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Linux has a Place in the Enterprise
From its meager beginnings as a hobby project to its extreme success among geeks, Linux has survived lawsuits, boycotts and onslaughts from every corner of the UNIX, Windows and Mac computing markets. Linux has, in spite of its critics, made its way into the world’s data centers. Linux enjoyed early success as a host platform for the Apache web server but now has blossomed into a formidable contender for rack space. For an operating system, Linux has the best mixture of vendor neutrality, open source code base, stability, reliability, scalability and affordability. It also provides the user or administrator the choice of graphical user interfaces or none at all.
Linux has one very significant advantage over all other operating systems: Hardware compatibility. It runs on a variety of hardware platforms from wristwatches to mainframes, although it’s most familiar playing field is on x86 metal.
Two decades of community development and support have brought Linux into the mainstream as an enterprise-level operating system that’s competitive on every level of computing. Linux hosts workloads of all sizes and types: Web services, databases, applications, network services, file services, virtualization and cloud computing.
With the notable exceptions of Microsoft’s Hyper-V and Solaris Zones, Linux-based virtualization solutions are the standard in contemporary data centers. And, the world’s largest cloud computing vendor, Amazon, uses Xen virtualization for its services. Though it’s rare outside of Internet Service Provider (ISP) realms, you can run “Zones” virtualization on Linux too. Zones, containers or jails are a popular method of securely compartmentalizing Linux applications from one another. ISPs use containers to separate users from one another on shared systems for shell access. It’s an effective and secure method of leveraging inexpensive hardware over dozens of users.
Though Linux has a dedicated following, corporate buy-in and support from the world’s largest hardware and software vendors, there are still those who aren’t convinced. As late as mid-2011, I found several articles and commentary challenging the viability of Linux as a data center operating system.
The problem with Linux adoption stems from a misunderstanding of the Linux support model. Linux, as a kernel, and generally as an operating system, is free. Free means its code is free to use, change and adapt to any purpose. Some refer to this freedom as open source. Open source does not necessarily mean free. Proprietary software can be open source but it isn’t free to change, rebrand, etc. Linux is free software and it’s also open source.
It also means that Linux is free of charge. Vendors charge for media, consulting, support and a host of associated services but they usually do not charge for the Linux software itself.
The very thing that makes Linux so desirable to geeks and those knowledgeable in the ways of free software is also the aspect that makes some company executives turn away from Linux as a data center operating system. Incorrectly, they assume that since something is free and doesn’t have strings attached that there must be something wrong with it.
Dispelling myths associated with Linux use requires a lot of energy and time. But, there is one sure test for Linux data center viability: IT Services Support.
Linux has support, financial and technical, from the biggest names in the IT industry. Each of these industry giants has its own Linux distribution preference but, whichever distribution you decide to use, you can purchase full support for it. You can purchase 24x7x365 support from a variety of sources, including directly from Linux distribution vendors.
Every major IT services company supports Linux, Windows and commercial UNIX flavors as part of its portfolio. Linux is a mainstream operating system that carries workloads for every sized company in the world. Linux is no longer cute or niche. If you use any online web hosting services, web-based CRM software, databases, virtualization or cloud services, chances are greater than 90% that you’re using Linux behind the scenes for those services.
Linux supports high availability, clustering, high-performance computing and a variety of hardware platforms. It also supports industry standard LDAP (Directory) services, large databases, journaling filesystems, SMP computing and major computer languages including an implementation of Microsoft’s .NET platform.
Linux has its place in your data center doing the enterprise-level heavy lifting at a lower cost than comparable proprietary systems. The days of the monolithic, single operating system data centers are long gone. Heterogeneous networks, including Linux, are today’s standard fare.
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.
Has the World outgrown Commercial UNIX?
When you read articles about cloud computing or Enterprise computing, you rarely see the term ‘UNIX’ anymore. You see plenty of rhetoric about Linux and Windows but UNIX seems to have left the building, for good. And, by ‘building,’ I mean data center. However, that’s not the case. UNIX is alive and well in the world’s Enterprise data centers. It just doesn’t grab headlines like it used to. Does the fact that UNIX isn’t a newsworthy buzz term mean that it’s on its last legs as an Enterprise operating system. Certainly not. Commercial UNIX might have lost its “coolness” but it hasn’t lost its place running your business-critical applications and services.
Enterprise-level UNIX systems still rule the data center for the big workloads, the big databases and Big Data.
When selecting an operating system for your critical business needs, what do you look for? Reliability, availability, stability, versatility, virtualization, scalability, affordability, sustainability, supportability and sheer ability are terms that come to mind on which to judge an operating system. Plus you need a company behind the operating system that employs experts who understand the critical nature of your business. That’s the lure of commercial UNIX. That’s the decision point for many businesses: Support.
It’s fun to think of living in a world where a company can throw caution to the wind and use free software. The reality is that for a company to remain operational it must do so sometimes at greater expense. It’s wise to be frugal but you also can’t afford to gamble with your business’s livelihood based on whim or attitude founded on an ideal. Free software has its place in the data center. But, are you willing to risk your company’s mission-critical business on it?
So far, businesses say, “No.”
Commercial UNIX still wins in every category listed above. Yes, even affordability. Companies that use Linux never do so without also paying for support and 24x7x365 is expensive, even for Linux. Windows does some things well. Linux does some things well. Commercial UNIX does some things well. There is no single right answer to every problem. That’s why you don’t have many companies of any size that have a single operating system or platform anymore.
Don’t misunderstand me, I love Linux and free software but you have to realize that, when it comes to risking millions or perhaps even billions of dollars on your computing infrastructure, you have to use a time-tested, battle-proven technology. That technology is commercial UNIX.
Allow me to quote some statistics gathered by Gabriel Consulting Group (GCG) last year (2011) on this topic that’s published in their whitepaper, “Is Commercial Unix Relevant in the Midmarket?” The 300+ survey respondents represent companies of all sizes, including 44 percent from companies with more than 10,000 employees. However, the data in the report reflects the responses from the focus group (Midmarket, 4,000 or fewer employees), which is 46 percent of the total number of those surveyed. GCG has also included some data from the large company segment for comparison.
- >80% stated that UNIX usage is increasing.
- 49% said that 75% or more critical applications run on UNIX
- >75% report that >50% mission-critical applications run on UNIX
- Larger organizations state that 75% of their critical applications run on UNIX
- 90% said that UNIX is strategic to their business
- 98% of large company respondents stated that UNIX is strategic
What are the most important factors to those who choose commercial UNIX for their mission-critical workloads?
- Availability and Stability
- Operating System Quality
- Predictable Performance
- Vendor Support
- Raw performance, Speed, Scalability
What are the less important factors for those who’ve selected commercial UNIX?
- Easy Administration and Management
- Acquisition Price
- System Familiarity
- Virtualization Capability and Tools
These two lists say a great deal about commercial UNIX buying habits. One glaring point is that price is of less consequence than reliability. The top three reasons given are the reasons why commercial UNIX has many more years of life left in it for the applications and systems that are business mission-critical.
One point that’s a bit unclear in the survey is that of scalability. Sure, Linux and Windows are both scalable but only on PC hardware. And, that includes virtualization. PC hardware can’t compare to the “big iron” on which commercial UNIX runs. Of course, Linux (zLinux) does run on mainframe computers (z/OS) and that’s pretty big iron but most companies under the 4,000 employee levels don’t own a mainframe.
Although survey respondents said that raw performance, virtualization and scalability were not high on their most important aspects list, they’re still important. So is support. The people who write the checks still like to rely on companies that back their products. Companies have more confidence in commercial UNIX than they do in Linux, even when supported by primary vendors such as Red Hat or Novell. Although the Debian distribution is free of charge, companies would rather engage and pay for a real company’s support behind the product.
To drive home the point, the survey revealed that 41 percent of respondents feel that commercial UNIX support is superior to that of Linux vendor support at 30 percent. And, 47 percent believe that UNIX is more available and more reliable than Linux.
Most small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), like most Enterprises, have a heterogeneous environment. They run their mission-critical applications and services on commercial UNIX and user-oriented services (File, Web, Intranet) on Windows and Linux. Almost three-quarters of those surveyed said they would use commercial UNIX well into the future. While commercial UNIX doesn’t have that “cool” factor that Linux does, commercial UNIX still owns the mission-critical market.
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.
