Ask Slashdot: NT to Linux Migration Costs? 165
Alex asks:
"How would one go about calculating immediate costs and
tangible benefits of migrating an NT/Novell IntranetWare
LAN to Linux. I am not talking only about long-term
benefits as in more uptime, fewer crashes, robustness,
etc., but if I could use fewer and cheaper boxes for file,
internet and print servers. What could I say to a company
about the immediate benefits?" What about the costs
associated with retraining? What pitfalls do NT admins have
to worry about when moving to Linux?
Re:"Primay Domain Controller" stuff can be a bitch (Score:1)
I believe you'll need to download a copy of the latest CVS source for Samba and use that in order to get a PDC working.
Re:How to go about a migration (Score:1)
(www.postfix.org)before setting up sendmail.
NIS , NFS , CRON (Score:1)
Dont ask how can I use MSword in linux.. ask How can i work with "word Documents" thats the real question.
Rant off.
I do recomend the slow but steady migration.. bring up a samba file server.. once you get that working well
Re:Unix apps are easier to support (Score:1)
-t.
Thank You *Very* Much! (Score:1)
as well!
I knew this could be done with 2.x versions of
Samba--I simply hadn't gotten around to figuring-
out the details yet.
These kinds of "cookbook" documentation is what
Samba (and much other open source apps) needs!
The Samba team would be well-advised to create a
set of web pages to point to these! (And anything
else laying-about like these.)
Re:Uh oh, learning curves... (Score:1)
Re:Sendmail covers just one aspect - (Score:1)
To get similar functionality in Linux, you could go with netscape messaging server, which would provide pretty much the same toolset, and all accessible via any decent web/mail client (e.g. netscape communicator) By the way, is the Linux version out of beta yet?
Alternatively, you could simply add a low cost or no cost calendaring/scheduling component such as teamwave synchronize or somesuch...
Re:Uh oh, learning curves (I did it!) (Score:1)
I was pretty attached to the following NT apps when I started my conversion:
MS Office (it sucks, but the whole world uses it)
Cinco NetXRay (now NAI, a protocol analyzer)
3com Transcend/HP Openview
Deerfield Wingate (like ipchains/masqerade/squid)
mIRC
Civilization II
Acrobat
Netscape Communicator
WRQ Reflection (VT100, 3270 term emulator)
IIS
Acrobat, mIRC, Communicator, and WRQ fell pretty easily - the native apps did what I wanted. I haven't seen the mission critical app (Civilization) for linux yet but I've been too busy reading to play. I'm *rarely* in office any more and my wife's PC is still infested with windos so I've been using it but I've got a Star Office key that came with a SuSe disk I just got and I've used the dowloadable SO and like it.
I did all sorts of tricks with wingate and was quite frustrated with the linux alternatives but now that I've moved to Red hat 6.0 the ipchains/ipmasqadm is *so* much nicer to work with.
The other two network management type apps are a bother.
I am very spoiled with graphical decode of network behavior so tcpdump doesn't cut it. I've been watching freshmeat and I think we'll see industrial strength graphical protocol analyzers out by mid summer.
I saw today that 3com has reversed its position of not doing linux tools. I talked to John Sancho, president of castlerock.com, at interop a few days ago and they have moved the user interface to their SNMP management platform to Java and the next step will be a server side linux release. Once again, industrial strength tools will be available momentarily.
IIS is a footnote as I was only serving a large volume of plain text files. An apache beta under NT did a better job than IIS and the real thing under linux is a joy.
I built a home lab for my conversion which had six Intel boxes and two small sparcs at its height. I read Essential Systems Administration, DNS and Bind, Sendmail, Learning the bash shell, Mastering Regular Expressions, Programmning Perl and Advanced Perl Programming, and Exploring Expect (all Oreillys) as well as Steven's TCP/IP Illustrated vol 1. I didn't track it but I believe I spent 400 - 600 hours between work and time at home to make the jump and now that I am 'over the wall' I am never going back.
I'm sitting on unread copies of Oreilly's Managing NFS/NIS, TCL/TK Tools, Apache Administration, and Maximum RPM but Linux has taken something of a backseat since I acquired two Cisco 2509s and a Catalyst 1900
I only made one mistake in all of this and it was not hanging on to an old 486 I had in 1985 and using it for Red hat 3.03. Had I done this I'd have realized sooner just how badly we've been treated by the m$ marketing engine.
Some thoughts on costs... (Score:2)
Also, most of the cost of a good NT/Netware solution is in terms of redudancy and backup. Good server platform such as Compaq with a UPS, redundant power supply, RAID-5, DLT drives, etc.
There is a huge support cost if you need to go to all the client machines and reconfigure anything.
The biggest cost is likely going to be the administrative time sorting through all the damn files and trying to figure out who they belong to and set file permissions accordingly.
Re:Uh oh, learning curves... (Score:2)
It's this kind of shop where the admins tell users who are having problems that sometimes things "act wierd" and they aren't sure why.
Most good admins have experience on as many platforms as they can get their hands on, and are really experienced on at least two.
Most sysadmin techniques and practices apply on all operating systems.
Re:Unix apps are easier to support (Score:2)
In Science and Tech, this is a big problem..By running the apps locally I am not constrained by network going down or bandwidth problem..At the rate IT is shoving stuff down our throat, I will put the corporate computer aside and bring my own one to do my job as best as I can do and not according to some IT guy who thinks he knows all about my application and loads the vanilla flavour of it..
Screw Sun for bringing the NC hype...I will stay with NT..it aint bad..It does my CAD stuff without crashing..Unix/Linux box..let me make coffee..due to so many sharing a server...
Vote for Unix Apps (from the support side) (Score:2)
I support both NT and unix Sci/Tech apps.
I prefer supporting unix because it blows NT away when the system is remote.
I can get on the users system, poke around, trouble shoot things (X cross country is slow, but it works), do remote installs of software etc., and spend the weekend with my wife instead of traveling (at least once a month I thank god for unix).
I don't care if the app runs localy on the users SGI workstatation or remotely on the server. We have both "types" of users. All I care is that when the user "fixes" something I can get at the system and set things right......
Look Beyond Immediate Costs (Score:2)
costs associated with a move from NT and/or Netware to Linux, you must
also consider the cost/benefit ratio.
[Note: I know next to *nothing* about Netware. Particularly later
versions. So what I'll address is NT vs. Linux.]
What do you stand to gain in the long run? Linux is widely reported to be
far more stable and, all else being equal, much faster than NT. I can't
argue as to the stability issue because, in my limited experience with
both Linux and NT, both have been quite stable. But I *can* speak to the
performance issue.
Two machines: an H-P 200MHz PPro server with 128mb and Ultra-SCSI drives
vs. a 3+ year-old Sun Sparc 1000e with 4 50MHz processors, 512mb, and just
SCSI-2 drives. The Intel box was running NT4 Server, the Sparc box
Solaris 2.5.1. Both were connected to the network backbone at 100mb/s.
There were about 200-250 seats in the enterprise (it varied). A mix of
Windows 3.x, 9x, and NT boxes and Unix seats. And some QNX clients as
well.
The NT box had almost nothing difficult to do other than play PDC, WINS
server and browse master. And Exchange Server for a whopping 15 clients.
The Sparc box was playing file and print server (both NFS and Samba),
license server for something like a dozen applications, Lotus Notes server
(about 125 seats), SMTP and POP3 mail server, PC-NFS server, Web
(Intranet) server, MySQL database server, NIS+ server, bootp/TFTP server,
INN server, primary DNS server, and who knows what-all else.
The NT server had to authenticate only for the 15 or so people that used
Exchange. The Sun box authenticated all the rest. And remember: the Sun
box did *all* of the file and print serving.
So the NT box, in relation to the Sparc box, was *quite* lightly loaded!
When we dumped the NT server and let the Sparc box (via Samba) take over
as WINS server and browse master, much to everybody's surprise: network
performance on *all* of the Windows boxes actually improved drastically!
This in spite of the fact that the Sun box, during working hours, rarely
shows an average load of less than two--with all four CPUs frequently at
or near 100% utilization.
The NT server, during the time I was administering it, frequently was on
its knees. (Probably mainly because of Exchange Server.) I regularly
received complaints from the NT workstation users about network
operations timing-out. Haven't received a one since letting the Sun box
take over.
One might be tempted to point-out that we're talking about a 4-processor
machine vs. a single-processor machine. But keep in mind the difference
in server load: approximately 15 clients vs. approximately 200? Not-to-
mention the difference in number of server tasks, etc. And the fact that
50MHz Sparc processors and SCSI-2 drives aren't exactly state-of-the-art
as compared to what the Intel box had.
And unlike some people I could mention
the NT box to get it to perform well. I spent a considerable amount of
time studying NT and fooling with it. *And* we hired a top-notch
consulting firm to work with us as well. The NT box *was* tuned. (So was
the Solaris box.)
One other data-point: my old lap-top. A lowly Dell Latitude 486/50 with
36mb of RAM. When I used to demo multiple tasks, graphical- and disk-
intensive, running on the box, experienced Windows people used to guess
that it had at least a 75MHz or 100Mhz Pentium in it!
The up-shot? My *guess*, from these experiences, is that any capable 'nix
box will easily out-perform a Windows box in either server or workstation
roles. I *suspect* that a Linux server in place of the Sun box would
yield similar results. Particularly with the improved SMP support in
Linux 2.x kernels.
I could be wrong, of course. The above comparisons certainly aren't
"scientific method" by any stretch of the imagination. But they seem
compelling to me.
The cost/benefit issue: end-user productivity, of course.
The above discussion assumes a 'nix server serving Windows clients. If
you go to an all-'nix environment, there are additional cost benefits to
be realized. One of the most compelling of these being administrative
costs. Since 'nix can be run in an enterprise environment with little-
or-no "local context", workstations are *much* easier to install and
configure. And when one goes belly-up, as will happen from time-to-time,
all you need perform is a vanilla re-install and reconfiguration. (If you
wanted to be slick, and had a lot of workstations--enough to justify the
exercise--you could even "clone" a vanilla install, install or restore
workstations from that, and customize things like host name, IP address,
etc. [Say, from a custom question-and-answer shell script.]) And remote
administration is far easier.
Utilization of "thin client" technology, such as X-terminals, eliminates
even these exercises.
In my experience (some ten+ years administering a wide variety of Ms-DOS,
Ms-Win, and 'nix boxen), there is no comparison: 'nix out-performs Ms-Win
from both a cost and performance standpoint. Even in an all-commercial-
products (e.g.: Sun Sparc Solaris and commercial apps.) context.
don't get rid of anything yet! (Score:3)
one thing to keep in mind is while you can telnet to any linux box there is no widspread management system or nds for linux available yet, caldera has some support, but it will be coming out soon for everyone else. I would keep the novell serevrs for nds alone. once you can drop your linux servers into the tree things will be easy going. but also don't fool yourself into thinking you can replace nt if you invested heavily in things like exchange, IIS, and SQL. These days everyone wants linux to scale to the moon but for now be happy with the basic things it can provide you. and a few months from now when everything is running smoothly you will have the "return' you are looking for.
Case study (Score:5)
Firstly - the service. The service is a popular European web-based application, mainly targetted at business users - shared email, calendaring and that sort of thing. It has a user base expected to increase to several million in the next year. It currently runs on a small cluster of NT servers fronted with a Linux/Apache proxy server (the Linux proxy server is another story - we use mod_rewrite to work around a number of bugs on the NT software
Starting a few months ago, I was employed to migrate the software entirely to Linux. For this, I have myself and one other person full time and a number of support people ordering and building kit. We started out by designing a scalable database back end and then we rewrote all the dynamic NT scripts in Perl. We are using Apache + mod_perl as the platform to run it on. Rewriting the scripts in Perl took two months. We are now spending a month in a closed beta test of the new system, and expect to spend another month importing all the users and their data across from the old system. Four months in total.
On the hardware side, it came as a pleasant surprise to find that we could get away with relatively low-end hardware on the Apache web servers. We are currently specifying single Intel P-II 450 systems with 512 MB RAM and 8 GB drives. Our scalability tests indicate that each of these machines can handle the load from around 100,000 subscribers (that's subscribers, not active concurrent users).
The expensive bit is the database. The nature of the web application we have developed is that it has enormous data storage requirements. We archive and store a lot of information on behalf of each of our subscribers. Because there is no high quality database solution for Linux yet - by which I mean no database which offers parallel servers and failover - we are using a popular commercial database on a commercial Unix. This is by far the most expensive part of the system. It looks like we will be paying the best part of $200,000 just for the database / 1 TB storage / back up solution.
Even though we are based in Europe, we have not had any trouble employing bright Linux experts straight out of university. Linux users tend to be a lot smarter than NT users too, since (at present) most people presenting themselves for jobs as `Linux experts' have had to take the initiative and strike out on their own. They are usually more motivated too for the same reason.
Some quick lessons learned: (1) You must make sure you employ people familiar with Linux. (2) It helps if management are behind you on this. Where I work, management have stated that they never want to see any more NT systems deployed. (3) The biggest technical problem to adopting the new system was converting all the old data (in NT proprietary formats) into open formats. If you have a lot of data, then this is a very important cost to factor in. Luckily if we decided in the future to move from Linux to another platform, then we would not have to pay this cost again.
Re:Linux is robust? (Score:1)
Re:Linux is robust? (Score:1)
1) You are lying and spreading FUD to try to make NT look bad
2) FreeBSD is buggy and crash-prone, thus causing the problems you described
Are you sure this is what you were trying to say?
Re:Linux is robust? (Score:1)
You've apparently never used HotMail! Before M$ came in and moved them to NT there site was rock solid. What happened afterward? I recieved more stalled connections and silly error messages than on any other site I've seen. The topper was when they were performing maintance (read: the machine hosting my account crashed) and they lost my account. We'll needless to say M$ fscked HotMail by moving them to NT.
RETRACTION! (Score:1)
Sorry about this post. I was still under the impression that HotMail was using NT. I now know that I was wrong. Thank you.
Re:Uh oh, learning curves... (Score:2)
Funny you should mention that. Myself and some other "migrated" users have been addressing that very need. We are putting together a website who's main goal is to aid M$ [microsoft.com] based administrators in migrating their services from NT [microsoft.com] to linux [linux.org]. We hope to have the beta site running by the end of the summer. There should be a formal anouncement some time in August.
Just wait. (Score:1)
It will get much better soon, now that the thundering herd problem has been proven and killed.
Re:The twin fallacies of poor NT advocacy. (Score:1)
Are you talking about the same test that showed that Linux/SAMBA served up files to NT Workstation faster than NT Server could? (NT Server was faster to Win9X clients.) Looks like file serving performance depends on how you slice it.
BTW, there's been some rather interesting work done in the last few weeks by people who want to know why NT/IIS did outperform Linux/Apache in the Mindcraft tests, and they've succeded in producing patches for Apache and the Linux kernel that have improved Apache's numbers quite a bit. I think some of the relevant info is on kernelnotes.org.
For now, keep in mind that Apache is reference, not performance, implementation of a web server. If you really need the raw speed, take a look at Zeus.
The second Linux fallacy is that it is more stable than NT. Let us consider what the man who invented Unix had to say, "Microsoft is really unreliable but Linux is worse."
Let us consider the hundreds of testimonials that claim quite the opposite, more than a few of which have been seen here on
Re:How to go about a migration (Score:1)
'Course, then look up exactly what the config file my script created does!
Donncha.
Re:Netware vs. Linux (Score:1)
NT Password auththentication problems! (Score:1)
The problem we run into is that the NT box routinely locks out accounts for no apparent reason. Nothing in the logs, we just have to go to the User Admin and unlock the account and all is fine for another week or so.
Has anyone run into this? Please Please PLEASE email me and let me know what to do to get rid of this problem!
Also is there any way to switch a server to be a secondary PDC once it has been installed as a primary? I'd like to move all the user auth to the Linux box and relegate NT to *just* Exchange Server.
(just remove the spam blows part and it should get through.
NutScrape Message Server -- NOT RECOMMENDED (Score:1)
This was four months ago. I have YET to receive a single response.
Usually sales caters to the NEW contracts and skimps on the service AFTER they get the cheque. Netscape seems to ignore you BEFORE they can make the sale.
Re:Linux is robust? (Score:1)
Re:Linux is robust? (Score:1)
Re:Common courtesy? (Score:2)
In my experience Slashdot has been very upfront about problems and changes. Rob's been busy recently which explains the outages and lack of timely notices. While it would be nice to have a slightly more "professional" slashdot (and yes, I would be willing to pay for it) it is hard to see how the site can change without losing its soul. I'd rather have a great service with a few outages than a commercial warzone with un-interrupted service.
--
Re:Start Small (Score:1)
After all, your users don't want to know about your network, that is why they hired you. If you tread lightly, and simply use Linux for new services at first your users will come to see Linux as a solution.
For example, I added a Linux web server, and people cheered. I developed a PHP3/PostgreSQL helpdesk application, and a perl/glimpse document retrieval system, and they were amazed. Now, I can use Linux for just about anything and no one even blinks.
Re:Apache and asp (Score:1)
that mimics all of the facilities of Microsoft's ASP. They use
Re:Uh oh, learning curves (I did it!) (Score:1)
I just have one comment on your whole article... YOU HAD A 486 IN 1985???!!! Can I borrow your time machine?
Re:Migrating Exchange to Sendmail, or Qmail, or ?? (Score:2)
It really depends on what you are using. Exchange provides many services in one package. Most of them are easily replaceable; calendar functions are the one major exception. This will hopefully change, too, once the IETF calendaring system catches on, but until then, you'll need some replacement for that if you use it.
Also, make sure that when you replace technology that you have buy-in from management. Change always brings in friction, especially if it's perceived to be harder to use. So be sure to do lots of user testing, previews, benefits analysis, and the like, especially with anything that is going to look or work different from the user's point of view.
Given all that, here's an example gameplan:
- Switch all users to open protocols. Use IMAP and SMTP for mail, LDAP for directory services, NNTP for discussion groups, etc. Hook all of these into the Exchange box for now. This is the stage to eliminate all of the user issues - training, usability, etc. Make sure that everything is set up to be compatible with the Linux way of doing things; for example, refer to public folders by their NNTP names instead of their "pretty names". This is also the stage to introduce the users to replacements if you use them; for example, roll out Web-based calendaring or group discussion stuff now (on the Linux box, of course), as well as new clients if you're switching from Outlook.
- Start replicating all those services on the Linux box. Hook them together if possible; for example, have your Exchange public folders do a NNTP news feed to their equivalents on Linux, and have the LDAP server synchronize with Exchange's directory through some means (X.500 if you can hack it, or Perl script pulloffs in a pinch).
- Set up addressing so that the Linux box and the NT box are equivalent; that is, "user@example.com" just works, no matter where the actual account resides. A good way to do this is to make the Linux box the "gateway" for all mail, and set up an aliases database to forward for all the Exchange users. We actually did this for a different reason: we wanted a fairly safe "buffer" between the Internet and the company's E-mail.
- Now start setting up your first users - the "beta team". Make sure they can get to everything and do everything they need to. Especially look out for interoperability issues with the Exchange users.
- Once all roadblocks are out of the way, start migrating the rest of the users. If you've done your job right, the move should be transparent from the user's context - the only thing they should notice is how much faster and more reliable everything is.
Once you're done, things should run a lot more smoothly. We had several groups of users using Linux E-mail servers instead of Exchange; they had much less downtime than the Exchange users. Granted, they only had at most 20 users each, but they were also running on 386/40 systems with 200 MB disk and 8 MB RAM; had we the hardware we needed to run Exchange, we could probably have supported 1000 users.
Thoughts from former NT admin (that's FORMER) (Score:3)
- as countless others have said, start modestly. Ideal would be recycling an older generic PC (not Compaq server or laptop) as a simple Samba server. Have an NT admin install Redhat 5.2 with default "server" option, and just make it an extra place to store files. If there are problems getting Samba going, use it as an "FTP dumping ground" for archiving stuff you may want to keep around. Then get Samba going.
- Point to zero-cost fileserver for the admins to use. That's win #1.
- get a subscription to Linux Journal for the admins. The enthusiasm of the writers and the sheer coolness of what's happening with Linux worldwide will start to infect NT folks too.
- Figure out what NT servers are reaching end of life, etc. Get a rough forecast on new web servers needed, etc. Match them up: instead of a costly *new* server for NT/IIS, show how the capital budget won't take any hit at all if servers are recycled into Linux boxes.
Re:Best tool for the job (Score:1)
Does the phrase "IFSVXD.VXD" mean anything to you? "Windows Protection Error"? Ever wonder why "MPREXE.EXE"(the MultiProtocol Router) crashes so much? Why your client systems are lagging?
Novell servers are rather brilliantly written. Their clients...well, didn't it take 'em a few years to write an uninstaller that didn't work? *YEAH*.
Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
Re:Z.E.N.works (Score:1)
People wonder why I'm so ascerbic against Netware. We've got students around here disconnecting their ethernet ports whenever they have work to do. We've got *FACULTY* doing that.
Not Good.
Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
DoxPrint *should* speed migration (Score:2)
http://doxpara.netpedia.net/doxprint.html [netpedia.net]
Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
Plan in advance (Score:1)
2: Use NIS for user accounts, aliases, group databases etc!
3: Use NFS or CODA for home directories!
4: Use automounters!
5: Use a SINGLE DISTRIBUTION (this is part of No 1.)!
6: Use RDIST or RSYNC to keep configs synchronised!
7: Create some scripts to make distributed cron management easy!
8: Start small until you're happy.
Re:smbpasswd question (Score:1)
If you use 'security = server' and 'password server = x.x.x.x', it will authenticate users with an NT server.
Wil
--
Internet Meta-Resources [navi.net]:
Well, that could be a problem... (Score:1)
[in reference to access controls lists (ACL) and/or Netware file permissions]
Well, that's something to think about. In my (corporate) networking experience, Netware file permissions are critical to any usable and supportable security scheme. NT ACL's, too, if you can't get Netware {
sPh
Several different questions (Score:5)
*nix vs. {NT, Netware}
Linux vs. {NT, Netware}
NT vs. Netware
Linux vs. NT
Linux vs. Netware
cross many domains and will yield different answers depending on the problem to be solved and the way the questions are phrased.
In my experience, for example, NT has about 3x the resource cost of Netware in a large departmental environment (200-400 corporate users in 1-2 locations, 20% mobile users). But administration costs for NT go up exponentially as the number of sites and mobile users, while Netware administration costs go up linearly with the same variables.
So if you are trying to convince me to replace NT with Linux, you need to demonstrate that in the equation c = n ** p (c = cost, n = number of sites), p is
But if you are trying to replace Netware with Linux, you are going to have to prove that p
Others have made the argument about NDS, so I won't beat that one to death. But please keep in mind that if you haven't administered a large corporate network, you shouldn't knock NDS until you have used it.
sPh
Re:Migrating Exchange to Sendmail, or Qmail, or ?? (Score:1)
Couldn't you set up the (send|q|z)mail accounts at your leisure, then at 3AM some morning switch the new server into place as the primary mailserver, then have Exchange forward its spooled mail to the new box? This way, your users wouldn't lose any mail - the "old" mail on the NT server would just be temporarily inaccessible to them until the NT box had finished the forwarding.
Re:The twin fallacies of Linux. (Score:1)
Re:Netware vs. Linux -- no real point in switching (Score:5)
Caveat: I haven't used Novell since the 4.11 release, as I moved off into NT administration after that. And I have not used a Novell TCP/IP network yet. However, I serviced A LOT of 3.12 servers and a few 4.11.
The reason I like Linux so well is the same reason I like Novell: it works. It works well. It doesn't crash. Novell is just as reliable as Linux, in my experience, and maybe more so. Generally speaking, the only way a Novell server is going to fall over is if the hardware dies.
Now, I have seen unstable Netware installations, but invariably they have been hack jobs by administrators that didn't know what they were doing. A properly administered Netware network is granite solid.
In my mind, Linux's primary advantages over NT are reliability and open source. If something is wrong, I can always fix it with Linux if I'm willing to put the time in to really understand the problem, and once I fix it, it will stay fixed. However, in general, Novell is easier to figure out and it also stays fixed. You do give up a lot of control of the system, but in general Netware works the way Microsoft wishes NT did -- most of the time you don't need bit-level control because it's not going to break.
Novell also thinks their problem solutions out thoroughly. Their print queue is a good example of this. NT sort of has some of the same functionality, but it's a lot easier to maintain complex print structures in Novell and it's a hell of a lot easier to route around problems. Linux's print queues are postively archaic by comparison. You more or less have to build one by hand, and magic filters are a pain in the butt to figure out. Now, you can do more with Linux and print queues: once you understand it you can do just about any neat hack you like. But for most of us, Novell's approach is better. You can start printing with a minimum of fuss and go from there. Linux makes you jump through friggin' hoops to get everything configured properly. That's true of a lot of solutions in Linux.
Novell requires technical skill but has excellent documentation, is much more consistent, and is built with the big picture in mind. You can make HUGE networks with Novell. Most Linux apps aren't designed with the same kind of scalability in mind. They are often written by people with experience with small networks who have an itch. There aren't nearly as many working with really big nets, so there aren't nearly as many good solutions to the BIG problems. Novell is in the business of charging lots of money for solutions to the BIG problems, and they provide excellent, thoroughly-thought-out ones, too.
In my opinion, you'd be best off leaving your network core on Novell. Use Linux, but use it alongside, not in replacement. If you need the whizbang TCP/IP capabilities, or want to deploy a free web server, then you can plop down Linux boxes wherever you like. And when NDS for Linux ships, you'll be able to glue the systems together very closely with a minimum of fuss (apparently).
This is the strategy we have taken. We don't mind having Samba and NT next to each other. (we have no Novell in my present job, which is rather a shame.) We try to run most Internet-related protocols on Linux(we'd use BSD but I haven't learned it yet), and run Microsoft stuff on NT, and everyone stays happy. Samba interoperates nicely in a network with a PDC already in it.
There just is no sense in throwing away your existing investment unless it is too costly to maintain. Linux will certainly help save on maintenance costs once you grok it, but the upfront learning costs are steep. Amortize those by doing little pilot projects until you really know what you're doing. Someday, you may wake up and find that Linux is the center of your network -- but you also might not. And that's okay.
Remember, Open Source isn't going away. It's here for the long haul. You don't have to make this an either/or battle. It's not NT OR Linux, it's NT AND Linux. Take advantage of Open Source where it can help you, and try to give back and make it better. If you insist on making it a war, someone has to lose, and it could be you. If there is no war, then there can be no loser.
-- Ron
GUI network analyzers (Score:2)
One day, it might even support reading NetXRay and other network analyzer files. It's kind of rough right now, but it does work. About the only serious thing it's missing to compare with NetXRay are all the nice aggregate traffic analysis reports, and the network usage meters. Right now, it's just a protocol decoder.
Re:Linux is robust? (Score:1)
Re:You say you want the SOURCE??? (Score:1)
these aren't even remotely similar (Score:1)
To get the equivalent in linux you would have to use several programs; inn, sendmail, an imap server(like cyrus), an ldap directory server(open ldap), among others. There isn't a good free unix shared calendar app that I know of, but there are a few inexpensive ones.
All said, it really is a bitch to get all this stuff working together smoothly under unix while presenting the user with a single, secure interface to it (e.g., Netscape Communicator or MSIE/OE). I've tried. There are a lot of snags.
If you can handle hacking your own solutions, then it might be for you.
The main advantages of the shrink wrap integrated messaging environments like Messenger, Groupwise and Exchange is single sign on for users (this is very important to most people, no one wants to carry around a stack of passwords), and nice, easy setup and administration for admins. These things aren't to be overlooked.
The disadvantages are that they are hideously expensive and demand tremendous resources. Exchange for 350 active users would need at least 512MB, P2-400, several GB of disk.
Best tool for the job (Score:1)
We use Netware because basically it kicks ass for PC file serving and printing. Probably we will use it for Groupwise and zen as well when we go to NW5. Netware is awesome for making the best of windows pc networks - zen is hard to beat. The only problem is that application vendors are usually quick to blame net
We use NT because our application vendors don't seem to be aware that anything else exists (read: we are forced to).
We use linux because it is so easy to manage and such a joy to work with. No, it doesn't have some advanced apps like NDS, but linux is so easy to deal with. I've completely fallen in love with it.
NT is just a bitch, I can't stand her. Netware is nice and stable, but troubleshooting can be painful when things go wrong. Netware is very clunky to manage in some respects - the NWAdmin tool scales horribly for repetitive tasks, and the dos based cli tools for Netware are generally unstable. But Netware performs well, and has a lot of nice features linux doesn't have. the main advantages of the commercial stuff revolve around integration.
Fantasy: an all linux network, no windows. Nowhere. Now that would be nice.
Re:"Primay Domain Controller" stuff can be a bitch (Score:1)
Re:"Primay Domain Controller" stuff can be a bitch (Score:1)
Re:"Primay Domain Controller" stuff can be a bitch (Score:3)
It's running on a Dell Poweredge 4300, Dual Processor with 512MB RAM. The reason the machine is so hefty is because it's also serving IMAP for these same 100 users, print serving about 20 printers, handling a web E-mail application, apache, DNS, and lots of other miscellaneous duties. This is on a 100 MBit network.
The nice thing is that we can put all of these applications on one server, maintain backups and all, and the reliability stays right up there. We can run as many applications as we want, and we're nowhere near using up the CPU time. Most of the time the load average stays below
The server has been solid. We've had a few problems with corruption of the data recently. Hopefully this was just due to the beta MegaRAID driver in some of the 2.2.x kernels. Also, there have been a couple of problems with the u.washington imap daemon and Netscape, but we've been able to work around most of them.
Other than that, the server works flawlessly. There have been no problems with Samba, and we've had 30 day uptimes (would have been lots more, except we needed to do a hardware upgrade), and we've had no reliability problems with Linux.
This isn't a migration, however. This network was an upgrade from Novell, and these NT clients were purchased so that the client would have a managed architecture.
I won the contract since I offered better rates than the NT consultants they talked to and they liked the consulting work I did earlier. One big factor was the fact that they didn't have to pay licensing fees, which easily would have doubled the cost of the project.
The client is happy. They have an NT network that works. I don't get called about the machine in weeks at a time. Their staff has learned to use the utilities under Linux to manage Samba, and had no trouble learning a bit about Unix permissions, the samba configuration file, and smbpasswd, smbstatus, etc. It really isn't that hard to learn this stuff, and once you know it, it becomes easy to manage the network from anywhere.
They have a few remote offices, but those offices each have a Samba server set up. Maybe in the future we'll synchronize passwords across the whole company, but there's no need for it right now. The corporation is large, but is by no means huge, and most of the company is in the office in New York.
Netware vs. Linux (Score:3)
I admit this is a somewhat uneducated opinion. I've used linux and samba occasionaly, but am by no means an expert.
One thing I like about Netware is NDS. On anything but the smallest network you just can't beat NDS for managing users, groups, etc. I'm sure utilities exist for performing the same tasks in Samba preventing the need to manually edit the conf file. But we're still talking a flat file database at the lowest level. This can never compare with a directory service. Although I've heard rumors of Novell porting NDS to Linux. That might be a great combination.
I guess the main point is that if your current administrators are diehard NDS fans (like myself) convincing them to switch to Samba for file services will be a hard sell. You have to have the "*nix mindset" to put up with the quirks of a unix like os. I'm working on it, but I've still got a long way to go 8 )
My .02
Steve
Re:Unix apps are easier to support (Score:2)
The CAD stuff my users do wouldn't even begin to run on NT. Without a distributed file system and a server farm, they would spend 90% of their time waiting for their sims and rendering to finish.
A lot of the engineers have no clue how the apps should be installed. So they are set up in DFS. They have no idea how their machines should be set up, so we have an image that we can push out to any one of our 2400 machines.
So now our users can concentrate on designing their chips and making the company money instead of playing with the way the tools and machines are set up. They get to do what they do well and don't have to worry about the environment.
Tangible costs (Score:2)
* The consultants we hired recommend one NT server per major service (accounting software, company database, email server, etc.) As we develop the need for more services, we'll either keep investing in new machines (or use potentially unreliable cast-off desktop machines).
* This leads into the second item -- as a diehard Novell house (before I showed up), there was no internal support structure for NT, so we hired consultants. This is a measurable, ongoing cost. Since most Linux advocates are what they are because of familiarity with their OS, there's often less need to dip into outside pools of talent for such a migration.
These can't necessarily translate into hard numbers -- but I doubt anyone else's experience can equate to a budget entry for you.
Re:Actually... (Score:1)
Re:NIS , NFS , CRON (Score:1)
back where i used to work, we had one guy handle over 150 solaris boxes plus dozens of xterms and network printers by himself (using mostly cron, scripts, rdist, and NFS with no NIS or NIS+; pretty much everything he does could be applied to linux and probably simplified). in contrast, they have 3 people full-time for a smaller number of NT/95/98 boxes and they still have trouble keeping up.
tim
Actually... (Score:1)
---
Re:Linux is robust? (Score:2)
Had this been a large corporation, there would be some backup machines that could be instantly swapped.
---
Re:Actually... (Score:1)
Re:these aren't even remotely similar (Score:1)
And AFAIK HP had a Linux-Version nearly ready on
one of the Expos
Re:senryu (Score:1)
Winter, it's real cold
Dark too
and vampires and stuff
Re:The twin fallacies of Linux. (Score:1)
Besides Linux does not end here. It is more productive than NT. In general you can't get too much out of NT to do a wide range of tasks.
Ex. there is a box here that is used almost in a case to case basis (this box was so forgotten that it kept NT until yesterday
Generally NT is so "personal" that any task out of desktop/user ones is difficult to implement. Right now this box is on Linux. As before almost no one uses it or will use it frequently. Meanwhile it is doing its job on calculating a few things in background processes. And I don't worry on the fact that someone logs in and suddenly background and desktop tasks start to eat each other.
So I'm getting something out of the money spent on this machine. On NT times this would be nearly unthinkable.
Re:The twin fallacies of Linux. (Score:1)
"Where do you wanna be sent tomorrow?"
There? Tomorrow?.. Naa... Maybe in a few years but not tomorrow. And not with their help
Re: nt-> Linux migration (Score:1)
People has seen 2000 and Linux out-of-the-box running in the same machine. 00 is no match for Linux. Besides it is extraordinary to see that people reacts with the same feeling to 00 independently of each other. In a Celleron 450Mhz, 128Mb, 00 looks like 95 running in a i486 50Mhz 16Mb. No joke, no FUD. 3 different guys said that to one and the same person (the owner of the comp btw). On Linux the machine acted as one would "expect" of such hardware beauty.
Re:Z.E.N.works (Score:1)
All I can say after 6 months of ruling a NT network with ZenWorks is that if you have a problem with the OS then no tool will help you on this. Replace the OS.
Zenworks is a superb conception and has a good manageable architecture. It does its job while NT doesn't start to get crazy. But in the case when NT clients start to get problems be ready for serious catasthrophes. Sometimes the relation NTNovell leads to NDS crashes. And its consequences, on a ZenWorks+NT network, may not end on trying to restore a NDS scheme. They may run up on wiping registries, reinstall NT, restore user directories and even remake the whole server.
If you have thousands of users and a good lot of machines, that will be Hell.
I would surely recomend the use of ZenWorks on large NT networks (only kamikadzes would risk the same in a pure NT one). However be ready. If people start crying about the rise of crashes, registry damages and login timeouts over an relatively unchanged environment then it is time to do some serious clean up all over. Or to change the user's OS.
Linux is Quantum Leap (Score:5)
Imediate costs and benefits? Well implementing Linux is a tremendous headache. But results overcome expectations.
We are a group divided by three/four teams with 30 people around and serving a whole University network. We had a very interesting place around here called "Internet classes". Some sort of Internet Cafe without coffee. It consists of 70 workstations, several servers of different types and serving more than 2500 users of a wide range of professions and knowledge. The stuff here is quite serious. It is mainly IBM and Sun hardware and it costs a Hell of money.
We started the whole thing on a Solaris/Novell/AIX/NT environment. It didn't work. For 6 monthes we were turned to janitoring constantly a system on which NT was giving tremendous headaches. Things became a major crisis after a serious crash that stopped work for nearly a week.
Some of us lobbied to see NT replaced. After the NT Armageddon's day we got green light to deliver something on Linux in a month. It was Hell. We had problems and problems and problems. But we came with something two months ago.
Results? It is working. Last week we destroyed the NT image that we kept in any case. The last NT box had oxygen cut yesterday at 16:30. People are facing a system several orders more complex than before and are not deeply concerned about it. Some even love it.
The fearful "We want NT back!" didn't last more than a week. Crashes, hangups, coredumps happen but it is several orders of magnitude less than before (some of these new boxes worked nearly two monthes round'clock. A powercut spoiled things).
Do people fear such primitevenesses like the commandline? Yes. But soon they will start (re)using it because there are things that do their job much better than their desktop brothers.
Before we were forced to stick users to "one desktop, one environment". Right now we have a mega-crazyness here where each one chooses the working environment he likes most. And changes the environment as he likes. Before we had a cracking epidemics here. Now we have hackers digging up deeply on the system and helping things grow up. Before we forced everyone to accept the administrative fascism of having a restricted set of apps. Now security is based mostly in supervision. We allow people to do almost everything with their systems as users of a classic UNIX environment.
Right now we have not only a reliable network where people have finally the chance to work. Right now things are overcoming expectations. These two classes are no longer "cafe's". It is Linux Heavy Industries. It is a place where Internet lives not only of browsing. Some users turn their environments to full-fetched working horses. Others use it on developing apps for Internet. And all of us have seen a tremendous boost on development overall. We now are growing things and not janitoring like before. Meanwhile teams are getting free to care for areas that were not touched during the NT hiatus.
Besides we are now planning the future. We are trying to implement things such as clusters here. As an experiment we joined the RC5 contest. Amazingly we are getting a good place over there. There are plans to implement Coda or a huge webcacher based on Squid.
Want to turn to Linux from NT? Take attention to these permises:
You have to take some good time on tuning your hardware. Even in "smooth" installation may hide a lot of "features". And a good careful tuning may turn a rather "slow" machine into something amazing.
Check all those apps over there. Linux is still quite loosen on configurations. And that's a HUGE +. You have a very good chance to fit things much more to your requests.
Office apps are a big problem in Linux. But our world doesn't end here. Try to find a middleterm. When users will note everything else, they will stop whinning and start to hunt you for even more.
If your main language is not english you may find a problem. But most of it is pure cosmetcis. The final result is more rewarding than NT.
Linux is not beautiful. Because power means rawness. And its up to the user to paint it. When he gets there don't get scared. Everyone has a Picasso inside.
Linux crashes. Programs crash. However you have a wide field to maneuver. Even dealing with commercial "crazy" apps is much easier and there's a bigger chance to find solutions.
Take time. The most important is to make a good pre-installation. Get everything you have and try to make the "box of your and their dreams". Check and test it carefully. And then give your users a "gift".
They will cry over you. They will ask your head. They will pass near you and imagine that see you with a rope on your neck they'l be willing to push. But it will not last long. If things were made carefully and well-planned, then NT will be History in a few weeks.
Get a small development team around you. That's very important. Linux is growable and fetching things to specific needs gives a powerful boost on work. If there are no chances to get a developer then roam Internet as much as possible. Even a small sh script may improve things a lot.
Beware. In a few monthes you may note that you are no longer a network administrator...
Re:Unix apps are easier to support (Score:1)
My home network consists of a Linux server in the basement, two linux clients, a Mac running MacOS 8.5.1, and a PC running NT 4. The Linux box is the application and file server for all the machines. It's currently at 140 days of uptime. I had to shut it down to add another hard drive 140 days ago. Before that, the last reboot was when I installed it.
I would never dream of swapping the Linux box with the NT box. The NT box couldn't really serve as a Linux application server, and as a file server it does a fairly poor job emulating the native formats/options for both Linux and MacOS.
Overall cost... (Score:1)
----------------------------------------
Bashing, and then the topic at hand (Score:2)
On the topic of the question at hand, there are a whole bunch of issues to consider:
- Man hours. Make no mistake, even Unix veterans will have to spend a significant amount of time migrating the system from Novell/NT to Linux.
- In some cases, setting up Samba similar to NT permissions can be troublesome. Definitely look into a good tool to configure Samba. SWAT, the web frontend is nice, but may not be enough.
- If the LAN is just serving user home dirs and such, that's not difficult. If you have web based apps using MS propietary tech, you'll be in for a rough time porting that stuff. I hope you've gone with standards.
What are the short term benefits? Well here's a couple:
- No more per seat licensing/connection garbage.
- Very efficient use of hardware. I've seen NT servers slow down significantly when screen savers start. *SIGH* Of course, the screen saver should not have been enabled in the first place and it was promptly disabled but still...
- Bug updates are free, frequent, and if one has a bit of programming knowledge, possible to do/aid debug on one's own. Try that with MS Service Packs.
- Free software everywhere. Nuff said.
- Easy remote configuration, with X Servers, Telnet, FTP and other very useful methods. PCAnywhere just doesn't compare.
- Proven, useful web tech.
- With this more efficient hardware, you can have failover systems implemented (if you don't already, I hope you do). I have a little AMD 586 133 (P75 equivalent) with 16 MB of RAM and an ISA 10 MB Ethernet that can push 750+ KB/s to multiple clients over Samba.
Make no mistake, this isn't going to be a week-long thing. Plus, Netware is a nice NOS to start with. But there are several good reasons why Linux is gaining steam, and acceptance in the IT biz is another indicator of it.
Like other people have suggested, start small and work up.
Re:Overall cost... (Score:2)
Numerous studies back you up. The biggest cost of any system is the man/women power behind it. For complex Oracle installations, this can be more than 50% of the total cost.
It seems that the average small to midsized shop is barely scraping by on WinNT, and that's with the enormous MS training programs and documentation. Expecting underpaid, underskilled admins to migrate you to Linux is going cost a lot of money, IMO.
--
Re:"Primay Domain Controller" stuff can be a bitch (Score:2)
Could you post how many users you have hitting that Samba PDC, and what kind of network you have.
Samba's useful, but I haven't met anyone who's had the guts to put it smack in the middle of their NT infrastructure. (And, some sort of network directory is needed. Individual password databases won't fly in even the most screwed up NT enviornment.)
--
Re:Unix apps are easier to support (Score:2)
Basically, you describe reverse-engineering the installer. I've been through this in the old days (with WfW that used much more comprehensible INI files), and it wasn't pretty and a very bug prone process.
And while you can get this to work fine for simple, self-contained programs, forget about it for more complex programs such as Netscape Communicator or Microsoft Office. As far as I can tell, there is no documented list of Registry keys that these apps need, so you are going to have to use a Registry monitor and try to keep track of 100s of keys yourself.
If you've seen Intellimirror (in Win2000), they've accomplished the same thing by essentially allowing you to run the installers automatically. However, no existing installers work under this scheme.
Complicating this is that the default Registry permissions are not-to-secure, and tightening this up is inevitably going to break some applicaitons unless you are very careful.
--
Re:Unix apps are easier to support (Score:2)
Reading posts like these really depress me, but I know that's true in many, if not most environments.
Chalk it up to totally retarded (or defunded) IT departments. They won't deploy a standard hardware/software package that works, and they won't support you if you do it yourself. Of course that leaves their internal political support at about zero, so forget about improving the budget to fix the situation.
--
Re:"Primay Domain Controller" stuff can be a bitch (Score:2)
However, 100 users is a pretty small NT domain, and it sounds as if you only have one site. What I'd love to hear is "I'm using a Samba PDC with 1000 users and 5 sites, with a combination of Samba and NT BDCs and NBNS (WINS) servers at each site." When that's true, NT looks to be history for most small-to-midsized shops.
--
Re:How to go about a migration (Score:1)
use LDAP (Score:1)
to set up a box as an LDAP server, and tools do
exist (or are easily written) for user administration on an LDAP server.
Re:Unix apps are easier to support (Score:2)
- figure out what dll's and registry entries the software wants/makes and where it expects them. This is the toughest part.
- create a repository for dll's on a server and share it.
- have all users use a mandatory profile. Add the used menu structure in this profile, as well as the neededuser-registry entries. Have your environment path include the repository you created.
- If needed, system registry entries can be added by either running a remote registry update in batch, or a run-once like configuration, which can be implememted through the profile
- test, twiddle, fiddle, test, test, test
:-)
It's not easy, true. It will cost you a lot of time. true. And all of this makes it practically only interesting to actually do when you have to do a large roll-out. But, as i stated before, it's only for a small part an problem with NT. It's much more a problem with the software vendors who do not document or tell you what dll's, registry entries and such are needed for their apps to run. Once they would do that, the biggest time-consumer in large roll-outs would be eliminated.----------
'We have no choice in what we are. Yet what are we,
but the sum of our choices.' --Rob Grant
----------
Hmm... Tasks for an NT admin. (Score:1)
Revising your Resume'.
Finding a new gig is a tightening market.
Political manuvering to stop this maddness.
I've found that is is almost impossible to convert DOS/Windoze people to Unix. They (Former NT Admins) don't know that the root user is not their standard login. They often cannot be convinced to use the common Unix conventions for installing software (/ is not the answer), naming, and configuration. "There is no rule that says I can't do it this way!", is a common reply to an explanation of how things should be done. The common conventions are not a standard and there are several techniques for some things but Unix/Linux users usually know the value of picking a reasonable set of the conventions and sticking with them (i.e. waht goes in
The best way to do this is to bring in a new crew and slowly let the old crew drop off by attrition. The few that get a clue early may not be too brain dammaged to salvage but thats about it. People get religious about OS's, Languages, and L&F. Bringing DOS/Windoze people into a Unix shop usually gets people who can't wait until they can show you a "Better Way" with their favorite crap.
Change is good (Score:2)
It seems to me that the main cost would be if your server went down when you switched over cuz you (or someone else) did something wrong. I wonder if you mean replacing your current hardware with cheaper hardware...or just putting linux on your current hardware. If you have a decent server-hot swapable drive or at least removeable drives-set up linux on a remote box on a removeable hard drive, write the kernel for the server box then slide the hard drive into the server. It ought to switch over nicely.
It also depends on your current hardware. Do you have SMP systems with big RAIDs? Or single processor systmems with a few SCSI hard drives? Or less? Linux doesnt SMP too well but NT is pretty good at it. From what i understand ext2 isn't the best FS for a large RAID (it's not the best for my tiny 2 gig). If you wanna switch to a free *nix go with FreeBSD or OpenBSD (for lots of security). FreeBSD handles SMP rather well and it's FS has never given me many problems, but you could probably use UFS (Unix File System) for a RAID and put the kernel and such on a smaller drive. If you want LOTS of power and corporate support go with Solaris, on an SMP system it really shines.
Theres lots of alternatives to linux, pick one and move cautiously. I wouldnt suggest changing the user workstations over to linux without first giving all the users a good intro to linux and unix in general. This can be quite costly because it requires them to learn on the job and therefore not really be working or to work overtime. Xwindows and Gnome-CDE-KDE are nice for new users, but without a good understanding of how unix works they'll be lost.
license issues (Score:2)
I know that with UNIX there are also license issues. NT has those too. We use Microfocus COBOL, and they have per user license, but then again so does M$. M$ has per machine license, ie you need a license per each machine. Where UNIX is is usually per named user or per number of concurrant users.
going to UNIX could save you if you have users that do not always use the same machine all the time, or users that login from home.
going to Linux could save you as it would run most if not all of your NT hardware, and one copy could be installed on EVERY machine with only one liscense.
The biggest problem is your NT admins. How willing they are to learn Linux after getting there MSCE (assuming they are MSCE). Most may leave the company I'd imagine, especially if they paid for there MSCE themselves.
if Your NT admins can 'truly" trouble shoot a network then learnign Linux / UNIX would not be that difficult as long as they are willing to think "outside the box".
Re:Unix apps are easier to support (Score:1)
I'm also one of "those" users, mostly out of self-defense. Let's see, now... Our sysadmins regularly take weeks or months to install new software. The standard disk image installed on all engineers' computers is missing vital packages, and many packages installed are out-of-date. There is NO backup plan in place to back up user workstations. I've asked. I do my own backups to the network drive using zip. Oh, and about a week before my hard drive ate itself, the sysadmins lost the share my backups were on! Don't ask me how. It just went away, they don't know where.
And no, I'd never go running to them if I messed something up in my "cool" configuration. It's much faster to fix it myself than to even explain it to them.
You have to be one of "those" users if your network is managed by one of "those" syadmins.
Re:Netware vs. Linux (Score:1)
Sorry to be full of off topic questions but I thought I would ask.
Re:senryu (Score:1)
Please and Thank you.
Hanzie.
How to go about a migration (Score:1)
I have a similar quesion, but about the implementation rather than the cost. I will be working for an ISP that is already set on changing over from NT mail, web, and DNS servers (which sits somewhere else) to a local, Linux based mail, web, and DNS servers (one each). The DNS is not too hard, and neither is the web (except for case sensitive links). However, mail transfer for several thousand users might be an issue. I'm looking for documentation about moving from a NT system over to a linux based sendmail system, while not loosing user mail and doing this fairly quickly and reliably. Does anybody know of any sites, books, or any other sort of documentation about this? I'm sure that I'm not the only one who's had to do this.
Thanks
Re:How to go about a migration (Score:1)
Yinon
Re:Unix apps are easier to support (Score:1)
Re:Unix apps are easier to support (Score:2)
In UNIX, all application software and libraries can be put on an application server where they are already mounted on the clients via NFS. The user directories are usually centralized on a server, and all of the affected users can have environment variables or configuration scripts set up at once. This makes things really easy to install for multiple users, and the application designers don't have to worry about it. They just write applications. An added benefit, is that the users don't have to worry about what machine they are using. They can just as easily log on to another workstation if the one they are working on fails. All their applications are there along with any customizations.
If you are against the network application setup, you can use rdist or something similar, as mentioned in another post. There are many ways to accomplish this feat in UNIX, and they are all out there for you to choose from.
The application developers should worry about making an application that works well. Let the OS worry about the rest. There is no reason it should be that much of a problem. UNIX has been multi-user capable for a long, long time. Unfortunatly, the basic design of Windows did not consider multiple users. This is becoming a greater problem as the world becomes more network centric. Microsoft will continue to release workarounds and proprietary interfaces where they have to, but things will just keep getting more and more complicated to manage. I believe that an OS designed for multiple users will eventually take over. Which one? Is is created yet? I can't say, but Windows is doomed to obsolecence just like DOS. MS needs a new OS without all the backwards compatability (read backwards thinking) if they want to compete in the future.
Re:Common courtesy? (Score:1)
Re:"Primay Domain Controller" stuff can be a bitch (Score:5)
*BSD (Score:2)
Unix apps are easier to support (Score:4)
Most of the time I see cost savings in terms of
how much can I save by not moving to NT from a
costly Unix. It is more difficult when you can't
use the 40K per box savings argument. One place I
see as a major savings is in applications support.
I currently support 400+ Design tools on several
Unix platforms, my peers who are supporting
similar tools on NT are not even close. NT likes
things to be local, it likes things to make
registry changes instead of environment vars, it
likes dll's in places they shouldn't be and most
applications refuse to be a 'Network only'
install. The more applications and the more people
you support the worse the problem gets. I can
install a Unix tool for 1 person or 1000 at the
same cost. NT tools that want to touch the
registry require overhead for EVERY customer.
-SOTTEK
"Primay Domain Controller" stuff can be a bitch (Score:3)
I spent a lot of time banging my head against this with Samba, trying to figure out how to get it done, without really knowing the intricacies of NT administration. My boss had little sympathy: "Just tell it to do password verification" he would sneer, thinking to himself: Fuckin' dumbass.
Then my boss and I went to LWCE (the first one), and heard a talk by the main Samba guy. He talked about the great lengths MS has gone through to keep the password verification APIs secret. The Samba guy had gone to Microsoft conferences, had met with one of the head NT server guys at MS, had tried unsuccessfuly to get answers out of him. The MS guy had turned red and scampered out of the room. (Well, that might have been exaggeration.) MS has put a lot of effort into obfuscating things so that no one else on the planet can make a replacement NT server (because competition in unamerican). This has made it really really difficult for the Samba folks to make effective password verification routines. (BTW, my boss ate his words for thinking I was an idiot for not getting PDC stuff running.)
So the long and short of this is, if you want to do password verification for NT clients, you'll have to keep around a spare dinky little NT server box to verify passwords.
Hopefully people will flame me, saying "You idiot! It's easy to set up a Samba PDC!" But unless they actually POST HOW TO DO IT (hint), kindly redirect them to
Re:Unix apps are easier to support (Score:3)
> by network going down or bandwidth problem.
Perfectly right observation. If you do not want to bother about network downtime, don't rely on file server to host your software. Don't rely on network login system to host your login information. That way you're sure to be locked out when network fails.
But then for Linux, it is your choice. You can use NFS and NIS on a network which is usually up. You can make it standalone and manage all the binaries yourselves. You can use rdist to distribute software to your machine from the server automatically every night, avoid the need to track with security patches and new versions, while not lagging behind for too long. You find the BEST solution for your situation.
Not so for NT. You will have to take the trouble managing registry, and most likely this HAVE to be done by individually installing the software on each machine.
> At the rate IT is shoving stuff down our throat,
> I will put the corporate computer aside and
> bring my own one to do my job as best as I can
> do and not according to some IT guy who thinks
> he knows all about my application and loads the
> vanilla flavour of it.
Good luck, then. You should understand that by doing this, you are taking up another job of system administration. Many people enjoy this, and I do like managing my own Linux cluster. But I can only enjoy this when updating the system can be done automatically (I'm using Debian). I remember that I hate the need to update my system every now and then on my Slackware system: I have to look at individual package, check whether it is old, read README file, and install it. Unless you only have a couple of applications to keep updated, you'll definitely get tired of it.
Most Linux applications ARE user configurable through environment variables. After doing your own customizations, you can start relying on your system admins to upgrade the software. No more constant peeping at web site.
Re:"Primay Domain Controller" stuff can be a bitch (Score:2)
Random observations... (Score:5)
But one thing I've noticed is that when we buy an NT server, we always end up specifying a bigger one than we really need, if for no other reason than to make so the installation and reboots go a little faster. I'm not talking about crashes, just routine reboots that we're inevitably forced to do for minor configuration changes. When your servers are lightly loaded, as ours are, there can be actual cost savings using Linux.
But the hardware costs for such servers are usually less than the cost of the people who manage them. That can cut both ways. On the one hand, there are plenty of people who can keep a simple NT network up and running, and it's harder to find people with Linux experience. But one of the best-kept secrets about Linux is how incredibly easy it is for a competent person to manage. My NT experience vastly outweighs my Linux experience, but when an NT server gets cranky, I still get cold chills. On a Linux box, I calmly look at the log files, and usually find the answer pretty quickly. Samba's SWAT web admin tool is killer, far easier to use than anything in NT.
So, it all comes down to people. If you have people who are sharp, who understand what's really going on while they're clicking "Next... Next... Finish," then they should be able to do a lot more neat things in a lot less time with Linux.
Much also depends on how the company accounts for costs. Smaller businesses often ignore support and admin costs ("We have 3 people in our IS department, and they're on salary, so nothing's really going to change our costs.").
One other consideration, is that it's often useful to think not in terms of migrating but of integrating. It's relatively easy to pop a Samba server into an existing NT network. Keep doing that, and eventually all you'll have on NT is a PDC. So think of file services and authentication services separately. Linux can be used as the workhorse file-spitter-outer, while you maintain some other system, whether it be NIS or NT or, in the future, NDS, as the authentication system and user database. (hmmm... couldn't Samba use PAM to authenticate against a Novell server?)
Re:Uh oh, learning curves... (Score:3)
On the other hand, if NT is causing serious problems that need to be addressed, you can start out by deploying Linux in a limited capacity. Convert over a couple of servers as testbeds, and get your administrators familiar with their day-to-day operation. This can introduce them to the benefits that Linux provides. Once that's done, you can gradually roll your remaining NT boxes to Linux as the administration crew gains experience.
Good luck!
Start Small (Score:3)
a dns server there.. Etc. Make sure the staff gets
a lot of good traning and make sure they run linux
on their desktops. You will probably need to hire
a bunch of consultants to help you and teach your
staff the basics. Going from unix to NT is okay..
but IMHO going from NT to unix is a HUGE learning
curve. As far as cost? Hmm well training your
entire staff bigtime, time associated with making
the transition, a support contract for your
inexperienced admins, maybe some hardware replacement issues (not everything is supported)
I wouldnt attempt to introduce the entire company to linux. (servers only). The avg worker would freak out trying to use linux to do their job after using winnt.
I LOVE linux.. but going from NT to linux will
be a BIG nightmare in the beginning.. but become
much easier then admining NT over time. I guess
what you really have to ask is.. is the time you
would invest in the beginning be worth it in the
end? Is stability and reliability a KEY component
in your environment?
Re:It's as stable as the people who admin it (Score:3)
Coexist not Migrate (Score:4)
I work in an office where NT and Linux coexist. We plan to use Linux as a proxy server. We are also getting a linux based web server. We are not moving desktops to Linux yet. But you can bet that over time we will slowly but surely.