I was wondering if anyone on this board had any experience running a network with Windows servers and UNIX/Linux servers on the same system. My company is thinking about implementing some Linux servers to save money on licensing, and had a few concerns about compatibility. I would like to hear some stories if anyone has had any experience implementing this. Also more importantly I would like to know about what can go wrong in this situation.
What services/programs are the Windows servers being used to run and what services/programs are planned to being implemented on the Linux servers?
When it comes to compatibility, you have to be more specific on the services you are looking to run on windows and Linux respectfully. For example at my job, we have active directory, LDAP, and DNS running on a windows 2003 server while our users are using Red Hat Linux and other Linux distros. All of our Linux workstations log onto the Windows 2003 server using LDAP and active directory. We also have Linux servers running NAS, DHCP, and our firewalls. Really the key to having a mixed Windows and Linux environment is LDAP, and of course having Linux admins that know their stuff. Not much can go wrong when you have good Linux admins maintaining a mixed Linux and Windows environment. Linux is just a more stable OS than windows, and if anything will improve your network.
It all comes down to the Apps and your companies current skillset. There is a misconception that linux is cheaper but its not always true. If you want support, than its about the same price for most smaller businesses in terms of licensing. You also have to hire a person that knows linux on top of the people that already know windows. That skillset often costs more than the licenses. If cost is the main reason to move to linux, you have to look at the total cost of ownership. How much will it costs you to get support, how much will it cost to train your admins, how much it will cost to hire new admins, how much it will cost to upgrade your applications that are currently running on windows that you want to move to linux. How much it will cost to upgrade systems that aren't certified to run linux. All this being said, most larger IT shops run a mixed enviroment. That is because most of these shops had Unix skills in house due to apps that required it. It didn't cost them much more to get the guys trained and compared to traditional Unix gear, linux boxes are a lot cheaper.
You might get a better answer if you tell us what services you'd like to deploy on UNIX before interoperability can be discussed in detail. If you're looking to save money, you'll probably be limited to Linux and BSD, though I hear OpenSolaris is gaining steam.
i'm no IT guru, but we run a blended system of unix, linux and windoze. from this user's perspective Bill's stuff seems more problematic. we do have great IT guys that know their stuff though ...
Thanks for responses. I will get in more detail now with what we have going on. Basically we have a Windows 2000 network, that we will be upgrading to Windows 2003 in about 3 months. We have Exchange 2003 running on a server, SQL 2005 running our accounting package on another server, then we have two other servers that mainly just share files and perform backup DNS services. More specifically AutoCAD files and normal Microsoft Office Documents. Those normal file servers are the ones that I am strongly thinking about running Linux on, while running Samba on them to help integrate it with the other Windows servers. We also are going to be putting up a web server to host web sites for our various projects that we are going to be running Linux on as well. We have a great Linux admin that joined our IT Department a few months ago and he can hopefully be a link for our Windows admins to learn from. We will be working hard to get the Windows admins trained on Linux in case our Linux guru leaves one day. Our workstations will continue to be Windows but we were looking for a more stable server platform to move to that is not as much of a target for viruses, spyware, etc. It looks like all of our server hardware has Linux drivers for everything, including the RAID controllers and our file backup program, Backup Exec, had Linux agent for it. We also running a license management program called LMTools that had a Linux compatible version. I am interested if anyone running a mixed environment has had any problems with Samba on the Linux boxes communicating effectively with the Windows domain controllers. I heard that Samba can also emulate a PDC for a Windows Network. I would like to hear about anyone who had any problems with Samba. I really appreciate all of the input from everyone.
Samba works fine but for file sharing I would go the NAS route. Simpler, less expensive, and easier to manage.
Whe have an HP NAS running Red Hat as the OS. We just implemented Samba on the server about 3 months ago, and its been running fine. As with any file server the work comes from maintence, backups, and restores.
You probably don't want to replace your DCs with a Linux box. It can be done, but group policy is a pain and Windows does the job pretty well. Samba will integrate fine with Windows for file and print services. I haven't messed with Samba and AD in years, but I hear it's a lot easier than it used to be. However, if you have the funds, I'd look at something like a NetApp NAS ($100K plus) if the data you are storing is mission critical. Is LMtools the same thing as FlexLM? If so, it runs great on Linux. Linux makes for amazing web servers, and can do wonders with email, NAT/routing, load balancing, and backups. The only place I prefer Windows servers is as a domain controller and sometimes a print server. Since being spoiled by an enterprise NAS, I'd never go back to using individual servers and RAID for primary file storage.
