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by hueving 4084 days ago
The fud from Microsoft is interesting. They imply that by using open source, you can't get support for when you're company is losing money. Additionally, they imply that by using Microsoft, they will actually do something useful in this contrived situation losing thousands per day.

Here's a hint, whichever solution is more complex is going to bite much harder from a downtime perspective, regardless of the underlying technology. I would much rather depend on a few line script that uses sendmail rather than a 5,000 mail client half implemented in a batch script.
2 comments
sudioStudio64 4084 days ago
I actually don't hear FUD from MS about open source any more. I'm doing tests on my workstation of .net core and asp.net 5...all open source. Mark Russinovich said the other day that they are considering open sourcing Windows one day. They contribute to the Linux kernel. I can spin up a linux VM in azure with a powershell command. I don't know how much more friendly to open source they could be.

The article that was quoted and that you are talking about is an old article by Raymond Chen where he is talking about the importance and value of backwards compatibility. He's talking about the pain in the ass that large businesses face when trying to update the base image for a fleet of servers. I can tell you from personal experience that its a painful process.

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emodendroket 4084 days ago
That's a personal blog, not some official Microsoft thing. I think that, regardless of the source, it's an important point -- at a really big environment it's hard to introduce new software packages for nontechnical reasons (like the licensing stuff) and for technical ones too (gazillions of machines with different configurations you have to worry about breaking). I've been a system administrator at a small place and even then it's not fun to try to roll out something like that.
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merb 4084 days ago
wow. in which world do you live? since puppet, its really easy to update fleets of machines. and the tools even emerged. new software could be upgraded easily, as long you have a valid license or if it is handled by a "free" license.
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alttab 4075 days ago
In 3 years Microsoft will deliver MS Virtual Deployment Technology that uses powershell and ftp under the hood, but the integration with Visual Studio will be swooned for by millions. I'm speculating of course, but it feels like familiar territory. It always sounds like stockholm syndrome...
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sudioStudio64 4083 days ago
not everyone is in a place where they can use puppet or a similar orchestration system. Lot's of places are actually really scared of automation because they did it in the past and someone left without documenting something that caused some mayhem. I know, things like that can be avoided. And yes, all of the places that are gaining the benefits of scale are using lot's of automation...not everywhere is like that.

Things are better than they used to be, yes. But in lots of big businesses you wouldn't believe how slow processes are for all kinds of very valid sounding reasons. Don't get me wrong...its something that I'm personally working on changing everywhere that I can. I think everyone should be able to code, system admins should ALL be able to code in at least one language.

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