[clug] Enterprise Linux use

[Antti Roppola]

On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 4:18 PM, David Cottrill <cottrill.david at gmail.com>wrote:

> Thanks for all the answers, but I'm after something I can feed to 
> insular public servants.
> Once again, I consider all my initial points pretty hollow.
> After discussing this with other AIX people, their principle belief is 
> that all managers want a single entity to sue if something doesn't 
> work. A business case Linux has trouble answering.

It's not quite that. There are lots of solutions out there that are made
from stuff from a variety of vendors. For example, most storage combines
software, SAN, tape, servers and network from a range of vendors. Similarly,
you can get a single entity to supply and support Linux (i.e. RHEL).

I can only guess at your circumstances, but would expect that the benefits
of a change would need to be significantly more than the risks to warrant
taking those risks. That is, you should be prepared for a long haul in
understanding all the factors that are part of infrastructure investment.

N.B. All those "AIX people" are also part of that existing investment.

Neil mentioned insurance. Coverage against monetary loss only goes so far.
Look at the recent Virgin Blue system outage, I'm sure they'd preferred to
not have had an outage in the first place over a damages payout.

Get adept at spotting opportunities for change and recognising when pursuing
change is not going to be worth the pain. :)

Cheers,

Antti