Re: [Hampshire] Happy Happy Joy Joy

Responses inline.

On Sat, 2007-09-22 at 19:07 +0100, Tim B (Systems) wrote:
> And you expect the monkeys to be sysadmining your network???? (ref. cartoon of
> all the monkees sitting in a tree)

Of course *I* wouldn't, but it's not my networks and not my decision. A
good windows admin can be picked up for the fraction of the cost of a
good Linux admin and are a lot easier to replace. Most companies have
predominantly Windows clients, and a Windows server suits those needs.

>From a management perspective, the Windows admin is cheap. And a
reasonable one will be able to design a reasonably reliable network.

> Keep it simple, install linux, clean the dust out every 6 months, you'll be
> fine.

Except the lack of a distribution facilitating a fast out of the box
installation and the lack of a good set of management tools imposed on
you mean the cost of setting up Linux as a cross-platform server
platform is prohibitively time-consuming.

Setting up a windows domain controller is a few clicks -- add a new
domain controller and you have multi-master functionality with automatic
failover. I've met windows admins that don't understand DNS at all,
have installed Exchange without needing to understand much more than the
basics of what they are doing (evident by one occasion where a company
Exchange 2000 server was configured as an open relay and found itself
blacklisted for a week).

MMC provide effortless setup of users and adding windows machines to a
domain is dead simple. You can setup a whole network and there's no
need to even know about designing building an LDAP directory to contain
your organisations details, adding service keys, etc. It's all done for
you. Although not universally implemented, single signon largely comes
for free. One might argue that if you are only provided with a limited
view on the technology you are using then you only need to understand
that view to be able to operate the software.

Setting up a Linux equivalent to AD with LDAP, Kerberos, etc is not so
trivial. I'm not arguing it's a bad thing that you have to understand
what you're doing, but to get the same level of functionality is a lot
of work.

> As soon as some-one says "XYZ must be able to login and change ABC" I worry,
> because (at least in the company I work for) "XYZ" hasn't got a clue and
> it'll take me an age to sort out "ABC" properly afterwards. I'm quite happy
> to use config files. at least you need some idea of what you're doing before
> you change them!

Having worked with a Windows admin who insisted he was competent enough
to make simple changes to a BIND configuration, and consequently broke
it regularly, I can confirm that you don't need some idea of what you're
doing before changing config files. You just need to *think* you do.

> What I like about MS Software is that it doesn't interoperate seamlessly with
> other systems from MS. Half the time I find myself running linux to
> troubleshoot Windows issues.

I'm no fan of Windows based stuff -- I work with Linux every day on
clients and servers. I find Windows frustrating and when things go
wrong on a Windows machine, there is always a chance it may just be
completely unfixable. Nevertheless, I think it's smart to acknowledge
what it gives you.

In the same way that I think that C++ is a much better programming
language than Java, I may pick it by preference but it's foolish to not
acknowledge what Java provides.


Graham