CIOs as well as industry analysts. I think that this relates to a couple of other questions on Slashdot with the gist of if Microsoft is funding the study aren't you incentivized for them to come out ahead. Besides the standard we would never do that and that would put our credibility at risk which is our primary commodity which are both very true, let me explain a little more about how our research engagements work.
Company X (in this case Microsoft) comes to us and says can you help us measure quality Y (in this case Reliability) to get some insight into how product Z stacks up. We say, sure, BUT we have complete creation and control of the methodology, it will be reviewed and vetted by the community (end users and independent analysts) and must strictly follow scientific principles. The response will either be: great, we want to know whats really going on or um, heres some things to focus on and I think you should set it up this way. In the first case we proceed, in the second case we inform that company that we don't do that kind of research. We are also not in the opinion business, so we present a methodology to follow and illustrate how that methodology is applied with the hope that people will take the methodology and apply it in their own environment.
All of our studies are written as if they will be released publicly BUT it is up to the sponsor if the study is publicly released. The vendor knows that they're taking a risk. They pay for the research either way but only have control over whether it is published, not over content. So if their intent is to use it as an outward facing piece, they may end up with something they don't like. Either way, I think it's of high value to them. If there are aspects of the results that favor the sponsor's product, in my experience, it goes to the marketing department and gets released publicly; if it favors the competitors product it goes off to the engineering folks as a tool to understand their product, their competitor's product, and the problem more clearly. Either way, we maintain complete editorial control over the study and there is no financial incentive for us if it becomes a public study or is used as an internal market analysis piece. The methodology has to be as objective as possible to be of any real value in either case.
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5 - ATMs vs. Voting Machines
by digitaldc
How is it that Diebold can make ATM machines that will account for every last penny in a banking system, but they can't make secure electronic voting machines?
Also, does the flame-resistant suit come with its own matching tinfoil hat? (don't answer that one)
Dr. Thompson
This is a question that has passed through my mind more than once. The voting world is very interesting. I don't have experience with the inner workings of Diebolds ATM machines but I can say that the versions of their tabulation software that Ive seen have some major security challenges (see this Washington post documentary for some of the gory details). I'd say I'm concerned about the e-voting systems Ive seen but that would be a serious understatement.
I question whether the economic incentive is there for them to make their voting systems more secure. Take an ATM for example. Imagine the ATM has a flaw and if you do something to it, you can make it give you more money than is actually deducted from your account. Anything involving money gets audited and sometimes audited multiple times and chances are good that the bank is going to figure out that they're loosing money. On the flip side, if there was a flaw in the ATM in the banks favor, someone balancing their checkbook is going to notice a discrepancy. The point is that there's always traceability and there's always someone keeping score. If you think about voting tabulators though we've got this mysterious box that vote data gets fed into and then, in many states, only a fraction of these votes are audited. That means we don't really know what the bank balance is other than what the machine tells us it is. If the system is highly vulnerable and its vulnerability is known by the manufacturer *but* it's going to be expensive to fix it and shore up defenses, there seems to be no huge incentive to fix the problems. I think the only way to get some decent software that counts votes that people can have confidence in is to allow security experts to actually test the systems, highlight potential vulnerabilities, and put some proper checks and balances in place. That would give the general public some visibility into a critical infrastructure system that we usually aren't in the habit of questioning and will hold voting manufacturers directly accountable to voters.
As for the tin foil hat to go with the flame resistant suit; it hasn't been shipped to me yet - apparently the manufacturing company is still filling backorders from SCO :).
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6 - Why are the requirements different?
by altoz
Looking at your research report's appendices, it seems that the requirements for Windows Administrators were somewhat different than the Linux Administrators. For instance, you ask for 4-5 years sys admin experience minimum for Windows, whereas it's 3-4 years sys admin experience minimum for Linux.
Why wasn't it equal for both? And doesn't this sort of slight Windows favoring undermine your credibility?
Dr. Thompson
Short answer: Typo. Long answer: We originally were looking for 4 years of general administration experience for both Linux and Windows which is what is reflected in the desired responses to the General Background questionnaire for Linux. We then raised it to 5 years for both Linux and Windows which is reflected in the General Background of the Windows questionnaire. The difference in the two was just a failure to update the response criteria on that shared section of one of the questionnaires. On page 5 though we've got the actual administrator experience laid out:
Each SuSE Linux administrator had at least 5 years experience administering Linux in an enterprise setting. We also required 2 years minimum experience administering SuSE Linux distributions and at least 1 year administering SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 and half a year administering SLES 9 (released in late 2004). Windows administrators all had at least 5 years experience administering Windows servers in an enterprise environment. These administrators also had at least 2 years experience administering Windows Server 2000 and at least 1 year administration experience with Windows Server 2003.
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7 - Scalability of Results?
by hahiss
You tested six people on two different systems; how is that supposed to yield any substantial insight into the underlying OSes themselves?
[At best, your study seems to show that the GNU/Linux distribution you selected was not particularly good at this task. But why does that show that the ``monolithic" style of Windows is better per se than the ``modular" style of GNU/Linux distributions?]
Dr. Thompson
First, let's look at what we did. We followed a methodology for evaluating reliability with three Windows admins and three Linux admins. This is small sample set and it looked at one scenario: ecommerce. Is this enough to make sweeping claims about the reliability of Linux/Windows? No way. I do however think the results raise some interesting questions about the modularity vs. integration tradeoffs that come with operating systems. I don't think that either the Windows or Linux models are better in a general sense but they *are* different; the question is which is likely to cause less pain and provide more value for your particular business need in your specific environment. Hopefully these are the questions that people will ask after reading this study, and with any luck it will prompt others to carry out their own analysis within their own IT environment, building on what we started here. I think the methodology in this paper has provided a good starting point to help people answer those questions in context.
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8 - Convenience vs. security
by Sheetrock
Lately, I've felt that Microsoft is emphasizing greater trust in their control over your system as a means of increasing your security. This is suggested by the difficulty of obtaining individual or bulk security patches from their website as opposed to simply loading Internet Explorer and using their Windows Update service, the encouragement in Service Pack 2 of allowing Automatic Update to run in the background, and the introduction of Genuine Advantage requiring the user to authenticate his system before obtaining critical updates such as DirectX.
In addition, Digital Rights Management or other copy protection schemes are becoming increasingly demanding and insidious, whether by uniquely identifying and reporting on user activity, intentionally restricting functionality, and even introducing new security issues (the most recent flap involves copy protection software on Sony CDs that not only hides content from the user but permits viruses to take advantage of this feature.)
I would like to know how you feel about the shift of control over the personal computer from the person to the software manufacturers -- is it right, and do we gain more than we're losing in privacy and security?
Dr. Thompson
This is an interesting problem because manufacturers have to deal with a wide range of users. If there was real visibility and education for users on the security implications of doing A, B or C then we'd be ok. It's scary though when that line gets crossed. Sony's DRM rootkit is a good example. But if you think about it, we are essentially passively accepting things like this all the time. Every time we install a new piece of software,especially something that reads untrusted data like a browser plugin,we tacitly accept that this software is likely to contain security flaws and can be an entryway into your system; NOW are you sure you want to install it? The visceral immediate reaction is no but then you balance tradeoffs of the features you get versus potential risks. Increasingly, were not even given that choice, and components that are intended to help us (or help the vendor) are installed with out our knowledge. This also brings up the question of visibility; how do we know what security state were really in with a system? Again, there are tradeoffs, some of this installed software may actually increase usability or maintainability but it's abstracting away what's happening on the metal. So far, it seems as though the market has tended towards the usability, maintainability, integration that favors bundling on both the Linux and Windows sides. It's kind of a disturbing trend though.
As another example, think about how much trustaverage programmers put into their compiler these days. Whenever I teach classes on computer security and then go off into x86 op codes or even assembly, it seems to be a totally foreign concept and skillset. We've created a culture of building applications rapidly in super high-level languages which does get the job done, but at the same time seems to have sacrificed knowledge of (or even the desire to know) what's happening on the metal. This places a heavy burden on platform developers, compiler writers and even IDE manufacturers because we are shifting the cloud of security responsibility over to them in big way. Under the right conditions it can be good because the average programmer knows little about security, but we need to make sure that the components we depend on and trust are written with security in mind, analyzed by folks that have a clue, and are tested and verified with security in mind. This means asking vendors the tough questions about their development processes and making sure they've got pretty good answers. Here's what I think is a good start. If that fails, theres always BSD. :).
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9 - Apache versus IIS
by 00_NOP
Simple one: of course I accept that Windows and Linux are a priori equally vulnerable - C programmers make mistakes. The question is which model is most likely to deliver a fix fastest. Given that the one area where Linux is probably in the lead over Microsoft's software is in the realm of the webserver - why are my server logs filled with artifacts of hacked IIS boxes but apache seems to remain pretty safe?
Dr. Thompson
You bring up a couple of interesting points. The first is patch delivery. It's true that on Linux if there's a high profile vulnerability you're likely to be able to find a patch out on the net from somebody in a few hours. Sometimes the fix is simple, a one-liner, and other times it may be more complex. Either way, there could be unintended side effects of the patch which is why there's usually a significant lag between these first responder patches and a blessed patch released from the distribution vendor. Most enterprises I know wait for the distribution patch as a matter of policy, and even then, they go through a fairly rigorous testing and compatibility verification process before the patch gets deployed widely. In the Windows world, one doesn't get the alpha or beta patches, just the blessed finished product. So the question is which solution is likely to provide a patch that fixes the problem and doesn't create any more problems the fastest. That's a tough one to answer. I think theres something to be learned by looking historically and that in general theres a big discrepancy between perception and reality. Here's a (pdf) link to a study we did earlier this year based on 2004 data that I think provides a good starting point for answering that question.
As far as why you've got so many attempts on your Windows/IIS box, I think there are two distinct issues: vulnerability and threat profile. In the past, I would argue that the path of least resistance was through Windows because desktop systems were often left unprotected by the home computer user. Bang-for-the-packet favored creating tools that exploited these problems and some of the attacks actually worked on poorly configured servers as well. Then there's the targeted vs. broad attacks. Theres no question that the high-profile worms and viruses in the last several years have favored Windows as a target. The issue gets even more complicated when you look at targeted attacks. These targeted attacks are much harder to measure, even anecdotally, because either an organization gets compromised and doesn't disclose it (unless they're compelled to by law) or the attack goes undetected because it doesn't leave any of the standard footprints, in which case no pain is felt immediately. That may help to explain it but the truth is that there's a lot of conflicting data out there. I remember reading this on Slashdot last year which claims Apache was more attacked than IIS but I've also read reports to the contrary. The reality is that any target of value is going to get attacked frequently. If there is an indiscriminant mass attack like a worm or virus, that's pretty bad and can be really painful. What's scarier though is the attack that just targets you.
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10 - Do you agree with Windows Local Workflow
by MosesJones
Microsoft and Linux distros have had a policy for some time of including more and more functionality in the base operating system, the latest example is the inclusion of "Local Workflow" in Windows Vista.
As a security expert do you think that bundling more and more increases or decreases the risks, and should both Windows and Linux distros be doing more to create reduced platforms that just act as good operating systems?
Dr. Thompson
Three years ago I bought my mother a combination TV, VCR and DVD player. It was great; she didn't have to worry about cables or the notorious multi-remote control problem. She didn't even really need the VCR because she hardly ever watches Video tapes, but I thought, why not. It worked great for two years, mom watched her DVDs, and on a blue moon a video tape from a family vacation would find its way into the VCR. All was well at the Thompson household. This past year, tragedy struck. The VCR devoured a videotape, completely entangling it in the machine. This not only knocked out the VCR but the television too (it thought it was constantly at the end of a tape and needing to rewind it). So here's the issue: mom probably only needed a TV and a separate DVD player. I probably could have gotten better quality components individually too, and with some ebay-savvy shopping, the group may have been cheaper. For my mom though, the integration and ease of operation of the three were key assets. The flipside of that is that the whole is only as strong as the weakest of its constituent parts, and by the manufacturer throwing some questionable VCR components into the mix, it caused the whole thing to fail. The meta-question: did I make the right choice, going for the kitchen-sink approach versus individual components? I think for mom I made the right call. For me, my willingness to program a universal remote and my love of tweaking the system would have lead me down a different route.
In operating systems, it depends what you're looking for and what the risk vs. reward equation is for you, and I would argue that the answer varies from user to user. The ideal would be something that gave you integration, ease of use, visibility, manageability and the ability to truly customize and minimize functionality and maintenance requirements. No operating system I've ever seen strikes that balance optimally and for every user. As far as bundling functionality with the distribution, I think it's a question of market demand. There's no question though that from a simple mathematical perspective, the less code processing untrusted data the better. That means if I need a system to perform one specific function, and that function was constant over time, then from a security perspective I only want the stuff on that box that does what I need to serve that goal. For example, I don't ever want X Windows on my linux file server. I just want the minimal code base there because as long as the code itself is reliable, I'll only have to mess with the box to apply patches (and much fewer patches if I strip the system down). That's true of my home fileserver. If I have an army of systems to manage though, my decision is going to come down to which platform is reliable and extends me the most tools to manage it efficiently and effectively. That's a question that can only be answered in context. I can tell you what I run at home though. File server: Red Hat EL 4 (no X windows). Laptop: Windows XP SP2. Desktop: Windows Server 2003 with virtual machines of everything under the sun from Win 9x to SuSE, Red Hat and Debian.
by einhverfr
It seems that your study attempted to simulate the growth of an internet startup firm on Windows or Linux. One thing I did not see in the study was a good description of assumptions you made. What assumptions were made in both the design of the requirements and the analysis of the data? What limitations can we place on the conclusions as a result of these assumptions?
Dr. Thompson
This is a really important question. I think there are two sections of the study: the assessment methodology and then the experiment we undertook to illustrate how to apply that methodology. I'll answer the assumption question for both parts:
Methodology - For the methodology, we wanted to provide a tool that organizations could use and apply their own assumptions. Maintaining a system is all about context; some environments favor Linux, others Windows. The question is, how do you know what's likely to be the most reliable (which includes manageable, secure and supportable) solution for your environment? We proposed a methodology a recipe - that looks at a solution in its entirety instead of just individual components. Policies like configuration control vary from organization to organization and to get something that's truly meaningful in your environment, the methodology needs to be carried out in your context. Enterprise customers can and should do this when they are about to trust their critical business processes to a platform. That said, the basic assumptions of the methodology are that patches are applied at 1 month intervals and that business needs evolve over time. How those business needs evolve depends on the scenario you're looking at (in our experiment we looked at ecommerce for example). The methodology doesn't cover steady state reliability, meaning the uptime of a system that is completely static. While this is important, our conversations with CIOs, CTOs, CSOs and IT folks lead us to believe that this was a smaller contributor to pain in a dynamic environment. In an appliance for example, though, steady state reliability is king, and I think an important limitation of this methodology is that we don't capture that well, and I think it's amazingly difficult quality to measure in a time-lapse way.
The purpose of the experiment was to illustrate how to apply the methodology and to begin to get some insights into some of the key model differences between two platforms. For the experiment we picked the ecommerce scenario, for no other reason than there has been a clear shift in how ecommerce sites have serviced their customers in recent years moving from static sites to personalized content. Some specific assumptions were:
* The transition from a basic purchasing site to a personalized portal based on order/browsing history takes place over a one year period.
* The period we looked at was July 1st, 2004 to June 30th, 2005 (the most recent full year at the time of the study).
* A configuration control policy exists that mandates OS version but not much else meaning administrators had fairly free rein to meet business requirements.
* All patches marked as critical or important supplied by the vendor are applied.
* We assume the system to be functioning if the original ecommerce application is running and meets some basic acceptance tests (same for both platforms see Appendix 1 of the report) and the new installed components are also running.
* To add new capabilities, we use leading 3rd party components as opposed to building custom code in-house.
* The business migrates operating system versions at the end of the one year period to the latest versions of the platform.
* The administrators that participated in the experiment reflect the average Linux (specifically SuSE) and Windows administrators in skill, capability and knowledge. While this was strived for, it's important to recognize the small sample size in drawing any conclusions from the data.
As far as limitations, the experiment looks at one specific case with a total of six administrators. I'd love to have done it with a hundred admins on each side on a wide range of business requirement scenarios and my hope is that others will do that and publish their results. Our experiment, however, shows that for this particular, clearly documented scenario, experienced Linux Admins had conflicts between meeting business needs and a recommended best practice like not introducing out-of-distribution components. If one is aware of potential conflicts and challenges upfront, I think you can put controls in place to make reasonable tradeoffs. In the linux case, a precise and specific configuration control policy may have prohibited the problematic upgrade of one of the components that the 3rd party solutions required. This would have likely reduced the number of failures but would have put some hefty constraints on 3rd party solutions. To understand the implications for your environment you really need to run through the methodology with the assumptions and restrictions of your organization and I hope that this study either prompts or provokes people to do that.
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2 - Meta-credibility?
by Tackhead
Where I come from (non-management, grunt-level techie), appearing in any of these analysts' journals *costs* an author more credibility than it gains him or her. For example, if $RAG says that $CORP has the best customer support, I immediately assume that $CORP has such horrid customer support that they had to pay someone to make up some research that proves otherwise.
To be sarcastic, I'd ask "who the heck actually takes these studies seriously?", but obviously *somebody* does. Who are these people, and why do these people take these industry analyst firms/journals/reports seriously? Are they right or wrong to do so? This isn't an attack (or endorsement :) of your research -- I'm talking about the credibility gap in industry research, and my observation that it's an industry-wide problem.
The meta-credibility question is this: Given the amount of shoddy pay-for-play research out there, does being published in an analyst journal tend to cost (a researcher, his consulting company, his financial backers) more credibility than it can gains him/her/them? If not, why not -- and more importantly, if so, is there any way to reverse the trend?
Dr. Thompson
This is a really interesting question because it cuts to the heart of what a real research study should provide to the reader. It should provide a baseline and I think research should always be questioned, scrutinized and debated because one can always find reasons for bias. Particularly, if a subject of the study (vendor for example) is behind its funding, whether directly (as in this study) or indirectly (meaning that they are big clients) I think it's critical that the study not provide just a baked cake for readers but the recipe as well. The recipe has to be inherently fair and simple, meaning that it has to map directly to a the quality or pain one is trying to measure without taking into account how the subjects try and provide that service or mitigate that pain. I think slanted opinion pieces, with no backup for those opinions, seriously hurts credibility, at least in my book. If you're presenting facts though and encouraging others to question them then I think that actually helps credibility, even if the search for those facts was paid for.
I agree though that one is tempted to dismiss research a priori though because of funding or some vendor tie. I think a good way to reverse the trend is to open the process up to public scrutiny; that's probably the main reason I came on Slashdot. To use this specific study as an example, some folks disagreed with several points in the experiment from counting patches, to reasons for upgrading key components, to the ecommerce scenario we used. For me, the study's key value is the methodology. Could different applications/scenarios have been chosen: absolutely!
The value I think that this study gives to the practitioner is arming them with a tool to help measure in their own environment. By applying the methodology, the results should take into account things like administrators skillsets, support policies, configuration control policies and the tradeoffs between customizability, maintainability, visibility, security and usability. It's only by looking at this stuff in context can one make a sound judgment; and a true research paper, especially one where funding is in question, needs to fully disclose the method and the funding source. In our case, the methodology has been vetted by industry analysts, IT organizations and several academics. That doesn't mean much, though, if you don't find the methodology meaningful for the questions you want answered. One reason I've come on Slashdot is to get the thoughts, opinions and assessments of the methodology itself from administrators in the trenches. I'm really pleased with the great questions and comments amidst the inevitable flames and I'm looking forward to this being posted so that others can weigh-in with their feedback and I can jump into the threads to get some discussion going.
If the research helps give real insight, and the methodology makes sense, I think there's real value no matter who paid the bill. At the end of the day, you need to decide whether or not you can extract any value from the information presented to you. In the case of this study, my hope is that it will leave you thinking hmmm.... maybe we should actually run through a process like this and check out how this works for ourselves. My more ambitious hope is that you'll implement it and tell me what challenges you faces on Windows, Linux, OSX, BSD, whatever platform you choose to compare. It may not even venture into the perennial Windows versus Linux battle; maybe you're a linux shop trying to decide between multiple distributions for example. Either way, if it's got people thinking about the topic and asking questions, well, that's all any researcher can really hope for.
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3 - Weak setup
by 0xABADC0DA
If I understand the study correctly, the windows side had to do nothing but set up a server to do a few different tasks over time and run windows update. The linux side had to have multiple incompatible versions of their database server running simultaneously on a single system and had to run unsupported versions of software to do it.
Why wasn't the windows side required to run multiple versions of IIS or SQL server simultaneously? In real life if you need to run multiple database versions you use virtualization or multiple systems, especially if one requires untested software. You don't run some hokie unstable branch on the same system as everything else. Why was a linux solution picked that required this level of work? My other related question is, did any of the unix administrators question why there were being asked to do such a thing? For example, did they come back and say they need a license for vmware? If they did not they do not seem like very competent administrators in my opinion.
Dr. Thompson
The Windows Admins and Linux admins were given the exact same set of business requirements which doesn't necessarily translate into the same tasks as they went about fulfilling them. The 3rd party components installed were chosen solely based on their market leadership position and any upgrades of OS were unknown at the time of selection. That said, on the Windows side, it turned out that no upgrades of IIS were needed (except for patches) and SQL Server was upgraded to SP4 as part of patch application. On the Linux side, at a high-level there were two main classes of upgrades: MySQL and GLIBC and they were both prompted by the installed components. After the experiment, the administrators were asked on both sides if this kind of evolution of systems met with their real-world experience. They said yes, with the caveat of if they were asked to install a component that required an upgrade of GLIBC that they would likely upgrade the operating system as long as their configuration control policy allowed it.
You make a great point about installing components on some sort of staging system (which is almost always done) as opposed to live running systems. That still means that the problems that the administrators had equal real IT pain. If something weird had to be done to get the system running but it does run and it's then put into production it's like a fuse that gets set on a bomb. A careful configuration control policy would almost certainly help and thats why I think it's so important to conduct this kind of experiment in your own environment with your own policies.
As far as selection of the Linux administrators go, they all had at least 5 years of enterprise administration experience, and two years of experience on SuSE specifically. With three people there's certainly likely to be a lot of variability and to get some conclusive results, I'd love to get a huge group of administrators across the spectrum in terms of experience. I'd also love to do it across multiple scenarios, beyond the ecommerce study. For this experiment, basically the bottom line is that we Illustrate one clearly documented scenario with six highly qualified admins that we selected based on experience. We cant ensure equal competency levels, but there was nothing in our screening that would lead us to believe there were gaps in knowledge on either side. When it comes down to it though, the really meaningful results are the ones you get when you perform the evaluation in your environment. Hopefully this study provides a starting point for asking the right questions when you do that.
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4- Who determined the metrics
by Infonaut
Did Microsoft come to you with a specific set of metrics, or did you work with them to develop the metrics, or did you determine them completely on your own?
Kudos to you for braving the inevitable flames to answer people's questions here on Slashdot.
Dr. Thompson
Great question! The metrics and the methodology were developed completely on our own and independent of Microsoft. They were created with the help and feedback of enterprise CIOs as well as industry analysts. I think that this relates to a couple of other questions on Slashdot with the gist of if Microsoft is funding the study aren't you incentivized for them to come out ahead. Besides the standard we would never do that and that would put our credibility at risk which is our primary commodity which are both very true, let me explain a little more about how our research engagements work.
Company X (in this case Microsoft) comes to us and says can you help us measure quality Y (in this case Reliability) to get some insight into how product Z stacks up. We say, sure, BUT we have complete creation and control of the methodology, it will be reviewed and vetted by the community (end users and independent analysts) and must strictly follow scientific principles. The response will either be: great, we want to know whats really going on or um, heres some things to focus on and I think you should set it up this way. In the first case we proceed, in the second case we inform that company that we don't do that kind of research. We are also not in the opinion business, so we present a methodology to follow and illustrate how that methodology is applied with the hope that people will take the methodology and apply it in their own environment.
All of our studies are written as if they will be released publicly BUT it is up to the sponsor if the study is publicly released. The vendor knows that they're taking a risk. They pay for the research either way but only have control over whether it is published, not over content. So if their intent is to use it as an outward facing piece, they may end up with something they don't like. Either way, I think it's of high value to them. If there are aspects of the results that favor the sponsor's product, in my experience, it goes to the marketing department and gets released publicly; if it favors the competitors product it goes off to the engineering folks as a tool to understand their product, their competitor's product, and the problem more clearly. Either way, we maintain complete editorial control over the study and there is no financial incentive for us if it becomes a public study or is used as an internal market analysis piece. The methodology has to be as objective as possible to be of any real value in either case.
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5 - ATMs vs. Voting Machines
by digitaldc
How is it that Diebold can make ATM machines that will account for every last penny in a banking system, but they can't make secure electronic voting machines?
Also, does the flame-resistant suit come with its own matching tinfoil hat? (don't answer that one)
Dr. Thompson
This is a question that has passed through my mind more than once. The voting world is very interesting. I don't have experience with the inner workings of Diebolds ATM machines but I can say that the versions of their tabulation software that Ive seen have some major security challenges (see this Washington post documentary for some of the gory details). I'd say I'm concerned about the e-voting systems Ive seen but that would be a serious understatement.
I question whether the economic incentive is there for them to make their voting systems more secure. Take an ATM for example. Imagine the ATM has a flaw and if you do something to it, you can make it give you more money than is actually deducted from your account. Anything involving money gets audited and sometimes audited multiple times and chances are good that the bank is going to figure out that they're loosing money. On the flip side, if there was a flaw in the ATM in the banks favor, someone balancing their checkbook is going to notice a discrepancy. The point is that there's always traceability and there's always someone keeping score. If you think about voting tabulators though we've got this mysterious box that vote data gets fed into and then, in many states, only a fraction of these votes are audited. That means we don't really know what the bank balance is other than what the machine tells us it is. If the system is highly vulnerable and its vulnerability is known by the manufacturer *but* it's going to be expensive to fix it and shore up defenses, there seems to be no huge incentive to fix the problems. I think the only way to get some decent software that counts votes that people can have confidence in is to allow security experts to actually test the systems, highlight potential vulnerabilities, and put some proper checks and balances in place. That would give the general public some visibility into a critical infrastructure system that we usually aren't in the habit of questioning and will hold voting manufacturers directly accountable to voters.
As for the tin foil hat to go with the flame resistant suit; it hasn't been shipped to me yet - apparently the manufacturing company is still filling backorders from SCO :).
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6 - Why are the requirements different?
by altoz
Looking at your research report's appendices, it seems that the requirements for Windows Administrators were somewhat different than the Linux Administrators. For instance, you ask for 4-5 years sys admin experience minimum for Windows, whereas it's 3-4 years sys admin experience minimum for Linux.
Why wasn't it equal for both? And doesn't this sort of slight Windows favoring undermine your credibility?
Dr. Thompson
Short answer: Typo. Long answer: We originally were looking for 4 years of general administration experience for both Linux and Windows which is what is reflected in the desired responses to the General Background questionnaire for Linux. We then raised it to 5 years for both Linux and Windows which is reflected in the General Background of the Windows questionnaire. The difference in the two was just a failure to update the response criteria on that shared section of one of the questionnaires. On page 5 though we've got the actual administrator experience laid out:
Each SuSE Linux administrator had at least 5 years experience administering Linux in an enterprise setting. We also required 2 years minimum experience administering SuSE Linux distributions and at least 1 year administering SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 and half a year administering SLES 9 (released in late 2004). Windows administrators all had at least 5 years experience administering Windows servers in an enterprise environment. These administrators also had at least 2 years experience administering Windows Server 2000 and at least 1 year administration experience with Windows Server 2003.
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7 - Scalability of Results?
by hahiss
You tested six people on two different systems; how is that supposed to yield any substantial insight into the underlying OSes themselves?
[At best, your study seems to show that the GNU/Linux distribution you selected was not particularly good at this task. But why does that show that the ``monolithic" style of Windows is better per se than the ``modular" style of GNU/Linux distributions?]
Dr. Thompson
First, let's look at what we did. We followed a methodology for evaluating reliability with three Windows admins and three Linux admins. This is small sample set and it looked at one scenario: ecommerce. Is this enough to make sweeping claims about the reliability of Linux/Windows? No way. I do however think the results raise some interesting questions about the modularity vs. integration tradeoffs that come with operating systems. I don't think that either the Windows or Linux models are better in a general sense but they *are* different; the question is which is likely to cause less pain and provide more value for your particular business need in your specific environment. Hopefully these are the questions that people will ask after reading this study, and with any luck it will prompt others to carry out their own analysis within their own IT environment, building on what we started here. I think the methodology in this paper has provided a good starting point to help people answer those questions in context.
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8 - Convenience vs. security
by Sheetrock
Lately, I've felt that Microsoft is emphasizing greater trust in their control over your system as a means of increasing your security. This is suggested by the difficulty of obtaining individual or bulk security patches from their website as opposed to simply loading Internet Explorer and using their Windows Update service, the encouragement in Service Pack 2 of allowing Automatic Update to run in the background, and the introduction of Genuine Advantage requiring the user to authenticate his system before obtaining critical updates such as DirectX.
In addition, Digital Rights Management or other copy protection schemes are becoming increasingly demanding and insidious, whether by uniquely identifying and reporting on user activity, intentionally restricting functionality, and even introducing new security issues (the most recent flap involves copy protection software on Sony CDs that not only hides content from the user but permits viruses to take advantage of this feature.)
I would like to know how you feel about the shift of control over the personal computer from the person to the software manufacturers -- is it right, and do we gain more than we're losing in privacy and security?
Dr. Thompson
This is an interesting problem because manufacturers have to deal with a wide range of users. If there was real visibility and education for users on the security implications of doing A, B or C then we'd be ok. It's scary though when that line gets crossed. Sony's DRM rootkit is a good example. But if you think about it, we are essentially passively accepting things like this all the time. Every time we install a new piece of software,especially something that reads untrusted data like a browser plugin,we tacitly accept that this software is likely to contain security flaws and can be an entryway into your system; NOW are you sure you want to install it? The visceral immediate reaction is no but then you balance tradeoffs of the features you get versus potential risks. Increasingly, were not even given that choice, and components that are intended to help us (or help the vendor) are installed with out our knowledge. This also brings up the question of visibility; how do we know what security state were really in with a system? Again, there are tradeoffs, some of this installed software may actually increase usability or maintainability but it's abstracting away what's happening on the metal. So far, it seems as though the market has tended towards the usability, maintainability, integration that favors bundling on both the Linux and Windows sides. It's kind of a disturbing trend though.
As another example, think about how much trustaverage programmers put into their compiler these days. Whenever I teach classes on computer security and then go off into x86 op codes or even assembly, it seems to be a totally foreign concept and skillset. We've created a culture of building applications rapidly in super high-level languages which does get the job done, but at the same time seems to have sacrificed knowledge of (or even the desire to know) what's happening on the metal. This places a heavy burden on platform developers, compiler writers and even IDE manufacturers because we are shifting the cloud of security responsibility over to them in big way. Under the right conditions it can be good because the average programmer knows little about security, but we need to make sure that the components we depend on and trust are written with security in mind, analyzed by folks that have a clue, and are tested and verified with security in mind. This means asking vendors the tough questions about their development processes and making sure they've got pretty good answers. Here's what I think is a good start. If that fails, theres always BSD. :).
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9 - Apache versus IIS
by 00_NOP
Simple one: of course I accept that Windows and Linux are a priori equally vulnerable - C programmers make mistakes. The question is which model is most likely to deliver a fix fastest. Given that the one area where Linux is probably in the lead over Microsoft's software is in the realm of the webserver - why are my server logs filled with artifacts of hacked IIS boxes but apache seems to remain pretty safe?
Dr. Thompson
You bring up a couple of interesting points. The first is patch delivery. It's true that on Linux if there's a high profile vulnerability you're likely to be able to find a patch out on the net from somebody in a few hours. Sometimes the fix is simple, a one-liner, and other times it may be more complex. Either way, there could be unintended side effects of the patch which is why there's usually a significant lag between these first responder patches and a blessed patch released from the distribution vendor. Most enterprises I know wait for the distribution patch as a matter of policy, and even then, they go through a fairly rigorous testing and compatibility verification process before the patch gets deployed widely. In the Windows world, one doesn't get the alpha or beta patches, just the blessed finished product. So the question is which solution is likely to provide a patch that fixes the problem and doesn't create any more problems the fastest. That's a tough one to answer. I think theres something to be learned by looking historically and that in general theres a big discrepancy between perception and reality. Here's a (pdf) link to a study we did earlier this year based on 2004 data that I think provides a good starting point for answering that question.
As far as why you've got so many attempts on your Windows/IIS box, I think there are two distinct issues: vulnerability and threat profile. In the past, I would argue that the path of least resistance was through Windows because desktop systems were often left unprotected by the home computer user. Bang-for-the-packet favored creating tools that exploited these problems and some of the attacks actually worked on poorly configured servers as well. Then there's the targeted vs. broad attacks. Theres no question that the high-profile worms and viruses in the last several years have favored Windows as a target. The issue gets even more complicated when you look at targeted attacks. These targeted attacks are much harder to measure, even anecdotally, because either an organization gets compromised and doesn't disclose it (unless they're compelled to by law) or the attack goes undetected because it doesn't leave any of the standard footprints, in which case no pain is felt immediately. That may help to explain it but the truth is that there's a lot of conflicting data out there. I remember reading this on Slashdot last year which claims Apache was more attacked than IIS but I've also read reports to the contrary. The reality is that any target of value is going to get attacked frequently. If there is an indiscriminant mass attack like a worm or virus, that's pretty bad and can be really painful. What's scarier though is the attack that just targets you.
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10 - Do you agree with Windows Local Workflow
by MosesJones
Microsoft and Linux distros have had a policy for some time of including more and more functionality in the base operating system, the latest example is the inclusion of "Local Workflow" in Windows Vista.
As a security expert do you think that bundling more and more increases or decreases the risks, and should both Windows and Linux distros be doing more to create reduced platforms that just act as good operating systems?
Dr. Thompson
Three years ago I bought my mother a combination TV, VCR and DVD player. It was great; she didn't have to worry about cables or the notorious multi-remote control problem. She didn't even really need the VCR because she hardly ever watches Video tapes, but I thought, why not. It worked great for two years, mom watched her DVDs, and on a blue moon a video tape from a family vacation would find its way into the VCR. All was well at the Thompson household. This past year, tragedy struck. The VCR devoured a videotape, completely entangling it in the machine. This not only knocked out the VCR but the television too (it thought it was constantly at the end of a tape and needing to rewind it). So here's the issue: mom probably only needed a TV and a separate DVD player. I probably could have gotten better quality components individually too, and with some ebay-savvy shopping, the group may have been cheaper. For my mom though, the integration and ease of operation of the three were key assets. The flipside of that is that the whole is only as strong as the weakest of its constituent parts, and by the manufacturer throwing some questionable VCR components into the mix, it caused the whole thing to fail. The meta-question: did I make the right choice, going for the kitchen-sink approach versus individual components? I think for mom I made the right call. For me, my willingness to program a universal remote and my love of tweaking the system would have lead me down a different route.
In operating systems, it depends what you're looking for and what the risk vs. reward equation is for you, and I would argue that the answer varies from user to user. The ideal would be something that gave you integration, ease of use, visibility, manageability and the ability to truly customize and minimize functionality and maintenance requirements. No operating system I've ever seen strikes that balance optimally and for every user. As far as bundling functionality with the distribution, I think it's a question of market demand. There's no question though that from a simple mathematical perspective, the less code processing untrusted data the better. That means if I need a system to perform one specific function, and that function was constant over time, then from a security perspective I only want the stuff on that box that does what I need to serve that goal. For example, I don't ever want X Windows on my linux file server. I just want the minimal code base there because as long as the code itself is reliable, I'll only have to mess with the box to apply patches (and much fewer patches if I strip the system down). That's true of my home fileserver. If I have an army of systems to manage though, my decision is going to come down to which platform is reliable and extends me the most tools to manage it efficiently and effectively. That's a question that can only be answered in context. I can tell you what I run at home though. File server: Red Hat EL 4 (no X windows). Laptop: Windows XP SP2. Desktop: Windows Server 2003 with virtual machines of everything under the sun from Win 9x to SuSE, Red Hat and Debian.
Kidding!
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
People on slashdot can get pretty upset about the studies Microsft shows the world, and these mostly say Microsoft is the king on the hill. But don't ever forget they don't show ALL of their studies. It could well be that 60% of them does not favor Microsoft good enough or not at all.
Of course I realise they try to use situations that are more likely to favor for them as for [insert competitor].
No if just once a bunch of other studies leaked we could get a real view over what MS is doing with their researches all the time...
Dependency hell? =>
At least the guy has a sense of humor.
See his comment on the Flameproof suit/Tinfoil hat question.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Okay, so they needed a certain version of MySQL which required a newer version of Glibc. Still, though, any Unix admin should know that upgrading glibc is risky at best (I've broken many systems due to upgrading glibc).
Here's my question: Why didn't they just rebuild the source RPM and install the resulting binaries? This way the binary would be built with the same glibc as everything else on the system. I've done that on many system with no adverse effects. They didn't have to rebuild in on the server, just any machine running the same distro would do fine.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
When this study was originally posted, many of you slashbots rushed to dismiss it solely on the basis of funding.
When I brought it to your attention that doing so is fallacious, I was modded down into oblivion.
Inevitably the same people will post again, with the same fallacious arguments, claiming that this guy is a shill for MS.
I'll be interested to hear the excuses that are made this time, and I can guarantee that several people will attack this man personally for no reason other than the results of his study.
So how about, instead of relying on old prejudices, we instad attempt to actually examine the research and gauge it on it's own merits.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Looks like a bunch of honest and detailed answers with no dodging...
You obviously see the value of public scrutiny in what you do. So do we, we're obviously paying attention to your studies, and are pleased to see the "inner workings." It certainly helps lend credibility to your points. But it also begs the question: why doesn't Microsoft extend that same logic to operating systems or applications?
John
Not to sound like a troll, but meta-credibility does also work the opposite way;
anti-$ rag says that grassroots anti-$ os/app/whatever is "the best" and you will have an immediate knee-jerk reaction from the community defending it to the death and proudly installing it on thier boxes just to say they did, even if it takes several dozen man-hours to get it to do anything even marginally useful.
Dogma is probably even more dangerous and counterproductive than putting blind trust in some $corps marketing stooges, as hard as that is to comprehend.
Sorry, just watched six guys on laptops code and tweak for two hours failing to get the newest, hippest OS du jour to even recognize basic hardware.
From a purely technical point of view, I was mostly interested in seeing the following question [and thread] addressed:
8 949&cid=14084692
http://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16
--- d'oh
Mostly, becuase unlike ESR, he doesn't seem to have an agenda... Unlike ESR the Dr. doesn't work for Microsoft or any OSS org...
The OS upgrade was already part of the "evaluation".
Why not allow the sysadmins to upgrade from SLES 8 to SLES 9 instead of REQUIRING them to backport the glibc patches from 9 to 8?
In all of my years as an administrator I have "upgraded" operating systems exactly twice on systems that are not FreeBSD. The reason? Upgrades break stuff. Random binaries don't work or some configuration file is in the wrong place or two copies exist. Something is wrong. It is usually faster to make a final backup, and install the new version and then start the system fresh from the latest backups, providing any tweaks required. Legacy components left around for years come back to bite you in the ass, 'tis a proven fact.
He told you his process. He told you how Microsoft approached his company. He gave you his methodology. Show us where he f*ed up.
I'm waiting... come on... all talk now? yeah...
-everphilski-
DECEMBER 03, 2003 And that was just the first news story google turned up for atm+diebold+flaws
There is a lot of crap that goes on in the banking industry which is not reported. Mostly because there are no laws requiring it to be reported.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
King of the Desktop perhaps but not King of servers. Sure they show more REVENUE but as for deployment, Linux still dominates and has been squeezing Microsoft more and more out of server space. While Linux eats into UNIX market share, they also are eating into Windows market share as well.
Don't believe it? Look at what the most widely used Web server is. Look at what the most widely used DB is. look at the most popular scripting languages. And now keep in mind that they all come installed by default on almost all Linux distros.
They can keep putting money into trying to convince people that Microsoft Clusterfuck Edition can replace Linux clusters. That's cool. Just another money pit for them and a great way to divert resources into a nowhere scheme. And sure they have loads of funds but they still have to answer to shareholders and they are not pleased that the stock has stagnated for so long and they won't be pleased when didvidends stop getting payed and products not being sold or delivered on time do to them focusing on a product that will go nowhere.
The entire open source world and all companies supporting open source (IBM, Google, Sun, Amazon, etc.) are all starting a bait and switch where Microsoft throws mony into duplicating anything that it thinks may be a threat. This is turn causes them to waste funds and resources on red herrings when the actual threat is something else entirely.
These past 5 years have seen Linux and open source go from obscurity to mainstream in the business market. The next five years will see it go from obscurity to mainstream in the consumer market.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Maintaining a system is all about context; some environments favor Linux, others Windows.
I've built many many systems for many people; servers, desktops, multimedia backends, you name it. I personally use linux/unix, but the OS installed upon each of the machines I build is by no means limited by my personal preference. Dr. Thompson makes a wonderful point here. In computing as in life, different situations merit different approaches.
I really wish all of the microsoft-, bsd-, and linux-zealots would realize this. To each, his own.
From the responses it sounds like he did an honest attempt at this study. I think the conclusion however should be that stupid admins cost a lot, so taking away things they could mess up is the key to lowering costs. If it turned out that the windows admins had to actually do anything, I bet the results would have been just as bad or worse for Windows.
In the Windows world, one doesn't get the alpha or beta patches, just the blessed finished product
...) or outlook's bad record of keeping spam from executing malicious code (mostly through the IE engine).
p hp?story=20020924094345962r sjump_1.htmls pr aised-microsoft-patches
yeah, right!
i won't even mention IE's security holes for the last 8 or so years (active x,
but boldly stating how much due diligence is exacted upon the microsoft patches before final release is ridiculous in face of them frequently backfiring and leaving old or new vulnerabilities in their wake:
http://www.hideaway.net/home/public_html/article.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/09/08/HNhacke
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1753511,00.a
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2120864/doubts-
jethr0
...these were highly experienced Linux admins.
- which chose an ancient linux distribution
- which tried to use bleeding-edge software on an old OS software platform
- which didn't know that glibc updates can break things
- which apparently didn't upgrade the system first if that's what they had in mind
- which took more than an afternoon to set up a linux system
- which were stymied by basic systems administration
- which appeared to be unaware of the tools available such as webmin
Wow. That's why I hire kids fresh out of highschool. They're so much more advanced than "experienced professionals" available to this guy.
...Steve
How long will this argument go on? Apples and Oranges I say. More marketing propaganda to buffer the bottom line. Technology will only move forward when we stop arguing over what is better and start working towards a common goal.
How is it that Diebold can make ATM machines that will account for every last penny in a banking system, but they can't make secure electronic voting machines?
The reason is that Diebold is not required by any law or regulation to do so. The banking industry and financial networks demand and regulate the security and journalling of transactions. If you don't follow the rules, they don't let you run transactions.
The "voting industry," on the other hand, has yet to regulate or stringently demand minumum standards from e-voting machines. Until the constituency informs their lawmakers that they want the security of a) knowing that their vote went through the way they wanted it to, and b) knowing that no one can rig the election so that Snoopy wins, Diebold has no economic incentive to add these features.
BTW - for what it's worth, Diebold can't build an ATM machine worth a crap. They were one of the original ATM manufacturers, and thus have great brand-name recognition in the industry. What they build is over-engineered, over-priced, and over-proprietary. Think of the old IBM PCs that cost much more that their clone counterparts, used nothing that was off-the-shelf, and did no more than a cheaper computer. That's Diebold.
--- This
"The fact that Microsoft funded the "study" means that you MUST look at the assumptions and process."
No it doesn't. Examining the study in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as every other study will reveal its flaws. Nothing else is necessary.
The fact that you think the funder matters means you MUST look up "circumstantial ad hominem", because you used one and don't even know it.
I have no skin in this, but I've always wondered why people like you try so hard to stay ignorant. You're wrong about this, and you're using a common fallacy to suport your opinion.
Instead of insisting you are right, just learn something. It's easier than defending an erroneous position.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
If we look at the history of SuSE then we see Novell's big involvement was in the 9.0 world. Right from the get-go we can see that forcing the administrators to remain on SLES 8 is creating problems that would be considered a show stopper in a regular environment. Especially if you're talking about buying components with their required environments. The fact that you even have the option of applying SLES 9.0 patches to an 8.0 environment is something that you can't do in the Windows world.
What were the "third-party components" installed on the systems? The following dodge "The specific 3rd party vendors are not disclosed
because the focus of the study is the methodology and not a specific component." is complete bull if you're crowing about the repeatability of your experiment. How can the experiment be repeated if we don't know the items? (It would be interesting to know if those components didn't support SLES 8 at the time of their installation.)
Also, why this requirement for the components: "Support on both Windows and Linux" when your environments are obviously not equivalent (IIS/ASP versus LAMP instead of J2EE)?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
[At best, your study seems to show that the GNU/Linux distribution you selected was not particularly good at this task. But why does that show that the ``monolithic" style of Windows is better per se than the ``modular" style of GNU/Linux distributions?]
That pretty much sums up the entire study. This isn't really a test of Windows versus Linux, but a test of "modular" operating systems versus "monolithic" operating systems. And, unfortunately, the study didn't even do a good job of testing that.
Linux happens to include several distributions, some more "monolithic" than "modular". Unsuprisingly, the "monolithic" versions are usually those used by "enterprises", such as RedHat and SuSE. The "modular" operating systems, such as Debian, are almost universally ignored by businesses, though you will find IT personnel swear by them. There are Linux distributions that adhere to the Unix philosophy, and there are those that try to emulate Windows and Apple in the name of "ease of use". Hell, even some of SCO's products are more "modular" than commercial Linux distributions.
By requiring "enterprise" sysadmins and a Linux distro that is geared towards "enterprises", the study preselected a Linux competitor with which Windows can easily compete: admins (probably used to using Windows) using Linux distros that attempt to emulate Microsoft's "monolithic" operating system. By virtue of the fact that Microsoft has been building "monolithic" operating systems for at least a decade longer than any of these Linux companies even existed, that the vast majority of Linux components are designed to be used instead in a "modular" fashion, and that most "enterprises" wouldn't know proper system administration from their own asses, anyone can see that this test is designed to fail.
I've spent the last one and a half years doing this exact same study. Guess what I found? You can't treat "monolithic" operating systems, RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Windows, as though they were "modular". Though doing so is easier with Linux, it's not recommended, and distro makers such as RedHat explicitly warn against doing so. Any IT guy learns this lesson about six months into his career. You either find a truly "modular" OS, such as Debian, or a good Unix, or you very carefully buy products made only by Microsoft or by companies joined at the hip with Microsoft. That is, if you choose modularity, you choose Unix. If you choose out-of-the-box integration, you choose Apple or try to navigate the Microsoft "ecosystem", and you pay monopoly rents for doing so. The people who choose RedHat and SuSE, and expect it to be Windows at this stage, are kidding themselves.
The real headline should be: "Linux admins tasked with using Linux in the same retarded-ass way as Windows, fail." Which should be no suprise.
But the important thing to take out of this is that it is neither technical necessity nor user requirements that make operating systems less "modular", and thus less flexible, less powerful, and ultimately less valuable. It is the commercial requirements of the operating system manufacturers themselves. It is the fact that the OS is commercial that makes it difficult to upgrade, impossible to integrate, and expensive to maintain. The evolution of commercial Linux distributions towards the "monolithic" model of Microsoft, and the concomitant decline in their quality, has proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt. At most, this study only serves to highlight what any competent Linux admin already knew.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Recording your data and config files, reloading the system with a new version of the OS, and then reloading your data is upgrading. You have just failed your reading comprehension test. Thanks for playing, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Dr. Herb Thompson talks a good story but it isn't supported by my first hand experiences - Why is that?
Maybe your first hand experience wasn't in a reasonably controlled environment. Maybe your bias will only allow you to see things one way.
Sorry Herb but your study is nothing more than a carefully crafted FUD attack on a superior product.
"Linux is better because I think so" is hardly a refutation. Why don't you point out the flaws in the study?
FFE4: What kind of credibility do you think you have, being a Microsoft MVP?
The problems the study reported with Linux appear to all due to an incompatable unnamed 3rd party software package. Surely then, all this study can conclude is that the 3rd party software used was incompatable with SLES? And if not, why not?
"All of our studies are written as if they will be released publicly BUT it is up to the sponsor if the study is publicly released. The vendor knows that they're taking a risk. They pay for the research either way but only have control over whether it is published, not over content. So if their intent is to use it as an outward facing piece, they may end up with something they don't like. Either way, I think it's of high value to them. If there are aspects of the results that favor the sponsor's product, in my experience, it goes to the marketing department and gets released publicly; if it favors the competitors product it goes off to the engineering folks as a tool to understand their product, their competitor's product, and the problem more clearly. Either way, we maintain complete editorial control over the study and there is no financial incentive for us if it becomes a public study or is used as an internal market analysis piece. The methodology has to be as objective as possible to be of any real value in either case."
But isn't this part of the problem with vendor-funded studies? (Maybe it's THE problem)
This WOULD be fine if it were just science for the advance of knowledge, but in the case of studies of *products* somebody somewhere is looking to use the information to make a product purchasing decision, or to promote a new product. In other words, someone is looking to either save money or make money using the results of the study. But those two goals conflict. For the purchaser, they would like to know both the pros and the cons of all studies involving that product. For the seller, they want to know both the pros and cons of their product, but only want their consumers to know the pros, and minimize the cons as much as possible. Both of these positions make complete sense... except for the group conducting the study. You have two different types of customers that you are trying to satisfy with these studies, but only one group is paying you to do the study - the seller. Hence, the results ARE skewed in favor of the organization purchasing the study, because they maintain control over whether the study gets released to the purchasers of that seller's products or not.
In this case, Microsoft has a win-win proposition, whereas for the rest of us, the purchasers, it's a win-lose proposition. Only if the study is positive for Microsoft will we be given more information necessary to help us save money. But if it's a study that puts Microsoft in a bad light, we lose because we don't get to see such information to make a purchasing decision, and may therefore make an incorrect decision.
I'm still skeptical that these "industry supported" studies are fully worthwhile to us, the purchasers.
>Maybe your first hand experience wasn't in a reasonably controlled environment.Maybe your bias will only allow you to see things one way.Why don't you point out the flaws in the study?
The flaws in the study? How can I? I have not heard from the supposed 'experienced Linux Admins'. I don't know what proprietary products were deployed. I have no idea why Suse 8.0 was selected (not my first or second choice, by the way).
The study was funded and conducted for the sole purpose of finding a favorable result for Microsoft and that is exactly what it did. How can I possibley find fault with it when it did exactly what it was supposed to do.
I am getting tired of this game, aren't you?
Dude
...upgrading something like kernel.dll under NT4, 2000, XP, etc. It's not something lightly undertaken on a running machine- especially a production machine. Typically, when something of that magnitude needs an update, it's a full system upgrade- doesn't matter if it's Windows, etc. What makes the author of the report think that this was even remotely a fair comparison in question.
And I'll be honest, I find it fishy to say the least that he seemed to need that specific version of glibc; pretty much all vendors that are in the FOSS world try to track deprecated interfaces, avoid making calls to "broken" apis on the machines in question, etc. Even with a security flaw present, unless the glibc actually is the root cause, they will go out of their way to code around problems in most cases instead of mandating a glibc update for customers- it's that big a deal. Better yet, it seems that the official version updates from SuSE DID address all of this, including dealing with a fix to glibc that changed the revision number. If it's on SuSE's update sets, it's been pretty much vetted unless you change something fundamental, like glibc, at which time, all bets are off- it'd be the same way with Windows if you figured out how to accomplish a swap out of kernel.dll, or similar. Currently, for all distributions in main use except for Slackware, a system of handling all dependency relationships and obtaining all the official updates, etc. online. This is a KNOWN feature of all those distributions, whether you're talking Yast, urpmi, apt-get, yum, up-2-date, etc. Given that this is the case, not a single admin that actually knows what he's doing would have ever done what you describe in the draft 13 version of the paper on page 31, where you list things like admins doing by-hand updates of glibc, etc. That's "where Angels fear to tread" territory and would only be attempted by people that either roll custom distributions for embedded use or similar (Myself, for example...)- which would not be your typical sysadmin and they'd not be doing something like that with a production or pre-production server because they know better. And this is just one of numerous flaws with the whole study. I'll try to get to more later.
While I won't label you as a shill for Microsoft (partly because you're brave enough to face the gauntlet on this site...), I will question your ability to frame in adequate tests that actually test something- because you failed to do anything useful here except give Microsoft precisely what they were looking for. The work you did as presented to the whole world is hopelessly flawed in a manner not unlike what Mindcraft did for Microsoft a while back. I'd not consider your firm a reliable source of input or information at this point- while I was going to use one of your other papers that was provided online for a reference item in one of the white papers I am working on for my company, I must now largely discard this and find other sources for the information as everything you've produced is suspect because of the egregious flaws in the paper we're discussing.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Note: I've attempted to be fair to the original questions and responses, but my opinion may have affected how I've summarized things. If so, I apologize.
1) What were the assumptions?
2) does publishing studies like this help or hurt credibility?
3) Why did you force the Linux side to do so much more work?
4) Did you pick the metrics, or did Microsoft?
5) Why does Diebold make good ATMs but lousy voting machines?
Did your flame resistant suit include a matching tinfoil hat?
6) Why did you require 4-5 years experience for Windows but only 3-4 for Linux?
7) You only tested three administrators on one Linux distro. How does that really mean anything about the situation in general?
8) Is it good that vendors seem to be taking more control over what happens on my machine?
9) Which model has better security, especially fewer attacks and faster patches?
10) Is it good that OS vendors keep bundling more and more into the OS, or would it be better to just keep it a basic OS?
--
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
We say, sure, BUT we have complete creation and control of the methodology, it will be reviewed and vetted by the community (end users and independent analysts) and must strictly follow scientific principles... All of our studies are written as if they will be released publicly BUT it is up to the sponsor if the study is publicly released.
While I understand the reasoning, I don't think this should be represented as following scientific principles. In one of his most famous speeches, Cargo Cult Science, Richard Feynman specifically called out this type of research as being problematic:
IMHO the open source community is just as bad on average, if not worse. You better believe they have an agenda and they often aren't held under the same level of scrutiny as corporations, who have to face up to investors, competitors, governments, and "lottery ticket" lawsuits (especially Microsoft these days). The solution? We need fewer one-sided publishing of studies. We also need more studies overall, as they naturally conflict and are situationally dependent, but together would paint a better picture of the state of the world.
Of course finding funding for unbiased studies that will be published regardless of outcome is probably hard to come by.
The Linux admins were artificially given much more to do and screw up than the Windows admins, if the verbiage in the paper is to be believed. They were mandated to patch much more than is realistic, etc. in a production shop. If you were to have to patch all the local exploits in everything Windows related, you'd be very busy, moreso than the Linux admins- but they only had to do the Windows critical updates as MS provided them. The Linux admins were off patching everything- even if it wasn't very relevent to the servers (i.e. if it's a properly set up server, they shouldn't be ABLE to exploit local exploit possibilities, etc...). Worse, they had the guys doing manual updates to a lot of stuff, even though it WASN'T needed.
The study's heavily stilted to favor Microsoft and Windows- either through ignorance or malice. It'd be your call on how it got there, but it DID get there all the same.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The study illustrates some of the weaknesses of the GNU/Linux methodology which were previously GNU/Linux strengths. For instance, much software in the Unix world is distributed as source code, yet problems constantly arise because people have moved from source distribution to binary distribution. As a BSD user who hardly ever uses x86 systems, I find it strange that the trend is heading in this direction, but it seems that this isn't the only way that GNU/Linux distros are becoming more similar to Windows. Binary patches seem to be commonplace, and so are "wizards" which are hardly stateful and therefore not particularly suited to a multiuser server, for instance.
Would it be unreasonable to suggest that a good lesson that GNU/Linux people could learn from a study like this is that moving towards the lowest common denominator is NOT a good thing?
A major possible fault of subject-is-buyer studies is the possibility of bias by selective publication. Do ten thousand completely fair studies, publish the favourable results and bury the rest. Or, a similar procedure but preemptive, focus the study's remit upon a known strength which is in fact surrounded and dwarfed by (un-studied) weaknesses.
In this the researcher may not actually be methodologically at fault at all. How did you protect your study from this kind of externally induced bias?
Many of us have several questions about the level of incompetence displayed by these Linux Admins. From the choice of distros to the botched installation of glibc, they made egregious errors that would have sunk ANY startup that they were intended to help setup. And given your knowledge of Linux from your home use, I think you know this.
Do you see this as a credible challenge to your study?
Can we talk with these supposed "admins" to gain insight into why they behaved so incompetently?
And given that you don't have enough admins to be in adherence to the central limit theorem, how do you feel your study applies in a general way to anything at all?
In fact, it was part of the requirments.
But they did NOT let them upgrade when any normal person would have. They REQUIRED them to stay on SLES 8 and backport patches from SLES 9
Any intelligent person would have skipped the backport process, done the upgrade when it became necessary and bypassed all the "problems" that were "found" in this "study".
I have grave concerns as I'm reading the paper. If the 3rd party component needed an upgrade to a new glibc, you would never have done what these admins allegedly did in the paper. It would have been a red-flag on the component in question and if it was something critical to the application, it would be assumed that the official version of the OS that was supported by the components was SLES 9, not 8 because it didn't have support for that version of glibc. You don't hack something like this in a production system, ever- even if you've got the skills to pull something like it off. I've got the skills, but even I wouldn't do what was done. You'd do a migration to the next version- period. There's far, far too many things that can go wrong and you really need to vet everything once you do it. What your esteemed admins did was analogous to someone haxoring kernel.dll by patching it manually and then putting it into a production Windows machine. I honestly don't know of anyone in their right mind that would do that one- ever.
.so file (Currently libc.so.6 on modern Linux and *BSD distributions...). This interface can be safely used for many years at a time, in spite of varying version numbers and the expected behavior will be the same for an older and a newer version- so long as you're not stepping on a bug within the older version or a new feature offered by a later on version of the runtime.
.Net framework for everything and then proceeded to install pieceparts of the OS to get it there.
Another faintly disturbing thing in this paper is that it's assumed that it's Linux at fault, when in reality, it was the ancillary components' requirements and someone trying to bull their way through the "problem". There's several problems with this, but I can number a few key ones for you:
1) glibc's interface, the ABI, doesn't change all that much over time. Typically, it's linked
to at runtime through a sonamed link to the actual
2) Yes, you CAN get away with minor revision updates of glibc without problems, but typically, you need to vet all your compiled code for regression testing purposes. It really, really is like replacing kernel.dll on Windows. If it isn't provided as an update, you've got a lot of regression work ahead of you to ensure that fixes done to the library don't break other code (Typically not a problem, but you never can tell when someone mis-used something...)- this is NOT something that your rank-and-file sysadmin has any real business doing. It's NOT their job.
3) Either the component stepped on a bug, or they're using some new feature of the glibc layer. In either case, you can't bull your way into using it on something that doesn't have the needed support level. What your admins did was analogous to trying to make this work on NT4, only to find out that you need the
The study's flawed- that plain, that simple. You can defend it all you'd like, but it's got bad problems that everyone, myself included, have been pointing out and you've avoided answering several of the key points we've been making.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
As others have pointed out, the root problem was a GLIBC incompatability with a closed-source binary-only application which was one of the requirements. For unknown reasons, upgrading to SLES9 was ruled out. As was running the closed-source application on a separate server. As was choosing a compatable product instead of the incompatable one. Moreover, the selection of the "requirement" applications was made solely on "market share" with no consideration as to the actual compatability with existing IT infrastructure. Basically, a series of poor techincal decisions which no competent IT organization would make. The only valid conclusion you can draw from this study is that choosing applications based on market share alone with no thought as to technical considerations can lead to unfavorable outcomes. Is that enough of a refutation for you?
A lot of people are trying to poke holes in the study itself though it seems to have been fairly well implemented.
I did however notice two interesting bits that cause me to put a lot less importance on the results
With three people there's certainly likely to be a lot of variability and to get some conclusive results, I'd love to get a huge group of administrators across the spectrum in terms of experience. I'd also love to do it across multiple scenarios, beyond the ecommerce study.
And a little later
it is up to the sponsor if the study is publicly released
Simply fund a lot of small legitimate studies with a high variance, publish only the results that fit your case. In a way it's like one big badly done study where someone throws out all the data points that don't fit their hypothesis, for all we know he, or another researcher, might have done a dozen other studies which came out in favour of Linux and were subsequently ignored. The research itself is all completely legitimate but Microsoft creates a false overall conclusion through selective publication, perhaps companies who fund the studies should be held to the same eithical standard as those who do the research?
I stole this Sig
There's a lot of fancy ducking and dodging, none of which changes the facts that:
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With all due respect, welcome to enterprise-level IT. In several big companies I've been at, including the one I'm at now, corporate policy dictates what software you're using, particularly operating systems. And without getting into specifics, we'll just say that any OS version, regardless of vendor, that hasn't been around for at least a year isn't very likely to be running in such a place.
The most unrealistic part of this study when it comes to deviance from "real world applications" is that, upon finding this problem, the study's authors didn't adequately simulate the series of e-mail messages, telephone conferences and face-to-face meetings between at least three departments, that would happen as people tried to find a solution everyone would bless. The solution the admins actually came up with, backporting from a more recent release to the officially-sanctioned one, is not at all unusual.
Sure, there are companies out there that don't have enforced IT policies, but I haven't been to or worked with one bigger than a few hundred people that didn't have one. And once you have an IT department, they tend to try and clamp down on sysadmins doing their own thing, because consistency in management becomes more important to them than individual efficiency. (This isn't entirely bureaucratic nonsense, either, since if your unapproved software becomes important to the company and then breaks in a way you can't fix, it becomes their problem.) The study described here may not be perfect, but forcing the admins to work under arbitrary restrictions isn't a flaw.
He didn't, or at least, that's not the bad part. The key issue is that MICROSOFT DECIDES WHETHER TO RELEASE THE STUDY. This means that only good (for Microsoft) studies are released. A study like this provides an interesting road map for a real study, as mentioned in several of the answers, but it is far too small to be statistically significant. An easy method of sure success for Microsoft is:
1. Commission many too-small studies with their $$$$$.
2. Only allow the statistically insignificant positive results to be published.
(3. Keep the info from all of the studies so that they end up with statistically significant results.)
4. Profit!
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.