[rescue] Re: [geeks] THIS. MAKES. ME. SICK.

[Devin L. Ganger]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2001 at 03:10:02AM -0500, amy wrote:
 
> fbsd i can see making the most of high-end hardware but not linux. the 
> scalability factor, etc.

Exactly.  Having a coherent design team behind the helm helps make
FreeBSD a bit more focused on meeting the engineering challenges.
 
> my cuisinart toaster probably has more scalability than linux ;) 

To be fair to them, they *are* working on it.  It's just that there's a
lot of other pieces in the kernel they really need to redo from the
ground up, and they don't seem to be willing to do that.
 
> > Show me a place where I can get 24x7 support with 4-hour on-site
> > committed response time for FreeBSD
 
> irc, efnet, various channels. if it took 'em four hours (as opposed to 
> 5 minutes), i'd be shocked. 

That won't do me any good in the case of hardware failures.
 
> > The scale of administration for FreeBSD or Linux to
> > provide the equivalent levels of service would have been prohibitive to
> > the level of staffing.
 
> oh yes. god forbid we install any o/s without a support contract. it
> just wouldn't do to know the operating system well enough to fix it
> yourself....

I never scorn a safety net when I'm up climbing high -- and that's what
a support contract is.  When my Ultra-2 starts reporting intermittent
faults on a particular drive in my A5000 array, and replacing the drive
doesn't help, it's nice to know that I can call Sun and in 15 minutes of
my time have it conclusively nailed down to a failing GBIC -- and get a
replacement brought to me within 2 hours, so that I end up having no
downtime for the six databases (and 12+ dependent apps) on that machine.
As a sysadmin for a utility, I don't have the luxury of being able to
take things down at the first sign of a problem and play with it until I
figure out what's wrong; I need to take advantage of any edge I get,
including the body of knowledge that Sun Support has on various
failures.
 
> each time people cry for support contracts, they lower their intelligence
> factor concerning the machines by a factor of 12. it doesn't matter
> which o/s. the fault is on the admins for their laziness and unwillingness 
> to fix their own hardware and software.

I don't think that's a realistic attitude.  Certainly, there are times
when a support contract is wasted money, or a crutch that a
non-competent admin relies on to cover their inadequacy.  But there are
certainly many circumstances under which it is not best use of an
admin's time to re-invent the wheel and work out the solution to
problems other people have beaten.

-- 
Devin L. Ganger <devin at thecabal.org>
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