Debian Enterprise (not a Starfleet metaphor)

[Sean 'Shaleh' Perry]

hey Johnie, its been a while (-:

On Tuesday 16 December 2003 20:22, johnie@nyip.net wrote:
>
> Somehow I suspect this isn't true, so I have two questions:
>
>   1. Has anyone here run Debian for critical work -- say as RDBMS or
>      part of a cluster of application servers, webservers etc. -- or
>      read of that being done by others?  Or maybe as smart firewalls,
>      or OpenOffice deployments that saved money compared to Windows....
>

I have used Debian quietly at work on numerous occasions.  It has *ALWAYS* 
been a struggle.  Here is my most recent case study.

The IT department wanted a ticket system and did not want to use engineering's 
bugzilla.  So I looked around and decided to use Request Tracker.  This being 
a RH shop I used RH 8 and started following the docs.  For those of you who 
do not know, Request Tracker uses lots of perl modules and usually mod_perl 
in apache.  I had to build *ALL* of it.  Took me like 3 days to get 
everything working.  Recently the apache authentication broke.  The Windows 
admin changed something so my hooks into Active Directory no longer work.  
System is like 3 months old.  I decided to re-install with Debian because I 
was tired of maintaining RH by hand.  Made a backup of /etc and the SQL db 
along with some other data.  Installed Debian -- took about an hour.  Did an 
apt-get install request-tracker3.  Waited 20 minutes.  Put the data back into 
the SQL table, read the /usr/share/doc/request-tracker3/README.Debian.gz.  
Was up and running 30 minutes later.  This has been my experience with damn 
near all of my RH --> Debian changes.  It works and my boss is none the 
wiser.

Why not Debian?

*) linux == RedHat, why not just use RH?, the next admin we hire will know RH, 
etc.

*) we often have some piece of proprietary software that says it will only run 
on RH X.Y.

*) it is hard to beat anaconda + kick start.  DAMN HARD!!  Sure, once it is 
installed Debian kicks RH's ass left, right, and backwards.  However, my 
bosses like scripted, easily replacable servers.  Especially because we 
either a) are stuck with shit hardware or b) hardware gets stolen by other 
departments and we have to make new servers out of whatever is left / 
swapped.

You are right now coming up with crafty ways around this.  Well disk images 
don't work because we have no storage space.  Everything else I have seen is 
a horrible kluge.

*) RH makes releases.  Debian will get one out some day.  Maybe.

It is that last item that damns us eternally.  As long as Debian floats down 
the river of time at its own pace we will never have any serious place in the 
market.  Yes I know releases are stupid and meaningless.  But my boss won't 
listen.  The book publishers won't listen.  The news media only wants to hear 
announcements.

>   2. Will anyone admit to having docs for the commercial RedHat or
>      United Linux dists, that would explain what is so great and
>      "enterprise" about them?  (their kernel patches blah blah)
>      I admit it, I'm not above borrowing ideas.
>

*) kernel work
*) commercial vendors say "we work on XX"
*) Perception of polish (not shared by the admins, but bosses thing "hey, came 
from a company, must be good.")

Note, I have NEVER seen a company pay for RH.  It will be really, really 
interesting to see what happens with Fedora.  I honestly think this will only 
serve to strengthen Windows in the market.  The marketing engines of Redmond 
are killing us and frankly their software is finally as stable as ours.