MS Beta Software To Manage Unix/Linux Systems

Tumbleweed writes "The Cross Platform and Interop team at Microsoft today announced some new beta products for managing Unix/Linux systems from MS Operations Manager 2007, as well as connectors for HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console. Both betas are available at Microsoft Connect (search for systemcenter), according the blog."

Comments

"Resistance is futile..."

[BUL2294]

"You will disarm your command prompts and escort us into Linux as root. If you attempt to intervene, we will destroy you."

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[ClickOnThis]

"You will disarm your command prompts and escort us into Linux as root. If you attempt to intervene, we will destroy you." I think MS would like to destroy Linux whether anyone "intervenes" or not.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I do wonder whether this is another "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" tactic. Or at least an attempt by MS to create a "view" of Linux that it can control, perhaps in a way that is unflattering to Linux.

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[Culture20]

Indeed; I wonder how many times this app will randomly send a "kill -9 1"

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Ron Paul 2012!

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to be Offtopic. The grownups are talking about MS software that manages *nix systems. Are you here because you need changed?

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[mrbluze]

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I do wonder whether this is another "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" tactic.

It is. Microsoft is trying to create an abstraction layer to Linux. This means that, gradually (or in one foul swoop), Microsoft can replace all the abstracted functionality with its own code. That's if anyone bothers to use the product. Why anyone would want to introduce this kind of level of inefficiency is beyond me. Linux is perfectly able to be managed through its own interfaces - with free updates!

If you want to control Linux from a Microsoft system (or OS X), then there already are X clients around that work very well. I guess integration is where Microsoft is going to push its claim for usefulness.

I also wonder if this is leading down a path of stupidity. I doubt, in the long run, it's efficient to have too many diverse platforms running in a workplace. This introduces too many unknowns and makes it a nightmare to manage.

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[bemo56]

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I do wonder whether this is another "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" tactic. Or at least an attempt by MS to create a "view" of Linux that it can control, perhaps in a way that is unflattering to Linux.

I'd say its more along the lines of "Linux Computers are doing too successfully as Servers, but well make Windows Desktops able to communicate with them so users won't have to change to Linux desktops and we loose market share.

One of Microsoft's biggest successes, is having people use Office + Windows at work, then having them buy (or copy) Office + Windows at home. Its a effective lockout of the competition.

MS Operations Manager 2007 is probably Microsoft's way of keeping as many people using Windows Machines at work (then at home...). Microsoft isn't going to lie on its back and let Linux take over a good source of income.

P.s. Sorry about the grammar. I'm coming off a 5 day coding binge, i think it's called work (current Uni Student)

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[GaryOlson]

Indeed; I wonder how many times this app will randomly send a "kill -9 1"

I think rather it would be more subtle and issue:
nice 19 firefox
nice -15 iexplore
nice 10 gimp
nice -13 Silverlight
nice 18 bash
nice -18 wmiprvse
nice 17 ssh
nice -20 TrustedInstaller

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Fell. One fell swoop. One refers to the number of swoops necessary, fell refers to the manner (fierce). It's not a judgment of the fairness of the tactic, as the word "foul" would imply. See also http://xkcd.com/386/.

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[mrbluze]

Thank you, Webster's Anonymous Coward's Dictionary.

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[mrbluze]

A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Ha! There should be no comma before and. Xkcd should be ashamed!

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[vegiVamp]

It may also work the other way around: if the Linuxen can be integrated into the existing MS instriumentarium, it might be easier for the techs to sneak in a few servers. This, in turn, may lead to management becoming (or being made) aware of the virtues of Linux.

TBH, I think this is just one group in the increasingly fragmented MS landscape trying to provide what their customers want. I know the same issue has come up where I work before, and MS, *nix and other groups coexist peacefully here.

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[marafa]

microsoft will always find a customer or two who can be "convinced" to use this product with say .. SLES.
and when that happens, microsoft will turn the customer in to a marketing campaign: "see! there is at least ONE customer who thinks its a good idea!"
oh and the mc on that ad would be microsoft bob ;)

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to reduce abortions? Go fuck yourself. That should work.

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[IpalindromeI]

It actually used to be that the comma before and was required. However, language evolves, and now both forms are accepted.

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[Chris Mattern]

It actually used to be that the comma before and was required. However, language evolves, and now both forms are accepted.

"I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God."

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[YaroMan86]

I am not worried.

If, indeed, this new "technology" from Microsoft is meant to do harm to Linux, then I see only a few things happening, almost none of them will be a true hindrance to Linux and all but harmful to Microsoft.

First, most Linux distributors would recognize this is a ploy my Microsoft and ignore this and use true interoperability without the danger of integrating Microsoft software.

Second, those that don't, if this is indeed something Microsoft is using to destroy Linux, either fork or die. Those that die probably deserve to die for being managed by distributors that are too dim to see it as a trap. To them I say good riddance. The forks ditch the Microsoft control mechanisms and become stronger than the original distributions they forked from.

Third, various projects spring up, free and open source alternatives to the Microsoft control mechanism spring up. This in no way enabled Microsoft.

Finally, Microsoft, seeing that they only managed to squish maybe a handful of weaker distros, moves on to the next embrace and extend.

Don't forget one of the reasons Linux hasn't managed to get squished like DR-DOS or Be OS is likely in part thanks to the Open Source model. Microsoft squishes one, at lest two will take its place. If Microsoft is able to kill the Linux kernel, they just fork it and call it something else, with changes made to it that prevent the previous mad destruction.

The worst case scenario I see is only one major distribution going down, and I'm betting it will be Novell's since they're in that agreement with Microsoft. Definitely not Red Hat, since they have essentially declared they won't have anything to do with Microsoft.

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[StewBaby2005]

Why do they even bother? The major Unix vendors have had s/w that manages Unix and Windows servers for years...

Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[apoc.famine]

Wtf? The gui tools available NATIVELY don't allow for any comprehensive management of Unix/Linux systems. Less is more, terminal is faster, text over ssh, bash scripting - the entire culture of *nix is anti-gui.

How the fuck is MS going to make a gui to manage such systems?

Or are they just reimplementing an ssh terminal?

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[oyenstikker]

webmin.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[PPH]

Command line or GUI, what Microsoft needs to do is to restrict the number of options available when administering Unix/Linux systems to the subset available for Windows. Then, the next question is: What can you do with *nix that you can't do with Windows (ignoring the crippled interface)? If the answer to that is: Nothing, then the next question is: Why not just use Windows?

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[zappepcs]

Indeed... webmin can be quicker for stuff you can't remember the command line for, but it is ALWAYS best to learn the text/terminal/shell commands for the very same thing.

I like a lot of webmin, but would rather just script quite a bit of stuff where I can. Much simpler than clickety clicks -- YMMV

The REAL question is: Are there *ANY* *nix system admins out there that WANT MS to manage their systems? My head about exploded when I read the title. On second reading, well, it makes sense to be able to deal with all things in the data center. I'm just not sure if MS has the m4d sk1l5 for doing so. I have yet to see a well managed MS data center installation.

Just an opinion

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[InlawBiker]

Because then, theoretically, you don't have to have both Linux and Windows people on staff. I.T. managers want to hire less people, not more, and the Windows guys are usually cheaper.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[oolleq]

This is the 21st century compliment to the Speak 'n Spell interface for NORAD.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Whatanut]

Many large corporations are still stuck in the mindset of a microsoft centric world. So in many cases management may have decided on using MOM or SCOM as their monitoring system. That being said, it actually wouldn't be a bad thing to have decent clients for *nix machines. Of course there are other cross platform monitoring systems. But sometimes you don't have a lot of choice...

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Venik]

For the past year I've been struggling with Scali Manage - a cluster management tool that came with our two new HPC SLES clusters from HP. Essentially, Scali is an attempt to create a parasite OS on top of Linux. Scali does offer a couple of useful features, but nothing that can't be done by hand almost as easily and nothing that's worth all the additional problems it creates. The moral of the story is: if there are idiots willing to pay big bucks for useless software, there always will be those ready to take the money.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Z34107]

How the fuck is MS going to make a gui to manage such systems?

Windows (c)(tm)(R) for Linux! (Professional Business x64 Ultimate Edition!) (With powershell!)

With Microsoft's experience in GUI development, Linux will finally be a real alternative to Windows for desktop machines!

Wait...

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or are they just reimplementing an ssh terminal?

Doubtful. First, Microsoft write code to a specification? Have they ever? Kerberos, LDAP, NIS, OOXML? Not going to happen.

Next issue is security.If you can't fix Windows, move the problem into UNIX. Problem solved. This might work for Microsoft. You can't beat them, destabilize them.

Oh, this is going to be so much fun to watch this blow up. Something like UNIX tools for NT/AD, never was reliable or compatible enough. Which isn't a Microsoft strong point either.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[peragrin]

Not when you need twice as many of them for the same number of servers. it might be down to 1.5 times now with win 2k3 but you still need more windows admins.

So quantity over quality? In the end Windows costs the industry over $60 billions dollars a year. A figure from MSFT's sponsors.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Nullav]

Why would I pick MS' hatchling and a few paper-certs over someone who knows what to do and brings his own tools? IT isn't something you forcefully dumb down with flashy toys and clip-on ties; it should be treated as a perpetual learning experience. (If the previously-mentioned 'flashy toy' is well-documented and has proper support for all of those nasty 'ifs', and those paper-certs are willing to google at times, I might actually like the idea.)

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[TheRealSlimShady]

It's an automated monitoring & alerting tool, rather than a GUI tool to perform actions that would traditionally be performed at the command line. So you just let your *nix system run, then when an error occurs (maybe an message gets logged in syslog, maybe a process that should be running isn't), the alerting system can alert you (email, SMS, IM), optionally take corrective action and resolve the issue automatically. You can also collect performance stats etc so you can do capacity planning and analysis. Screen shots here

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck is MS going to make a gui to manage such systems?

Simple: By hacking something together that looks cool, is (at first glance) easy to use and does the most common things for the most common daemons. (Which is not impossible. The management tools for Mac OS X Server do this quite well, I've been told. But I still prefer my shell, thank you very much.). Then they're gonna push it onto the management drones by way of a few millions of ad and bribery dollars.

Once it has become the comprehensive way of managing Unixoid systems in the corporate world (which will hopefully never happen) two things can, and will, happen:

a) M$ is gonna offer certification for that tool and charge an arm and a leg for the test, and all the management drones will start to require IT personell to have that certification (test to be taken at their own expenses of course), again helped by ad dollars and the odd wad of bills put into the right pocket.

b) M$ can drop support for any daemon as they see fit, maybe save the largest ones like apache or bind. And they will, or at least will treaten to, unless... well unless of course the maintainers of any daemon in question would be cooperative enough to comply to M$'s feature requests. And possibly under the condition that M$ itself doesn't offer any 'better' software which they wish to push onto their willing customers.

On Paper everything will stay open source and blah blah blah, but once M$ has it's foot into that market they can exploit it at will, considering the power they hold over corporate computing today.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[techno-vampire]

Command line or GUI, what Microsoft needs to do is to restrict the number of options available when administering Unix/Linux systems

No, no, no! Remember, we're talking Microsoft here. You administrate the system, not administer it!

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[ThreeGigs]

I was thinking along the lines of cPanel, actually.

Oddly enough, it's a proprietary app managing thousands of Linux based websites, and doing quite well for itself, and no one's complaining.

Now, imagine MS doing something along those lines, but with a more comprehensive feature set aimed at managing the whole system. If they come up with something that's as good as, if not better than cPanel, you *will* see admins lining up to license it. And you'll likely see productivity enhancements. And the occasional admin saying to themselves "Damn, I didn't know that option was available, glad I got this GUI app!".

Want to really get your knickers in a bunch? Imagine MS releasing a competitor to KDE and Gnome. In fact, don't imagine it, *expect it*.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[symbolic]

So THAT'S the plan...they're going to embrace the linux server space with clueless windows admins, who, through their own incompetence, will slowly extinguish any interest in Linux. Once you can get someone to play the role of a "connect the dots" admin, you can make all kinds of interesting things happen.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[SaDan]

They can't even manage the systems they wrote them selves very well. What makes them think they can manage a totally different OS?

If I did drugs, I'd love to have what they're smoking in Redmond.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[schauhan]

In the end Windows costs the industry over $60 billions dollars a year. A figure from MSFT's sponsors.

Interesting. Do you recall where you got this figure from. I'd love to see this.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[RightSaidFred99]

Haha, that's...quaint. If you're managing 10,000 machines using ssh and bash scripts, you're an idiot. There's nothing anti-gui about UNIX, it's just about functional interfaces and not window-washing.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would you say has a steeper learning curve?

What purpose would it serve for anyone to have a lesser skilled workforce?

Whom does it serve to have a lower skilled workforce?

When we begin to ask more questions, which requires a willingness to be open, we will discover alot more.

As always, simply follow the money for those who's primary motivation is money and you will understand where this is leading.

If you don't think they're not using Sun Tzu's Art of War as a basis for how they see the Open Source community, then you don't understand them.

Maybe if the Open Source community understood, it is not about being free and saving companies money. At the end of the day it is about making money. And who profits from these kinds of things, and how do they profit?

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Want to really get your knickers in a bunch? Imagine MS releasing a competitor to KDE and Gnome. In fact, don't imagine it, *expect it*. I would be all for this, if it was actually a replacement for Windows -- that is, if they were to also deliver sufficient backwards compatibility to run all my Windows games.

In fact, I'd settle for deprecating Direct3D in favor of OpenGL.

Neither seems particularly likely, though. Your cPanel scenario seems a lot more likely -- pretty much anything that lets them force you to have a Win2K3 server somewhere.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[zippthorne]

That is the direct cost. Since that is only 10 billion more than Microsoft's revenue. And where do you think they get that revenue?

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[miknix]

http://www.engardelinux.org/

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[peragrin]

http://www.cnet.com/8301-13846_1-9920202-62.html

Think about it. That does include things like Solaris, AIX, etc but Windows represents the bulk of that number. Also remember many businesses buy windows twice for every install. Once for their volume site license, and one OEM install that is required to come with every computer sold by the major manufacturers. Dell doesn't sell a computer without an OS very often, and large corporate need to be sure of the licensing so they wipe and reinstall after paying for the OEM install of windows.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Capt James McCarthy]

Actually, it's taking feeds from HPOV (SNMP) and TEC adapters (DM/ITM/Logfile Adapters) to feed their consoles. I don't think that the capability exists (though it may) for the MS console to execute Tivoli tasks on a given system. Otherwise they would have to write the APIs to talk through the Framework to get to the Endpoints. Otherwise you are loading yet another daemon on your Linux/UNIX system that needs to be monitored via ITM/DM or HPOV.

If you already have TEC implementation in place, you should have whatever automation in place that you need anyways.

If I have a mixed enterprise, the last thing I'd want (or have) is for MS to be the MOM. Though to each their own I guess.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[jimicus]

If the answer to that is: Nothing, then the next question is: Why not just use Windows? I suspect you're playing Devil's (or maybe Microsoft's) advocate, but I'll give you a reason anyway.

Because my employer already has an extensive Linux infrastructure, complete with a mail spool alone which would preclude any version of Exchange short of the full enterprise edition with support for very large mailstores. Last time I added the prices up I came to something like £80,000 setup and a further £40,000 per annum in licensing alone. My entire budget for 1 year including hardware, consultancy and licensing but excluding salaries is about £30,000.

Of course, if your employer is coming at it from the other direction - already has an extensive Windows infrastructure - then things may be rather different.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[jimicus]

Ah, so they've reinvented the SNMP management console.

Nice to see such extensive innovation.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[ArhcAngel]

I always scratch my head when I see/hear comments like this. OK, we get it. "True" *nix admins do EVERYTHING from the command line. For years I was among the "command line is better" camp but I had an epiphany. The unwashed masses WANT a simplified GUI. And that includes many system admins who are overloaded and don't have time to write a script to streamline their process. Just because someone finds a GUI easier to use than a command line does not make them inept. A properly coded GUI SHOULD be easier to use.

The pioneers of early computing trudged along coding first in machine code or Binary and eventually they developed assembly language which made things much easier. Assembly eventually lead to "high level" languages like C that had to be compiled back into its binary form to run. Etc, etc. Computing has evolved and if the dinosaurs don't evolve with it they will get left behind.

If you don't want this tool Microsoft is offering to become the de-facto standard in all *nix/Microsoft environments I suggest you come down off your high horse and get coding a FOSS alternative GUI which runs on Windows as well as Linux. Otherwise all your PHB will see when you present your case and Microsoft presents theirs is that the Microsoft tool is polished and colorful and yours is just an ugly black box with a blinking cursor. The command line isn't going away any time soon. Neither is machine language but can you remember the last time you had to code in it?

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[drinkypoo]

Why don't you look up Tivoli Systems and see what their product does? It will do software inventory and distribution, resource management, and alerting across a couple dozen operating systems at least (42 different flavors of Unix plus Windows NT when I worked there.) I think there's a security module, too. By the same token, you can use fwbuilder to manage firewall rules on like ten kinds of firewalls, one of which is Linux; it works by considering all machines the same internally (you just write rules) and then compiling the native ruleset into a ruleset that works for that firewall. There's tons of management utils for Linux that work fine, many of them are graphical. They require some customization to the distribution, but in a corporate environment you're as homogenized as possible and that limits the number of times you have to do this. If you think that "comprehensive management" (whatever that is) of Unix/Linux systems from a GUI isn't possible, then I don't think you're paying sufficient attention. These major enterprise management systems always involve site customization for support of their specific environment. It can cost ten million dollars just for a Tivoli install, you bet your ass that comes with some consulting. A lot of it.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Vellmont]

The gui tools available NATIVELY don't allow for any comprehensive management of Unix/Linux systems.
Less is more, terminal is faster, text over ssh, bash scripting - the entire culture of *nix is anti-gui.

That was true maybe 10 years ago. It's no longer true. Changing the network configuration on most distributions, for instance, is a thousand times easier using the GUI tool. I started out doing all the CLI file editing. I still do that to some degree, but I find myself reaching for the nice GUI tools more often. Even adding/editing users/groups is a LOT easier these days using the GUI.

I'd say the only thing that's anti-GUI are the guys that learned it one way, and refuse to learn anything new.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Alpha830RulZ]

he REAL question is: Are there *ANY* *nix system admins out there that WANT MS to manage their systems?

This part time admin wouldn't mind a single console that could reach and manage all my machines, about half of which are Linux and half of which are windows. I wouldn't care if it runs on Linux or Windows Server. It would be nice if it was free, though, which suggests that Linux would be the delivery point.

On the 'well managed MS Data Centers', I've seen several that are just as well managed as the best unix/linux shops. Possibly better, as the hierarchical structure of the domains lends itself well to structured management. I have never had tools for the linux side that match the MS tools. This is probably due to my ignorance, which I would welcome correction of. I have never found anything that manages sets of user IDs across sets of machines in a coherent fashion. The MS 'domain' concept is pretty handy for that. If anyone wants to point me to one, I would be appreciative.

As to the text versus gui tool approach, I've spent a lot of years using the Unix text commands, and I much prefer the gui approach. Admin isn't my day job, and I don't have enough brain cells remaining to be able to summon up from the depths the commands to configure DNS without grabbing my well thumbed Linux System Administration book. From just the Gnome gui, though, I can always get the box running without consulting a reference. I have the same experience on Windoze servers.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[zappepcs]

I always scratch my head when I see/hear comments like this. OK, we get it. "True" *nix admins do EVERYTHING from the command line. For years I was among the "command line is better" camp but I had an epiphany. The unwashed masses WANT a simplified GUI. And that includes many system admins who are overloaded and don't have time to write a script to streamline their process. Just because someone finds a GUI easier to use than a command line does not make them inept. A properly coded GUI SHOULD be easier to use. Right there is a problem. Writing those scripts *IS* your job. You can never be too busy to do your job unless your management is uninformed or very bad at their job. No arguing, because all you'll have to argue with are excuses. period. If you are too busy to do your job your problems are bigger than system administration.

The pioneers of early computing trudged along coding first in machine code or Binary and eventually they developed assembly language which made things much easier. Assembly eventually lead to "high level" languages like C that had to be compiled back into its binary form to run. Etc, etc. Computing has evolved and if the dinosaurs don't evolve with it they will get left behind. Doing it right is not about evolution per se'. Toilet paper has evolved, but I bet you still wipe your ass the same way? no? Administrating the systems is about using the best tools you can get to do the best job you can as efficiently as you can. If a GUI suits you, go ahead and use it. What do you do if the GUI is not working? If you can't do anything without it, are you only half an admin?

If you don't want this tool Microsoft is offering to become the de-facto standard in all *nix/Microsoft environments I suggest you come down off your high horse and get coding a FOSS alternative GUI which runs on Windows as well as Linux. First, it's arguable that MS' tool will become a standard. I don't think you've been in the average data center lately.

Otherwise all your PHB will see when you present your case and Microsoft presents theirs is that the Microsoft tool is polished and colorful and yours is just an ugly black box with a blinking cursor. The command line isn't going away any time soon. Neither is machine language but can you remember the last time you had to code in it? BTDT, in spades. Guess what, the F/OSS alternative won on price alone. The PHB doesn't care how it's done as long as it IS done, and the PHB doesn't have budget for fancy stuff like administration tools. I quote the PHB: "can't you just write a script and do this?" He says it often.

BTW, yes I can remember the last time I coded in machine language. CS is not restricted to PHP.

I did not point out the average fail of this in the first post, but lets look at them briefly:

MS' options costs money, and requires a MS server to run on (more money).

MS' options are not required to support anything in particular. The end user is dependent on MS to make their product work in the end user's environment. MS' options are closed source, not modifiable by the end users.

If you want something that MS' options won't do, you have to write your own anyway.

If you want a *nix GUI admin program, Webmin is pretty handy. It's open, modifiable, and you can write your own modules. Support is free. It runs on the *nix box you are trying to admin, and uses a web browser for interfacing. Yes, Webmin supports Windows already. I support and use Webmin, I don't need to go write my own.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Alpha830RulZ]

What can you do with *nix that you can't do with Windows

One thing that will always be true is, deploy a machine for $800 less. Over a farm of web/compute servers, that adds up.

Windows is no threat to Linux. Of course, the reverse is true, as well.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[neurovish]

The REAL question is: Are there *ANY* *nix system admins out there that WANT MS to manage their systems? Novell?

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Vellmont]

but it is ALWAYS best to learn the text/terminal/shell commands for the very same thing.

Why? I've been doing this linux thing for 14 years or so, and while I think it's important to understand the system, I really don't understand why it's ALWAYS good to know how to edit some file by hand. Sometimes I don't want to know all the internals of every single configuration option. X11 configuration is crazy complicated, for instance, and I hate having to edit that config file by hand. Networking has become a similar sucky config nightmare. Sometimes it's nice to hide all the guts behind a nice GUI.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[zappepcs]

Yes, car analogy time:

It's nice to have cruise control, but you should know how to drive the car without it too.

Likewise, it's nice to have a nailing gun but you should know how to use a hammer also.

Not sure which one is a better analogy...

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[ArhcAngel]

Right there is a problem. Writing those scripts *IS* your job.

You are INCORRECT sir. My job is making sure the network is transparent and works 120% of the time.

If you are too busy to do your job your problems are bigger than system administration.

BINGO! The majority of places with an IT staff are busy dealing with politics, personality conflicts, enraged customers for one reason or another. Putting out any number of fires that were the net result of a management decision you had no control over. If you don't have to deal with any of those things then Kudos to you.

Toilet paper has evolved, but I bet you still wipe your ass the same way? no? Administrating the systems is about using the best tools you can get to do the best job you can as efficiently as you can. If a GUI suits you, go ahead and use it. What do you do if the GUI is not working? If you can't do anything without it, are you only half an admin?

Actually I no longer use toilet paper to wipe my ass. I found something better. For that matter most of the world doesn't use toilet paper either.
As to what do I do when the GUI doesn't work.....I said in my previous post the command line isn't going anywhere, or didn't you bother to read the whole thing?
Sometimes I get nostalgic and pull out the old Commodore 64 and load up some old programs I wrote for it but that doesn't mean I want to go back to those days.

BTDT, in spades. Guess what, the F/OSS alternative won on price alone. The PHB doesn't care how it's done as long as it IS done, and the PHB doesn't have budget for fancy stuff like administration tools. I quote the PHB: "can't you just write a script and do this?" He says it often.

You must work for a small company. At most large companies the IT staff is lucky if they ever meet the guy making the purchasing decisions. Again, you are the exception, not the rule.

BTW, yes I can remember the last time I coded in machine language. CS is not restricted to PHP.

Not reading the post again. I asked when was the last time you HAD to code in machine language. If you had a choice then you can thank your predecessors who created that choice.

MS' options costs money, and requires a MS server to run on (more money).

Your argument against it is the exact reason most PHBs are going to demand it. The attitude is Microsoft is better because we have to pay for it and so it will be better supported regardless of whether this attitude is based in reality or not.

MS' options are not required to support anything in particular. The end user is dependent on MS to make their product work in the end user's environment. MS' options are closed source, not modifiable by the end users.

See above

Thank you for so eloquently proving my point. Your apparent indignation over any inference that a GUI tool could be as good as a command line goes a long way to support my position.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[azemute]

The nail gun analogy. Like the GUI tool, it just lets you build your coffin more quickly.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Vellmont]

Why do you need an analogy? Can't you just explain yourself describing the thing you're actually talking about?

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I no longer use toilet paper to wipe my ass. I found something better.

Your shirt tail?

(Sorry - don't want to put you down - because I side with your argument. It's just that you left yourself wide open here :-)

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[TheRealSlimShady]

No, that's a different component. They announced two components - one is the *nix agents, the other is the connectors to Openview/TEC. In the case of the *nix agents, SCOM talks to them using OpenPegasus.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[TheRealSlimShady]

Does anyone actually use SNMP to manage operatins systems anymore? As far as I can tell, SNMP sucks hard for doing this, it's hard to use, it's hard to manage, it's pretty insecure. And it's not like this is a new thing that they're doing, MOM has been around since 2000, what they've annouced is the *nix agents - which is a good thing in my opinion.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[jimicus]

SNMPv3 has security built in, and if you're only using it as a monitoring system it's not too bad. Saves messing around with shell scripts which need to re-invent most of the intelligence in net-snmp in order to reliably look at every partition and promptly break in the next major OS upgrade because the way the kernel makes these things visible has changed.

I wouldn't fancy using it for writing values, though.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[sglewis100]

The REAL question is: Are there *ANY* *nix system admins out there that WANT MS to manage their systems? My head about exploded when I read the title. On second reading, well, it makes sense to be able to deal with all things in the data center. I'm just not sure if MS has the m4d sk1l5 for doing so. I have yet to see a well managed MS data center installation.

Probably not, or at least a very small number for sure, but the real question is are there IT shops that are mostly Windows, use MOM, and have 1 or 2 Linux servers running some package they got from a vendor that they'd like to monitor.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[sglines]

No gui management system fro Linux? Ever try webmin?

Is it just me...

[Infonaut]

Or does that Connect Center login look like a dating site?

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or does that Connect Center login look like a dating site?

A dating site for gay men.

Re:Is it just me...

[moderatorrater]

I am a: [ ] Red Hat Enterprise Linux [x] Suse Linux Enterprise [ ] CentOS [ ] Ubuntu looking for a: [x] Windows Server 2008 [ ] Windows Server 2003 [ ] Windows Small Business Server to: [ ] Communicate through RPCs [x] Manage me [ ] Replace me [ ] Invade my ports [ ] Infect me

Surprise

[Daffy Duck]

Microsoft wants to control Linux. What a shock.

Re:Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say it wants users to manage their leased vpn servers without leaving windows. Don't let them try a desktop distro and witness it works good enough to start spending more time on the linux partiton.

I just tried ubuntu hardy on a fairly new acer 5720 (bought with intel 3d card to run linux without proprietary drivers, if possible). All I tested worked, 3d, sound, WEP wireless, integrated cam. It is not as stable as debian, but debian required some more line editing to get WPA wireless and sound working. Windows desktop, be very afraid.

Better late than never

[discogravy]

I hope they find a way to tie tools like these together with their existing tools for windows; something like a built-in mremote, even if not freeware/OSS like mremote (although the mremote author today posted that he's going to be moving to a for-pay model and away from GPL).

Keep away

[Wowsers]

I dual boot Linux and Windows, the less Windows knows about Linux on the system all the better, especially when you consider Windows wants to do stuff like on re-installing Windows, install it's boot loader over the better Linux one. Who knows what Windows would do to file permissions.

Re:Keep away

[jrgp]

Oh good god. I don't see any point whatsoever in Microsoft creating client to manage software it has no experience with whatsoever. $50 says every file on the system will be owned by root.

Re:Keep away

[shutdown -p now]

This has absolutely nothing to do with installing Windows and Linux on the same computer. It is a centralized management system for sysadmins. I would imagine that for mixed Linux/Windows networks (and I've seen plenty - usually it's AD & Exchange on Windows, file servers and often HTTP server for corporate intranet on Linux), it is quite handy to have a single tool to manage it all.

So, they are including

[lazy_nihilist]

Putty.

Chose Wisely

[Hibia]

A) Complete fail, with plenty of problems B) Useless Also: Cygwin if you are THAT attached to your Windows. But seriously, who wants to be managing something with a GUI under Windows, when you could be SSHing in and changing all the settings.

Re:Chose Wisely

[vux984]

But seriously, who wants to be managing something with a GUI under Windows, when you could be SSHing in and changing all the settings.

Yeah, that's why all those cpanel and webmin products are so unpopular. Oh wait... they are extremely popular. Hmmm... maybe people do want this.

I know I do... I like to be able to ssh and change all the settings. But I also like being able to flip a checkbox on a form when I just need to change one setting, or even better, delegate flipping that setting to somebody much less tech savvy than me... and without worry that one typo can bork the entire [whatever].

Choice is good. Competition is good. We're not losing anything here so what's the problem?

Re:Chose Wisely

[Anonymous Coward]

"Choice is good. Competition is good."

I could go for that in this case except that almost everything Microsoft produces is crap. Their products are not competitive because their market is not and they sit on their intellectual asses. Therefore they provide little if any real choice.

Plus, I distrust them, but only because they've earned that distrust.

Re:Chose Wisely

[Mr. Sketch]

But seriously, who wants to be managing something with a GUI under Windows A Windows user?

Re:Chose Wisely

[houstonbofh]

Many people. Have you ever used MOM or something like it? There are no FOSS products that can give an overview and easy management of a hundred or so Linux systems like MOM, or BMC, or CA or Tivoli can do with Windows. Attitudes like your are why FOSS is so far behind. Many people want an easy way to manage 100 desktops before they deploy 100 desktops. And while Microsoft makes some crappy products, they are always easy. Microsoft could own this market very fast, and that should scare you. The fact is that all the easy ways to manage a large number of Linux systems are closed source. Why is that? PS: If I am wrong, please post some links. I hope I am wrong, because SSHing into all the systems I support is killing me.

Re:Chose Wisely

[isj]

IMHO, A mix of GUI+command-line works best. I use Yast for the initial setup, and the command-line for tweaking. I wouldn't dream of setting up network cards initially via the command-line. I guess that it depends on whether the GUI simplifies a task without being too limited. Examples:
Adding network cards: Yast manages udev detection, persistent interface naming, and ip/mask. Command-line would be too cumbersome.
Adding NFS mount: command-line wins here (1 line in /etc/fstab)
Adding software: yast is OK. Yum is nice too. download+untar+compile+install? Only if I have to.
Adding a user: I always end up using "useradd" and "groupadd" to have complete control.
Configuring init.d: GUI runlevel management is easier than making symbolic links myself.
Adding a printer to cups: GUI wins here.

So I think the whole idea of managing unix and linux from a Windows GUI tool depends on on the quality of the software an whether it offers any value for a system administrator.

Re:Chose Wisely

[Kent Recal]

Many people who want to deploy "100 desktops" (or rather "100 servers" in this context) will first want to hire competent staff to manage said hosts.
For OSS unix-management stuff I'd point to puppet, cfengine, FAI (debian specific) and others. As usual there is not "one tool to rule them all" but a set of building blocks that competent staff will assemble into something suitable to the task.

Re:Chose Wisely

[Drakin020]

But seriously, who wants to be managing something with a GUI under Windows, when you could be SSHing in and changing all the settings

Umm...because it's easier?

Re:Chose Wisely

[whoever57]

Configuring init.d: GUI runlevel management is easier than making symbolic links myself.

But a command-line tool such as chkconfig or rc-update is easier than either a GUI or making the symbolic links yourself. In fact, Red Hat's system-config-* tools are very effective.

Re:Chose Wisely

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used MOM before. Masters Of Magic is an awesome game - you all should try it too!

Re:Chose Wisely

[Dolda2000]

Not having used MOM, I cannot see what it would be good for, so maybe you could enlighten me a bit? What would one use an overview on one's servers for? What kind of "system health" monitoring would be better than, say, a hardware watchdog timer?

Re:Chose Wisely

[houstonbofh]

Quick view in a GUI, what servers are one what OS, at what patch level? What have system updates ready? (Single click to update them) What optional packages do I have available and on how many systems? How does this compare with licensing? What systems are between 70% and 80% disk full or disk usage average? CPU? Memory? Yes, all of these things can be done on Linux by hand with many components. One package combining all this into a clean GUI anyone can use that is multi-platform (and not in the 6-7 figure price range like BMC) would sell well. I sell a lot of Linux desktop systems, but I can't touch the enterprise. They all want a GUI they can understand to monitor and manage all there systems. Microsoft MOM (formerly SMS) does this for Windows easily. Adding Linux support means that Microsoft owns the Linux desktop in the enterprise. I could see this happening all to easily, and I would hate it.

Re:Chose Wisely

[afidel]

Landesk already does all that and supports mac's and handhelds as well.

Re:Chose Wisely

[Alpha830RulZ]

Why is this guy modded troll? He's right, he's courteous, and he's on point. S/B insightful +5

Re:Chose Wisely

[drsmithy]

[...] who wants to be managing something with a GUI under Windows, when you could be SSHing in and changing all the settings.

Me. More accurately, me on behalf of my staff, because a GUI-based system is orders of magnitude more robust than one where they can make typos, or other, similar, involuntary mistakes.

Re:Chose Wisely

[maciarc]

But seriously, who wants to be managing something with a GUI under Windows A Windows user? I think the more important question is: What admin wants a windows user managing his linux boxes?

Re:Chose Wisely

[Lord Kestrel]

MOM isn't SMS, and SMS isn't MOM. MOM (Microsoft Operations Manager) is a monitoring product like Openview and Tivoli. SMS is for application deployment and patching.

Re:Chose Wisely

[nuzak]

> Have you ever used MOM or something like it?

Yeah, yours.

C'mon, you seriously invited that one.

Itsatrap

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, OK, it gets overused on MS stories... but there certainly hasn't been a more appropriate one for it recently.

Re:Itsatrap

[mysidia]

That's probably exactly what they're using to build this tool.

SNMP Traps and SNMP Queries.

Some times of monitoring of Unix systems will work.

Advanced system management features will probably only work on Windows hosts.

Re:Itsatrap

[TheRealSlimShady]

Not in this case. It's an agent based technology (or at least, it can be, SNMP is also an option - a poor one, but an option). The agent reports information back to the Ops Mgr environment, and since it's agent based you can also get the agent to execute commands on your behalf (natively).

Hmmmmm.

[jd]

I see you are trying to manage Linux. Do you want help installing Vista instead?

• Yes
• No, I'll install Vista myself now
• killall clippy

Re:Hmmmmm.

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

killall clippy

please, don't do a half-assed job, mmmkay?

# killall clippy
# find / -name "*clippy*" -exec rm -f {} \;

see ? that's how's done

Re:Hmmmmm.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Here, let me fix this for you:

# cat >> /etc/rc.local
killall -9 clippy
find / -iname '*clippy*' -type f -exec shred -ufn 50 {} \;
find / -iname '*clippy*' -exec rm -rf {} \;
^D
# `tail -3 /etc/rc.local`

Translation, for the Unix-challenged: /etc/rc.local, at least on Ubuntu, is run at the end of a normal boot. This adds three lines to it and executes them. The first kills with -9, which sends signal 9, the "real" kill signal, which is near-immediate and cannot be ignored by the process. The second is like the original find command, but limits itself to regular files, and overwrites their data 50 times -- double the default for the shred command. The third line goes back and checks for any directories named 'clippy', and, because I'm lazy, just does a recursive (forced) delete, rather than shredding their contents.

After adding those three lines, it executes them immediately.

My one regret is that root usually doesn't have my ssh key -- otherwise, I'd have this distributing flaming death to Clippy anywhere on our network.

Re:Hmmmmm.

[SanityInAnarchy]

It just occurred to me that tail is a bit of a roundabout way of doing this. Cleaned up a bit more:

# `tee -a /etc/rc.local`
killall -9 clippy
find / -iname '*clippy*' -type f -exec shred -ufn 50 {} \;
find / -iname '*clippy*' -exec rm -rf {} \;
^D That is technically a one-liner. In fact, let's literally make it a one-liner, because I'm bored.

# `echo killall -9 clippy; find / -iname '*clippy*' -type f -exec shred -ufn 50 {} \;; find / -iname '*clippy*' -exec rm -rf {} \;; | tee -a /etc/rc.local` Technically not equivalent, as it makes the lines added to rc.local just as ugly, but it's probably the safest way of doing this. Of course, beware of bugs in the above code; I have neither proven it correct nor tested it, and I don't endorse actually doing this, for obvious reasons.

Re:Hmmmmm.

[An ominous Cow art]

To be completely sure, shouldn't you also delete any directory (and its contents) found to be harboring *clippy*, as an example to the rest of the file system?

Re:Hmmmmm.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Well, in that case, I'd end up doing

# rm -rf /

I'm not sure I'd go that far.

I would, however, load up a Quake 3 mod featuring Clippy, so I can kill it more graphically, over and over again.

Re:Hmmmmm.

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

let me fix it even further:

# crontab -l > cron.$$$
# echo "0 1 * * * killall -9 clippy; find / -iname '*clippy*' -type f -exec shred -ufn 50 {} \;; find / -type d -iname '*clippy*' -exec rm -rf {} \; " >> cron.$$$
# crontab cron.$$$
# rm cron.$$$

now it runs once a day at 1:00 AM, just in case you don't reboot all that often.

Indemnity

[Anonymous Coward]

Manages them? Or documents the number of patent violations employed by a company and reports back to Microsoft?

we really promise to play nice this time...

[harvey the nerd]

Uh, no thanks. We work too hard to avoid defective products, extortion, and sources of malware for anymore chances. Please extend, embrace and extinguish yourselves.

Better management and monitoring tools

[Anonymous Coward]

There are much better solutions out there:

Nagios, Hyperic, Versiera, Zennos and SpiceWorks.

Re:Better management and monitoring tools

[drakaan]

I can't speak to how easy MOM is to use, but (about a year ago), I gave nagios and Zennos a try, without much luck. Configuration was difficult enough that I didn't know where to look for what to try and reconfigure. I was looking for an open-source OpenView replacement. I may revisit them (and look at the other two), if they're working better now...

Re:Better management and monitoring tools

[sleigher]

take a look at opennms. http://www.opennms.org/index.php/Main_Page

I agree zenoss was a little weird but I think nagios is great!

GPL?

[Gonoff]

Will this stuff be infringing the GPL in any way? You might wonder if MS' lawyers have looked over this but we have heard in the past that Bill & Steve consider it a Communist plot or something...

Re:GPL?

[shadylookin]

even MS can use linux. They'd only violate the gpl if they took code from an existing gpl'ed project and made their own without releasing the source.

That's not a control panel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look out, it's a trap!

Thanks Microsoft, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Unix/Linux systems can be managed just fine without your supposed "help." You'll find that out soon enough when no one uses your piece of shit beta.

Microsoft Linux

[calebt3]

So they are building a GUI to manage Linux servers. Could this eventually lead to a MS Linux distribution? (of course one that masks the cli and possibly has it's own proprietary clones of all the 'standard' programs)

Re:Microsoft Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

It is called Xenix. (Ok, so it's Unix and not Linux)

Re:Microsoft Linux

[jcr]

MS washed their hands of Xenix a long time ago. They sold its rotting corpse to SCO.

-jcr

Re:Microsoft Linux

[Deanalator]

I believe you are referring to SUSE. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I think microsoft is actually trying hard to make sure you can easily run a linux server farm in a windows datacenter.

I think that this is why microsoft has been hiring up so many xen/suse people. From their hires and acquisitions, you can tell that microsoft is investing a TON into the virtualization market.

Re:Microsoft Linux

[SL Baur]

Xenix and early SCO were fairly popular and very stable systems. The corpse part didn't come until much later. Up until around the mid 1990's, SCO Unix was an excellent choice for a proprietary Unix.

Re:Microsoft Linux

[zeylisse]

  __ It looks like you are trying to issue a command into root prompt.
/ \ Would you like me to:
|/ \ * read the manual page for you?
|| | * input some characters and beep?
|| | * search microsoft.com for most appropriate command?
\__/


What? At least i resisted to joke about Cancel/Allow! Just think what a simple apt-get would look like!

Re:Microsoft Linux

[i_love_unix]

I think if Microsoft were to produce their own version of *NIX, it would probably be based on *BSD so that they could close-source it. Microsoft has built their business strategy in recent years around the idea that "open source is bad," so I can't imagine they'd go against that philosophy now.

Re:Microsoft Linux

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Why make your own Linux distro when you can make money offering programs/services for managing/supporting others' distros? If Microsoft put their minds to it, they could easily hire a bunch of Linux gurus and offer better and/or cheaper support for Red Hat's own distros, and put Red Hat out of business. (Of course, that's part of the risk of the support-based revenue business model; if others can provide better support than you can for your own products, you're screwed.)

Re:Microsoft Linux

[JasterBobaMereel]

SCO Unix was different from The SCO we know and hate

Santa Cruz Operation produced a Unix that was fairly popular and stable - sold it's assets to Caldera who renamed themselves SCO and started suing ....

Xenix was bought by Santa Cruz Operations and folded into SCO Unix before they sold it to Caldera ...

The Rotting heap was Sco Unix as sold by The SCO Group

Re:Microsoft Linux

[defected]

SCOM is similar to HP Openview, TEC and BMC Patrol.... tools that happen to have a visual representation of your environment and limited management...nothing to do with a Linux distro.

Manage a Unix/Linux System from an MS System?

[walter_f]

Why should anybody want to do this?

Strange idea, very strange.

Re:Manage a Unix/Linux System from an MS System?

[Anonymous Coward]

So that MSCEs can continue to point and click in bliss?

Afterall *nix admins manage windows boxes by installing unix style utilities. Microsoft must realize that if their point and click experts were to actually learn the standard cli tools, most wouldn't want to work with Windows ever again.

Re:Manage a Unix/Linux System from an MS System?

[ancientt]

Well, for those of us using MS management tools, this may (potentially) provide a nice consolidation of the tools we use. If I could get a plug-in that would consolidate the updating processes and reporting, then yes, that would be handy.

Certainly I can do everything that I need to with the tools from each system, but it wouldn't hurt my feelings if it could all be done through one interface with the reports bundled into one system that works well with MS Severs that I already have to support. No argument that it would make me just as happy if Red Hat, Novell or Ubuntu came out with the same product that would manage multiple systems, but MS has source code and the ability to develop directly for both, which as unfair as it may be, the Linux community cannot have.

The way I see it, if MS decides to develop tools for Linux systems management, the admin of mixed systems will have three choices:

• Continue to use the tools that come natively with each system
• Build custom tools to consolidate the common functionality of updating, monitoring and reporting for each
• Use tools that manage homogeneous systems even if those tools come from MS.

MS will make me consider two questions. First, are the tools provided by MS good enough to replace some of the ones I already use for Linux systems? And as an ancillary second, do I prefer to take a stand for my ideals or do I prefer the convenience?

Re:Manage a Unix/Linux System from an MS System?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should anybody want to do this? Simple, to allow virus writers easy access to a Unix/Linux system.

Step 1, infect Windows Operating system with virus
Step 2, use Windows remote control software to gain easy access to Unix/Linux system as MS control software may/will run as root on *nix
Step 3, root Windows and all controlling *nix boxes at the same time.... claim "Cracker of all OS" status
Step 4, listen to Microsoft say: see *nix can be infected, it's not just our OS.
Step 5, MS will add UAC patch to *nix kernel to make it as secure as Vista

And yes, some previous poster is correct, http://connect.microsoft.com/ looks like a dating site....

Give me a brake it is 2:30am here....

Re:Manage a Unix/Linux System from an MS System?

[Hucko]

And it looks like they are using Ubuntu brown!

Ha, I'm doing just the opposite

[rwa2]

A lot of my work these days deals with getting Windows boxes to act more like *NIX boxes so I can operate them remotely from a central Linux box.

It's working out pretty well, actually... I set up cygwin with sshd installed in interactive mode, so I can run a script on the central server and have a cluster of WinXP machines all open an application simultaneously, such as play a video simultaneously or connect to a set of VNC servers all at once. I can also use rsync to efficiently distribute and keep a set of files up to date.

Still running into a bunch of limitations of what I can do remotely, such as set the display mode to a certain resolution, etc. so it ultimately won't keep me from replacing the remote machines with a bunch of custom Knoppix LiveCDs eventually. But at least this way I can still leverage the other Windows sysadmins we have an abundance of.

Re:Ha, I'm doing just the opposite

[fbartho]

I'm not endorsing this since I've never used it, but there is a freeware application that lets you change the resolution from the commandline:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/Resolution-Changer.shtml

It can do it temporarily or permanently, and you can set it to run a second application and revert resolutions when the application quits.

Re:Ha, I'm doing just the opposite

[rwa2]

Yeah, the main deficiency is that I actually have to set up the special clone modes used by the nVidia drivers. nVidia does ship with a handy profile manager tool as part of nView, but I haven't figured out how to launch it from the command line in such a way that it actually restores a profile. Maybe if I played around with AutoHotKey some more I could create a script/macro that does it by manipulating the GUI, but yuck.

Another nVidia / nView problem I'm running into is launching applications on other displays. I can set up nView to automatically place applications with a certain name on the 2nd display. But when I launch the same thing remotely through ssh, it always comes up on the primary desktop, even if I launch it via a batch script or AutoHotKey script. I've tried comparing and tweaking various environment variables between the local command prompt and the ssh command prompt, but no joy.

Sorry to hijack thread with work woes :P

Re:Ha, I'm doing just the opposite

[Bob The Cowboy]

I don't know if this will help you (I haven't yet gotten the chance to install Cygwin on my Windows network) but there is a command line app that will change resolution. I'm not sure if you can call it from a ssh shell or not. I use it in a login (batch) script for a lab to always ensure that the screen is a certain resolution when the user starts their machine.

It's called QRes, and it's BSD licensed. Maybe it can help you out: http://qres.sf.net/

There's a setup file which produces some GUI app I've never used, and then a qres32.dll and qres.exe, if I'm not mistaken.

I'd be interested in hearing more of what you're doing, as I've been beginning to work along those same lines (NIX-ifying my WinBoxen) at my work. Drop me a line at billysanders at gmail.

Bill

Re:Ha, I'm doing just the opposite

[Culture20]

use reg.exe to alter "HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\VIDEO{FOO_HHHHHHHHH}\0000\Default Settings.XResolution" and "HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\VIDEO{FOO_HHHHHHHHH}\0000\Default Settings.YResolution" Note that FOO_HHHHHHHHH is a "random" string based on your video hardware, so you'll have to use reg.exe to list the keys in "HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\" first, then have your script do the editing. I had to do this once with psexec on a machine that natively became 320x240 (weirdest thing ever). Here's someone's batch file that reads and prints display settings ( surely can be modified to set instead ): http://www.robvanderwoude.com/files/getresxp.txt

Re:Ha, I'm doing just the opposite

[Culture20]

@&$@@^&$@& Why does /. still insist on HTML as the default? Hey, /., how does one post a correction without having to deal with "Slow down Cowboy!"? It's been minutes since I posted that unreadable HTML garbage I'm correcting.

use reg.exe to alter
"HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\VIDEO{FOO_HHHHHHHHH}\0000\Default Settings.XResolution" and
"HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\VIDEO{FOO_HHHHHHHHH}\0000\Default Settings.YResolution"

Note that FOO_HHHHHHHHH is a "random" string based on your video hardware, so you'll have to use reg.exe to list the keys in "HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\" first, then have your script do the editing.

I had to do this once with psexec on a machine that natively became 320x240 (weirdest thing ever).

Here's someone's batch file that reads and prints display settings ( surely can be modified to set instead ):
http://www.robvanderwoude.com/files/getresxp.txt

Re:Ha, I'm doing just the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to do compiled scripts with Autoit and then push the executables with pstools. Both programs are free (beer) though they are windows based. Don't know what your specific requirements are but with autoit you can emulate mouse and keyboard actions so you can do just about anything.

Re:Ha, I'm doing just the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could write your own scriptable screen resizer... http://andkorn.googlepages.com/sresize.zip

Re:Ha, I'm doing just the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to try having explorer.exe run the applications, as I wouldn't be surprised if nVidia implemented their stuff with shell extensions.

Re:Ha, I'm doing just the opposite

[afidel]

Just so you know next time you can mount the registry over the network. From regedit go to File->Connect network Registry. Useful for turning on remote desktop on a machine you forgot to click the check box on.

Re:Ha, I'm doing just the opposite

[SanityInAnarchy]

FYI, the new comment system doesn't seem to ever tell me to slow down. I suspect they assume that AJAX comments are at least being typed by a human.

Or maybe it's that it forces me to preview first -- which, by the way, seems to make the "slow down" message go away in non-AJAX mode.

Re:Ha, I'm doing just the opposite

[Chris Mattern]

Wow. Good thing it isn't one of those hard-to-configure Linux boxes.

Interesting implications

[bcmm]

It almost seems as if they have just noticed that there is nothing they can do about Linux's domination of the server world, or the decline of the desktop, and have decided that Windows can be the the frontend/thin client.

Re:Interesting implications

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd need to see some reliable figures before I trumpet the demise of Windows.For better or worse, behind the corporate firewall Windows is still dominant. Yes, I run production linux, but in the 'tool for the job' philosophy, Windows is not going to go away.

BTW, Server 2008 really is rather good. A new OS is always fun, Windows or not.

Ignorance is bliss

[thethibs]

Does anyone here have even a faint idea of what Operations Manager is? Judging from the posts so far, the answer is obviously "Not a clue".

It's not a remote shell.

"Infringing the GPL?!" LOL!

Re:Ignorance is bliss

[thethibs]

Come to think of it, I think it deserves a full-blown ROTFLOL!

Re:Ignorance is bliss

[geekoid]

An attempt to put an MS label on non MS boxes.

Re:Ignorance is bliss

[TheRealSlimShady]

Shameless karma whoring...

Here for information about what Operations Manager is for those who might like to read before commenting. I know, this is Slashdot and that's frowned upon...

This may be a good thing in the long run

[mlts]

Devil's advocate here:

Long term, this might be a help for Linux and other UNIX variants. A lot of companies are required, either due to regulations, contract or their own corporate policies to perform audits on computer systems. Having a "one stop shop" by MS where someone can punch a button and generate a report on vital machine statistics for every single thing hooked up to the corporate network, down to the USB powered urinals, regardless of OS being run, will allow IT shops more freedom in choosing operating systems.

Having OS independence for this tool would allow a shop to use Linux for a number of servers, but when audit time comes around, it will be as easy to print out a report about the machine's and how it adheres to corporate policy as the Windows machines. Audits of machine and network infrastructure security are a critical part of a lot of businesses and any tool that allows this to be made easier is definitely a help.

Using a tool like this, a business can not just say to a prospective client that "all our network connected computers have antivirus, antispyware, and firewall software installed that are kept updated", but actually show it, by showing a report that even the Solaris boxes have Mcafee installed [1] with current vdef files.

[1]: Yes, we all know about UNIX boxes and viruses, but there are lots of times when virus scanning software has to be present on all machines due to contract or legal reasons, even if the installed program just takes up space in /usr/local and the only thing it does is fire up a cron job to update the virus definitions and occasionally run a filesystem scan.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that most impressed me about your post was that you actually know what MOM does (unlike almost every other post in this thread).

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[thethibs]

Listen to the man—he knows whereof he speaks.

Microsoft didn't just dream this up. Their customers, including a few of my clients, have been asking for this. A lot of non-trivial data centres run a mix of platforms—LAMP for Web, Windows Server for file services and AD, something else for databases,... They want to manage all this with a single management environment and toolkit.

Microsoft is doing what it does best. It's responding to a well-defined customer need.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[Kent Recal]

Admittedly I have only glimpsed at TFA. But what the hell does "manage" mean in this context?
Last time I checked our hosts ran a mixed set of services, most of which are best (and most comfortably) "managed" from the command line - by editing config files.

What is MS gonna do, create a GUI frontend for every piece of OSS unix software out there?
Preferably a unified one?

Excuse me while I go laugh my ass off.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[grcumb]

...USB powered urinals....

Man you give a whole new meaning to the phrase 'hot plug'.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[Foofoobar]

It's responding to people who want buttons. People who learned how to sys admin via buttons and don't know how to actually administer a system without a button. People who don't know how to build themselves a cert without a button. People who don't know how to check their logs without a button. People who should never have been hired as system administrators in the first place.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[TheRealSlimShady]

Actually it's for people who want to be automatically alerted when there are issues with their systems, or who want to record performance & availability information for reporting and analysis. Or people who want an overall view of the state of their systems, so that they can see at a glance what services are working correctly, or what aren't. It's nothing to do with providing point and click management, it's about providing a centralised monitoring and reporting interface.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[sloanster]

IMHO it's not at all a good thing in the long run if it leads to an ms lock-in.

Sure, microsoft frantically desires to be relevant, and it's no doubt their wet dream to have a world where you can't manage unix without ms windows.

But, I'll pass - thanks but no thanks. Give me one or two skilled unix admins, and I'm good.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[pandrijeczko]

Yep. It's called SNMP and Syslog. Nothing new to see here, please move on.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[Dolda2000]

[...]A lot of companies are required, either due to regulations, contract or their own corporate policies to perform audits on computer systems. Having a "one stop shop" by MS where someone can punch a button and generate a report on vital machine statistics for every single thing hooked up to the corporate network, down to the USB powered urinals, regardless of OS being run, will allow IT shops more freedom in choosing operating systems.[...] Seeing you say that at least seems to verify my suspicions about these kinds of programs; people do not use them because they actually want to, but because they are required to.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[Foofoobar]

a button to check your logs...

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[Anonymous Coward]

>down to the USB powered urinals

Some data really shouldn't be streaming.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[TheRealSlimShady]

Yeah, except SNMP sucks.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[TheRealSlimShady]

So do you check your logs manually? If you're managing 100's or 1000's of servers, how well does that scale? At that point, you can't check them all manually, so you have an automated system that does it for you, and tells you when it detects a problem. And it's not only logs - it will tell you when that process that was supposed to be running isn't, or when the server has died completely, or when that web application is taking too long to respond. And it does it automatically, so that you don't have to check them yourself. You know, all that stuff that usually you cobble together a bunch of scripts to do for you, you just get done in the agent for you.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[Foofoobar]

No I generally use grep. But yes a tool is useful when I have to do alot of tasks at once. My point is if you don't know the basics then, you are useless without your button. I cant ask you to manually config, grep a log or add a shell script to the crontab if you depend on GUI's. And I have (and still am in the process of) run across too many Windows sys admins who freak out when they have to do ANYTHING that does not have a GUI. They need to learn the basics and take the training wheels off before adding more tasks to make them dumber than before.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[TheRealSlimShady]

Well it's not aimed at replacing administrative expertise, it's aimed at replacing repetitive tasks that don't need to have an admin do them. Why waste your time grepping through logs if you can have your system do so and tell you when there's an issue? That way you use your expertise for what you need it for - and all those boring tasks get done automatically. I don't know about you, but I hate reading log files if I don't have to...in a GUI or at a command line.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[Foofoobar]

A non-admin looking at your logs? Great!! And that's beneficial HOW? So that they can spot only the thing you asked them to spot? A sys admin can also trouble shoot while looking through a log and spot additional problems. A non-admin will not. Boy, you are talking yourself further into that hole. This tool is looking more and more dumb all the time.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[TheRealSlimShady]

Which bit of automated tool, and not aimed at replacing administrative expertise did you miss? Yeah, cause it's a tool it's looking for things that you tell it to look for, but the point is that once you start dealing with more than say 10 servers you're getting to the point where manually looking through the logs of every server doesn't scale. An automated tool can look for the common stuff, and let you know when it happens. Then when there are other problems (which could be picked up by other components of the tool - say a process not running, a file not existing in a directory, a file existing and having been there too long all sorts of other things) you can look through the logs manually if you need to. And then configure your monitoring system to pick up that the next time it happens - and across all your systems. eventually you build up a good body of knowledge that means the tool does the boring bits of your job for you - it detects when they are problems, you figure out the why (the bit that actually takes intelligence). I don't know about you, maybe you enjoy reading logs when you don't have to.

Re:This may be a good thing in the long run

[Foofoobar]

Processes throw errors, scripts catch errors and things that are questionable. Don't you have a log file for going through your log files? Don't you have a set of scripts already in place for maintaining this and grabbing most of the questionable stuff for analyzing and putting into a separate log so that you can create better script for better analysis? How long did you say you have been doing this job? Sheesh.

One Command

[KwKSilver]

My guess is that they will only support one command, e.g., dummy@dodo:~# rm -rf

8-(

Re:One Command

[AngryDill]

Evil, but not quite evil enough. It would probably be something more like "dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hda"

-a.d.-

Opps

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for a second I thought "yeah, that's right" but then I saw your sig.

Re:Opps

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for a second I was going to agree with you, but you can't spell "oops."

From Microsoft

[Ariastis]

"Please use our BETA software to manage your stable servers. kthnxbai"

Re:From Microsoft

[s4ltyd0g]

Well of course. Besides, Microsoft has a proven track record for building secure systems. What could possibly go wrong?

Microsoft Helps Police Crack Your Computer

[chartreuse]

I can't believe it -- am I really the first person to think of this story and wonder if they'd make a USB key to unlock Linux, too?

Awesome!

[Vexorian]

You do not need windows anymore to get locked into Microsoft!

OH BOY !!!

[unity100]

their software cant manage their own systems thoroughly. now its gonna manage linux ? oh boy oh boy oh boy !! hot jupiters !

Re:OH BOY !!!

[geekoid]

Well, this system has the advantage of managing non-MS systems.

Re:OH BOY !!!

[unity100]

un-managing you mean ... or de-managing ... or totally dismantling and sending them in shambles ...

Cool...

[PaulusMagnus]

...and next week I'll be giving the keys to my Porsche to my 12 year old son to look after.

Bite the Bullet

[VeteranNoob]

Why doesn't Microsoft just bite the bullet and base the next version of Windows on Linux or BSD?

We could finally see a secure and maintainable version of Windows. And Linux might finally see its adoption on the desktop like it has always sought.

It is obvious that Windows has become stagnant. Adoption seems to be nil, or possibly even negative. When ordinary (read: non-geek) acquaintances go out of their way to trash Vista, you know it's in trouble. And I don't believe their code-base is the issue, either, since they've purportedly redone it. Instead, I think they're suffering from decades of complacency due to having no competition. And if they don't change their tune soon, they risk being surpassed.

OTOH, Linux is ready for prime-time. With technologies like HAL, Udev, and Dbus (amongst many others), Linux is easily growing out of its role as a server O/S. Everything is in place to create any kind of application, securely, from a Compiz-enabled desktop to a POS register. That's more than I can say for Windows, despite it being deployed on these platforms. The only barriers left are formalities and time. Linux is poised to dominate, and Microsoft must be aware of that considering their recent behavior.

They should take a hint from Apple, hit the reset switch on Windows and rebuild it from Linux. They could use their experience to develop a more modularized, secure, stable operating system than they have ever been able to offer.

They probably wouldn't reap the profits that they are used to, but then again they probably aren't doing that now. In fact, I would expect that they would divert some of their focus away from their Windows product line. After all, Linux-based Windows could be a nearly free enabler to all of their other product lines. Also, Microsoft could gain a bit of goodwill by contributing their changes back to the community and finally owning up to their so-called open source initiative.

It can be easily argued that Microsoft needs goodwill more than it needs wealth at the moment.

Re:Bite the Bullet

[turing_m]

Everything is in place to create any kind of application, securely, from a Compiz-enabled desktop to a POS register. That's more than I can say for Windows, despite it being deployed on these platforms.
I think you are being too harsh. Windows ME is widely regarded as the gold standard of POS operating systems. Vista comes close, at least on slashdot.

Re:Bite the Bullet

[shutdown -p now]

Why doesn't Microsoft just bite the bullet and base the next version of Windows on Linux or BSD?

Why should they mess with the GPL like that? They seem to be doing fine as it is, even with Vista (if you look at the sales...). And Windows Server 2008 is doing even better (when did you last hear a rant about that one?).

Re:Bite the Bullet

[lordSaurontheGreat]

"Why doesn't Microsoft just bite the bullet and base the next version of Windows on Linux or BSD?"

Because the only ego in the world greater than Steve Jobs' is Steve Ballmer's. I'm praying that Microsoft's -11% profits this quarter due to the whole Vista fiasco will prompt a changing of the guard. Ballmer's bad for Microsoft. He's picking fights with Google and Yahoo! when he should be focusing on his degenerating core businesses: Windows and Office. Office adoption is less than stellar, and Windows Vista has petitions demanding its demise circulating around on the Internet. Meanwhile, Ballmer is trying to break into the Internet advertising market to try and kill Google. Bad idea. Microsoft tried to buy Google a while back, and was denied. So now he's trying to kill Google dead. He should focus on his own products first, not killing other people. If he keeps this up, Windows will be dead. True, he'll have the Internet ads market, but then he'll only hope to be as big as Google. It doesn't bode well for Microsoft to keep Steve. I hope a few of their deluded chairmen figure that out.

Re:Bite the Bullet

[archen]

If windows is stagnant it is because of the company, not because it is entirely technically infeasible for Windows to progress. Open source is not a magic pixy dust that will fix that. Switching to Linux would be trying to treat the symptoms instead of the cause.

April Fools Joke

[Bananatree3]

Imagine this playing over Microsoft's recruitment center PA on April 1st.

We are the Borg...We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.

some more information

[Tumbleweed]

Yahoo News
Microsoft leverages two community projects promoting open protocols for network management-- Web Services for Management and OpenPegasus-- to enable cross-platform support. Microsoft also has joined the steering committee for the OpenPegasus project and will contribute royalty-free code to the project

some articles via Google News

Nexus SC: The System Center Team Blog

Information Week

Microsoft won't just rip the code from OpenPegasus, but will join IBM, HP and others on the OpenPegasus Steering Committee and contribute code back to the project under the OSI-approved Microsoft Public License, which the Free Software Foundation has said is compatible with the GNU GPL version 3. The terms of the Microsoft Public License mean that any code Microsoft contributes will be freely modifiable and usable by anyone, so long as copyrights in the code are left intact.

"It's very important to me that we use OSI-approved licenses when using open source," Sam Ramji, Microsoft's director of platform strategy and one of its top open source advocates, said in an interview.

Microsoft's adoption of OpenPegasus for the Operations Manager add-in could be seen as a small data point that shows Microsoft is getting a little bit more comfortable with the open source world by working with IBM and others on an open source project. It's not like Microsoft is open sourcing all of System Center, but it is a step nonetheless.

Re:some more information

[Tumbleweed]

Crap. Take off the trailing 'J' from the Yahoo article for that one to work. *sigh*

Re:some more information

[revengebomber]

They're contributing code under a license different from the project it's intended for? I know it's technically doable, but it's suspicious at best coming from MS.

IBM Called

[bhmit1]

They're pulling support for the Tivoli Enterprise Console (TEC). You're supposed to be developing for Omnibus now.

yet another virus vector

[fred fleenblat]

So when my windows box gets pwned, the botmaster can just wait for root access next time I uses MOM and then he gets my linux cluster too? No thanks.

actually you could probably do that

[Anonymous Coward]

that is actually quite interesting....
i can vision mass installs or something?

you can write a lot of fascinating scripts using pywin-32 that do things like change resolution... specialized windows stuff that pywin32 hooks into... the problem is how to securely set them off remotely. . . ???

Re:actually you could probably do that

[fbartho]

sshd with keys isn't secure enough for you?

Re:it's the GUI stupid

[plantman-the-womb-st]

Why exactly do you think that the casual home user is trying to manage a room full of servers?

Say what?

[thatskinnyguy]

For a second there I thought I misparsed the title as "Fox guards hen house".

Nope. MSFT needs some Wall St. Cred STAT!

[mikelieman]

So they're going to pretend to be competent enough to play in the "Enterprise Management" arena. Like they pretend to be competent enough to play in every arena they've entered...

Sometimes it works better than others. Now? Not so much... I see MSFT is down today, and going down further in after hours.

RHT and GOOG are up, however.

It's called Tivoli -- And it's by IBM.

[mikelieman]

And when your data center grows up to be big and strong, you can buy it too.

One GUI

[unchiujar]

One GUI To Rule Them All, One GUI To Find Them, One GUI To Bring Them All And Under Windows Bind Them....

Re:One GUI

[GaryOlson]

That's funny.
Could you translate that into old Elvish to make it sound less darkly evil and more sagely beneficial?

oxymoron

[gzipped_tar]

>"The Cross Platform and Interop team at Microsoft"

What an elaborate oxymoron.

btw Why don't they develop a Linux tool for managing Windows machines instead? We already have OpenSSH.

GPL

[Danzigism]

would someone please modify the GPL to say "Anyone can use this code unless you are Microsoft"

Re:GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

NO, Dumb ass. Its a virus, we *want* them to use it.

I'll be impressed if they cover two commands

[Gazzonyx]

What can you do with Linux that you can't do with Windows, and how can they interface it? Well... I'm still waiting for someone to actually _FIGURE OUT_ and then program a comprehensive interface to 'tc' and 'ip'. I'd hate to be the microsoftie assigned to those two! You could probably quite literally spend months just becoming familiar with all the various flags and options for both of them. Seriously, check out man tc and man ip. After the part about the six or seven balancing _OPTIONS_, they lead you in to ingress filtering for traffic control. I think MS is biting off more than it can chew, again.

Re:I'll be impressed if they cover two commands

[PPH]

I think MS is biting off more than it can chew, again.

Or, is Microsoft trying to 'dumb down' Linux (or all *nixes)? Who cares what all the possible options are for a command? The idea is to make them all look like Windows.

From the point of view of corporate IT PHBs, this means that they can hire one class of admin worker. Namely the point and click guy. From Microsoft's point of view, it stops people from developing new features or applications until Microsoft figures it out (or makes their own implementation) and provides a button for it on the admin GUI. Microsoft's biggest fear isn't that some Linux geeks will knock off a work-alike application to replace one of theirs. Its that someone might put something together for which they don't have a standard product to market as a *NIX replacement.

Back in my day developing apps on Sun, HP, and Linux systems, the approach of the Microsoft sales droids was to bypass the analysts and go straight to the customer. Their emphasis was on getting features we offered that they couldn't (or didn't want to) implement eliminated from the requirements.

MS Open Standards Participation

[bluescreen]

These extensions are built using a recently ratified open standard called WS-Management from the DMTF.

Microsoft and 11 vendors submitted a proposal to this standards body in 2005.
They then worked with the committee through the standards process as the spec evolved and came to its final standard status just recently.
The spec was ratified as preliminary standard in mid-2006.
Many changes were made by committee voting process. Microsoft's implementation is a core part of the OS, called "Windows Remote Management" or "winrm". As this was happening Microsoft kept its development team in sync with the committee so that changes could be made in the OS.
  Vista shipped compliant with the Preliminary Standard version and MIcrosoft has shipped updates both to Vista and downlevel operating systems like windows XP to bring it into compliance with the standard.

The system center extensions make use of the winrm component to communicate with non-windows systems including Linux and embedded hardware such as Intel vPro and AMD equivalents.

you can find the specification at: http://www.dmtf.org/standards/wsman

Windows 7???

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this mean that Microsoft will be releasing their own flavor of Linux/BSD under the guise of Windows 7?

I just shot...

[sblanky]

Beer out of my nose I laughed so hard at the thought. Why in THE HELL would anyone want to do this? Next up: How to put a 4-cylinder engine in your corvette.

What you can do with xNIX you can't do with windoz

[Anonymous Coward]

Then, the next question is: What can you do with *nix that you can't do with Windows

Higher level of service and performance, lower total computation cost.

...what?

[FedeLebron]

The Cross Platform and Interop team at Microsoft...

Cooperating with China's Public Information and Human Rights team?

Is there a "tainted" flag for non-kernel-modules?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe a "fifth column" flag? A "this system is administered by a convicted criminal company with a multi-billion-dollar incentive to cause problems" flag? No? Too bad. That might make life easier for the OSS developers handling bug reports.

Give me a break

[pbailey]

Why would anyone want some M$ software to manage their superior FOSS offerings. Time to give up and pack it in m$!

Unix manages M$... The other way around!

[gd23ka]

I don't think M$ even wants to get started on this one.

Wierd since MS is embracing the command line now

[zerofoo]

With 2008 server Microsoft is really starting to embrace the command line. Powershell seems nice, and 2008 can be installed without any GUI in "core" mode, and managed via external graphical tools or SSH.

Now MS wants you to manage your Unix/Linux machines with a GUI? MS strategy seems more disjointed than ever.

-ted

The gist behind the story....

[Knightman]

...if you bothered to read up on the subject:

SCOM (formerly known as MOM) is used for enterprise-wide monitoring of services and resources (think Nagios). What they have done is to add support for monitoring and some fault resolution of *nix-machines.

It's not an MS-Linux. It's not about setting up/installing and configuring *nix.

It's all about monitoring the servers in enterprise market segment (where the big bucks are); preferably all the servers. Every sold copy of a Windows Server generates a cascade effect where other systems are replaced with MS software solutions.

If you work for a company making monitoring software, I'd start to look for a new job in a couple of years when this software have marginalized your companys product.

Re:The gist behind the story....

[Guido von Guido]

Eh, Microsoft is not going to be dominating this market any time soon. I say this as someone who had the misfortune to use MOM (fortunately not that much). My previous employer bought MOM to support Windows servers, and we wound up getting rid of it a couple of years ago for a product that also covered Linux, AIX and Solaris.

I'm not surprised Microsoft is going after this market, but I don't think support for Linux and other *nix is going to mean a lot unless the product itself becomes a lot better.

Re:The gist behind the story....

[Anonymous Coward]

It has gotten better. I currently work for a company that uses sitescope, baccore/bpm, and HP Openview for a console to the two.

We tested out MOM for our windows servers, and twitched. We started playing around with SCOM, and it's actually really nice. Still needs a bit of refinement, but all in all I like it.

That means alot as I actually prefer to write my own monitoring systems.

I'm currently at the Microsoft Management Summit.

Re:The gist behind the story....

[Hugheser]

Wow. Someone read the article! Good job! Everyone, THIS IS A GOOD THING! Microsoft isn't moving in on your market. System Center is primarily a monitoring package. It's not going to setup apache or compile your kernel. It's going to tell you if a service is dead, or logs are growing excessivly, or if you're running out of space, RAM is maxing out, etc. That kind of thing. There are a lot of large enterprises that are big into Microsoft that would love something like this. It would give them some assurance that those foreign linux boxes would be adequately monitored. Plus currently many enterprises have already invested in System Center for MS products but have something separate for *nix. This would allow them to consolidate. Yes there are ways using SNMP, Syslog, etc to do this. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be other options. System Center Operations Manager (MOM) isn't going to take over your box. It's only going to be watching them in an enterprise environment. Nothing more. RTFA

Re:The gist behind the story....

[Guido von Guido]

Glad to hear it's improving--I'm sure I'll be running into it in the field. I have to admit that in my opinion pretty much every product in this category sucks. Typically these products do a few things well, and a lot of things poorly. Usually you wind up with a fair amount of glue code to get things to do what you need (and I've written plenty of my own monitoring apps).

Re:Nope. MSFT needs some Wall St. Cred STAT!

[techno-vampire]

So they're going to pretend to be competent enough to play in the "Enterprise Management" arena.

When I hear about Microsoft getting into the "Enterprise Management" arena, I always expect them to pass out red shirts as freebies.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Wierd since MS is embracing the command line no

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

am i the only one to read "powershell" as "powers hell" ???

real useful links...

[glitch23]

I have to sign in to both sites to get anything useful (at least I presume there is something useful behind those sign-in forms) and the blog site links to the other site so anyone want to provide the content behind those iron curtains for those who don't have a Windows Live account to sign in?

Re:real useful links...

[aaron.axvig]

In the time you took to write your worthless piece of shit post you could have created an account with fake information, probably through some proxy if you really thought Microsoft cares about who the trolls on /. are.

Re:real useful links...

[glitch23]

In the time you took to write your worthless piece of shit post you could have provided some actual information regarding the topic of conversation. The principle of the matter is that the submission contained 2 links which provided no information whatsoever and required a login to get any further information. The subsequent information was not guaranteed to be available behind the login form either. It's a worthless submission for that reason although others have been calling it worthless for other reasons.

They have this awesome technology...

[zeylisse]

But why did they call it so strange? I mean, Awesome Unix/Linux Ruler (c)(tm) would be fine, but putty? What the hell it means anyway?

cygwin

[fatp]

All I need to cygwin, which included an ssh client and even X server. What else do I need to manage Linux from Windows?

Re:It's called hair tearing -- And it's by IBM.

[rubies]

Tivoli / OpenView / whatever Microsoft call their version. They've been rubbish since the early nineties and will continue to be rubbish for most places that don't have completely heterogenous server environments.

I say: hire people who know what their doing, don't hire people who only know how to install the shims for Tivoli, they'll break your heart and your wallet.

Beta Available

[adam.dorsey]

To participate in the Microsoft Linux Management beta, simply boot to Linux and type "rm -rf /" at a root console.

could maybe be good

[benthurston27]

Well it looks like MS is pursuing a new market instead of aggressively trying to infiltrate one that linux has. thats the glass is half full version anyway.

people PLEASE!

[Anonymous Coward]

System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is an environment similar to HP OpenView. It's designed for centralized alerting and metrics gathering for reporting. When people think management, they often think configuration but in this case it's more about monitoring the health of the machines in the network or the network itself.

It's also a relatively new product offering that scales poorly but will undoubtedly make Microsoft a significant amount of money over time as it pulls through license revenue for the components it's built upon.

connectors to Tivoli Enterprise Console?

[prashanthch]

From the article: "The second beta announcement from our team was the availability of the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Connectors for HP OpenView (Unix/Windows) and IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console (TEC)." Given that Tivoli Enterprise Console is soon to be replaced with Tivoli Netcool OMNIbus, why would MS spend time developing connectors to TEC? I don't see the point.

Re:connectors to Tivoli Enterprise Console?

[Guido von Guido]

I strongly suspect that migrating from TEC to Omnibus is not going to be the kind of thing you can do over a weekend. Customers are probably going to be running TEC for years even if they can migrate for "free" (i.e., no additional licensing fees). Besides, it's probably on somebody's marketing checklist.

Ouch

[dave87656]

Letting MS control my Unix/Linux boxes? Huh? I can see it the other way around, since Unix is secure, but there's no way I'd give an MS product my root password.

Sorry, Tickly Throat

[pandrijeczko]

[cough] Syslog [cough] [cough] SNMP [cough] and neither one in Beta [cough]

Possible trademark infringement

[magus_melchior]

Fujitsu markets "Operation Manager" as part of their Systemwalker sysadmin product line, currently #3 behind the Microsoft product in a Google search for that phrase.

We have a great tool

[justkeeper]

For managing *n*x systems under Windows for years,and it's called SecureCRT.

Bad analogy time

[Yetihehe]

Managing linux with windows is like making watches in safety gloves. Sure, it will be harder to make some injuries, but it will screw everything.

Re:Nope. MSFT needs some Wall St. Cred STAT!

[gronofer]

So they're going to pretend to be competent enough to play in the "Enterprise Management" arena. Like they pretend to be competent enough to play in every arena they've entered... So they have noticed that Linux exists, that's novel. I suppose it's part of "pretending to be competent".

Seen it before - running Nagios instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Nagios. I knew I'd seen this somewhere before.

The screenshots at Techlog (http://www.techlog.org/archive/2008/04/29/opsmgr_cross_platform__first_s) make it look as though it is put together with sharepoint (is this going to make it vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks?).

Is the print screen button disabled or something - why use a camera?

Previous art

[houghi]

There already exist Windows software to maintain Linux systems from Windows:
putty.

Also there are several solutions to maintaing things remotely like openSUSE's solution.

Purpose: Deteriorate Linux knowledge

[Niklas Ohlsson]

This will probably lead to the deterioration of general linux knowledge and therefore windows sales will rise once more. But don't worry, ms will have though of this :S

Another example of /. f**ktards that don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

If any of you would RTFA you would know that answers like "WTF ... PUTTY!" just make you look like the idiot you are.

The new version of MOM does a heck of a lot and writing it off with inane comments just inforces the reasons that corporate IT hates /..

UPnP in Linux

[Nicolay77]

Hey, I want to be able to open UPnP ports from the command line in Linux, that's one thing I currently can't do in Linux that I can do in Windows. And you can do that from a GUI, too.

I know the issues with UPnP, but you know, there are users like me that don't have virus or spyware at all; and because the modem is password protected by the ISP, I just can't do the usual port forwarding.

Also, UPnP lets me use DCHP assigned IPs in the same machine that has a service installed, so I never have to worry about setting the IP address manually in any of my real (or virtual in vmware) machines.

That said, I hated UPnP because it's insecure (I read that somewhere), until I needed it and realised that it just helped me manage my network with less work.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems? - cPanel is horrid

[IMightB]

Actually I despise cPanel with a passion... I had the displeasure of working for a hosting company that had somewhere around 800-1000 cpanel servers.... To the uninitiated cPanel is pretty nifty, to people who actually have to admin cPanel, it's horribly insecure. We had cPanel servers comprimised on a daily basis due to cPanel architecture decisions/insecure perms, etc etc etc. 1/2 the cPanel code is compiled perl bytecode because the author is paraniod that his horrid coding skills will be exposed.

Extra Bonus! cPanel has a format HD GUI Options which used to make my life double plus Good when ignorant custo.. errm cPanel users tried to use it... I had to field calls like: "I hit the Format HD button and now my server isn't responding! What did you guys do?!?! I want it back up now!"

Cpanel needs to die, or at least get a f*in clue. IMHO Plesk is WAY WAY better than cPanel

We used to joke that we should add an extra page to the cPanel UI that was just a BIG RED BUTTON that said "Do NOT press this button, or else bad things will happen!" Then if the button was pressed, add the browsers IP to IPtables to block.

We never did implement this, as we knew it would just make our lives even more miserable.

CFEngine.. duh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't any of these dimwits ever heard of CF Engine (www.cfengine.org)? The last thing I want to be doing is managing *nix machines with windows. What a freakin nightmare that would be. Duh.

Re:

[clint999]

Actually I despise cPanel with a passion... I had the displeasure of working for a hosting company that had somewhere around 800-1000 cpanel servers.... To the uninitiated cPanel is pretty nifty, to people who actually have to admin cPanel, it's horri