11 Jan
2012
11 Jan
'12
4:18 p.m.
On 01/11/2012 06:43 PM, Lance Lyon wrote:
Horses for courses, but it irritates me no end when
people who have little
experience with managing data centres constantly spout of (usually ancient
history too) about how bad Windows systems are.
Is this where we get to compare resumes? Oh goodies! Add another
digit to the quoted number of machines in your current datacenter and
then you'll be in the right order of magnitude to compare to datacenters
that I've managed nearly single-handedly. Should we quote numbers and
company names? I'm fine with that. You're not dealing with a hobbyist
here. (well, you are, but not exclusively so! ;))
Your dismissive arguments are typical of MS pushers. Anyone who
doesn't like Windows is automatically labeled as either "behind the
times", "inexperienced", or "religious". I'm sorry to
disappoint, but I
don't fall into those categories.
To be fair, though, with the zeal with which I pursue these
occasional flamewars I can easily see how I might be perceived as
"religious". Not that you'll take my word for it, but I'm really not.
I don't say "Windows sucks" because I don't like it...I don't like
it
because it sucks. Yes, it's improving, and I applaud that. But it's
still not good enough for me, because I'm an extremely anal-retentive
perfectionist who loves cutting-edge technology, but loves reliability
and predictability a lot more, and does NOT like the idea of using the
wrong tool for the job.
I'm a professional, I do this for a living, I've done so all my life,
and I CARE about this industry and the science behind it. Because of
that, every time I see someone screaming or crying that Windows just
lost all their general ledger entries or all their baby pictures (both
of which have happened in the last month, out of the maybe half dozen or
so people I know of who still use it) I feel a measure of personal
responsibility because "my" industry has failed them. It bothers me.
You are to be commended for achieving the uptimes that you get. But
why, really? I'm sure if someone worked hard enough, and was driven
hard enough by some sort of reward, they could build a skyscraper using
a Volkswagen as their only hauling vehicle. But why not just use the
tools built for these sorts of jobs anyway?
For home use, apart from my 8 bit Commies (which I
certainly don't use for
anything like email or browsing although they are of course capable) I have
two systems - one is a dev box running Red Hat enterprise 5.7, this isn't
used for day to day "stuff" as the packages are generally poorer than
commercially available ones for the "other" OS. That OS is Windows 7 -
it's
been running for close on 18 months, has never crashed and is only updated
when *I* decide it should - ergo only reboots when *I* decide it should.
Sure, and it takes a Windows expert to do that. I readily
acknowledge that Windows machines can develop some uptime. Nowhere near
that of a mature OS, but still, 18 months is approaching reasonable.
But it needs someone of your level of experience to get there, and most
datacenters (including ones I've managed with a few racks of Windows
machines in the corner) just don't have that. I know of a few people
who can get real reliability out of a Windows machine...there are even a
few that I know of on this list. But the poor sods I see plodding
around the Windows machines scratching their heads and just rebooting
when something doesn't look right are NOT of your caliber, and they are
in the vast, vast majority.
The Windows haters need to get out of the mentality
that Windows is a poor
OS - that may have been the case with W95/98 (and definitely ME) but two
releases (XP and 7) stand out as well designed and reliable systems. I would
not use either in a server environment, but then neither would I use Debian
in a server environment for the same reason - they are all consumer
operating systems.
Wow. I don't know of anyone, not even the most hard-core Microsoft
worshipper, who claims Windows to be "well designed". The evidence
presented by others in this thread (since clearly you don't believe ME
simply because I don't like Windows!) stands clear. And in case it
doesn't, I'll utter one word: "Registry".
As far as Debian, I've never used that Linux distribution
specifically, but then I'm not much of a Linux person. I can say,
however, that I readily got multi-year uptimes out of a stack of very
high-traffic (hundreds of simultaneous calls each) telephony servers
(needed Linux on x86 due to binary-only CODECs) upwards of 6-8 years
ago. At one time I disliked Linux as much as I dislike Windows
now...but it really has grown up in the past decade.
The world has moved on - perhaps the old stodgies
should do the same.
The further dismissivity of stating anything that's not Windows is
somehow "old" is entertaining but ludicrous. Windows has evolved, as
you so loudly say...but so has the rest of the data processing world.
And the rest of the data processing world has a very large industry and
hundreds (if not thousands) of companies behind it...not just one. Like
it or not, the world's heavy lifting isn't done by little Dell machines
running Windows. In your datacenter, maybe. But not much else. Before
you decide that I'm a hobbyist trying to envision a datacenter full of
Commodore 64s, please recall that I've worked in this industry, for
real, for a good long time. I speak from experience, not assumptions,
suppositions, or wishful thinking. All of your desire to simply dismiss
my statements with that assumption will have to be disappointed this time.
Now can we please drop this shit for once? When *I* of all people
get tired of a good flamewar, you know it has gotten pretty stale.
Thanks go to Richard for starting this one, as it was a good one.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
New Kensington, PA