is there a clear evidence that linux is being applied in the production environment?
 

hi,

first and foremost, i dont have anything against linux, and i really like the os running in my desktop at home.

back to the topic... long before, this has been a dilema over serveral message boards accross the internet, perhaps even a discussion over several sys ads.

is there really a company (besides linux communities, of course) that use linux (any flavor) in their production environment?

the scenario is actually like this, linux communites and linux sites practically support this os because this is theirs right? what about an example of a company that has really preferred linux over the "gates os."

this is just a sort of a survey, sort of a reality check that needs concrete and definite examples of linux in the production environment.

i pertain to production environment as server clusters, ftp, http, dhcp, dns, ad, database, application, file, print, etc....

I work at a company (around 250 employees) that does all online data processing for mainly car dealerships, GM, Ford, Toyota and all the top cars except Mitsubishi, to pull, extract data from Dealer Management Systems, clean the data and prep and ready it to be displayed online. We do other things but 90% of our business is that.

All of our Development, Staging and Production servers mainly run Redhat 2.1AS or Redhat 3 ES currently. We have nothing to do with OpenSource development and 98% of our servers run Linux and Unix. All of our support department use Windows along with most of our development but we do have around 20 developers who use Linux and only Linux for their desktop OS.

So yeah, Linux is ready or can be if you have the right people running the show.. and BTW, I'm a Jr. Sysadmin where I work.

:)

Yes,
I am currently working with a real estate office and we are replacing 15 PC'c with Win98 on them with SuSE and one server also running SuSE. We are also placing a SmoothWall firewall in the office with VPN.


It is happening as more and more people "See" linux.

In Germany, some city councils are migrating to linux. Among them is Munich, Bavaria.
The German Home Office (Innenministerium) offers Migration Guides to encourage Linux deployment. Google for
+kbst +entscheidungshilfe +migrationsleitfaden
there you will find a pdf document in English.

AFAIK, the city administration in Munich have some problems with the migration and use VMware as a temporary solution. But this was predictable. It is not an OS issue but an application prob.

As to industiral production & linux:
On their HP, the Suse folks list many customers from the automotive branch. But I don't know if they deploy linux in the administrative or production sector.

Check out this page at IBM. There are alot of case studies and success stories about companies that use GNU/Linux.

so far, based from your experience, which is a better performer server-wise in a production environment?

win or lin?

we are primarily concerned in the following:
1 - cost
2 - ease of use
3 - extensibility
4 - migration time needed from win to linux (time it takes for a windows sysad to get familiarized and productive when shifted to linux)

im no ubb3r guru in linux, but i have been workign with it more and more over this year, and am working on moving 100% towards *nix.


1. M$ OS cost roughly $150, servers start at roughly $750 and go up from there. also with win2k3 and longhorn you will no longer OWN the OS you are leasing them.

Linux = free so cost goes 100% to linux there.

2. depending on what you know. i know windows, so the clicky is very easy for me to setup and manage, but i am learning linux. the more i understand how things work, and were to get help the easier it becomes. i have been using windows for many years so that is not really a fair question. a M$ person will say M$ is easier, yet a linux person will say linux is easier.

3. linux hands down owns in this case. yes M$ can be upgraded and modified but at a very high cost in both labor and raw cash. linux is built around this feture so it is part of how the systems work.

4. migration is always hard when completely chaning OSs. as for how long it will take a sysadd to get comfortable with Linux if they are coming out of windows enviroment, will depend on who started the migration... if it was the sysadd, then they should be smart enough to figure out what they are doing in a short enough amount of time, if they were forced into it, they may never figure it out.

as for moving over a company that will range so widly it is not even possible to take a guess. every company will be different in the apps they use, require, are willing to change, etc... some companies may never be able to move due to being in a contract with a vender that only produces products for windows, and there is no other vender with a comperable program for them, etc...

Seems like a troll
 

Linux is great in the production environment, although, like ALL tools, you have to pick the right tool to fit your application.

This is the same reason that, for years, anyone who wanted to do any serious publishing bought a Macintosh. (Not that I'd advocate that you should do the same.) The tools of your trade may exist only on one platform, or possibly because one platform gives better performance.

I have personally started a company this past year or so as a CTO/CIO/ETC. (When there are only two people, you get to wear a lot of hats.) Part of this process is to pick the correct tools. As we've begun to expand, we had to have a clear vision of what path we want the company to go down. As such, we made the decision to go forward in x86_64, running Linux. Currently, we're up to 2 Linux desktops, 2 linux servers, and will probably head towards a Linux cluster.

The only windows PC left is the Laptop the CEO uses - and since it meshes with our Linux systems flawlessly, I don't see any reason to force him to use Linux. (TCO is lower for Windows Laptops, IMHO, compared to Linux, when combined with a user who lacks linux experience.)

Of course, my company isn't running anything that's mission-critical at the moment, but we will be! And I believe Linux will provide a solid base for that growth.

(ok... now I feel like an infomercial.)

To answer the original question, we're running http, file shares, print shares, CVS, app dev and a host of other services on our Linux machines. So far, so good!