The Linux Advantage - 2nd Edition

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INSIDE...

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Beyond the OS community forums Linux role in cloud computing Get more from virtualisation Satellite solutions for networks

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www.thelinuxadvantage.com

For Ambitious Managers of Linux and Mixed IT Environments.

ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS

FREE Workshop Series...

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BOOK N

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RHEL, RHEV, JON, Satellite. Discover how to achieve efficiency savings and much more... Book your free place today!

Open for Business

The pace at which applications are moving across to Linux is accelerating. A combination of business, economic, and technological factors are driving many to make the switch to Linux based systems.

solutions offer a robust development and applications environment, without the proprietary lock-in of a single vendor, which is typical for RISC/UNIX implementations.

Those that have been using Linux to support their web, FTP, firewall and communications servers continue to increase their Linux estate while other applications such as database, DNS, email ERP that in the past have run on UNIX are also moving to Linux-based systems.

There is now a strong body of evidence showing that those who migrate from UNIX to Linux get the features and functionality they need to run their businesses — with similar or better performance, scalability, reliability, security, and support at lower costs — plus the flexibility, choice, and control to manage their environments on their own terms and time frames.

MORE FOR LESS Economic conditions are forcing many companies to re-examine costs. Recent surveys have shown that the majority of the respondents are under more pressure to reduce costs now than ever. At the same time doing more for less, and to deliver systems that make the organisation more productive and competitive. These goals have many organisations examining their IT infrastructure choices. In particular, determining which technologies will bring the needed cost savings while providing the means to deliver the required services. To that end, the requirements that made RISC/UNIX a good choice when installed have not changed. Organisations still demand performance, scalability, reliability, security, and support from their IT environment. For many years, RISC/UNIX solutions met these requirements. But today there are more choices, and many are finding that open standards-based solutions, using Intel®-architecture based servers and Linux, are providing all the required characteristics —

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performance, scalability, reliability, security, and support — and more.

LATEST TECHNOLOGIES Standards-based solutions offer all this at lower capital and operating costs (TCO) with better performance, price/performance, and performance per watt (to save on power and cooling costs). These benefits are realised using the latest technologies and advancements including virtualisation, multi-core processors, advanced I/O options, and large memory support. Additionally, standards-based

The growing and proven technology prowess and features of open systems make now an ideal time to migrate from UNIX to Linux. For example, server performance and efficiency has never been greater. Intelbased servers now achieve over 3 times the performance of the SPARC-based servers. The operating environment of open systems is equally impressive with Red Hat offering organisations of all sizes a complete ecosystem of enterprise linux solutions and support, with LinuxIT providing a range of popular complimentary services.

Critical factors in moving from UNIX to Linux No matter how complex or customised the application is, in almost all cases there is a process, toolset, and expertise to migrate from UNIX to Linux. Dell’s experience has shown there are a number of critical Continued on page 2...

ISSUE 2

CIO Mastermind...

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The key questions every CIO should be asking.

The ultimate Linux and Open Source experience Our new site at www.linuxit.com is the culmination of over 10 years experience and success in providing impartial, informed advice, proven software and award winning service to the world’s leading commercial and public sector organisations in their use of Linux and open source. Working with both established users, and those interested in embracing the unique benefits that flow from their adoption.

Visit it today and: • See today’s most comprehensive Linux and Open Source technology and service offering • Discover Linux and open source technology, management and industry solutions • Enter our launch competition to win a cool Huawei S7 Android Tablet, and take your films, music, pictures wherever you go • Get supported and escape the tyranny of your IT systems, within the hour! • Join our blog discussions

The site provides information on how you can make: • Significant TCO savings • Unlock the advantages of the Cloud and Virtualisation • Reduce IT system risk • Embrace new technologies more easily Also featured are our NEW Premier Services (see page 7), providing proactive system management that complements the software support provided under Red Hat Standard and Premium subscriptions.

Enter our Launch competition... To celebrate its launch we are giving you the opportunity to win a Huawei S7 Android Tablet. The iPad isn’t the only touch screen portable device that lets you take your films, music and pictures wherever you go! The Huawei S7 has a 7-inch touch screen, runs Android 2.1 and features a 3G sim card slot as well as builtin WiFi - so you can connect to the Internet anywhere, anytime. It includes a kick-stand so you can watch movies at a convenient angle,

the facility to connect anywhere wirelessly and a choice of apps for download on Android Marketplace. It comes complete with battery, mains charger, USB Data Cable and User Guide. Enter today at www.linuxit.com Best of luck!


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For Ambitious Managers of Linux and Mixed IT Environments.

Welcome Our aim is to provide new and innovative thinking for ‘real world’ IT management in the use of Linux and Open Source. But we go beyond just the commitment to consider or embrace Linux and Open Source technologies by exploring how these technologies are being used successfully, and of course why. We consider management solutions to achieve greater system and team productivity, efficiency, cost reduction, compliance and more. Also reliable technology solutions to support operating systems, email, databases, web server, security, data management, virtualisation and middleware. And we provide specific examples of these solutions in action. If you have the time, I would appreciate your feedback on what you like/dislike about this edition and what you would like to see in future issues. Please email me at ceo@linuxit.com I do hope you and your colleagues find this issue of interest and value.

From front page...

factors for a successful UNIX-toLinux migration including:

following 5 phase process for a UNIXto-Linux migration:

• Addressing people, operational process, and technology requirements.

1 Assessment 2 Design 3 Validation 4 Implementation 5 Management

• Operational effectiveness being based on having a risk mitigation plan that takes into account the impact of the transformation upon operational processes. • A thorough analysis of workloads and application dependencies reduces migration time, clarifying the business case, and identifying technology requirements. • Extensive multi-discipline planning being required for effective project execution. • Realisation of benefits being proportional to the adoption rate over time.

Adopting a phased approach

Peter Dawes-Huish Chief Executive LinuxIT

PS Should you need extra copies for colleagues/events do please email marketing@linuxit.com

Some common factors that often stop migrations include a lack of experience, fear of the unknown, insufficient resources, or some combination of the three. Organisations must break through this “getting started” roadblock to actually deliver on the promise of UNIX-toLinux migration. Fortunately, there have been many successes, which means there is lots of experience to draw from, and there are skilled resources to help make each migration go well. At the core of these successes is a disciplined, phased approach. For instance Dell and Red Hat use the

These phases are similar to those used by others and serve as a good set of guidelines for successful migrations. Across all of these phases they use a strict and documented governance process to enable project integration and coordination among various constituencies, and to ensure agreement and transition from one phase to the next. Project governance, through a formal project manager or group, acts as the key interface between the executive sponsor, vendor teams, and project teams; provides and manages the project plans and definition; manages risk and deliverables; and provides a framework for communication, training, logistics, and procurement.

A final word For those concerned about making the migration to open systems, there are known best practices and resources to help all organisations determine what to migrate to, when, and how to do it. LinuxIT have been applying these for many years in partnership with leading hardware and system providers such as Dell and Red Hat. Call 01454 333002 or visit www.linuxit.com for more information. Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat Inc, Dell is the registered trademark of Dell Inc. In the United States and other countries.

LinuxIT RHEV’s up Increasing demand for virtualisation at desktop, server and storage level generally and Red Hat Virtualisation (RHEV) in particular, has seen LinuxIT move to both deepen, and recognise the growing importance of the virtualisation skills of its engineer pool. A team that already boasts many qualified RHCE engineers. Now, its engineering team boasts Red Hat Certified Virtualisation Administrators enabling LinuxIT, the leading Linux and Open Source technology and service specialist in the UK, to fully support its Red Hat Premier Partner, and RHEV specialist provider status. Commenting on the recent many RHEV administrator passes, Mark Reynolds, LinuxIT Head of Technical Service said ‘We are committed to providing the complete Linux and Open source technology and service proposition across the entire commercial and public sector user spectrum. Strengthening our RHEV service skills is paramount to ensure we can provide and support RHEV and the benefits that can flow from its adoption’.

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Boldly going beyond... the forums The Open Source community forums are great places to meet other users, developers and to learn about the nature of the community, its aspirations, its capability. By joining them you can often participate in an active, vibrant, talented and growing community gaining access to post new messages, get support, use private messages, download images and much more. A selection of the community web sites are listed at the base of this article. However, business users often need enhanced, responsive support and advice well beyond this. With a record of success over the past 10 years in providing impartial advice, and award winning support for Centos, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and other open source solutions LinuxIT are well placed to provide this. Support solutions for the real world, based upon a deep understanding of the operating system, its interoperability within the environment, and the service required to ensure system reliability, efficiency and development.

We know Open Source With an unequalled record of implementing Ubuntu and other Open Source solutions we are recognised by many as the leading authority in the UK. It’s a passion that has driven us to create the most comprehensive Linux software and service portfolio available today. A simple focus giving our service that extra something, making us the most popular specialist choice across the UK.

See page 5 - How to get more ‘real world’ application performance, scalability and security from virtualisation.

Change... the only certainty We appreciate how the IT landscape is constantly changing with new technologies, demands and constraints. To meet this we ensure our solutions are as future proofed as possible and offer a formal system audit, and strategic planning service.

We invest We employ more Linux certified engineers than anyone else in the UK. In addition we have invested in a leading edge service management system and associated ITIL based processes to ensure our client interface is as efficient and reliable as possible. This enables our clients to capitalise upon the strengths of Linux through the provision of a world-class service. In essence we bring the best people and the best technologies together to deliver innovative, intelligent and cost effective solutions for your IT environment. Security, reliability and process We recognise the importance of your data security and system reliability. Our people are used to working with systems holding and processing confidential and commercially sensitive information, and to the processes and protocols surrounding the management of major IT systems.

Quality We are well down the path of securing ISO 90001 for our business processes, and ISO20000-1 for our service desk operation. We expect certification during 2010.

Working in partnership

More at www.linuxit.com

We work in an open, collaborative partnership to understand your specific, and often unique, requirements. Enabling us to maximise your IT scalability, productivity, and to manage risk.

www.ubuntuforums.org www.fedoraproject.com www.forum.mandriva.com www.forums.debian.net

Some of the open source community web sites:


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Receive your Linux Advantage via email by providing your address at www.thelinuxadvantage.com refined while creating private and public clouds for some of the world’s largest and most demanding companies.

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Edition One also includes consulting services to enable turnkey assessment, implementation and operational management of a private cloud. And training classes, to transfer knowledge and best practices to customers, creating a strong base of skills among customers staff quickly and efficiently.

Interview with Phil Andrews Phil Andrews , Regional Director, Northern and Eastern Europe, Red Hat, talks to us about Red Hat’s Cloud offering.

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TLA – How is Red Hat supporting the deployment and management of Cloud environments?

PA – Firstly there are two approaches with Cloud - Private cloud, built in the customers own datacentre, and Public cloud, which is a shared “utility” type resource for multi-tenant use. We have new offerings, ecosystem infrastructure and services, designed to provide CIOs with a comprehensive, easy on-ramp to private cloud computing. We also have development services that provide our customers with the tools and expertise needed to deploy and manage cloud environments. We also have a “Certified Cloud Provider” programme to assist end users to know that a Public Cloud built on Red Hat technologies will be running an Open and Standard Cloud environment. Without open standards, public cloud has the potential to become the “mother of all lock-ins”. It’s worth noting-some of the largest clouds in the world are already built on Red Hat.

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TLA – Some are concerned about the safety of the Cloud for mission critical applications. Are you addressing this?

PA – Just as we made Linux a safe place to run mission-critical applications with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we are focused on making the cloud a safe place for enterprise applications. We see ourselves as leading with a broad portfolio of enterprise cloud solutions, driving the expansion of the cloud for new users, from developers to enterprises, with our expanded cloud offering. TLA – So just what does your Cloud offering comprise?

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PA – Red Hat Cloud Foundations, is our major new offering family delivering comprehensive solutions for planning, building and managing Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service private and public clouds. Each Red Hat Cloud Foundation offering includes industry-leading products, implementation cookbooks and reference architectures, expert professional services and training classes – elements necessary to successfully create and operate

NEW ! The

Workshops Packed with information and advice from leading speakers in their field our workshops are designed for ambitious heads of information and IT managers who want to know more about how Linux based systems can contribute towards cost reduction, system productivity and development, migration planning and implementation. There are two workshops to choose from.

Reserve your seat today, places are limited. The workshops are free and will be held at the offices of Red Hat at Farnborough, Hampshire. Refreshments will be provided, including lunch. Book your place today by calling 01454 333002 or emailing tlaworkshops@linuxit. com. You will receive joining information by return, and a comprehensive information pack on the day. We look forward to seeing you.

clouds. With Cloud Foundations, customers can achieve the benefits of the cloud today, with lower risk and simple, easy implementation. These offerings are designed to significantly expand the reach and appeal of cloud, and offer the richest set of development and deployment environments in the industry and also deliver consistency between the datacentre private cloud and public clouds. TLA – So what can you offer today?

TLA – Through your Certified Cloud Provider Program Red Hat established the industry’s first program to certify that vendors have validated cloud capabilities and support processes that provide standards and open access. How are you developing this?

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PA – The first element in this family, Cloud Foundations: Edition One. This enables customers to deploy real private clouds today. It includes industry-leading products for implementing a private cloud, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Network Satellite, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation, JBoss Enterprise Middleware and Red Hat Enterprise MRG Grid. We can provide a cookbook implementation guide, making cloud setup quick and simple and a detailed reference architecture providing step-by-step instructions, scripts and settings for creating and configuring the private cloud. All based upon the years of experience and knowledge Red Hat engineers have built and

PA – We are expanding the Program to include new types of partnersthose investing in building public cloud infrastructures, and we are introducing new benefits from the program. Through the Program, we will be delivering more industry-leading offerings, including Cloud-specific offerings and pricing designed to make the cloud accessible and attractive to developers, administrators and users. Preconfigured, certified Red Hat images enabled with cloud-specific configuration and security settings to make deployments simple and secure. This includes pre-configured firewall and SELinux settings for secure cloud use the moment an image is started. Innovative management and updating services built for scale and designed to provide maximum security and lower costs,

while ensuring consistency between customer datacentre and public cloud environments. The extension of Red Hat partner ISV certification to public clouds, enabling enterprise solution availability and consistency regardless of deployment choices.

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TLA – What about Virtualisation and the Cloud?

PA – Virtualisation is the fundamental premise on which Cloud is based. Through our Program, Certified Public Cloud Providers can run any supported virtualisation solution, ranging from Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation and Red Hat or Microsoft guests to VMware and Microsoft platforms running Red Hat Linux as guests. In addition, Premier Certified Cloud Providers are able to deliver Red Hat Cloud Access, an innovative and flexible licensing model that allows customers to easily use existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions in the datacentre or the cloud, thereby driving easy cloud adoption.

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TLA – How do I find out more?

PA – There is more information on our entire Cloud offering at www. redhat.com and we are working with our leading specialist partners, organisations including LinuxIT to support both Private and Public Cloud offerings.

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TLA – Thank you.

For more information: Contact LinuxIT one of Red Hat’s leading Linux and Virtualisation specialists in the UK and a Red Hat Premier Partner in the UK. Call 01454 333002, email sales@linuxit.com or visit www.linuxit.com

FR EE !

Workshop 1

Workshop 2

Open For Business

Achieving Efficiency Savings

This workshop will provide an overview of the Red Hat Ecosystem from a technology and service perspective, and its value to businesses today.

This workshop has been designed specifically for the public sector. It will show how savings of up to 50% can be achieved through the effective application of Linux and Open Source based system technology and service.

Thursday, November 25th, 2010 Registration from 9 - Start 9.30 Introduction & Welcome – LinuxIT RHEL 6 – a broad message about the Platform, but extolling the features and benefits of RHEL 6 focusing on possible cost savings RHEV – Desktop and Server – the features and benefits focusing on possible cost savings

Thursday, December 9th, 2010 Registration from 9 - Start 9.30 Introduction & Welcome – LinuxIT RHEL 6 – a broad message about the Platform, but extolling the features and benefits of RHEL 6 focusing on possible cost savings

Coffee break 15 minutes

RHEV – Desktop and Server – the features and benefits focusing on possible cost savings

Management – JON & Satellite – the features and benefits focusing on cost savings

Coffee break 15 minutes

Panel Q and A

Management – JON & Satellite – the features and benefits focusing on cost savings

12.30 Buffet lunch

Panel Q and A 12.30 Buffet lunch

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For Ambitious Managers of Linux and Mixed IT Environments.

CIO MasterMind

migrating and continuing to support the expensive proprietary licenses you’re locked into.

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the key questions every CIO should be asking...

9. Is your technology efficient to manage? Up-front acquisition costs rarely tell the whole story of how much you’re paying for your technology. How much time do your administrators spend managing your systems? What strategic, business-critical projects could they be working on if they spent less time on basic, repetitive tasks? Are you able to keep up with changes on your systems? How much visibility do you have into your platforms and the applications that run on them? When there are outages, how quickly can you diagnose and solve the issue? And do you have the tools that allow your team to learn from each other and past experience? With today’s shrinking IT budgets, effective management tools are more necessary than ever.

Every business is looking for ways to be more efficient. You know information technology is critical — you can’t be in business without it. But what is your IT really costing you? Could you be doing more with the technology you have? Could you reduce costs and provide better service to your organisation? Finding out becomes a lot easier when you know the right questions to ask. Here are some suggestions from The Linux Advantage:

1. Who is choosing your IT? Making good choices about the right technology starts with who is making those choices — and why. Are those decisions strategic and based on long-term business requirements or short-term technology remedies? Are they delaying inevitable problems and inviting further lock-in that could be more expensive to fix later? Do the vendor’s features and functionality match the demands of your architecture?

2. What are you doing to control costs? The idea is simple: Get the most out of your current investments and keep future costs under control. Do you need to deploy applications and provide a rapidly ready environment to meet business demands? Integrate with legacy and new databases? Or have developer needs that change hourly? You want to make sure your technology is fully utilised. And gain the most performance from the servers you already have to avoid investments in hardware you don’t need. Controlling costs also means making sure technology vendors are providing value beyond charging you for licenses to use the software.

3. How many licences do you have? Proprietary licenses charge for the right to use software. They often lock

in organisations and force upgrades. And if you need to understand cores, threads, sockets, you may already be spending too much. Measuring how many proprietary software licenses you have is often a good way to begin measuring the true costs of supporting that proprietary technology over the long term.

4. Are you using open standards? Open standards mean that the technology is based on a common, independent standard rather than the choices of one vendor. Because these standards have been established neutrally and collaboratively, more vendors can deliver value around them. With open standards, your technology investments will be interoperable with the hardware.

5. What are you doing to improve systems utilisation? Hardware may be one of your biggest expenses. Are you using it as efficiently as you could be? For instance a server running Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® can do more work in less time. And with performance tuning, you may be able to use a less expensive server instead. In addition, JBoss® Enterprise Middleware has a small footprint, is easy to install, manage, and rapidly scale. New advances in infrastructure technology are helping IT departments better utilise the hardware they already have — without reducing the quality of services they provide to their organisations.

6. Are you using virtualisation, cloud computing or grids? Are you taking advantage of the latest technology to maximise your hardware’s abilities? Virtualisation lets you run more than one operating system on a single machine. That makes it easier to pool computing resources and get the most out of your hardware. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has virtualisation built into the operating system. Cloud computing delivers software as a service — you purchase computing power via the Internet as you need it. You can manage peak service demands without additional capital costs, and software you have today. They’ll also be protected from lock-in tomorrow since open standards make migration to other platforms easy. And you get rapid innovation, quick resolution to issues, and value when you use it, rather than the license keys you’ll forget.

7. Are you using open source? Open source means anyone can see the software code. Not only that,

10. How can we do a better job at managing our inventory? they can look at how it works and make changes that benefit them. The technology is built collaboratively, which results in lower costs. Open source puts organisations in control. It forces vendors to deliver value beyond the license to use the software. And if you don’t like how one open source vendor is serving you, you can choose another without overhauling your infrastructure.

Organisations often have to deal with excess inventory of hardware or under-utilised, expensive software. As the company grows, these systems and their software can continue costing money, even as their use One key question to ask is just how much of the hardware you have is limited to one application per server. That could be a significant opportunity to gain efficiency and reduce costs.

Grid computing is a way to share computing resources. Systems borrow spare computing power from each other, rather than relying on the power of a single server. Together these technologies can help you get the most out of your technology investments while meeting the highest service demands.

11. How can we reduce our operational costs? It’s the question on the minds of many CIOs today. How can I reduce operational costs — the area where such a significant portion of my IT budget has already been committed? And then, can I continue to provide better service and innovate? This is especially difficult in an economic downturn when new capital cost projects have trouble getting the resources they need.

8. What will it cost to migrate? There are many aspects of a migration to consider — the shortterm investment in technology, the time involved, and the skills of the support and migration team. And what may be most important to consider is the long-term cost of not

For help in addressing any of these points then LinuxIT can help - just call 01454 333002.

The complete, integrated Linux technology and service solution That’s how LinuxIT now describes its unique offering. Their new brochure takes as its lead the benefits that can flow through the effective adoption of Linux and Open Source technology and service. It summarises these as:

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BUSINESS BENEFITS

IT FUNCTION BENEFITS

• Supporting organic growth, and growth through acquisition • Supporting organisational collaboration • Reducing exposure to IT system risk, including disaster recovery • Protecting mission critical systems • Predicting future IT costs • Reducing IT total cost of ownership • Enabling the business to exploit new technologies eg Cloud • Maintaining high customer service levels, internally and externally • Meeting regulatory compliance requirements

• Improved system performance, efficiency, optimisation and its effective development • Enhanced system support quality, efficiency, scalability and consistency • Reducing departmental budget pressure • Embracing new technologies successfully eg low risk migration to a virtual environment, network satellite server • System stability, reliability, scalability and security

• Enhanced system interoperability eg OS and Microsoft • Freeing up existing IT resources to focus upon strategic issues • Access to in-depth technical experience • The provision of specialist skills when needed • Pre-empting server system problems before they occur • Developing your people through relevant training The brochure is available for download at www.linuxit.com/media-centre.

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To find out more how your business could benefit call 01454 333002 or email sales@linuxit.com


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The BIG Case Study Another shining example of a support program that has made a significant contribution to business performance. More at www.linuxit.com/services/case-studies

First National Bank of Omaha (FNBO) is the heart of First National of Nebraska, one of the largest and most highly respected regional banking institutions west of the Mississippi. With a 150-year history, FNBO has more than $16 billion in managed assets and more than 7,000 employees.

mainframe, midrange and PC desktop. Novell and IBM make terrific partners for us.” In its previous environment, FNBO had a nearly one-to-one ratio of machines to applications and yet each machine was using only a fraction of its processing power. Using virtualisation, FNBO consolidated 40 Sun Solaris servers to five Linux engines using Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) processors on the IBM zSeries mainframe running under SUSE Linux. The bank also migrated the rest of its 600 servers to 70 IBM Blade Servers.

Taking control As the financial industry transitions from paper to electronic-based transactions, banks are tasked to handle enormous volumes of electronic data. This shift is requiring financial institutions to make significant investments in security, network capacity, system performance and storage, which can significantly impact IT budgets. FNBO was weighed down with the costs of managing 600 servers, including 40 Sun Solaris boxes with 80 processors, and multiple operating platforms. To keep pace with company growth, the bank was adding servers at the rate of 30 percent a year and every 20 servers required additional administrative staff. FNBO turned to a Linux solution to get its expanding and expensive infrastructure under control.

Virtualisation benefits To replace its UNIX environment, FNBO chose to partner with Novell

and IBM for a solution consisting of SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server running on an IBM zSeries mainframe. “We already knew we wanted a mainframe environment and it was evident to us that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the best option for the IBM zSeries,” said Kenneth J. Kucera, Senior Vice President and CIO of First National Bank of Omaha. “Unlike Sun Solaris or Microsoft Windows, Linux gives us the option to scale up, down or across platforms–

“With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on IBM zSeries we not only consolidated all our Sun servers, but we also have tremendous room to grow on our 32-way IBM mainframe,” said Kucera. “I haven’t had to buy a new server in the past two years - how many CIOs are able to say that?” The five virtual SUSE Linux servers run all of the bank’s mission-critical Web applications for online customer banking, call centres and branch automation services. FNBO has nearly 600,000 online users and a large percentage of these users visit a Web site twice a month on payday to pay

I haven’t had to buy a new server in the past two years - how many CIOs are able to say that? their bills. It was critical for the bank to respond to increased transaction volumes on those days. ‘’I haven’t had to buy a new server in the past two years - how many CIOs are able to say that?” “With our previous UNIX environment, we never had capacity on demand, so we ended up paying too much overhead just to be prepared for two days a month,” said Kucera. “With our SUSE Linux/IBM zSeries environment, we can handle periodic increases in transaction volumes without constantly paying for excess capacity.”

Reduced Security Risks With fewer physical servers to manage, FNBO has dramatically reduced its security risks as well as administration costs. Linux virtual servers give the IT staff flexibility to respond quickly to business requests. “We now have fewer people managing fewer physical devices and yet we can deliver new applications in days instead of weeks,” said Kucera. “With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, we no longer have the delays of waiting to acquire and configure an expensive server. We just carve out more virtual machines on our mainframe and we are off and running.”

FNBO is also considering Novell Linux Desktop as part of its Linux enterprise to dramatically reduce software licensing costs. “Linux is our target architecture so we are moving everything possible in that direction,” said Kucera.

Costs cut by 70% By migrating its UNIX environment to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and IBM hardware, FNBO consolidated its environment by more than 95 percent. The bank has reduced its administrative costs by nearly 70 percent and reduced software licensing costs by more than 90 percent. Overall, the bank saved $1.8 million in operating expenses its first year and estimates a savings of $9.6 million through 2011. Most important, FNBO can easily handle business growth and increasing transaction volumes with the ability to set up Linux virtual servers in hours. “The whole e-commerce world demands greater convenience and faster service,” said Kucera. “Our customer service simply can’t be limited by technology. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server gives us the technology to grow oour company, but without the high overhead of other platforms. Our IT budget has actually remained flat this year.” For more information on SUSE and the Linux advantage generally contact Novell Gold Partner LinuxIT on 01454 333002.

Test results show how to get more ‘real world’ application performance, scalability and security from virtualisation Research shows that what matters most to organisations moving their mission-critical workloads to virtualisation is real-world application performance and scalability. So when Red Hat tested the performance of their Enterprise Virtualisation, they didn’t create artificial benchmarks or measure how many unrealistic virtual machines we could squeeze onto a single server. They created workloads that mirrored what they saw in their customers’ datacentres every day and measured their performance and scalability under a realistic load.

The best combination for enterprise applications Red Hat Enterprise Linux is already seen by many as the most trusted Linux platform for running missioncritical applications. By leveraging the performance, scalability, and security of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel, so the virtualisation technology in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation provides the logical choice for virtualising Red Hat workloads.

Test results Red Hat tested platforms like SAP, Oracle Database, IBM DB2, AMQP messaging, the Java application stack, and the LAMP application stack running real world applications and real-world loads. They scaled single virtual machines up on a single server to measure how well single virtual machines perform, and they scaled out multiple virtual machines on the same server to measure how efficiently Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation consolidates servers.

Performance matters Red Hat compared the performance you get today running your enterprise applications on bare metal with Red Hat Enterprise Linux to the performance that can be expected when running those same workloads on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation.

The Bottom Line They found that Red Hat Enterprise Linux applications run best on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation. For your enterprise applications designed with multi-threading and large memory

management, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation provides up to 96% or more of bare metal performance. And for applications based on the LAMP stack or other platforms that were not designed to scale up to take advantage of today’s multi-core and high RAM servers, you can get better than bare metal performance by leveraging the power of server consolidation and application clustering.

Everything they did, from the configuration of the hardware, to the virtualisation settings, guest operating system settings, application settings, and client load characteristics, is available from LinuxIT. For more information call RedHat Premier Partner LinuxIT.com on 01454 333002.

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For Ambitious Managers of Linux and Mixed IT Environments.

Satellite Solution for Network users

The state of the Linux nation TLA asks Peter Dawes-Huish, LinuxIT CEO, his views about the predisposition, adoption and utilisation of Linux today.

TLA – Are there any signs that Linux is being properly considered in both corporate and government IT plans?

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PDH – Yes there are signs that it is. This can be evidenced by the increasing use of Linux across education, the NHS and by local and central Government. LinuxIT have first-hand experience in supporting corporate adoption which is strong in many sectors. A good example is financial services, where system demands are rising exponentially and budgets constrained, a situation where Linux can provide the solution. If purchases of Enterprise Linux is used as a measure of Linux adoption then, unlike other operating systems, Linux is seeing a boom in uptake. For instance Red Hat has seen an overall 20% increase in revenues in the last quarter year on year, whilst LinuxIT have see a 60% increase in Red Hat sales in 2010, over 2009, which itself was a bumper year. TLA – Did the government commitment to consider it last year make any difference?

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PDH – It’s too early to say – local government have always been strong adopters of Linux as the best cost solution upon which to base their system. We haven’t seen much consideration of Linux by Central government, although we have had meetings with them, and are confident of significant movement in the coming 12 months as budget cuts impact on IT budgets. But at the end of the day Govt commitment in the form of the Cabinet Office strategy document is all well and good but what is needed is an action plan rather than just a policy. As well as evangelising about the benefits of Linux, the new Govt really needs to make the case clearer for Linux, the benefits the public sector can expect, as well as solutions to the challenges they may meet. Migration to Linux is now a well trodden path and there is a wealth of evidence available to support the case for Linux whilst simultaneously overcoming the fear, uncertainty and doubt that can surround its adoption. An impartial and experienced source such as LinuxIT could work hand in hand to support such an initiative.

?

TLA – To what extent does it depend on having integrators and channels with experience to make its case in the UK?

PDH – The efficacy of Linux and OS marketing by integrators and channels is now key in accelerating adoption. Specific examples of successes in market terms, and support for the route organisations need to take from where they are now to where they need to get to.

?

TLA – How does the UK compare with the rest of Europe in terms of OS adoption now?

PDH – UK is still lagging behind other European countries particularly France and Germany. The drivers in Europe over the last 10 years have been different. In particular other European central governments have been more focused on ROI or value for money than perhaps the British government has. With the drive towards value for money now we expect to see Linux viewed much more positively in the UK. For instance, we were delighted to have held discussions with the Cabinet Office regarding the No 10 web site move to Linux.

?

TLA –Does the UK tendering process still need more “sunlight” as some Linux champions have suggested?

PDH – Yes. Particularly with regards to small and medium size businesses who can often offer the specialist service and value for money that Govt demands but can have difficulty in engaging with Govt contracting opportunities due to lack of knowledge and resources. TLA – What is holding Linux adoption back?

PDH – In our experience its more about misinformation, prejudice or lack of knowledge around Linux, rather than the reality of what it can offer. All of the barriers that were there say 3 years ago have largely evaporated. Its more about inertia now. We find that ambitious IT managers cut through the fog and embrace the Linux advantage without fear, or confusion.

(A condensed version of this article appeared in IT Europa Magazine July 2010)

6

?

TLA – Is the UK creating enough Linux specialists?

?

RHN Satellite Server can provide an ideal solution to organisations requiring absolute control over, and privacy of, the maintenance and package deployment of their servers. It also enables Red Hat Network customers the greatest flexibility and power in keeping servers secure and updated.

PDH – Recognised Certifications has been an issue for Linux. However this has changed over the last few years. For instance, Red Hat’s own certification is now internationally recognised as a standard facilitating the adoption of Linux ranging from certification for engineers (RHCE) to senior architects (RHCA). At LinuxIT we happen to have more Redhat certifications in depth than any other provider in the UK. Alternative Linux certifications including the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) are making huge inroads into creating an eco-system of trained and certified engineers. The adoption of LPI by the Open University and other qualification bodies will lead to a huge workforce of well trained and certified individuals. TLA – What will 2010 and 2011 bring in the UK for Linux use?

?

PDH – With the massive expansion of cloud and virtualisation Linux is on the cusp of massive adoption. We see 2010 and 2011 being key years in its mainstream adoption. TLA – Turning to specific vendors of enterprise Linux, is what Red Hat is doing enough to meet demand? What would you like to see done?

?

PDH – Red Hat’s strategy for the UK is absolutely correct in that they put their value where clients money is. They offer a transparent and collaborative development process, the capability for users to do more for less, faster development through a rapidly growing community/ development cycle, complete solutions, and the power of a broad ecosystem, combined with the capability of a global provider. We work closely with Red Hat to ensure every customer gets the right product and service to meet their expectations and needs. A mixture of Red Hat’s product and support, and LinuxIT’s Service offering, ensures that customers get the industrial strength product to underpin the organisations objectives and LinuxIT’s service. If you would like to contact Peter over points in this artice please email peter.dawes-huish@linuxit.com

There are two types of RHN Satellite Server available. One with a standalone database on a separate machine, the other with an embedded database installed on the same machine as the Satellite. Although the two types of RHN Satellite Server are functionally similar, some differences do exist. These variations are primarily isolated to hardware requirements, installation steps, and maintenance activities. They may also appear during troubleshooting. The distinction is generally around whether they are Stand-Alone Database or Embedded Database. RHN Satellite Server enables organisations to utilise the benefits of Red Hat Network without having to provide public Internet access to their servers or other client systems. System Profiles are stored locally on the customer’s RHN Satellite Server. The Red Hat Network website is served from a local Web server and is not accessible from the Internet. All package management tasks, including Errata Updates, are performed through the local area network. The advantages of using RHN Satellite Server include:

• Security An end-to-end secure connection is maintained from the client systems to the RHN Satellite Server without connecting to the public Internet.

• Efficiency Packages are delivered significantly faster over a local area network.

• Control Clients’ System Profiles are stored on the local RHN Satellite Server, not on the central Red Hat Network Servers.

• Customised updates Create a truly automated package delivery system for custom software packages required by client systems, as well as Red Hat packages. Custom channels allow fine-grained control of the delivery of custom packages.

• Access control System administrators can be restricted to access only those systems within their maintenance responsibilities.

• Bandwidth management The bandwidth used for transactions between the clients and the RHN Satellite Server is controlled by the organisation on the local area network; RHN Satellite Server clients do not have to compete with other clients accessing the central Red Hat Network file servers.

• Scalability RHN Satellite Server may oversee an entire organisation’s servers in combination with RHN Proxy Server. For more information call 01454 333002


The

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Mini Case Study

servers, taking an incremental snapshot every 24 hours.

Fishburns

Alan Budd, IT Director, Fishburns Solicitors said “The key benefit of the solution is the confidence it provides that we can be back up and running quickly in the event of a server failure. This comes largely from the ability to test the recovery capability whenever we want.” Maintaining effective communications with clients is essential for Fishburns, and one of the three key systems protected on PlateSpin Forge is its Microsoft* Exchange e-mail server. The solution also mirrors a large Interwoven document management system and an internal accounts systems. “The PlateSpin Forge appliance enables us to demonstrate a very high level of disaster recovery capability to our clients,” said Budd.

Another shining example of a support program that has made a significant contribution to business performance.

Disaster recovery for less than the price of a cup of coffee per day. Novell PlateSpin - now available for Linux users. Hear how Fishburns Solicitors implemented a PlateSpin Forge® appliance to increase the speed and reliability of its disaster recovery capabilities. The Novell® solution enabled the recovery of all servers within two hours of a disaster, and allows Fishburns to test data and server recovery at any time, giving the company and its client’s full confidence.

Overview Fishburns is one of the foremost professional indemnity practices in the UK, and has been providing legal services to the insurance industry for over 30 years. Based in the City of London and with offices in Dublin, Fishburns acts for many of the leading insurers and reinsurers in the London market and beyond. The company employs both experienced lawyers and insurance professionals from across the industry.

The Challenge Fishburns had a conventional disaster recovery plan: the company was backing up all data to tape, then regularly moving the tapes to a secure offsite location. While adequate in terms of protecting critical Company and client data against loss, this approach had two major drawbacks. First, restoring from tape was slow and required significant manual effort and expertise. To recover just one of its servers, Fishburns needed to re-build the operating system, then restore the data itself. Second, the effort and disruption involved made it difficult to test the recovery procedure. Fishburns was confident that all data was protected, but not that it could recover rapidly enough to avoid business disruption in the event of a disaster. Keen to demonstrate a high level of contingency planning to major clients, Fishburns looked for a disaster recovery appliance that would offer extremely rapid restores and the ability to test recovery at low cost.

LinuxIT joins Red Hat Premier Partner elite LinuxIT, the UK-based Linux and open source specialist, has been awarded Premier Partner status by Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions.

The Solution A fully virtualised recovery hardware appliance, PlateSpin Forge takes regular snapshots of live server workloads and enables them to run on its own hardware in the event of planned downtime. As Fishburns was also planning to refresh its Storage Area Network (SAN), it decided to reuse the old SAN hardware alongside the PlateSpin Forge appliance at its disaster recovery site. The PlateSpin Forge appliance is protecting three critical systems at Fishburns, spanning a total of nine physical

By implementing a PlateSpin Forge appliance, Fishburns achieved its primary objectives: increasing the speed and reliability of server recovery, and simultaneously

You can find out more about PlateSpin through the videos and white papers at www.linuxit.com or call 01454 333002

Compliance Management together with all your Red Hat Enterprise Linux installations to ensure compliancy,

Monitoring

economy and reduced administration.

Incident Management

Predictive, proactive system

Rapid identification, isolation, resolution or

monitoring 24/7 that helps to reduce

escalation of problems through the

IT team workload enabling staff to

combined resources of LinuxIT and

focus on core activities.

Red Hat service departments.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Standard and Premium subscription providing industry leading software support, updates and development.

Commenting on LinuxIT’s new status, Phil Andrews, Red Hat Regional Director Northern and Eastern Europe said ’’We are delighted to recognise LinuxIT with our Premier Partner accreditation. LinuxIT has shown great commitment to Red Hat and have proven themselves to be a valuable asset to our UK partner ecosytem”

For more information on the Red Hat ecosystem and LinuxIT please call 01454 333002, email sales@linuxit.com or visit www.linuxit.com

Results

“PlateSpin Forge enables us to perform a full test of all the servers at our DR site whenever we like, with almost zero administrative effort,” said Budd. “The only difference between these tests and a real DR scenario is that we don’t actually re-direct users to the appliance—so we have complete confidence that the solution will work when we need it to.” Including the time taken to relocate staff to rented offices, Fishburns estimates that recovery to normal operations would take just 36 hours in the event of a total disaster at the primary site. This compares very favourably with the estimated 10 days required with the previous technology. “In addition to significantly decreasing our risk and ensuring that we can continue to provide almost uninterrupted client service in the event of a disaster, PlateSpin Forge gives us much greater control and confidence over backup and recovery,” said Budd. “In place of a largely manual recovery process with significant unknowns, the Novell solution gives us fully repeatable, highly automated recovery within known and tested timescale.

Your subscriptions information is tracked

Premier Partner is the highest designation offered by Red Hat, and recognises the specialist skills, training and exceptional track record of the partners accredited at this level. Red Hat Premier Partners are expert-level business partners and they lead with top-level services and customer satisfaction.

While Peter Dawes-Huish CEO LinuxIT said ‘’We see Red Hat as a key strategic partner and are delighted to have been awarded Premier Partner status. It will provide us with an excellent platform to further increase our Red Hat ecosystem business with existing and new customers, and provide complementary services’’

“As industry regulation grows, our clients can be confident in our reliability as a business partner. What’s more, the Novell solution removes a significant amount of the time and effort we previously spent on testing our disaster recovery process.”

reducing its administrative burden. The Novell solution provides a userfriendly front-end for managing replication schedules and performing tests, providing confidence that all systems can be back up and running within two hours of a complete disaster.

Management

Change Management

Underpinned by quarterly reviews and

Helps ensure that changes to your

monthly executive summary reports, this

Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems are

service puts you back in control. Includes

planned and controlled to optimise the

onsite visits, health checks, analysis of

Problem Management

your networks trends, security,

Recommendations, based on root

and performance.

cause analysis at the hardware,

performance of your systems.

operating system, middleware or application level, on how you can avoid system problems in future.

7


The

For Ambitious Managers of Linux and Mixed IT Environments.

LPI Certification becomes Linux Certification of choice in UK

FREE : how to enhance your security and reduce your helpdesk burden. Impress your boss and your boss’s boss by enhancing security and reducing helpdesk burden with Active Directory-based single sign-on and password policy enforcement. And only you have to know how easy it is to centrally install! Centrify Express is a free version of the same Active Directory integration technology that 2000+ business customers currently have on hundreds of thousands of servers.

Centrify Express consists : * Centrify DirectControl Express, which enables Active Directorybased single sign-on to Linux and Mac * Centrify DirectManage Express, which discovers non-Windows systems and joins them to Active Directory * Centrify-Enabled Open Source Tools for remote access and Samba integration to enhance productivity

If you have just a few non-critical Linux systems or Macs, then Centrify Express is for you; use it for free as long as you wish. If you have larger numbers of non-Windows systems, want enterprise-class support, or need advanced features, it can help. But the bottom line is with Centrify Express you get more functionality and more to upgrade to than other free Active Directory integration solutions. Download FREE Centrify Express at www.linuxit.com/s/centrify-express

LPI (Linux Professional Institute) Certification has recently been recognised as the preferred choice for academic students at schools, colleges and Universities in the UK. LPIC 1, its junior level Linux professional certification, has recently been wrapped around the Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF). It means that LPIC 1 has been recognised by eSkills, the sector skills council for business and information technology.

LPI to Scottish Colleges. A key component of this new agreement is the mapping of LPIC 1 to the Scottish Qualifications and Credit Framework (SQCF). These new arrangements are expected to boost take-up of LPI certification significantly building on the current demand of over 258,000 exams and 85,000 certifications worldwide.

LPIC 2, LPI’s advanced level Linux professional certification, recognition is expected to follow shortly. In Scotland LPI has signed an agreement with the Scottish Qualification Authority to promote

For further information please visit www.lpi-uk.org or call 01454 333012

Thin client solution for third world education recognised in Project Excellence Awards LinuxIT are finalists in the BCS and Computing magazine UK IT Industry Awards 2010 - Project Excellence Awards – Community Project of the Year category - for their innovative, rapid and reliable solution for NoPC, a charitable organisation dedicated to improving the access and quality of education available to Third World countries. NoPC believes that digital inclusion through ICT has a critical role to play in making this happen. One of its educational projects in Tanzania had become unviable and LinuxIT was tasked with coming up with a solution that would meet all the challenges, and provided a scalable model for NoPC. In 2005 NoPC delivered schoolroom systems connected to the internet in Tanzania. Several schools took part. The result was enormously beneficial and led to school attendance rising from 60% in 2005 to 97% in 2007, and pupil attainment. However, the maintenance and support of PC’s in remote locations proved to be a huge challenge and further innovation was sought for the project. For this reason in 2009 the NoPC approached LinuxIT with a brief to devise and implement a rapid and reliable internet and desktop computing solution to serve digitally under-privileged areas. Central to the brief was a solution to incur minimum support costs

8

was delivered on time.”

and use hardware that could be maintained locally, by non IT staff.

The challenge was to provide a desktop internet and computing facility to serve remote communities and hostile environments. The solution needed to be robust and survive the theft or destruction of any of the system at the remote location.

Delivered on time

Pioneering

Peter Dawes-Huish, LinuxIT CEO, commenting on the project said “We approached the project scoping, design and build in the same way as we would when implementing and supporting mission critical systems

The solution implemented by LinuxIT was to use leading edge technologies namely the thinnest of thin client technology, and a form of dumb terminal that runs a remote session on a server based in a secure data centre, which can be located anywhere in the world. Each school had a number of thin clients with keyboards, mice and monitors. This pioneering and original approach using thin clients that have no computing power meant that they were useless to anyone outside of this environment, therefore making their theft value zero.

for customers in the private and public sectors. A scope of works was agreed, followed by a design and implementation process before a final acceptance test by NoPC. At each stage prototypes were delivered for testing and comments for the design and build team. The build was assigned a duration of 4 weeks and

In practice each school has a setup of thin clients with no memory or even processor to speak of. They are basically a hardware implementation of VNC. These talk to a concentrator, which is a solid state PC/server hybrid, configured with local logon profiles which also runs a customised

One of the schools in the Southern region of Mtwara, Tanzania using our internet and desktop computing solution.

VNC server for the thin clients. Applications include a web browser, Wikipedia for Schools, Edubuntu and Gcompris. Each student account is set up with a server session, giving them remote desktop access to a server hosted in a data centre. This elegant solution means that each school has a monitor, keyboard and mouse all connected to a thin client which is displaying a desktop running on a server based in a data centre. In the event of failure, or theft, of any of the components at the school they can be readily replaced by spares which are then just plugged in and work.

IMPACT The project lead to increased student enrolment with the percentage of children in school has increased from 60% in 2000 to 97% in 2005.

Encouraged by the outcome of the project the number of secondary schools in Tanzania has grown from 1,202 in 2005 to 3,185 in 2009. The project also required teachers ICT skills to be developed and this led to more teachers being trained in ICT. Both those in schools and those in the country’s 32 teacher education colleges where 16,700 student teachers now have enhanced ICT skills. The model has the potential to be replicated across the developing world. Indeed the NoPC intend to roll this out in areas with similar educational challenges and needs and the model is now being implemented by NoPC In Grenada. Keep in touch with the NOPC project at www.linuxit.com

Contact Us Do you have a linux project or topic that could be featured in future issues? If so please contact The Editor on 01454 333004 or email editor@thelinuxadvantage.com

Published by: LinuxIT (Europe) Ltd. 1 Oaklands Business Park Armstrong Way Yate, Bristol , BS37 5NA www.linuxit.com


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