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Linux Desktop Deployment Postmortems?
duffbeer703 asks: "My employer runs alot of desktop and laptop computers -- something in the neighborhood of 40,000 PCs. Currently they are all Windows 2000 & XP managed by Active Directory and other big, complicated enterprise management tools, all of which can support Linux in one form or another. I'm looking for ways of making Linux (and maybe Unix or even Apple desktops) an option as we replace or add PCs. The problem is, most of the resources that you find online about deploying Linux focuses on server environment, and the articles that I do find about desktop Linux focus on standalone developer workstations, the IBM conversion to Linux (which doesn't seem to have happened) or things like LTSP, that won't integrate well with our infrastructure. Is anyone out there successfully using Linux for regular users? How did it go, and how did your IT and user communities adapt to the new kid on the block?"
F1r57 p0r57!
how is gradparent trolling?
article asks for stories of successful linux integration in a windows environment, grandparent provides said story
don't mod it down just because you wouldn't use ubutnu- there's nothing trollish about the post itself
I build Linux and Apple clusters for biotech, pharma and academic clients. I needed to announce this because clusters designed for lifesci work tend to have different architecture priorities than say clusters used for CFD or weather prediction:) Suffice it to say that bioclusters are rate limited by file I/O issues and are tuned for compute farm style batch computing rather than full on beowulf style parallel processing.
I've used *many* different platforms to address different requirements, scale out plans and physical/environmental constraints.
The best whitebox vendor that I have used is Rackable Systems (http://www.rackable.com/ [rackable.com] . They truly understand cooling and airflow issues, have great 1U half-depth chassis that let you get near blade density with inexpensive mass market server mainboards and they have great DC power distribution kit for larger deployments.
For general purpose 1U "pizza box" style rackmounts I tend to use the Sun V20z's when Opterons are called for but IBM and HP both have great dual-Xeon and dual-AMD 1U platforms. For me the Sun Opterons have tended to have the best price/performance numbers from a "big name" vendor.
Two years ago I was building tons of clusters out of Dell hardware. Now nobody I know is even considering Dell. For me they are no longer on my radar -- their endless pretend games with "considering" AMD based solutions is getting tired and until they start shipping some Opteron based products they not going to be a player of any significant merit.
The best blade systems I have seen are no longer made -- they were the systems from RLX.
What you need to understand about blade servers is that the biggest real savings you get with the added price comes from the reduction in administrative burden and ease of operation. The physical form factor and environmental savings are nice but often not as important as the operational/admin/IT savings.
Because of this, people evaluating blade systems should place a huge priority on the quality of the management, monitoring and provisioning software provided by the blade vendor. This is why RLX blades were better than any other vendor even big players like HP, IBM and Dell.
That said though, the quality of whitebox blade systems is usually pretty bad -- especially concerning how they handle cooling and airflow. I've seen one bad deployment where the blade rack needed 12 inch ducting brought into the base just to force enough cool air into the rack to keep the mainboards from tripping their emergency temp shutdown probes. If forced to choose a blade solution I'd first grade on the quality of the management software and then on the quality of the vendor. I am very comfortable purchasing 1U rackmounts from whitebox vendors but I'd probably not purchase a blade system from one. Interestingly enough I just got a Penguin blade chasssis installed and will be playing with it next week to see how it does.
If you don't have a datacenter, special air conditioning or a dedicated IT staff then I highly recommend checking out OrionMultisystems. They sell 12-node desktop and 96-node deskside clusters that ship from the factory fully integrated and best of all they run off a single 110v electrical. They may not win on pure performance when going head to head against dedicated 1U servers but Orion by far wins the prize for "most amount of compute power you can squeeze out of a single electrical outlet..."
Check out my website: Playfully Clever
For the love of FUCK, there IS NO SUCH WORD AS ALOT. You wouldn't say "alittle" would you?
Okay, the last line was definately troll-worthy, but the gist of the post is spot on. You can't use OSX on non-Apple hardware, and that is friggin' retarded. I've heard all kinds of good things about OSX, but if I can't run it on the hardware I own and like, then screw it.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!