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Re: My employer completed migration of apps to Linux

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____/ Ignoramus27079 on Friday 31 October 2008 21:30 : \____

> A while ago I mentioned the our company that I work for, runs some
> proprietary homegrown apps some of which are quite demanding on both
> CPU and network.
> 
> They were running on windows.
> 
> At some point we started having big performance problems with them and
> started running out of datacenter rack space also due to needing to
> have a lot of computers.
> 
> We were lucky since we tried to keep our apps away from using
> Microsoft specific libraries and so on. So we tried running these apps
> on linux.
> 
> They ran much better.
> 
> We started moving this stuff to Linux and reorganized things by making
> everything much more scriptable. In fact, these servers are set up b
> yplopping in a custom disk and running the disk. Usually all that the
> installer has to specify is the hostname. They all run the same
> scripts, self update, etc. I manage them, but I never have to go to
> all of them one after another and do some manual stuff like clicking
> icons and shit like that. There is about 30+ servers, not really
> taking much of my time any more.
> 
> The end result of improving performance was that we could combine
> approximately 5 windows servers into one linux server. We started off
> with about 100 Windows servers and ended with about 20 active linux
> servers. (the remaining ones adding to 30+ are things like hot spares
> and boxes waiting for their turn to be used etc).
> 
> We actually use those underutilized ones as compile servers.Thus,
> libraries that would take 20 minutes to compile under Windows, would
> take only under 2 minutes to compile with Linux. (windows is not
> capable of parallel compiles due to issues with PDB files and so on)
> 
> So the end result is that all our server side stuff is running on
> Linux, so some of our developers who were developing on Windows only,
> are now slowly going into Linux also.
> 
> Because we reduced the number of servers, we are no longer running out
> of rackpspace.
> 
> Due to much improved scripting, our production support people are also
> able to do a lot less. I have extensive experience with Windows
> scripting and it cannot compare due to various Windows nonsense.
> 
> Altogether, the efforts to maintain those linux boxes and their
> software (including our software) are many times less than that
> required for Windows, plus no performance issues. Changes can be
> rolled out in minutes. Scripts make a lot less mistakes than humans,
> etc.
> 
> So, as a final tally I think that everyone is very happy about this
> move. The windows centered computer administrators were apprehensive
> in the beginning, but now they see it as less work. Plus people with
> Linux on resumes are paid 15-20% more, according to Microsoft, so they
> like this aspect.

Why don't you write a letter like this post explaining your experience and send
it to Red Hat, Canonical, and the Linux magazines, since it might be useful to
them, for example, counteracting Microsoft FUD?


- -- 
                ~~ Best of wishes

Roy S. Schestowitz      |    Useless fact: 12345679 x 8 = 98765432
http://Schestowitz.com  |    RHAT Linux     |     PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
 23:05:01 up 16 days,  7:23,  1 user,  load average: 3.32, 3.31, 3.38
      http://iuron.com - Open Source knowledge engine project
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