Deven Kampenhout's Tech Blog : Linux and Open Source

Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit (How I learned to freely burn ISO images in Windows)

devenkamp — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 04:38:00 GMT

In my prior life before coming to Microsoft, I didn't use Windows as a server but rarely and as a workstation very little. My main workstation was running on RedHat (or Fedora from time to time), and I managed mostly Unix and Linux servers, only managing Windows servers on an as-needed basis, which was pretty rare since we had other staff to do that. I did run Windows on my laptop however, as it was very usefull to run the Windows Office suite as my company had a fully integrated Exchange environment, and collaboration with co-workers was more efficient using Windows.

One of the reasons I preferred using RedHat as my primary workstation however was due to the availability of tools and resources. If there was a job that needed to be done, and I didn't already have the software, I could almost always find an open-source project that had a solution. If the project was somewhat active I could easily download and install the software without having to pay for it. On Windows, if the OS didn't provide the utility, my perception was that the only other options were typically non-free products, ranging from "trial versions" to "shareware" to full blown pay for license professional software. The problem was that if it wasn't free, then I had to go pester my boss about buying a license for it, and that was an inconvenience at the very least.

One example of such a utility was cd-burning. In Linux/Open Source distributions, it was easy to obtain fully functional cd-burning command-line utilities. On top of those, if you didn't like working in the command-line, there were a bunch of freely available command-line GUI wrappers to make the tools pretty. Most of these utilities are part of the common Linux distributions today. If I wanted to burn a CD, a quick search on the Internet would reveal plenty of how-to docs on the subject.

Conversely, in Windows if I wanted to burn CD's, I had to go find a third party applications to burn them. When I bought my cd-writer, it came with a free "light" version of a CD burning tool, but to get the advanced features such as burning an ISO image, I had to buy an "upgrade". Granted, it wasn't usually more than $20-30, but this is more expensive than "free".

However, it turns out that I should have voiced this opinion to my Microsoft-minded colleagues, as contrary to my ignorant opinion, Microsoft does have free cd-burning tools. Granted, some of these tools came to public distribution relatively recently, so I can't blame myself too badly for my mis-perception. For cd-burning of data and music CD's, Windows Media Player 10 has all of that functionality fully available. But if you want to burn an ISO onto a CD, that isn't supported. However, there is an answer for that too. Microsoft published the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit on 4/28/2003, which contains tools to "help administrators streamline management tasks such as troubleshooting operating system issues, managing Active Directory®, configuring networking and security features, and automating application deployment." This toolkit also includes the cdburn.exe tool, which enables burning ISO images to CD (and dvdburn.exe for burning DVD from ISO images). You can install this resource kit on windows XP or Windows server 2003. One caveat that I discovered (while writing this post nonetheless) is that you can't be running Windows Media Player while using the cdburn or dvdburn command line tools, or you'll get an error message stating "Unable to lock the volume for exclusive locking 5".

Once you install the resource kit, burning a CD is as easy as the following command:

cdburnn d: image.iso -speed max

You can find all of the options for the command by passing the /? flag after the command.

The moral of this story? Before you assume that you have to buy third party software to accomplish your task, check to see if microsoft has a free utility or toolkit.

RedHat Cap at MMS 2005

devenkamp — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 02:36:00 GMT

Even though I didn't get as many comments as I'd hoped, the few that I received convinced me to commence wearing my RedHat cap at the Microsoft Management Summit 2005 in Las Vegas. I wore it on Thursday. It was a good day to wear it, as just the day before, Steve Ballmer had given a keynote address stressing the importance of interoperability within management systems. I wore the RedHat cap to a breakout session which detailed how MOM 2005 can be used to monitor systems and devices independently of their operating system.

The funny thing was that after the session, I bumped into another guy wearing an Apache t-shirt. We smiled at each other and wondered if we were the only two open-source geeks at the conference.

More posts are coming with everything I leaned at MMS. Sorry for the delay, but was travelling all day Friday and didn't have Internet access all weekend. I've got some rought drafts going, so expect some more posts soon.

I need more if I'm going to wear the RedHat Cap to MMS

devenkamp — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 08:56:00 GMT

Come on people! I need more of you saying that I should wear my cap if I'm going to do it. So far, there are only two comments on my post asking whether I should wear my RedHat cap to MMS 2005 to draw attention to the fact that for companies like Web Hosters, the management tools need to be better able to manage heterogeneous environments.

Come on people! This is your chance for your voice to be heard.

More to come on what I'm learning at MMS...

Blogging from MMS 2005

devenkamp — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 18:55:00 GMT

What do you think? Should I wear the RedHat cap to MMS 2005? Let me know and post comments to my blog. Your voice will determine whether I wear the cap or not....(read more)

Linux Can't Kill Windows

devenkamp — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:18:00 GMT

Today when reading slashdot, I was referenced to an article that so eloquently states what I've been thinking for some time now:

You can quit proclaiming Linux the Windows killer.

Linux is established and has a niche that, as various pendulums swing, will grow and shrink. Show me charts and stats and benchmarks that prove Linux superior to Windows in every measure and I'll not argue with you. But no matter how much money and dedication is poured into Linux, it will never put a dent in Windows' mind share or market share because Linux is an operating system, a way -- and probably the best way -- to make system hardware do what it's told. But you can't turn Linux into a platform even if you brand it, box it, and put a pricey sticker on it.

I really like open source Unix. I also agree that while it serves a purpose, it fills a different need than the Windows platform does. The only area in which I would disagree with the author however, is in the Web Hosting space. I'm not saying that Linux is going to kill Windows in the web hosting space, but the hosting world is very different than enterprise. In general, you have much smaller companies. For years, hosting companies have pretty much been packaging their platforms. While I agree that Windows integrates tools better with the OS, there simply aren't as many web-based tools in the Windows space like there have been traditionaly in the LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) world. Due to the greater number of freely available web-based applications, there are basically more legos in the bag on open source Unix than there are for Windows. Hopefully that will change soon. Microsoft realizes this weakness and is moving to address it. You already see Windows-based web applications like DotNetNuke and Community Server gaining more popularity. Hopefully with the success of these apps and more community involvement, we'll get more web-based applications available for the Windows platform to even out the playing field a bit.

Attack of the Clones

devenkamp — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 05:51:00 GMT

An article posted about a month ago details a serious challenge for companies with GPL software seeking to protect their intellectual property. Basically, RedHat's newly released Enterprise Linux 4 was cloned shortly after its launched by few other companies. Up until a few years ago, RedHat freely distributed its "production" version of its Linux-based operating system. They realized that they were loosing potential revenue by not charging fees for their software, so they began charging a service fee to obtain copies and maintain software update support for their distribution. The catch is that the software falls under the General Public License (GPL), which governs linux and most of the software within the linux kernel and virtually every piece of software within all major distributions.

The GPL basically states that software source must be freely distributed, and that any software derived from GPL licensed software must also include the GPL license. This requires that the source code for all of RedHat EL must be available for free download. RedHat only distributes its binary software packages to those who have purchased the support contract for RHEL; However, anyone can download the source and build their own binaries; Several companies now specialize in offering free distributions based solely on the RHEL source code.

It will be interesting to see how RedHat responds to this threat. RedHat is a publicly traded company, which means that they have to make a profit. Unfortunately, the GPL license creates more problems for them than it solves. The lack of IP protection is directly threatening the viability of RedHat's new direction. How long will clones erode its fee-based revenue before they are forced to change their business? I'm not saying that all of their revenue will dry up. One may make the argument that the people who are already paying for RHEL support contracts already see the value in having their software supported by RedHat. However, I know of many cost conscious technology companies who would rather not pay for a hefty support contract, and I can only see this number growing. I personally see the value in having enterprise level support in an environment where you're supporting hundreds to thousands of servers, but for a small business it makes more sense to use a clone.

Conversely, the BSD license, which governs the *BSD operating systems as well as a good number of other "open source" software, has a much different IP model. Basically, the BSD license says that the software source is open for free distribution, but that deritives of that software do not require the BSD license (and thus don't have to be open source). One of the most well known software derived from BSD licensed "open source" is Mac OSX. In 1999-2000, Apple developed Mac OSX based on FreeBSD 3.x. Unlike RedHat, they have complete control over their intellectual property.

I wonder how this canundrum will be resolved. It will be interesting to say the least.

The Journey Begins Part 3 - Abuse, Automation, Management, and Aquisition

devenkamp — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 18:55:00 GMT

… Continued from part two (part one):

As we last left my chronicle of my experiences in Web Hosting, I was the sole systems administrator at Virtual Servers. The systems were running high on load average, which isn't surprising given what we were running on the hardware that was available back then. I quickly realized that the only way to begin to address the problems in any meaningful way was to automate fixes and avoid short-term "band-aid" fixes. This is easier said than done however when you're the only sysadmin; To be blunt, time is of the essence and you don't have much time to be proactive when your customers are constantly contacting the support team to complain of slow service due to high server loads. I was able to convince my manager that I needed help, and he allowed me to hire someone to share my workload.

The first person I hired was a guy named Steve, who has since become a great friend. His primary job was to handle all of the abuse complaints. He knew web design very well but was just beginning as a systems administrator. I trained him on how to react to high load issues; The reason this was tied to the Abuse Desk position was that in many cases, high loads on the servers were caused by people hosting things that were against our AUP, such as porn or warez. The other cases were caused by customers whose web sites had outgrown the capacity of their shared hosting plan. Steve would contact these customers and tell them that there site was causing the server to fail and that he'd have to shut down their web site to keep the rest of our customers happy; He also gave them the alternative to upgrade to a plan that had more resources allocated to accommodate the needs of their growing Web site. It was mainly through efforts like this that we built our dedicated hosting business.

Now that I had a little more time, I began to automate everything I could. First, in order to help Steve, I built a number of scripts that he could use to track down users that were causing server performance issues. I also helped to beef up our monitoring and paging system (we called the system Zookeeper) so that it was better capable of paging a team of people rather than just me and my boss. I also integrated some of my data gathering scripts into the web interface of our monitoring solution so that when you saw a server alert come up, you could click a link to get more detailed information to track down the issues.

Through all of this, the Perl scripting language was my greatest friend. When it comes to coding a complex application such as a server, end-user app, or what have you you'd probably want to look at a language like C/C++ (or similar), but there is nothing better than Perl when it comes to system administration, especially on Unix/Linux/GNU systems. It's funny now that I look back at some of my earlier perl scripts - they were hastily written and didn't use the best programming practices. However, over the years I would grow to know Perl like the back of my hand.

By the Fall of 1999, I had hired another system administrator to my team (Phil), and was in the process of looking to hire a full-time Perl scripter to help with tool creation for systems administration automation. In December, It was announced that Virtual Servers (AKA Lightrealm Communications) would be acquired by Micron PC. Micron PC at the time was struggling to compete with the likes of HP, Compaq, and Dell and thought to start an Internet Hosting business in order to take its company in a new direction.

They acquired two other web-focused companies along with Lightrealm with the intent of forming them into a larger player in the web hosting space. Micron Internet Services, acquired from their parent company Micron Electronics, was mainly an Internet Service Provider selling dialup and broadband Internet services in the Boise, ID area. Hostpro (AKA NetLimited) was a hosting company based out of Los Angeles, CA that had an array of hosting products and services ranging from high-end customized dedicated hosting solutions to shared hosting. Our strength at Lightrealm was mainly our shared hosting business. While we had some dedicated hosting and colo customers, the primary focus had always been on the shared hosting business.

The merger brought on a new era. I went from working for a small private startup company with a very personal feel to working for a small part of a much larger publicly traded company. At the time, MicronPC was the large revenue player and we felt completely segmented from them. It was decided that the new brand for the combined companies would be HostPro. It would take a few years for us to begin to truly integrate our cultures and think of ourselves as one company. It is strange to look back now and remember how weird it was going from a company of 100 employees to a company that had well over 1000. In retrospect, this was nothing compared to working for a company like Microsoft, which has almost 60,000 worldwide.

One of the benefits of the acquisition was that we had a much larger budget with which to grow our company. In fact, one of the main reasons for the acquisition was that Lightrealm had grown so much that we'd hit a ceiling of what we could accomplish without some major capital. This capital was what Micron PC brought. Now instead of building our own custom hardware built in custom cases and using PC hardware, we began to deploy our servers onto enterprise class servers (still Intel based, but much higher quality). We were able to build out a new data center and office space, both of which were badly needed. Some of us still laugh with fondness when we remember the old days of working closets for a lack of available floor space in our overcrowded old office space. Having a new employee report to work was always exciting, as it meant trying to figure out if there was a spare cabinet or closet that might possibly be converted into a work area. Now that HostPro was formed with the backing from Micron PC, those problems were behind us.

To Be Continued...

Back from Vegas

devenkamp — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 05:00:00 GMT

I just got back from being in Las Vegas for a few days for the CSNA offsite meeting. Overall, I enjoyed the meetings as it helped me get a better understanding of the organization I'm working in, and to meet all of the members of my team in person for the first time. I have decided that I don't really like Las Vegas that much. It probably would be a fun place to visit for a single day, but after being there for 4 days, it gets old. The Venitian resort was fun, but smelled completely like cigarettes, which began to really irritate my lungs, eyes, and skin after a while.

On a more technical note, RedHat released RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 (Link is PDF) this past monday. I haven't had much time to read up on it, but one thing I know is that it utilizes the 2.6 linux kernel. I'm looking forward to playing around with it to see how it is different than version EL 3.

On another personal note, I'll be driving to Dallas with my family to relocate there, so my postings may be more limited this week.I'm really looking forward to getting this whole move behind me.

The Little Worm that Couldn't

devenkamp — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 21:02:00 GMT

I read an interesting article posted here about a worm written to affect MySQL installations on Windows servers. In a nutshell, the worm replicates itself by scanning the internet and local networks for MySQL servers and brute-force guessing the root account password. Once it gains entry to a system, it launches connections to a remote IRC server and pushes itself into the background, allowing MySQL to run normally.

The funny thing about this worm is while the IRC bot has the capability of running DDOS attacks, this feature is turned off; The only DDOS that this bot has accomplished is against the very own IRC network it attempts to communicate with:

(quoted from the article)
As with similar types of malware, the bot runs in the background, allowing MySQL to run normally while it contacts a remote Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server for additional instructions. In the report, Ullrich states that the bots' target IRC server was busy and unable to accept new connections when researchers last attempted to contact it. On earlier attempts, the IRC server showed around 8,500 connections, all of them likely due to infected MySQL installations.

Interestingly, the worm only attacks Windows based installations of MySQL. I expect that this is only because the bot was compiled only for the Windows platform, and not because it isn't possible to attack other systems. I wouldn't be surprised to see a variant attempt the same exploit against *nix based MySQL implementations. Any time a brute force security breech is accomplished on this scale, it speeks for a massive lack of proper system configuration. In a nutshell, there are too many people out there who have decided not to disable root level database access to remote users or who use simple (or non-existant) root passwords which are easily guessed. The sad thing is that it is really easy to prevent this type of attack by allowing only local (or users from trusted networks) to connect as root, and at the same time using strong passwords.

I know that 4.1.x versions of MySQL have better authentication methods such as using keys or certificates. But a good feature that isn't understood and implemented by a large number of people makes the software look bad, regardless of its capabilities. For a long time, many in the Open Source community have stood by smugly while Microsoft has suffered attacks on its systems and on its reputation due to security vulnerabilities. But it seems like that attitude may come back to bite.

Several years ago Microsoft decided to step up its efforts with its "Secure Computing" initiative. Because of its position in the lime light, Microsoft receives more attention from hackers. But this attention has served to better prepare Microsoft for secure computing by helping to harden its software and practices. If you compare the number of security vunlerabilities in Windows Server 2003 to its open source competition, Windows Server 2003 has had far less critical vulnerabilies than the major Linux distros. I don't say this to start yet another "religious" conflict about which system is more secure, but as a preface to the following warning: Open source systems have enjoyed a broad, technical user base. As they gain popularity among less technical and security minded folk, prepare for more attacks such as the MySQL worm that is brute forcing passwords to gain access. Unless software is designed to make even the ignorant user to use secure computing practices, your whole platform will suffer as a result. At the end of the day, nobody benefits when any system is compromised, whether that system runs Windows or any other flavor. Secure computing will make or break you. Microsoft understands this, but keeping the growing number of open source users trained in security is going to be a challengeing endeavor.

Mysql Triggers Turn on the Heat

devenkamp — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 07:27:00 GMT

Peter Gulutzan wrote an interesting article describing his Mysql Triggers Tryout with the latest Alpha build of MySQL 5. I've been a long-time fan of MySQL. I first started using it in 1998, and have watched with great interest as it has matured. It seems that it is working very hard to match the features of the "enterprise" level SQL databases such as Oracle and MS SQL. For quite some time, many enterprise database (MS SQL, Oracle, etc.) advocates have drawn attention to the lack of features such as triggers and stored procedures in the MySQL database. Soon, the lines between the features of these competing databases will narrow.

One of my favorite things about MySQL in the past has been its speed and its simplicity. Could all of these new features be a pandoras box of instability and performance drains? In trying to compete with the larger databases, I hope that the database that I "grew up" with doesn't loose its identity, its speed, and its stellar performance. The way I see it, not every application needs the power to run join queries on a 3 Terabyte sized database. For small to medium sized database applications (most web apps), speed and simplicity are paramount. In these smaller applications, good database design can almost always compensate for the lack of some of the advanced features offered by the more advanced databases. As MySQL bridges into the enterprise DB space, will these key benefits remain intact?

I wonder what kind of an ultimate impact the "improvement of MySQL" will have on the Database market, as well as on MySQL itself. MySQL is an open source database, but it can be used either under the GPL or under a commercial license. The commercial license is not free, but gives the purchaser assurances and frees them from some of the limitations of GPL (most notably, doesn't require the licensee to distribute their application under the GPL). As the competition from MySQL picks up steam (and it already is), perhaps the other vendors will allow a free license for their databases under specific circumstances similar to MySQL licensing. The challenge is that the database market is a very high revenue generator for both Microsoft and Oracle, so there is a great deal at stake for both companies. At the same time, if MySQL takes over a significant portion of the market will their licenses change to better take advantage of their improved position and give them more cash? Will the approach of MySQL cause the enterprise databases to invent new innovations to differentiate themselves from the growing competition from MySQL?

Needless to say, it is going to be a battle ahead for the database players. There is a great deal at stake, so I'm sure the battles will be hard fought. Unlike Linux, the MySQL community centers around a private "for profit" company funded by venture capitalists. This could give a great deal of stability, legitimacy, and force-of-will to the MySQL movement; Or it is possible that the need for profits will cause a large rift with its Open Source (i.e. "We want everything to be free") champions. Only time will tell.

*Disclaimer* This posting represents the opinion of the author, and not any of the parties mentioned herein or the opinion of my employer. This post is also subject to the default disclaimer of my blog.

The Journey Begins Part 2 - The Early Days of Hosting

devenkamp — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 06:21:00 GMT

… Continued from part one:

In the beginning of 1999, the small hosting company I worked for (Virtual Servers, LLC.) realized that they were loosing business because they didn’t have a Windows based hosting product offering. By this time we were using NT 4.0 as workstations in the office, but we didn’t have any real expertise on IIS or running NT as a web server. They hired a New Yorker named “Vinnie” to put together our Windows based hosting solution. He did as good a job as anyone could do. The goal was to make it a similar style “virtual” product offering as our UNIX product. Unfortunately, true virtualization on Windows was impossible with the architecture at the time. In order to allow customers the “feel” of having more control of their Web server, we allowed customers to register their own dll’s. As you might imagine, this cause all kinds of troubles for our Windows Sysadmins. I also remember the company having all kinds of hardware troubles (only on the Windows side), as we had been used to building up our own servers to save on hardware costs. Eventually, we had to invest in some Dell servers and the major hardware problems went away.

During this time of our Windows hosting product beginning, I was busy creating the Unix systems administration team. At first, I was the only sysadmin. I had to wear all kinds of hats in that role: security, abuse, system administration, backup/recovery, and top tier support. All of our servers were hosted in a small NOC located in one of the Westin office towers in downtown Seattle. The NOC was owned and operated by our sister company, Lightrealm Communications. I wouldn’t quite call it a data center, as it couldn’t have been more than 1500 square feet in total size. Our office, where all personnel worked, was located on the East Side of Seattle in the city of Kirkland. As such, we had a “dark” data center.

We had built a custom monitoring system that would automatically page me if one of the servers went down. Each server’s power was hooked through a device called an “e-commander”, which allowed one to telnet in and power-cycle a box remotely if the box stopped responding and needed a hard reboot. This worked decently *most* of the time. Unfortunately, the UFS filesystem which was utilized by BSD/OS wasn’t the most resilient to hard booting. After coming up after a hard reboot, it would attempt to automatically repair the corrupted inodes, but every once in a while it wouldn’t be able to repair it automatically. If this happened, it meant that I had to make a trip downtown to give it personal attention. I don’t think I can count on one hand the number of times I had to make a trip downtown during business hours, but the systems had an uncanny knack of going down between 1-5 AM. The first few times I had to take a trip downtown in the middle of the night to fix a server, I thought it was pretty exciting. It didn’t take long to become quite a chore, however. I had been married for less than a year, and I can still remember my wife getting very angry at my pager.

Besides early morning file system recoveries, the biggest problem with the systems was performance. Since we allowed our customers a great deal of freedom on how they configured their servers, they were a very popular hosting solution for people who wanted to push the limits. Due to the backend system which created the “virtual” server environment, the systems tended to use more resources than a standalone hosting solution would have. The problems ranged from customers running bad “runaway” scripts, to sites which just got more traffic than the system could support. During the night, the systems tended to run pretty smoothly (when they weren’t crashing with filesystem problems), but during the day the loads could get pretty high. Any time the load averages rose above 7, the system performance would degrade to the point where customers would start to complain. I had to come up with a number of creative ways to automate managing the growing number of systems…

[To be continued] part 3

Knoppix to the Rescue!

devenkamp — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 01:46:00 GMT

I found a fun article called "True Stories of Knoppix Rescues". My first experience with Knoppix was when a co-worker of mine pulled a business-card sized CD out of his wallet during a server emergency. It sure does come in handy to carry around one in your wallet, especially if you're running systems on the Internet with data you want to keep. The cool thing is that the bootable utility OS and tools can fit within 100 MB. The filesystem recovery tools have proven invaluable, especially when you wipe out your boot loader. I wonder if there are any similar bootable filesystem tools that can be used on Windows. I know there are the standard install CD's which have some rescue utilities, but it would be cool to have a wallet-sized version. It probably exists somewhere already, but I'll have to keep my eyes out for it.

Linux Is No Longer "Free"

devenkamp — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 09:25:00 GMT

Today I came across an interesting article written on the History of Linux. The article quotes the famous newsgroup posting in which Linus Torvalds first announced his operating system project to the world. Notice how he calls it a "free" OS. It is clear that he grossly underestimated the future of this OS:

From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
among other things). I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40),and
things seem to work.This implies that I'll get something practical within a
few months, andI'd like to know what features most people would want. Any
suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's
all I have :-(.

Linux certainly was born "free", in a day when you could download the source and use the "free" GCC compiler to create your own executable. It was a hackers dream to have unfettered access to source code. Nonetheless, as the distribution of this hacker OS grew, and commercial enterprises like RedHat and SUSE came into the picture, a change in the landscape was inevitable.

For quite some time, distributors such as RedHat operated on the model that they could maintain a competitive business by providing "free" software sans licensing fees, profiting by offering paid training and support of their distributions. As Linux became a buzz and usage grew out from the hackers and into the common marketplace inside corporations, it became obvious to the major Linux distributors that their original profit model wouldn't work

The dillema for the major Linux distributors lies in the fact that their initial distributions were designed around the open community. As the number of different software packages included in the distributions grew, so did the effort required to maintain the distributions. Thus, it became increasingly difficult (and costly) to maintain legacy distributions. As the major Linux distribution companies began to end-of-life support for legacy versions of their distributions, this created a problem for commercial users of their Linux distributions; Migration from legacy Linux distributions is not necessarily trivial, so the time and cost for enterprises to upgrade to current distributions proved extremely painful.

The need for Enterprise level support for the major linux distributions was seen as an opportunity by the distributions to fix their profit model by charging licensing fees for the use of "Enterprise Level" distributions. The distibutions would provide sofware, support, and updates for an ongoing service fee. Thus, one can no longer get "free" version of major enterprise Linux distributions like RedHat or SUSE. The source is still open, and source versions of the software are free for download, but pre-built binary packages, updates, and technical support are only available to those who pay for the enterprise distribution. Thus, the distributors satisfy the needs of both the "hacker" and the enterprise.

I find it both amusing and interesting how eventually the major "free" linux distributions had to turn to a service based licensing model. It only makes sense, as the axiom my mother taught me when I was young still holds true: "There ain't no free lunch." With Enterprise level support requirements, comes Enterprise level licening fees. New studies now show that licensing and support costs do not significantly differ between Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, or Novell/SUSE Linux 8.

With this fact in mind, we should quit thinking of Linux as "free". Sure, it's out there for the hacker to play with, but when the rubber hits the road for Enterprises, we need to look at the other factors outside of licensing fees and support. Don't get me wrong, I like Linux. I enjoy "hacking" with open source software as a hobbyist/computer geek. Nonetheless, there is a major difference in the needs of an Enterprise organization and someone like me tinkering around on my home network. Let's start to look at the real issues like indemnification, supporatability, interoperability, security, and all of the other myriad of challenges that will differentiate a good platform/solution from a bad one on the Enterprise level.

*Disclaimer* The opinions represented within this posting express the views of the blog Author, and are not sanctioned by any of the parties discussed herein.

The Journey Begins

devenkamp — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 00:34:00 GMT

With this post, a new blog is born. Keep reading, as this isn't your typical blog by your typical Microsoft employee. My name is Deven Kampenhout. I'm not new to blogging, but you probably won't find my name on other blogs, as I've posted as an anonymous alias in the past. My blog wasn't only technically oriented, but was more of a creative expression of whatever was on my mind. This blog will be focused primarily on technology, especially about the battle between Microsoft and Open Source in the Hosting industry. This blog may be unique in that it will log my journey as I transition as a UNIX/Linux/Open Source technologist into a proponent of Microsoft technologies, software, and solutions. The rest of this post will be a history of how my life got to this point, so if you’re interested in my background, read on.

This week, I started working for Microsoft in the Communication Sector as a Hosting Evangelist. Professionally, I've been in the web hosting business for almost 7 years. My first internet experiences had me working on HPUX UNIX systems at the College of Engineering labs atBrighamYoungUniversity in 1996. I was captivated by the Internet and found myself spending all-nighters in the 24 hour lab figuring out how the Internet worked. Before too long, I had jobs working for the University building Web sites, creating content, and eventually building a rudimentary E-Commerce solution for the University book store.

In the summer of 1997, I went up to the Seattle area to begin working in an Internship. While I was there, I helped the small electrical engineering firm (ATD Northwest) establish its Web presence. I set up their web site with a hosting company named Virtual Servers, LLC. That same summer, I met my future wife. I returned to Utah to finish another Semester of school, returning to Seattle in the spring of 1998 to get married. While I was up there for the summer, I was fortunate to land a "summer" job with Virtual Servers, the same company that provided the web hosting services for ATD Northwest. I kept working through the summer and finally came to the point where I had a difficult decision to make: continue my exciting and promising career with “VServers”, or go back to school to complete my college degree. After much struggle over the decision, I decided that I was learning a great deal more at my new job than I was in college.

Virtual Servers focused on creating hosted web solutions for small to medium businesses. What differentiated this company from the rest of the fledgling hosting industry was our shared hosting product offering. Traditionally, you could either spend large monthly sums for your own “dedicated” server, or spend a fraction of the cost and host your web content on a server that shared other web sites. The disadvantage of “shared” hosting was a loss of flexibility and manageability. With a dedicated server, you could have full administrative access and customize your configuration to support your content. However, on the shared servers, most solutions gave very limited ability to add custom configurations, customize email and ftp account settings, etc. “VServers” came up with a hybrid solution, which created virtual server solutions which allowed each different account hosted on a shared system to be managed and configured as if it were a dedicated server. Initially, we only sold shared “VServer” solutions, but eventually some of our customers grew out of the resources that a shared system could offer, so we developed the “VServer Dedicated”. It was one of the first of a new type of hosting platform that would eventually be known as “managed dedicated solutions”.

At first, all of the VServer products were built on the “UNIX-like” BSD/OS operating system, distributed by BSDI (Berkley Software Design Inc.) At the time, Linux (RedHat) was still in its infancy (i.e. not very reliable yet), and Windows NT (IIS) was just beginning to pick up popularity in the infant web hosting industry. Before too long, it was apparent that without a Windows NT-based product, we were loosing business…

[ To be continued… ] (Part 2) (Part 3)