'Stevehewitt' seems to have it, Windows is no flakier than any of the others as long as it is setup right.
They all have thier plusses and minuses, but this may seem a little Windows orientated, but it is my salaried set/area so i know it. But Linux is extremely good for the pure geek/techie
I saw some text once about 'never' trusting configuration wizards. Read Laura Chappell's Truth#8 here
(SteveHewitt) "If your company is dedicated to high security and has no room on the network to listen to end users needs to make the business more productive then I have to assume you're working for the military - as even banks have a large number of Windows servers."
You hit the nail with this one
(pmonett) "99% of all virus and zero-day stuff concerns Windows. If you know that a specific car brand stands a 99% of being stolen the day you leave it parked outside, are you going to buy it ? Don't think so. Yet manager the world over trust Windows to house their business-critical data, even though there are other, much more secure choices that do not cost more.
It's crazy."
Bit of a generalisation, yes 99% may effect Windows, but thats coz there's more. if of the 6.5 Billion people on Earth, the equlivalent amount in percentage terms that Microsoft currently has in the OS market of about 80% (i think, unless its gone up or down) were to go to People in the shape of BMW cars! of course the breakin/theft rate would sky rocket as there would be more to choose from, the knowledge of known vulnrabilities would spread through the IRC channels across the world, if someone cracked the encryption algarithoms of the key fob e.t.c. (might have been done from all i know)
'They' want to create as much carnage as possible, because in some misguided reality they think they're 'sticking it to the MAN/System/Big Brother/any synonm for society/democracy/business/life e.t.c. so the biggest target, with the most commonly traded code, vulnrabilities, e.t.c is M$ Windows
Also, Windows doesn't need rebooting 90% percent of the time with things like software installations e.t.c. as much as people seem to think. If the software won't run straight after an install, without a reboot, is mostly looking for a newly installed service to be running or something
The longest run i saw of a Windows server was 4 1/2 years, for one never exposed directly to the internet, so only had selective updates applied. Amazingly it was an SMTP relay/logger between several offices and between the main bank of internet facing filters and internal exchange servers, it was in a secondary DMZ with just about every sevice disabled and every port barr 25 locked down.
As for Directory Services, Windows Active Directory from the perspective of administration, control, ease of use, and transparency (if you apply a bit of nouse, 'brain power' for the Americans
, and learn how it works properly) is the best for any techie in any organisation regardless of size, who wants to concentrate on the WAN/Internet/Linux web server/ part of the network, as this is the most under attack.
Since the later days of the IT/IS/.com booms e.t.c. where directors, shareholders, anyone with a bit of money or so on, wanted the next big thing, the internet revolution, e.t.c. got thoroughly shafted by IS/IT Consultant types commanding extortionately high figures.
(it still goes on in miss guided corners) but there has been and still is a rebalance which is leaving the techie with more responsibility/work but with a more realistic salary package (I.e. a recruitment firm advertising £65k for a Windows Consultant is taking the piss, and is earning money based on how many phone calls they make, I'm not saying these jobs don't exist, but they'll be one hidden away at some high flyer law firm in the City, that 'you' won't know about, and the role will need 10-15 years of active experience of global blah de-blah de-blah in a fortune500 and so on, but a thousand Recruitment Firms will be advertising variations of this job, with less facts, more salary, on a 1000 and 1 jobsites)
Anyway, I digress, I was trying to say, our workloads are going up, Active Directory redresses the balance for us, and makes 'us' more productive, as well as the user
AD is most productive from the users perspective from what I have found, yes especially with SharePoint, Office, Exchange, ISA, and so on. But its a directory service, accessible (albeit not open
) by 3rd party development, so it is also well integrated by people other than M$ (I will agree with the bad software issue tho, there is some shockingly bad software for Windows by 3rd parties, but this is where you employ testing!)
Us, you, techies in general, in the test lab or on Virtual PC/VMWare, are 'what does this do?' 'what if i try this?' 'whats this?' e.t.c. in the live environment should not allow access, let alone rights to change any part of the server infrastructure, barr using pre-assigned file shares for storage and so on.
But the user is
"I don't care how it works, as long as it works!"
Our job is to make it work and prevent 'them' from breaking it (AD Group Policy and the ability to centrally roll out updates/virus definitions is great for this too)
A Military sub-siduary i 'went' to once, was run by a screaming banshee Linux nut, who couldn't see beyond his blinkers that the way the system was running, and how administratively disjointed it was, meant it took 5 times longer to do anything, compared to at least moving/consolidating the mail structure and user accounts to a top down AD and Exchange infrastructure, would reduce the work load by 500%+, remove the need for extremely rare £50k *nix techies and replace them with very readily available £25k Windows Techies
The Security worries he kept labouring on about, are purely down to the quality of your admin staff, a system run by an amateur/fiddler is no more or less secure with Windows OR *nix
Cheers (bit of a rant in places, typed off the 'cuff as it were
based around a laff at the comment about the military, but hope it made a point)
Gurner
(apologies for grammer and spelling)
just look at this shocking cabling i just found
'now which point did you say wasn't working?'
