Using Debian in Commercial Environments? 506
sydb asks: "I am currently persuading my employer to try out Linux. We are heavily dependent on IBM software technologies just now, and it's a very conservative operations organization. As a challenge, I am trying to persuade them to use my preferred distro but there are hurdles: IBM doesn't officially support Debian as a platform, though I have anecdotal evidence that most of it can be persuaded to work (with alien etc). Does Slashdot have experience shoe-horning Debian into this kind of scenario? Most importantly, how have things gone getting IBM support? My rationale for pushing Debian boils down to its vast array of packages available to apt-get, easy upgrades, apt-get itself, and the overall quality and consistency of the system."
Put Debian on my ThinkPad (Score:2, Interesting)
Debian - harder to support (Score:5, Interesting)
if it's just apt.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I went through this same discussion at my company, as Debian is my preferred distro as well. The thing is, beyond the distribution scheme, I really don't get to experience the true differences between the distros, as I'm usually running an unstable release anyways.
The link above also documents creating an apt RPM repository - we did this at my company, and to be honest, 99.9% of my gripes with RedHat went away completely.
I'd suggest looking into apt for RPM, it fixes a lot of the problems, and doesn't introduce those posed by a totally new distro on your production boxes.
demo (Score:5, Interesting)
When it comes time to decide on an actual rollout they have to make a decision to go with a distro that they know is proven in their environment, or go with what IBM pitches.
But in either case, what you're doing is making the haters defend on two fronts: the vendors pushing for one linux and you pushing for another. With the debate being "which Linux" it stops being "why Linux". It's a win-win.
I can't agree with you. (Score:2, Interesting)
So, what do I recommend? Predictable as it sounds, a corporate version of Red Hat like Red Carpet. It comes with groupware (Evolution), a decent browser (Firefox) and more updates than you can shake a stick at via up2date. You can make a profile to mass-install it on a batch of machines, and they guarantee corporate support against copyright lawsuits to the tune of three million dollars.
Even so, it's still cheaper than Windows, and far far harder to get infected with viruses, trojans and spyware. Everything on it but the Red Hat logos is open source, plus you won't get wormed in the process of installing it. You'll be essentially invulnerable to hacking attempts and the like, and will be able to more easily roll out updates than on Windows.
This should provide the kind of reassurance your employers need.
Re:Dear slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
Now that we have switched our servers to Linux they wished we could move more.
Support? (Score:3, Interesting)
IBM? Support? Ha! My company (a large multinational financial corp) made the mistake of outsourcing all the technologies through IBM. Some of the stuff works, but their websphere Host-On-Demand system for terminal emulation is crap. The support angle of it is absolutely awful. I have a job thanks to their miserable support of anything they don't provide to us at astronomical costs. My team supports everything they don't. Their policy is, "If we didn't provide it then 1) we don't give a damn about it, and 2) we won't even attempt to help you integrate it into the environment we provided for you." Good luck. It took us years of badgering them before they would clear the way for installling Apache on a workstation to provide automatic updates of image processing. And on top of that, they didn't even try to give us a solution - it was just plain no. When we want to do something now, we just do it. Then hell with 'em. If you can wean your company off of their teat, then my hat is not only off to you, but also covered in mustard as I will be happy to eat it.
Distro fights (Score:3, Interesting)
It eventually boiled down to a single point: SuSE had commercial backing from Novell. Debian is purely a community-maintained distro. If we built a server for a customer, and then that customer decided they wanted to buy support for it, the only safe answer was to use SuSE or Redhat... and frankly, none of us (including the management) liked Redhat a whole lot.
At the end of the day, you need to ask yourself a few questions:
1) Are you happy supporting %DISTRO linux?
2) Are your management types going to be happy with it?
3) Are your customers going to be content with it?
4) Is it compatible with commercial packages? (Really important... although you might be able to shoehorn say, Chilisoft onto Debian, do you really wanna do that across a couple of hundred servers, and then end being responsable for manual updates or whatever?)
Some advice (Score:3, Interesting)
Go with a flavor of Linux that IBM supports, then later when you're feeling adventurous introduce a Debian box or two. Making the Linux transition any more difficult than it has to be seems utterly pointless, especially inside a conservative organization. Make sure they take the right lessons away from this, not some ambiguous point confused by distro issues.
Muddying the waters with unsupported distro complications is just bad judgement.
We've Actually Done It (Score:4, Interesting)
The other Debian box we built for this application was for running Tomcat with the Sun JDK pushing a web-based reporting tool. We were able to demonstrate how Debian supported removing all unrelated packages (including compilers) and lowered the security profile lower than their Solaris boxes. (They still used telnet, God help them) The demonstration worked and the server is running Debian in production on the [redacted] government network.
Don't push it. We recommend Debian because of access to the build/distribution system and the ability to craft custom loads for specific purposes (point-of-sale, thin client, rich client, etc.). Controlling the build/distribution environment is a bigger issue than many people realize. But we really support anything because after a certain point, Linux is just Linux.
Comment on DebianPlanet about how we do it [debianplanet.com]
We use it in our business and support it for our customers. No problems here! Go Debian!
shoe horning is part of the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
You find yourself using terms like shoe-horn, this should be an indication to you that the shoe doesn't fit.
Re:Conservative and don't like Debian? (Score:3, Interesting)
just kidding. You can get away with a compiled kernel and KDE desktop in 24 hours on a 1.8 ghz p4. I've only bootstrapped on a 500mhz k6-2. It took several weeks until KDE was finished.
I wouldn't see Gentoo as a bad solution for a small company as long as the guy doing it was familiar with gentoo. Once you configure a few systems, you get an idea of how the install process should go. It's not difficult, it's just a learning experience.
Please contact your IBM sales rep (Score:5, Interesting)
Except Debian is only REAL OSS (Score:5, Interesting)
It's truely free and fully open source, support is just about as good as Red Hat or Suse [again unless you're willing to paybig bucks], forward and backward releases are supported fully...no pressure to upgrade on a company's timetable, and software compatiblity is of the highest level... In a nutshell Debian IS Linux!
What's needed in the general OSS movement is to get more corperate interest in the grassroots OSS movements... Personally, I'm a Suse fan...because they have some great IBM hardware ports [like iSeries/AS400!] but realistically, distros like Gentoo and Debian are the future of software...companies like RH & Suse are attempts to strap "traditonal" lock-in software business to OSS/Linux... they are bound to fail...and leave you holding the bag. The beauty of Gentoo and Debian is that anybody can bolt anything they want on to the very stable bases...and when the base changes it's easy to work the changes into your custom software...they are DESIGNED to do just what most companies need!!!
As far as stability and compatibility, isn't it an open joke that the current version of Debian Stable is pushing 3 years old...I'd call that a pretty reliable standard base...better than ANY of the corperate Linuii.
Re:Conservative and don't like Debian? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dear slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
Then install Debian on an X86 server and show them it works.
It's often hard to see the potential of something that's not running. It's also hard to argue with a running system.
Re:Good Luck (Score:3, Interesting)
In years past, I introduced more than a few people to linux when we brought in cvs for source code control, bugzilla for issue tracking, apache for our intranet, etc.
Some of these apps can be run on Windows, but we got it running much easier on linux.
If you bring the right (read USEFULL) applications in, linux will sail right in.. because you weren't bringing in linux, you were solving a problem.
Re:I can't agree with you. (Score:3, Interesting)
1-If it ain't broke, don't fix it. People are lazy and upgrading apps is alot of work.
2-They are afraid they are going to fsck something up. Either its a complex environment or they don't trust their knowlege of the system enough to do it. ie, not many people in the real world stick their necks out if they don't have to, especially if htey have families at home.
We're right before getting productive (Score:2, Interesting)
thousand servers.
My small team got the opportunity to proof a linux desktop system could actually
be useful for the enterprise. The parameters were absolutely ideal:
* Several hundred desktops should be migrated from some kind of arcane unix
to a linux desktop (-> Users who know there is a world beyond Windows)
* All they need is a huge inhouse X-application, that would cost millions to
port to Windows, but is simple to recompile on Linux.
Obviously this situation is a winner to attempt to bring linux to the desktop.
It seems management had heard names like RedHat or SuSE before, but the
they did not have a straight preference. Therefore we managed
to the task without the suits trying to sell their
distro, so we (the techs)
could work with our back free.
Now our big enterprise has a deep integration of windows machines in
its custom environment. We felt the possibility to adopt Debian and integrate
it just as deep into this environment. What does this mean?
* There is a configuration management database with html-interface. We use it to
feed parameters in the debian package management and to configure our systems.
* There is an optimized process to install a custom windows desktops. We took the
process and made it the base for our debian install using FAI and Knoppix
hardware detection. (And yes, we install a system in 15minutes automatically,
while the windows desktops need user interaction and takes
two hours in a lab)
* Our users reside in the Microsoft ActiveDirectory. We used the vintela software
to hook up on the AD as well. This was a decision in order to save some time.
You can do it with non-commercial software as well, but vintela is ready-made
and easy to alienate into a debian package.
* Our enterprise is of course very conservative when adopting new software. So
we took the idea of unstable, testing and stable debian distributions and
extended it by a distro called pilot. This one is very close to the stable one
and basically the end-users getting the software a few days ahead, giving
us another layer of confidence in the stability.
* Our management is very fond of packages. We took this to the extreme as we
saw it suiteable for desktops: Everything is a package now. The root-password
is in a package, the desktop menu is in a package, the special fonts are
in a package and the sources list is in a package. Some of the packages ask
the config database mentioned above for parameters.
All the config packages use cfengine to manipulate the system, if problems
arise we have port 22 open and a service user (distributed as package) who
can be used to install/deinstall packages or to gain root access.
* We did it all within something around 40 man-days. This sounds very
convincing to the management, as they know how many years they paid to
squeeze the same functionality out of Windows.
During our proof of concept we saw it is very simple to integrate all these great
components into our corporate environment. If RedHat would have sold us
their commercial configuration and provisioning module, it would have been their
process and no longer our own well-tested installation and configuration process.
We have a good command-line interface to our
package management and no silly "advanced web
interface" to our package server. It is all
scriptable and we know the scripts as we have
written them.
So under the line debian proofs to be successful here, because it is so flexible
and because we do not need no certified OS to run commercial software. There is none.
What's missing?
You may have guessed: Management is willing to follow our
proposal but they want a support contract with a serious company with few letters in
the name.
We think this is no
We bought IBM with the choice of Red Hat OR Debian (Score:2, Interesting)
I have to add that it was an IBM reseller (but who does the support and everything) and not directly IBM, but Debian was - as far as I understood - their first choice.
I am presenting on Linux at IBM Bedfont in October (Score:2, Interesting)
IBM DB2 support (Score:3, Interesting)
I work in Italy. A company that produces an accounting package was interested in bundling their solution with our Debian-based server product.
Their solution uses DB2 for its database. It was important to them and their clients that IBM supported the DB2 installs back-ending their software. IBM only certifies DB2 installs (at least in Italy) on RedHat 7.X and a flavour of SUSE I don't recall now... Yes, in 2004 they will insist upon RedHat 7.X if you want IBM's support. Yes, I pointed out that RedHat doesn't support 7.X any more so essentially they were asking their clients to choose a lack of support for their DB or lack of support for their OS.
I'm sure there are countless examples where heavy-hitting software vendors have been able to cajole support from IBM for other distros but small software companies haven't got a hope.
In a last-gasp effort, I adapted the IBM installation and update scripts to use alien and dpkg and demonstrated that they worked flawlessly. The accounting package developers were happy, we were happy... IBM refused to budge.
Re:Why try for Debian? You will fail. (Score:5, Interesting)
Employee: Um, look harder please, remember we're paying you all this money for [Operating System]
[Any Vendor At All]: Ah, ok, I think we've found the problem. You're running software we don't support. Now go fix it yourself and stop bothering me.
How about this instead?
CEO: What's going on here?
Employee: I unwisely installed a new package on our production server without testing it first. I'm just in the process of removing it and going back to the old version. Everything should be back up by the end of our maintenance window.
CEO: Good. Let me know how it turns out and why this won't happen again.
Paying a lot of money for a support contract is no excuse for being careless. If your server absolutely has to be running tomorrow, then keep it running. I don't care if you use a cold spare, restore from a backup or try to fix it yourself, but I do know that if I told my boss that I couldn't be bothered to find a solution and was sitting in my butt waiting for a vendor to fix it for me instead, I would soon be out of a job. And I would have earned it.
Being a sysadmin means you always have a backup plan. Having someone to point your finger at does _not_ constitute a plan.
It's the certifications (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing that keeps Red Hat and SuSE on the top is certifications, validations and things like that, which aren't free.
Is Debian enterprise ready? Yes.
Would I recommend it to enterprise customers? No.
First, very few application vendors explicitly support it. I've had bad experience with Red Hat 8 (a vendor who "supported it" until we run into a RH8-specific bug they couldn't fix, then they recommended RH Enterprise Server) so I would be very very careful about that. This has nothing to do with "skillz" - sometimes to make things work you'd need to change the application or do something which isn't possible.
Second, if you happen to need to connect it to SAN or such hardware (or install Oracle on it), you'll be in big trouble - not because it can't be installed (it can) but because the customer would kill if they knew their 100K of h/w or s/w has been rendered unsupported because you've used an unsupported OS.
Third, in many situations, OS cost is about 1% of total TCO, so why bother?
Debian needs certifications and h/w vendor support. I hope some big Linux user will donate this money to Debian to get couple of important certifications for enterprise h/w and software.