Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 12:59:00 -0400 From: "tony" <tony@tntpro.com> To: <nathan@vidican.com> Cc: <questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: HotmailMigration Message-ID: <008901c0cda9$09d07f40$0a00a8c0@tntpro.com> References: <3AE6F95A.4D51D58D@wmptl.com>
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Just wanted to congratulate you on a well said email, and ask, "did they actually answer you?" ----- Original Message ----- From: "Nathan Vidican" <webmaster@wmptl.com> To: <technet@microsoft.com> Cc: <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 12:20 PM Subject: HotmailMigration > I've got a few questions which were not answered in your article. I > will tell you a little about my business, and what I am currently > working with. I cannot justify moving from my open-sourced system to > Windows 2000, and am curious as to why you would choose HotMail as a > prime example? I do not know of too many companies which could afford > (primarily speaking about financially) the migration of 5000+ servers > from an open-source (cost-free licensed) to Windows 2000. I cannot even > begin to fathom what such a cost would be, based upon my experiences > with Microsoft and it's software licensing charges. I am attempting not > too be biased with this email, as I am dead serious, and would truly > appreciate an honest reply. > I am currently involved in the startup phase of a new devision to an > existing company. My network is a relatively small network with a > cluster of about 30 servers (and growing), running web, database, and > email services. On all of the intel-based machines I am running the > FreeBSD (various releases from 2.2.8-RELEASE -> 4.3-STABLE) operating > system, on Sun Sparc based machines I am running either Solaris 2.8, or > OpenBSD 2.8 and on all of the Apple Macintosh systems I am running > OpenBSD 2.8 (used primarily for SSL servers). All servers are on a > 100mbit switched LAN, (using Cisco Catalyst switches), with Gigabit > (over fiber) connections between several of the key servers (eg: primary > user database and mail servers) in the progress of implementation. We > offer web-hosting, server co-location, and custom web/database design. I > use Oracle, MySQL, and PostGre SQL as well as a custom design which > leverages the UFS filesystem's capabilities for the databases. In > general, I am happy with the design, and really satisfied with the > performance. > I cam accross your article reading a thread posted to > questions@freebsd.org; and from there I understand that your move from > FreeBSD to Windows 2000 was primarily motivated by political reasons. I > can see how it would be a huge embarassment to be running one of the > most successful sites on the internet from a platform which you cannot > market and/or sell yourselves. Still, from an unbiased perspective, I'd > ask you to answer a few questions regarding this migration. > First and foremost, I can see how this migration wouldn't have incurred > the licensing charges as it is a part of Microsoft; but how much would > the total cost for the licensing on all of the HotMail webservers cost > the average business (which is not owned nor operated by Microsoft)? > Judging by what it would have cost me to run Win2000 Server for a measly > 25 users on our local office LAN I can't even contemplate the licensing > cost for 5000+ servers serving millions of users. I do understand that > one may be able to get away without purchasing so many copies of the > O/S, but I cannot see how you would legally allow an outside company to > run that many servers without individually licensing them. To be honest, > I do not know much about Microsoft's licensing policies... perhaps you > do offer some sort of bulk, flat-rate, or site-wide licensing fee > schedule for large server farms of this nature, do you? If so, what > would the MSRP be for say 5000 servers each serving 2000 users a piece? > Secondly, what about the upgrade path? What kind of options would you > be able to offer someone with a 5000 unit server farm when you're next > 'Service Pack' comes out? Would that company then have to 'upgrade' all > machines to the new service pack in order to avoid some threatening > back-door entrance to the system that you 'weren't aware of'? What about > say the next generation of the O/S? Would the company then have to > re-purchase licensing for each server to be upgraded? What would this > cost? I mean just the software cost; not including the IT staffing > requirements to actually procure such a transition. > Thirdly, to what level of customization could you possibly offer to > such a company? With FreeBSD, (or any other Open-Sourced system), the > company would have the extreme flexability in that they could simply > change or alter components of the O/S which they simply do not require. > For example, the GUI; similar to Novell Netware 5, wherein the GUI > doesn't have to be using system resources because it doesn't always have > to be loaded... or ever loaded to begin with for that matter. What if > the company were involved in some obtuse practise, (say VOIP), wherein > they were required to service thousands or even millions of clients over > a protocol which your O/S doesn't directly support? Would they then have > to fork-out more money for OS 'add-ons', and/or 'upgrades'? Would they > then incur more licensing fees? Would they be forced to go to a third > party to provide them with a solution that would work on your platform? > Would you then refuse to support it because it was designed a third > party; worse yet, would you blame problems their encountering on > imcompatabilities or state that you 'do not support that'? > Which brings us to another issue, support. What would you charge for a > support contract to be able to fully provide technical support for a > company of this magnitude? I know of several firms which support FreeBSD > for such massive endeavors, but I would assume that something this large > would have to be supported by Microsoft directly. Primarily so because > no-one else (should) have more knowledge of the O/S and/or how it > functions; and therefor be knowledgable enough to support it. What would > a typical technical support contract for a company with 5000 servers > running Windows 2000 cost? > Lastly, what about performance. You stated in your article that FreeBSD > does not perform well in a given scenario. From what I understand, that > given scenario really doesn't apply to Apache. Therefor you compared the > performance of two completely different things, of course stating that > yours was better. My question is, that if yours is so much better then > why are some of the largest sites on the internet still using FreeBSD > and Apache? These are the few companies which this migration could > potentially apply to, for example Yahoo. Companies which do service as > many if not more clients than HotMail, yet I don't see them even > attempting to justify such a migration. Why do you suppose they aren't? > Have you approached companies like Yahoo? What was the typical response > given to you by them? > To sum up things a bit, I would like to know what it would have cost an > outside company to make such a transition from and open-sourced system > to Windows 2000. This would of course not include their IT staffing, > programatic changes, and downtime incurred to do so. I would like to > know why, (other than for the obvious political reasons), you chose to > make such a migration public news. I would like to better understand how > you could possible intend to market such a large migration for any other > company outside of the Microsoft Corporation. If you could reasonably > answer any of the above, in a manner as unbiased as possible I would > truly like to hear from you. Please note that I have also carbon copied > this message to the FreeBSD support list, in an effort to understand the > FreeBSD community's viewpoint on this as well. I would encourage you to > also carbon copy your response to this list, as I am sure I am not the > only one with questions of this nature. > > Nathan Vidican > Nathan@Vidican.com > http://Nathan.Vidican.com/ > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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