Why Upgrade the Network?

So why am I going through the pain of a huge network upgrade this summer?  Two letters, NT.  Yes I still am running Windows NT as my NOS.  NT has had a long a steady life.  Up until recently it has done every thing I wanted it to do.  But in the last year or so I have been having issues, incompatibility issues.  For some reason modern network aware software does not like NT.  Go figure.  I have done some work arounds and done without, but I always knew the day would come, I would have to say good bye to an old friend.

Earlier this year the inevitable became reality.  Our PDC, a 10 year old Compaq Proliant server died.  It didn’t just die, it took the hard drives with it.  However because once and a while I do follow best practices, I had a BDC ready to be promoted so I was good to go.  But I knew the time had come. NT’s days were numbered.

I had been planning for the replacement for NT over the last 4 or 5 years.  It was simple, go with a newer Windows, Mac Server X, Novell or Linux. Because I have had no experience with Mac’s and they cost a whole bunch of money, I quickly eliminated them.  Novell is now Linux so I lumped them together.  It was down to a new Windows or Linux.

From my perspective I needed to determine if Linux could do everything I need a network to do. I made three lists, what I knew it could do, what I knew it could NOT do and unknown. The couldn’t do list is pretty short. Linux can not run Internet Information Server (IIS) or our library automation software, Spectrum. I needed to run IIS for the web interface to Spectrum and our Student Management System(SMS). It appears that I still would need Windows.

The unknown list has a few items mostly network based elementary school programs. So I have decided to run one Windows server until I can eliminate the unknowns and can’t works. I will also use IIS for our web site on a separate server. I have a fairly new HP server running Windows Server 2003 – Internet edition, so that will continue to be my IIS server.

So why Linux? I believe in Free software, both free as in beer and speech. A school district never has a lot of money and I’m cheap. I don’t look for the best something, I look for what is good enough. Personally I would love to drive a nice Italian sports car, but I can’t afford it so I drive a Subaru, it may not be the best, but it is good enough. Free (as in no cost) software may not be the best, but it is good enough to do the job I need done.

Free as in not propriety is also important. As a school we must think long term, not months or years, but decades. Will proprietary software still be supported next decade? We can see with NT it might not. Linux most likely will be supported, because anyone can support it, not just the manufacturer.

Wait I hear you screaming, What about training?? If you don’t know how to use Linux you will need to learn and that costs money and time. Yes that’s true. But so does learning a new version of Windows. Have you ever checked out how much classes in Microsoft Server Certification cost? Because I know NT, I would have to learn an all new model. Instead of learning Windows and being locked in to Microsoft products, I learned (and am still learning) Linux.

My distro of choice for this project will be Ubuntu.

Enough ramblings for today, more next time on my planning process for the summer upgrade.