We started with Ubuntu Linux as our initial path to start developing our own software. If a customer wants us to manage a different technology for them, we can do that. For now, for new projects that are made from scratch, we use our own technologies, and those are built over Linux.
Here's what I like most about Ubuntu Linux: the support we get from the factory, from the vendor.
I also find value in being able to test things with the community and learning more about the solutions that have been proven, so we can start to elaborate more and be able to pass to production more reliable information.
In the last five years, open source was not known, or it wasn't trusted much, but the industry knows that open source is the way to go as long as you work with the right vendor. Open source is here to stay, but it would always be dependent on the right partner, because there is a lot of open source software, but if they are not maintained, secured, or controlled, they are just like a train without a driver.
Based on all these, we love Linux, especially because of what we have learned in the last two months: We started to migrate customers from Microsoft SQL from Windows to Linux because the performance you can get from Linux with SQL from Microsoft, it's unparalleled.
You have more advantage from the power of Linux and you can cut off the cost of an operating system by using Linux with Microsoft SQL. We are starting to do that in the enterprise market because we believe that is a great step for them to reduce costs and to start making more powerful ETLs and queries, and faster processes, at a better price, because Linux is much more affordable.
Even in the Cloud, you'll find that a Windows instance is $400, while a Linux instance running SQL is $100 a month. It's a good thing here in Latin America, where we are going to start doing this. We are also seeing that there is a great opportunity in other countries in Europe.
We provide support for Red Hat, CentOS, and other distributions, but we have a solid relationship with Ubuntu Linux, with Canonical. We are a partner. With this solution, we are able to do more. We are able to explore a lot.
With Linux from Red Hat, we have been asked to manage, because in Peru, there were not many companies that had the knowledge to manage the workloads, but we prefer to use Canonical.
If a customer comes and asks us to manage their Red Hat Linux servers, we can definitely think about it because we have the skill. In our team, we have LPIC-1 engineers specialized in Linux so we can run any workloads over Linux.
Ubuntu Linux is very good.
There is a big advantage in security when using Ubuntu Linux that you will not have in the Windows environments short-term. When you have this relationship with Linux and you start working with very secure environments, there's less possibility of being directly attacked by a group of hackers. You will lose less data and you will have a more reliable ecosystem.
What I'd like to see included in the next release of Ubuntu Linux is for the interfaces to become richer, so they'll have the capability to absorb traditional and normal technologies.
For example, Canonical makes such high-end technologies to run and manage several servers at the same time, but they couldn't succeed because they were focusing all their efforts on just Linux-based systems.
If someone starts by providing things to assess and migrate the workloads you have in a data center where you have 200 to 300 Windows instances, you can provide some studies to these executive directors and say: "Today you're spending this money on licensing and operations, and you're getting 40% of your operational performance. If you start running Linux and you move your workloads into Linux, you'll be able to cut costs, and you'll get more out of your operational performance which you can present and provide data to your end customers more quickly and safely."
What we need to have is more tools to access the Windows environment of Ubuntu Linux, so we'll be able to say: "These are opportunities for your operational expenditure and cost cutting. These can help make your company better and allow you to provide more data to your customers more quickly."
Having more tools in the next release that can help provide information to executives: letting them know that there's money waiting in those opportunities for migration and change, is what I'd like to see.
We've been using Linux for more than 10 years.
Support for Ubuntu Linux is the reason I rated this solution a perfect score, because if you open a ticket, they will get to you quickly with the answers and information you need. For any subscription, it's good if you have a great SLA.
If you need a subscription and you need answers, go with Ubuntu Linux. If you have the right partner and you need an answer, your partner will always have it as well.
The support team always replies with the answers to your questions.
As an MSP, I reply within 10 minutes to my customers. I'm also basing this on other companies who are able to respond very fast to their customers' needs, so it depends on the kind of subscription and the SLA.
The price of Ubuntu Linux is more affordable.
We evaluated CentOS and Red Hat.
I have more than 20 years experience in providing MSP services for enterprises and the government.
We've been exploring the market. We are located in Peru, so we designed our own technology and we've been exploring a number of technologies from several providers. What we did was to create technology locally and based that technology on the best practices of several brands.
For example, we talked with Silver Peak, we talked with Fortinet and Juniper and other providers, because the major problem in the industry was the pricing and the licensing models. What we did was to create our own technology in Peru, then we provide this technology as a service, as a managed service provider. That's what we've been doing.
We provide the consultancy, then we provide the hardware, then we manage, but they don't need to buy it. They just need to rent it for the period of time stated on their contract, then we provide the full managed services for that.
We started as a hardware appliance on-premises, but the time and the conditions of the market forced us to start preparing a virtual cloud appliance because as Amazon, IBM, and other companies were using the Cloud, we started to make these laboratories to enable our device to pass through traffic over the Cloud, on any cloud. We started to use a virtual appliance. We started to use the Cloud.
Now, we have a hybrid model where some of our main devices are located in the Cloud, but we have a satellite and it's called a hub. This hub is installed on the local data center and its availability is found on several other providers. In this way, we can start and we can continue to monitor everything without experiencing loss, because sometimes data centers have this downtime.
We can keep working with other devices that are connected. We made a load balancing with DNS. We have a DNS solution that provides this, so it also responds to unavailability. If we have a problem, what we do is we keep tracking, monitoring, and providing KPIs for customers, and if something happens, we can respond within 10 to 15 minutes.
Many companies have a monitoring system. They can use PRTG. They can use free open source devices, but they don't have awareness. They have the monitoring systems, but they don't have time to remain seated to watch all those KPIs and sensors. What we did was to create an escalating model where the most valuable information our customer needs is the availability of their core systems.
We always take great care and we provide notifications not only about the downtime. It's not about the values because there is a big difference between a DDoS attack and just another load of our applications. We know those patterns. We're usually notified about anomalous patterns, security, etc. Today, in both the government and private sectors, attackers are scanning all the time. As we have an IDS solution, we are able to detect some anomalous patterns on the main sites and on the application.
In applications, we have developed IM (identity management) solutions. This software also tracks all the users getting into an application. When we notice that there is anomalous pattern, we're notified, so we block because we are using the zero-trust concept.
The zero-trust concept is a concept that makes us more reliable, because if you are a collaborator, or an employee, and you have a computer, a tablet, and a mobile phone, and you have access to our applications, we will know that you are not connected to your device trying to get into an application. We will ask you if you are the person trying to get in and we will authorize and permit you to get into an application through this identity access management solution that provides you access to the applications, but at the same time, we are providing you access to parts of the application you have permission to access.
This is a great accomplishment in Peru because we created something very competitive, in terms of Okta or AWS Cognito: it's their standard solution. We created that here in Peru, so we are trying to push this technology outside to make the people know about it. It's a mix of things because if you try to make just a firewall and start checking just the IDS and IPS, and you don't start checking the application itself, plus you don't start checking other patterns, you will have less information. What we are trying to do is to be more holistic on how a person works in the company to protect both their information and their access to the applications.
It's very holistic. We are mixing bare metal security. We are using a WAF (web application firewall) that we made here. It's a universal thing. At the same time, we are using the identity management platform. We made it for protection at that level. We are making several layers for the security, and also to provide the whole holistic pattern to our customers.
This is why our customers stay longer with us. Each customer we have today has been with us for more than five years, and they renew their contracts with us because they feel so comfortable with us, and we are well-trusted.
Customers just need to ask us if they can do something specific, if they can explore, because what we usually do and build for them are laboratories. We are making proof of concepts of new products because customers want to move forward and try new products. This is what enables us to keep the customers and have them renew their contracts, so they can move forward with new products. This is a good thing for us, and we are able to retain customers who have been with us in the last 10 years, for example.
We didn't experience many issues with Linux because we started using it early. The first solution I provided was 15 years ago, when we worked with a telco and this telco wanted to go to the enterprise market to sell IT services. What I proposed was to build a Platform as a Service to protect their information real-time. It's called continuous data protection. We installed all those in Linux.
We have extensive experience doing that and we started with data continuity for data centers. We started to replicate data a lot, even for a core bank located here in Peru. They were one of our first big customers and we had a five-year contract with them.
We didn't find many challenges at the beginning with Linux, because we started to build software over there, but then when we started to manage very big logs, we decided to build another software, in another instance, to start distributing the data and have more information and visibility for our customers.
We also developed a software over Linux to compress the traffic in transit. We made a lot of those. We didn't face any challenges because we have been working a lot with Linux.
We learned a lot. We learned how to build software over Linux and in several languages because we needed to build interfaces for end users. We also needed to build the backend. Our backend technology today has not yet been used a lot. We are using HTML technologies for the frontend. We have a team to do that. We also managed several, general things for any of our distributions. It depends on the function we would like to add to these appliances.
For example, for a network appliance, we are making our own distribution with Ubuntu Linux, but with some customizations to make it work lighter and easier on our dashboards. It's networking.
When we want to use Ubuntu Linux to develop software, we prepare those devices to run those workloads and make good backend servers and frontend servers. For example, for the IM (identity management) solution we made, we built it over Ubuntu Linux, but we are not yet using it at the backend. We are using the standard Open IDZ, but we made our own version for it to run effectively and be able to integrate this granular part of the permissions, because that is a simple way to make an identity management solution.
When you need to connect applications and provide granular permissions to the applications based on profiles and start from the FAP: If you have a new employee and this employee needs to have a lifecycle, plus permissions to applications, there is another integration we make with our software. We've been working a lot on that part to create this fully integrated software for identity management and application permission management. It's very nice.
The advice I would give to others who are looking into implementing Ubuntu Linux is that they need to start working with a partner. They need to start working with laboratories and start assessing. They need to start assessing what the company pain is because a few years ago we had been invited to talk for a country who was submerged in several taxes by paying Microsoft and some other companies with proprietary software. We saw that the companies in this country were spending a lot of money on Active Directory, SQL servers, and other technologies that the customers have been using for so many years. When we showed them how they can transform this into an open source technology package of assorted tools, and that they were easy to manage and to learn, they started to study it.
If a company wants to move forward with the world of Linux for improvements, savings, and start operating differently, they need to start working with a peer who has then done this for years, to make it aspirational, who would be able to tell them that they were using this technology, that they migrated their infrastructure and their solutions to open source, to Linux, because they needed to do that, and they succeed. They should start from there. They would want to start from laboratories and start passing to production the things that they can manage. First, with a partner, then they can run a team made up of people who can manage this new technology.
It's the right path. It's what they need to look at. If Microsoft didn't want to put SQL or Linux, they would be closing too many doors that they have today. Microsoft has grown bigger because they are open to the world of Linux. Microsoft has been saying that they are using Linux on the network and on other parts. It's the future. For example, we are using MongoDB. It's a great document database and doesn't have anything to do with SQL servers. They have no relation.
Companies need to explore. They need to start exploring new things and make these laboratories. If they start making these laboratories, they'll have opportunities to save money and make their operational performance better. They'll have a great migration to a new set of technologies.
Ratings for Ubuntu Linux will depend on the country and the culture. There are some companies who want to invest on the subscriptions. At the beginning, it would be best to invest on a partner instead of the subscription, because you'll really be able to take advantage of a subscription when you have an understanding of Linux. If you don't understand Linux yet, you should invest more in a partner who really knows about it, who can start traveling with you in this journey of migration.
Once you have everything up and running, that's the time you can select which subscriptions you need, but if you have a good partner, your partner will be able to give support about the subscription. Ubuntu Linux is the only one that doesn't need a subscription to work in an LTS version, unlike Red Hat and other distributions that where a subscription is mandatory. For Ubuntu Linux, you just need to buy a subscription on an LTS version in Canonical when you really need it.
I prioritized having a good partner first, then we went for a subscription to provide compliance to my operating systems that needed that compliance grade. You don't need to waste time and money in a subscription if you have the right partner on your side. There are two ways to look at this: the subscription cost and your partner who can manage everything properly.
Ubuntu Linux is a great solution, so if I'll rate it from one to ten, with one being the worst and ten being the best, it's a ten for me.
Oracle Linux is basically Red Hat. It's the same. Oracle took the CentOS project, which is Red Hat, and made its own enhancements. They added something they call 3DBear, which is their proprietary technology. They call it the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK).
Oracle took Red Hat, stripped a lot of the software that was not needed for Oracle, which made Red Hat much smaller. They optimized the UEK for their Oracle database applications.
A customer who is planning to have an Oracle database and is looking to see whether to choose to go with Oracle Linux or SUSE Linux or Red Hat, the best option for them would be to go with Oracle Linux because it's the same vendor.
Oracle Linux for Oracle databases is the top. There's no doubt whatsoever. However, if you are going to use it for anything else it's going to be a mess, because many packages will not be supported by Oracle.
For example, I was helping an organization back up various Oracle Linux servers using various kernel versions and various distribution versions. The software that I used for backup requires some packages to be pre-installed into the Oracle Linux machine from the distribution itself, but one of the packages was not available from the Oracle repositories. Because it's a Linux machine, I can manually download this package and install it myself. But the problem with that is that Oracle will void the whole warranty if I install a package from a third-party repository.
If you are going to use Oracle Linux for anything other than running Oracle databases, you will most definitely run into a bottleneck situation in which some packages that are needed, you will not be able to download. And, if you download and install them, you will void your contract, which nullifies the point of you getting Oracle Linux in the first place.
Oracle Linux has a particular use case, not like SUSE, or like Red Hat.
With SUSE, and Red Hat, you can use them for almost any use case, and you can even install Oracle inside both of them, but you can't do the same with Oracle Linux.
Oracle Linux is built for Oracle databases. It doesn't make sense for me to get Oracle Linux and install the MySQL database. Even though MySQL is an Oracle product, it doesn't make sense. If I am not going to using Oracle databases then I shouldn't go with Oracle Linux.
Oracle Linux needs to support more packages. I understand that they stripped down CentOS and Red Hat, but Oracle is an organization that will be paying the price of Red Hat making CentOS, CentOS-3 as well.
I understand the idea of making the Linux distribution just optimized for their Oracle database, but I'm not going to get Oracle Linux because it works well only with Oracle products.
I will most likely have a diverse infrastructure. So instead of going with Oracle Linux, I will go with SUSE Linux or Red Hat. Why? Because Red Hat, for example, has support for many, many packages. Instead of me going to get Oracle Linux for the Oracle database and Red Hat for the remaining workloads, why not get Red Hat from the beginning.
I have been using Oracle Linux for two years. It is still pretty new to me.
I have used Oracle Linux versions 6, 7, and 8.
Oracle Linux is a stable solution.
When you take Red Hat and strip several applications off of it and optimize it to work with Oracle databases, Oracle Linux is the most stable Linux.
Technical support was great. I didn't deal with them directly. When I had an issue, I was interacting with a team who was administering the Oracle Linux environment, and when we ran into hiccups and we needed support from Oracle, they would initiate a ticket, and Oracle would respond and would provide support.
The installation is comparable to Red Hat, and CentOS. It's not difficult.
In terms of the configuration, it won't take more than 30 minutes to install.
However, because it's an Oracle Linux, there are Oracle databases involved, which means there are steering committees. There will be complications in the implementation that are not related to the actual installation of the product itself. This will delay it by several days.
In general, I would not recommend this solution, but if you are going to be running Oracle databases, then yes, I would recommend Oracle Linux.
If you are going to be running Oracle-based solutions, or if your data center mainly is controlled by the Oracle Corporation then yes Oracle Linux would be the best choice.
You shouldn't go with Oracle Linux if you're not going to be using Oracle products.
As I am not particularly interested in Oracle, I would rate Oracle Linux a seven out of ten. If however, I was, then I would rate it a ten out of ten.
I'm using Red Hat as an OI solution with some Oracle databases and an FTB server on top of it. I am not using containers in Red Hat. It's solely serving as an OS with direct applications installed on it. We have a few thousand users benefiting from Red Hat indirectly, but only 10 to 20 people work directly with it. I only use Red Hat in one location right now. Previously, I had it deployed in a cluster.
The most important thing for any organization is stability and uptime for the application and the environment. Red Hat provides us with stability and uptime, and it gives us all the tools we need to integrate with our other solutions.
It's also a suitable environment for applying security certificates. You can perform all the requirements on Red Hat. For example, you can do everything you need to comply with BCI, ISO, or any other certificate.
The most valuable thing about Red Hat is its stability, uptime, and support for various hardware vendors. Linux servers, in general, are relatively secure and they are more secure than Windows and other products.
Red Hat provides additional tools to customize your environment and harden your OS. For example, you can apply security patches and use benchmarks. You can do everything in Red Hat, so you can always have a highly secure environment. The interface is pretty good. Our engineers like the PLI interface.
I've been using Red Hat for around 10 years.
Red Hat is as stable as you want it to be. We periodically have some bugs, but we can resolve these issues quickly.
Red Hat can be scalable, especially if you are using it for virtualization. For example, KVM is easy to implement and scale up. You only need to add more nodes to scale as much as you want.
I rate Red Hat support nine out of ten. It's nearly perfect. Red Hat support has one of the best teams I've dealt with.
Positive
I've used some open-source environments like CentOS and some other solutions like Solaris and HBOX. We switched to Red Hat because it's easier to deploy and manage.
Setting up Red Hat is straightforward if you're doing a basic installation. They have a beautiful installer that handles everything. For a more advanced deployment, you may need to go through some more complicated steps to customize it for everyone's best practices.
You only need one person to handle the installation, which takes anywhere from a few minutes to an hour, depending on the installation. If you install Red Hat correctly based on your requirements, you don't need to perform any maintenance. You might need to patch, upgrade, add resources or harden the OS. When discussing security, you always need to follow up on patching and security hardening.
The cost could be lower. Red Hat is considered a costly solution. It can be expensive if you want all the features in the license. A cheaper license would make Red Hat more accessible to a broader range of users. It's reasonable given the features and performance, but a lower price would encourage more people to adopt it.
We looked at HBOX servers, but they are far more expensive than Red Hat. Red Hat is more optimal in terms of cost versus performance and stability than other solutions like Solaris and HBOX.
I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten. It's an excellent solution. Go for Red Hat If you want stability at a reasonable cost. It's the best.
We are primarily using Windows Server for monitoring purposes.
The most valuable features are the file transfer protocol (FTP) and the secure file transfer protocol (SFTP). These are both used for file sharing.
The reporting, event logging, and event management functionalities need to be improved.
Windows Server needs more applications from the monitoring and backup perspective. These are not incorporated yet. In previous versions, the backup software was available, but not now.
I have been using Windows Server for 10 years.
There are bugs that appear but Microsoft provides updates that can rectify the bugs or expand the number of features.
Most of the features are scalable. Windows 2016 and 2019 may be more scalable, but we have not recently upgraded the infrastructure.
Our customer has a small number of people using Windows Server.
We began with using Windows Server and we are still using it. We are looking to migrate to Linux as well, but it depends on the infrastructure and the types of licenses. Microsoft recently began including lots of applications that require licenses, where they were not needed previously.
We are also using Ubuntu Linux and CentOS, which are open-source solutions.
Certain tools are easier to use, depending on whether you are using Linux or Windows.
The initial setup is straightforward and our deployment was completed in three months.
When we implement this solution, we start in a development environment and then move it to production.
Our in-house team performed the deployment.
The number of staff required for maintenance depends on the environment, infrastructure, and the type of activity that is being done.
I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.
It is user-friendly, and it supports many applications. I am working as an enterprise lead, so I have different client applications, and they are mostly compatible with Windows. The graphical interface of Windows 10 is better than Windows 8.
They should introduce some special tools for system administrators. I am currently looking at how to calculate the storage. It should have additional tools for monitoring for system administrators. A lot of such monitoring and security tools are available for free in other open-source operating systems, such as CentOS.
It should have the backup-and-restore functionality, which is integrated with any external device, such as a USB device. Windows 10 should also be free. They should only charge for Professional Windows 10, but the basic OS should be free.
Microsoft should support the Red Hat operating system. When I install Red Hat, it doesn't support NTFS. It needs some additional plug-ins.
I have been working with this solution for two to three years. I am using it in the office as well as at home.
It is stable. In our organization, we have a lot of security stacks. Windows 10 is more stable and better than Windows 8.
I have not contacted them.
The initial setup is very straightforward and simple.
The basic operating system of any hardware should be free. Therefore, it should be free. They should charge only for the enterprise level or enabling the hypervisor. They should charge for Professional Windows 10, but the basic OS should be free.
I would recommend this solution for non-IT people. It is an operating system for a novice end-user. As an administrator, there are many tools that I don't find in it.
I would rate Windows 10 a seven out of ten.
