Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 15:20:07 -0600 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: Glenn Johnson <gljohns@bellsouth.net>, FreeBSD advocacy list <FreeBSD-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: help in convincing management not to supplant Unix with NT Message-ID: <35CE1287.1F8E492A@softweyr.com> References: <199808090309.WAA00774@gforce.bellsouth.net> <19980809161908.B11095@freebie.lemis.com>
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Greg Lehey wrote:
> On Saturday, 8 August 1998 at 22:09:37 -0500, Glenn Johnson wrote:
> >
> > At my place of employment, the management team, who are basically computer
> > illiterate, have decided that there should be no Unix machines providing
> > network or Internet services, only NT machines.
>
> Sure, that makes sense. The Internet runs on UNIX. Why use it to
> connect?
Was your first thought to find better management? Remember what Ed
Yourdon tells us -- if you cannot support your management, vote with
your feet.
> > I am trying to convince them that this would be a mistake. This
> > situation is complicated by the fact that the Network Administrator
> > does not know anything about Unix and has shown an unwillingness to
> > learn. Over the last 4 months, the AIX machine that the previous
> > Network Administrator setup has been running happily without any
> > intervention, while the NT servers have crashed at least twice a
> > month. I personally have six FreeBSD machines (workstation usage)
> > that have been running without any problems; but this does not seem
> > to be enough evidence.
Network administrators are easy to replace, ditch him and get a better
one.
> > I, along with a couple of other people are trying to present
> > evidence to keep Unix systems running at our site. I searched the
> > FreeBSD archives and found the reference to the article by John
> > Kirsch about Unix vs. NT and have submitted that to management. I am
> > curious if anybody else has had to go through this type of nonsense
> > and could provide any pointers. I am particularly interested in Unix
> > vs. NT for mail service.
While at Intel late last year, our development team decided we needed
a better (faster, more reliable, and better able to support widely
distributed development) Source Code Management system. We tried
several, and settled on Perforce. Since the Perforce server is available
for a wide variety of platforms, I was requested to install it on the
NT Server we used for testing.
Our experience was horrible. While Perforce performed flawlessly, the
NT server crashed at least once a week, and twice scribbled all over
the disk while doing so. We had maintained careful backups using the
NT Backup utility, which proved to be unreadable during one of these
recoveries. Fortunately, I was also archiving copies of the critical
Perforce files on our FreeBSD-based UNIX server as well. After the
second catastrophic crash, I unilaterally decided to move the Perforce
server to the FreeBSD machine. I moved the PCI SCSI controller and
DAT tape drive to the FreeBSD box, ftp'd the Perforce server software
from their ftp server, called Perforce support and was emailed a
new license file. I had the server back on-line in an hour, and we
noticed the server ran much faster on FreeBSD.
Since then, the server has been rebooted once, to insure that system
configuration file changes to the primary IP address were done correctly.
It has now been up, without *any* system administration whatsoever,
since Jan 20 of this year -- 201 days with no attention at all.
Most amusing of all is that this machine, which we put together on a
shoestring budget before Intel bought our wonderful little company,
Dayna Communications, had an *AMD* processor in it. They're still
using it because they're afraid another one won't be as reliable.
They apparently don't believe me that it is FreeBSD that causes their
reliability, not the combination of junkyard hardware, but they are
at least smart enough to stick with a working combination.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.softweyr.com/~softweyr wes@softweyr.com
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