Linux TCO edge: Lower labor costs (ZDNet)

Posted Jan 5, 2003 12:25 UTC (Sun) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

> $71,400/admin/yr over 44 Linux servers = ~$1600 admin/yrs/server
> $68,500/admin/yr over 10 Window servers = ~$6850 admin/yrs/server

> ... So the numbers cited here don't add up. The gist of it is
> well taken, but someone ought to clarify where these numbers are
> coming from.

From page two of the article: <quote>
Robinson compared the cost of "processing units"--the number of servers that
would be required to process 100,000 hits per day, and tracked the costs over
three years. [] The study found that Windows needed an average of 7.6 servers
for a processing unit, Linux needed 7.4, and Solaris needed 2.2.
</quote>

Note that it took slightly but not significantly more server power on the MS
platform to serve those hits and comprise a processing unit, than it did on Linux.
However, the big difference was in admin cost, and if you do the math based on
the "processing units" as defined in the study,and the fact that they found an MS
platform admin did ten servers, while a Linux platform admin could handle 44, you
come up with the numbers in the LWN quote, $12.01K for Linux, although the
absolute salary was a bit higher at $71.4K, $52.06K on MS, on a salary of 68.5K.

I found the following summary of three-year costs, from page three of the article,
equally interesting: <quote>
According to the study, the three-year cost of a 100,000-hit processing unit was
significantly different among the systems:

Solaris: $561,520
Windows: $190,662
Linux: $74,475
</quote>

MS was making hay for years on the fact that it was considerably cheaper than
commercial unix, as is shown above. Now, Linux is beating them at their own
game. If the above numbers are taken at face value, there's roughly a factor of
three difference between Linux and Windows, and between Windows and Solaris.
That means Solaris was close to 9 times the cost of Linux, over the three years!
Of course, one would hope the Solaris solution would last a bit longer than three
years, while both Linux and Windows were figured on x86 hardware, where that
three years is it's entire assumed usable life. Thus, the Solaris solution won't be
QUITE that much more expensive, over a longer period, say, if it lasts two x86
lifetimes or 6 years.

Posted Jan 6, 2003 6:20 UTC (Mon) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

No, it's the opposite of that, really. Microsoft's official "best practices" is to put one service on one windows pc server - or sometimes, one service on a "farm" of windows pc servers. To do otherwise is to risk more frequent blue screens.

Linux/Unix, on the other hand, loves being loaded up with processes. You have typically one or two unix/linux boxes handling a number of web domains, while with windows, you have a farm of windows pc servers handling a single domain.

Even if the new ms licensing issues cause windows admins to start to rethink the policies which have required many windows pc servers, these admin/server ratios have been generally known for some time - certainly long before there was any talk of ms licensing v6.

Posted Jan 6, 2003 2:25 UTC (Mon) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

I was "sort of" running some 25 machines, in addition to a little "mini-Beowulf" of 5 machines, spending about 10% of my time on it while I was really supposed to be doing astrophysics research as a post doc. (Budget strapped, we ended up doing our own sysadmin. Fortunately, I knew what I was doing.)

I didn't have to do any DNS, but we did run a web server, a mail server, and lots and lots of NFS (which was a continuing nightmare in the Linux world back in the middle of the 2.2.x kernel series).

I cut corners and wasn't doing everything a "real" admin does, but still I think our machines were fairly well run; patches were kept up to date, and I think the systems were as secure as anything fully on the Internet can be. I could never have done it with Windows. A lot of the sysadmin was done by keeping scripts and a self-developed filesystem-based database that kept track of all changes from the base RedHat install. If there was a serious problem, I could reinstall RedHat, run the "customization" script, and 20-30 minutes have the machine fully back online and functional without a lot of futzing, and without having to open a single time consuming GUI.

I can easily believe that full time, a Linux admin could take care of 45 machines, with more services than I was dealing with, be they servers or workstations or both. (Servers require more work, but more workstations mean more users with their own ideosyncracies to deal with.)

(One thing I absolutely refused to do, even though people sometimes asked, was install a dual boot machine. I said that if they wanted a dual boot machine, they were on their own, even for the Linux side; I would give no support whatsoever. Being a post-doc and not a sysadmin, I had the freedom to make this stipulation.... I felt confident that I could keep track of Linux, but I didn't want to deal with the configuraiton and security concerns that would come with having Windows on the same machine. Plus, it was easier for me to run my admin scripts if I could make the assumption that unless there was a problem, all machines were up in Linux and on the net at all times.)

-Rob

Posted Jan 6, 2003 18:46 UTC (Mon) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

The city of Largo, Florida has 800 thin client desktops all running KDE from a monster Linux server. They have a very small sys admin team, whose beepers don't go off at night. Very low maintenance.

Posted Jan 6, 2003 20:46 UTC (Mon) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

What is the expected admin time for taking care of, say, 10 Linux servers and 800 Linux client desktops, compared to the same on Windows 2000?

I would expect Linux clients to be less work to admin for a couple of reasons:

1) There wouldn't be all of the Windows specific viruses to deal with

2) The ability to control via user accounts which parts of the system a user can trash, and limit the software that they can install

Posted Jan 7, 2003 0:18 UTC (Tue) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

ms windows does not include nfs or nis - unless you're saying that pc versions of nfs & nis servers are included in the "windows services for unix" add-on?

In any case, the unix emulator running on win doze did not impress me at all when i saw it at Linuxworld in the microsoft booth. It seemed to be mostly a broken toy, just something to earn a checkmark on a list, nothing that could actually be used for anything substantive.