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Linux Servers Break out of HPC into Enterprise
Jane Walker writes "Watch out, IBM, Dell and HP. Linux server vendors that have carved out a space in high-performance computing markets are taking their tailor-made servers into new enterprise markets, providing a welcome change for businesses that want to save money and get customized products."
Yes, but sadly its difficult to find server quality highend parts. I'm refering to such things and redundant hot swap parts. If you've ever had your hands on decent power edge server, you wouldn't want to give it up.
Each license of Redhat Advanced Server Linux costs me about $1200. How exactly does this save me money? Linux has its uses as does Microsoft Windows 2003, but I don't use Linux because it saves me money in the enterprise. For home users, yes, it might save money although with XP Home being bundled with $299 computers like at Dell I find that hard to believe. For enterprise users, no, price is not an issue.
...in a five year timewarp?
ps- 'Enterprise' doesn't mean anything.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
The submission makes it seem like these companies are moving into the "enterprise-level computing" arena dominated by the big players. What the article ends up saying, after the hype, is that these companies are putting together custom-build server sets that use Linux. This is news? Oh, wait, they're "breaking out of HPC" .. yet everything in the article is pretty much devoted to describing their HPC builds and customers. Yes, that's neat, but what does that mean in terms of competing with the big three? Ah...they have plans to move into the "enterprise"! OK, again, it's neat what they're doing, but they're still niche players, and I'm still not seeing how they're any threat to Dell, HP, or IBM. Those three already have and support Linux, a pretty good range of hardware, support, and marketing capability. I think there's a place for these other companies, and they're doing some really incredible things with Linux - but I don't see them pushing the big three.
Each license of Redhat Advanced Server Linux costs me about $1200.
Yup, that it does...so if I choose to use this box for a PostgreSQL database server it costs me $1200...if I decide I want RedHat's support and whatever other goodies. If I don't I can go to Novell and get their enterprise product for as little as $350 (1 or 2 CPUs) and no more than $900 (up to 16 CPUs). Or I can roll my own server using a no-cost distribution.
Note something about these prices too--they are based on servers/server processors. There are no CALs or client limitations...so even if you decide that buying a commercial enterprise distro is worth it, your licensing costs are $1200/$900/$350...period. You can use your RedHat (or SuSE or whatever) server with a database to serve up, say, an accounting system for an enterprise with 1000 users. Required licensing is as follows:
SuSe + PostgreSQL: $900
RH + PostgreSQL: $1200
Windows 2003 Server + MSSQL 2005: $9000 *
* W2k3 standard ($1000) with external connector license ($2000) + 1 SQL 2005 standard processor license ($6000)
Note that if you want to use a multi-processor box the Microsoft solution gets even more expensive...with SuSE and RedHat the price is for systems that support multiprocessing up to 16-way...that's a savings of $7800 to $8100 in licensing for a single server. And enterprises have a lot of servers. Seems to me that it'd be worth looking at.
Then there are the intangables: There are more viruses released per day for windows than there have been for Linux during its entire existence. There are free (and Free) software tools often bundled with Linux distros that are extra cost for Windows. Remote and automated management of Linux boxes is much more powerful than for Windows. If you want terminal services it is no extra cost for Linux--it is an in-built capability of X, whereas you have to pay through the nose to get terminal services licensing for Windows. The cost advantages go on and on.
Only fools would pay for $1200/license to use somebody's pre-packaged open-source software.
Um, yeah... The enterprise experience you base this statement on is?
$1,200/license doesn't add up to all that much in the grand scheme of things. Assuming you have a sysadmin total cost of $50/hour - that's compensation plus employer's side of FICA plus bennies. At that rate, a $1,200 license pays for itself if it saves 24 hours of sysadmin time. A well designed packaging and management system is capable of doing that.
Sure, it doesn't take *that* long to compile and distribute binaries, but then there's the matter of testing. Do you know that kernel update won't cause 100% CPU utilization when Apache tries to send mail? Do you know that software piece foo won't interfere with software piece bar? That's part of what paying the big money is supposed to ensure - that it's been carefully tested. Does that mean you shouldn't put it into your test environment before deploying? No, but it means you're much less likely to find problems and have to spend time debugging them.
"Enterprise" downtime costs add up real fast. If 100 people costing an average of $15/hour rely on a server and it goes down for an hour, that's $1500 of wasted time. I've been in the situation where a key database server that many more users at a much higher cost went down an average of an hour a week consistantly.
There's also the matter that the companies that are charging that kind of money for Linux and other open source software licenses are the ones footing the bill for large amounts of the development going on. Paying them ensures that further development occurs.
If you have more than one license, you could easily hire someone full-time to do upgrades on your servers and use a free linux distribution like Fedora or Gentoo.
So, what is the guaranteed amount of time that those OSes will be supported by their vendors? A few months? A year and change? In the enterprise world, it's not uncommon for a server to be put into service and run for four or five years. Once they're up, running, and stable, you apply the security fixes and that's about it. Having to switch to a newed version of the OS every 1.5 years when the vendor drops security patches for it is expensive and stupid, particularly when you have to go through the stability testing phase again. Maintaining four and five year old software isn't sexy, so you're much less likely to find a user supported distro keeping anchient versions patched than commercial distros.
And if it isn't so simple, then do you really want Redhat holding the gonads of your operations? What are they going to do for you that a dedicated employee wouldn't?
Not quit, not get hit by a bus, do the afore mentioned testing, write the kernel, GUI, etc. If you're running RH, you can find a few hundred people who can walk in off the street and handle a simple server in virtually no time. You can't do the same with Gentoo.
And then there's also the fact that certain enterprise software is only certified to work on the big commercial distros, so if you ever need help with a problem, you better hope that you're running one of them.