Joe Richards said:
I would question why your machines go down so much? We have thousands of
Windows Servers running that do not seem to
have as many issues as you have encountered. I personally manage around
400 servers that do very well and rarely if ever
Of course not, companies with 400+ servers can probably afford to give their
administrators computers to work on other then the servers. Granted, I am
totally against using any server as a workstation; however, I do not
administer the LAN at this company on a regular basis, I am merely filling
in while the IT manager is out on vacation. Don't take that as a sign of
inexperience however; as of April this year I have decided to leave the IT
world for what I really enjoy --programming. I would say that there is a
high probability that some of the crashes are a result of inexperience on
the real IT managers part, however I cannot accept that I am the only one
facing these instability issues. Read the various Unix newsgroups on the
net, many of the posters are frustrated with Windows and are looking for a
powerful alternative. These are not inexperienced IT managers by a long
shot. These are people that came from the days when servers experienced
near year round uptime. The downtime Microsoft's OS's display is an insult
to us PC users.
My previous employer had a mix of Linux, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0 and
Novell Netware servers. The 2K server ran our financial MRP software on a
MS SQL 2000 database. It was, for the most part, quite stable. The only
user logon's permitted, either at the console or through Terminal Services,
were by the IT department and it was only used for nightly maintenance on
the database, which could be performed no other way. About once a month, it
would have some kind of random problem that a reboot would correct. The NT
4.0 servers ran our Microsoft Exchange 5.0 server and were the PDC/BDC for
the company. For the most part, as long as I never touched them, the
servers would run flawlessly; but, the second I tried logging into either of
them, things would get ugly. I spent many hours on the phone with Microsoft
Technical Support, trying to resolve my issues. After months of headaches,
I finally gave up with both of them and now just let them sit 99% of the
time and let them do what they have to do without asking them for anything
else. The Linux machine ran our internal Intranet site on Apache 2.x with
MySQL 3.x. That thing was a work horse to say the least. I could do
anything I wanted at any time and never had problems. It was so reliable
and spent too much of its time, looking for something to do, that we had to
give it something else to keep it busy. Whatever could be run on Linux was
put on it to help alleviate some of the load on the NT 4.0 servers. This
did help the stability of the NT servers, but not by enough. The Novell
file/print servers were rarely touched. As I'm sure most of you are aware,
the bulk of administering a Netware server is done on a workstation. About
the only time we touched the main server was to check the tape backup logs.
I've experienced uptime on both my Linux and Novell servers up to or
exceeding 6 months. Around that time, I would shut them all down for
regular routine cleaning. I have yet to see a Microsoft server with uptimes
near 6 months. I can't even make it a month.
Well, I am done ranting, I realize that 99% of you here are against me and
would never admit that there are better operating systems out there with far
less problems. You all have a nice day...
Sean
