OT Google buys AOL chunks

[Odinn]

Same with Windows. We have a golden image we use for all of our OSes, be it Linux, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Windows, whatever. We don't do installs, we lay down images. For AIX, I have 4 different images based on the 4 different apps that we run on them. For Linux, I have 5 different images depending on what it's going to do. Windows, we have 3 different images, Solaris only 2 (one Solaris 9 and the other Solaris

2.7), and way too many HP-UX images (3 different baselines just for the hardware alone).

I've never babysit any of my systems, Windows or Unix unless I have a hardware problem. As many times as we go through patching of software or software upgrades (damn suits always want our apps do something different, even if it is going back to doing the exact same thing it did

3 versions ago), nothing stays static regardless of the OS it is running on.

No, I don't keep dicking around with it. Yes, there are a lot patches for Windows showing up as critical patches, but you would spend just as much time with Linux if you try to keep up with all the patches for it. When you are writing and hosting banking software, it doesn't matter what OS you are running, you have to keep one step ahead of ANY possible security hole, and that means patching a lot, be it Linux, AIX, Windows, FreeBSD, whatever.

Windows will run unpatched for long periods of time, just as will Linux, but I'm not going to trust your bank account to either of them having a security hole in them.

[Odinn]

I haven't tried clustering in W2k or W2k3. We tried it in HP-UX a few years ago, and never got it to work right (even had HP in trying to set it up). I prefer HACMP on AIX, it works right first time every time and is almost foolproof to setup.

[Odinn]

On 12/22/2005 2:42 PM Enoch Root mumbled something about the following:

And RedHat, or SuSE don't do the same? Hell, the cost of RH ES3 is as expensive as Win2k3, and they try to get you to upgrade from their previous version or they won't support you (we have about 20 $1200 a year support contracts with them on an earlier version and they are pushing us to upgrade).

We're really too small of a company to need to use Oracle HR/Financials, yet we have 3 Oracle DBA/Developers for a 1500 employee company to keep our HR/Financials running. We have 1 customer who uses our product with Oracle as the backend DB to our Personal Banking software. We've tried to get them to switch over to DB2 (our reference platform), but they want Oracle, so we charge them extra for it.

Happy Yule.

[Enoch Root]

I don't know, I use Debian (a copy costs you (given a net install) exactly one writable CD). I'm almost certain* those other distributions aren't suffering the same design/marketing problems Windows is.

er

[Odinn]

Try selling a platform to a bank without having support for every piece, hardware, OS, etc. It doesn't happen. They want assurance that if something fails, they have someone they can blame. Free OSes don't cut it if you don't have support.

[Enoch Root]

Well the banks obviously should be buying a warm wool Red Hat.

er

[Dave Hinz]

Ah, I _didn't_ read book 2 and 3, because, well, I didn't see where he was going with book one. So it's a book to add to the pile, then?

[Dave Hinz]

Our experience differs. At least in the mortgage industry...

Of course you have support. And if you have a problem where your boss encourages blamestorming rather than solving problems with the appropriate solutions, you need to upgrade your boss.

[Dave Hinz]

It's in this very thread, in the part that you snipped out (oddly enough). Here's the google link:

(mind the wrap) I'll save you a click if you'd like: "That's nothing. I've got a server, busy little box, that's wrapped around the 497-day "uptime bug" twice and is nearly to a third time. It's busy but has nothing sensitive on it, and is behind enough firewalls that I don't care so much about it being way out of patch."

Nor, apparently, this one.

[Larry Blanchard]

Odinn, could you please trim that signature? As you can see from the above, it's often more lines than your post.

I believe tradition says one or two lines should be the limit, although

3 or 4 doesn't seen really excessive. But 13?

[Dave Hinz]

Technically, it's not even a .sig, because it doesn't start with

[Enoch Root]

I think reading book 0 before book 1 will raise your curiosity enough while reading book 1 to continue on to 2 (& 3).

er

[Dave Hinz]

Um. Can I get a guide to the numbering as used in this context, please?

[Larry Blanchard]

Not unless I'm betting the same way you are :-).

[Enoch Root]

Book zero would be Cryptonomicon... mostly relatives of the characters in the trilogy.

er

[Tom Quackenbush]

Well, if nothing else, you'll get some closure. I think you'll find books 2 & 3 much more enjoyable reads, though. I found myself looking forward to reading them every day, as opposed to book 1, which I sort of slogged through.

R, Tom Q.

[Dave Hinz]

Yeah, me too. I finished it out of sheer obstinance (no, really. Imagine that, of me.) So, 2 & 3 are a bit less sloggy, then?

Dave "I may have just invented a word there..." Hinz

[Odinn]

Online banking is a lot different than something used by the mortgage companies internally. Firewalls in front of the web server, firewalls between the app server and the database with commuications via IPSec. OSes hardened. I'm sure you don't want your account to be hacked by someone else.

On top of the banks themselves, we have about 5 or 6 different audits due to some govt regulation (SOX, SEC, Some California thing, etc). I probably spend a good 60% of my time handling auditors (running scripts, answering questions, explaining why we do something one way instead of another) between the months of Sep and Dec when all these audits go on.

It's not my boss who encourages blaming, it's the banks who want assurance. They won't allow us to use Linux unless we pay for support on it, and only a small portion of the banks we host will even allow Linux (we host over 2000 banks online presense).

[Odinn]

(mind the wrap)

I didn't reply to your post, I replied to Matt Stachoni.

This is what was in his message that was attributed to you.

Here's what he replied to

As opposed to the *nix* systems, which work out of the box without constant fiddling.

One of my busier servers hasn't been rebuilt, and hasn't been rebooted in (let's see...497+497+199= 1193 days). It was a sunday morning, and the reboot was due to a clumsy mistake, not a system problem.

Sure, but if you have to constantly tweak and adjust it, then that's a lot more screwing around than it should be.

Ah, so you're a fully-recovered sysadmin, then. A difficult state to get to.

Now, please try again. You didn't mention it in this thread prior to my post. You need a serious lesson in reading newsgroups.

[Odinn]

I'll keep my signature as I see fit. Don't like it, don't read it