Michael Dolan Dot Com

Tuesday, February 14th, 2006

Counter the Facts – Help from the OSDL and EMA

The executive summary of a new report from EMA and co-sponsored by the OSDL and Levanta shows some striking real world, admin in the trenches truth to counter some of the hypothetical situations Linux opponents in the Northwest posit as facts. If you read beyond the executive report you will see an anlaysis and detail that should put to rest any fears that managing Linux “costs more”, “requires too many patches” or is “too difficult for Windows admins”.

From the Exec Summary:

Executive Summary

In various older studies, Microsoft and some analysts claimed Linux has a higher Total Cost of  Ownership (TCO) than Windows. They attributed the difference mainly to higher system management costs, and concluded that the higher TCO outweighed the much lower license and acquisition costs for Linux.

However, in a new study of over 200 Linux enterprises, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) found that this perception is no longer accurate. Sophisticated management tools now allow Linux management to be fast, effective, and inexpensive. With far lower acquisition costs, Linux is now a cost-effective alternative to Windows.

EMA analyzed the cost factors cited in previous studies and found the following results:

• Provisioning – 75% of administrators using sophisticated tools can provision a system in less than 1 hour; one third can provision a system in less than 30 minutes.

• Patch management – most Linux administrators spend less than 5 minutes per server per week on patch management. Sophisticated management tools reduce this effort even further.

• Configuration management – supporting multiple versions of a given distribution has no discernible impact on Linux management. In some cases, respondents actually had more versions of Windows than Linux.

• Reliability – most respondents reported 99.99% or higher availability for their Linux systems. A significant number (17%) report no downtime at all.

• Problem resolution – in over 60% of cases, when problems occur in Linux environments they are diagnosed and repaired in less than 30 minutes, over 8 times faster than industry average.

• Management and support – 88% of enterprises with Linux and Windows spend less effort managing Linux; 97% believe it is, at worst, the same for both systems. Respondents with sophisticated management tools all report Linux management is the same or easier than Windows management.

• Storage management – enterprises with sophisticated management tools did not find any significant difference in storage management effort or utilization for either Windows or Linux.

• Resource costs – most administrators, for either Linux or Windows, earn under $60k. Salaries for combined Linux/Windows administrators are only marginally higher than for Linux-only administrators. Linux skills are readily available.

• Consulting and training costs – 79% of enterprises spent nothing on Linux consulting, and 63% spent nothing on training. Only 4% spent over $10K on consulting or training.

In addition, this research found the following in areas not adequately addressed in previous studies:

• Acquisition costs – for similar environments, Linux acquisition costs can be almost $60,000 less per server than Windows in software costs alone. Windows also incurs higher hardware costs.

• Productivity – Linux tends to be more productive, as Linux administrators tend to manage more servers than Windows administrators, and Linux systems tend to handle greater workloads than Windows systems.

• Security Management – 75% of Linux administrators spend less than 10 minutes per server per week managing security. With sophisticated management tools, this goes up to over 85%.

• Virus and Spyware Management – 95% of Linux administrators with sophisticated tools spend less than 10 minutes per server per week managing viruses and spyware. Respondents strongly endorsed Linux as inherently less vulnerable. No administrator reported spending more time on Linux than Windows.