Poll of sorts-

Cyber Source peter at thecybersource.com
Thu Mar 10 12:29:51 EST 2005


Charles H. Root, III wrote:

>Hey Gang,
>
>In less than three years, the Unix/Linux installed base at ASG has grown
>from zero to:
>
>15% of all workstations
>25% of all data system servers
>60% of dialer system
>
>I've always preached a technology agnostic philosophy... Don't drink the
>kool-aid and don't take the pill. Otherwise you will find yourself blindly
>worshiping at the temple of IBM, Microsoft, Sun or whomever. Even worse, you
>may become trapped by a proprietary system that is painful to leave. My
>approach has always been "the right tool for the right job at the right
>price."
>
>Here's some of what we are doing with Open Source.
>
>Most of our employees run Citrix sessions. We are now rolling out Linux
>based PC's or thin clients that have nothing but X Windows and the Citrix
>client on them. I can utilize old Pentium II's, buy or use old computers,
>and don't have to pay a Microsoft Windows License fee. I've saved the
>company $15K - $20K on XP licenses and about $75K on PCS. Almost $100K in
>one year. Our CFO loves me!
>
>All DNS, FTP and web functionality have been migrated to Red hat 8 and
>Fedora Core 3.
>
>We have built an HP WebJetAdmin server running Red Hat 8 that monitors all
>printers across the enterprise. If a printer gets a paper jam, is low on
>paper, toner or has any type of error it automatically e-mails my Help Desk
>team. When you empower yourself to be proactive, you can stay ahead of the
>support curve and fix problems, often times, before your users know there is
>an issue. Since we receive e-mail alerts, sometimes our techs show up just
>as a user says something like "Hey, I was just about to call you!" Our user
>base thinks we are heroes!
>
>We also built a Near Line Storage (NLS) server running Red Hat 9 with Samba
>on an old server we had laying around. This unit contains seven folders...
>One for each day of the week. In addition to backing up all end user data to
>tape every night, another jobs copies that day's data into the appropriate
>folder on the NLS server. Now I have the last seven days of end user files
>backed up on a hard drive!
>
>If you send your backup tapes offsite to Iron Mountain or somewhere safe
>like we do, then you know it's a pain (and expensive) to recall a tape from
>storage when an end user blows up a spreadsheet and needs the file restored.
>When your Help Desk gets a call like this, you normally would tell them
>something like "I'll call you in four hours after we get the tape back and
>restore the file."
>
>With my solution, our Help Desk staff can restore the file from the NLS
>server during the support call! Thirty seconds versus four hours... The
>problem is solved before the end user hangs up! Again, our users think we
>are heroes!
>
>Phase two of our NLS plan is to make these folders available to end users in
>a read-only format that mirrors what they are allowed to see on our main
>file server. In this scenario, end users can restore their own files and
>never call the Help Desk. Oooh yeah... works for me!
>
>We are using a FreeBSD server to run scripts that accomplish scheduled tasks
>via telnet on an old legacy green screen system.
>
>We grabbed the source code for VNC and created our own application that lets
>us shadow end user sessions for QA and tech support purposes via a web based
>front end.
>
>My point is look at all of your business needs and see what makes the most
>sense. If you can utilize Open Source like we have at little or no expense,
>you can pull off some high visibility projects that make you look like a
>genius.
>
>The right tools for the right job at the right price!
>
>Good luck,
>
>Charles H. Root, III
>Chief Information Officer
>
>Account Solutions Group
>205 Bryant Woods South
>Amherst, NY  14228-3609
>
>v: 716.564.4991
>f: 716.564.4331
>
>www.accountsolutionsgroup.com
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-nflug at nflug.org [mailto:owner-nflug at nflug.org]On Behalf Of
>Dennis Ruzeski
>Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2005 10:18 AM
>To: nflug at nflug.org
>Subject: Poll of sorts-
>
>
>I'm curious about something--
>
>How do you all use Linux? Are there many people on the list that use it in a
>corporate/enterprise environment or is it more for desktop/home use?
>
>I've only been to a couple of meetings, but they seem to center more around
>'Linux as a Windows desktop replacement', which is great since Windows
>sucks, but I'd like to see more meeting topics revolving around things like
>high-volume system administration, tuning for performance and uptime, and
>Linux in the enterprise. Anybody else that would like to do things like
>this?
>
>--Dennis
>
>
>
>
>
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>  
>
Sounds like really great stuff. Love to hear stuff like this, Congrats!

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