OT: flame on (was Re: [TriLUG] Debian Bigots)

[William W. Ward]

Andrew -

As speaking from the point of a current Exchange administrator, while it may
take a few minutes to set up (and a few minutes more to realize your SMTP
relay is hanging open like the fly on your pants,) it will take years off
you life in ongoing maintenance.

I like Exchange for a number of reasons, the client software integrates
several nice functions (contacts, shared calendar, etc.) and the server is
fairly straightforward to manage if its left by itself.  In an enterprise
environment with heavy loads, it gets tricky.

This may also be true for Sendmail in larger installs, but how many times
has Sendmail's mail handler bombed due to the content of a message it was
handling?  We've experienced cases where too many Remote Procedure Call
threads were allocated for dial-up modem users (they tend to hold RPC pipes
open for long periods of time, and there were a limited number of pipes that
could be allocated in that version of Exchange, fixed later,) which blocked
new connections.  We've had a myriad of other issues and even escalated
things to the point where we received an apology letter from the top dogs at
MS.

In short, the lure of MS is the cheap cost of hardware and the low entry
barrier for administrators, but the hidden price is man hours and downtime.

One last point - a large part of the problem with MS's reputation isn't
always the quality of its software code, but the inadequacy of the
administrators implementing and administering these systems.  Because of the
easy entry to the field, many of the administrators do not get proper
training, a lot of the pitfalls we've experienced would have been avoided if
we'd had better training.  Those pitfalls include transaction log volumes
filling up and halting the services, inadequate monitoring of these systems
(which would alert one to the disk space shortage,) and non-existent user
training.

So, Exchange has come a long way, and as long as you sit on top of it to
ensure it doesn't spool out of disk space when a mail loop occurs (the sort
of loop caused by autoresponders on both ends,) it will probably be just
fine.  Course, the client-end is another issue.  Patch those bad boys or
suffer the wrath of script fu!

-b-






----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew C. Oliver" <acoliver at apache.org>
To: <trilug at trilug.org>
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 10:47 AM
Subject: Re: OT: flame on (was Re: [TriLUG] Debian Bigots)


> Man I feel all the love.  Now can we all start trying to increase the
> signal on this conversation and turn it back
> towards Linux?  I'd like to have an in depth conversation about mail
> servers (it apparently takes at least 6 months
> to set one up on linux).
>
> I understand Microsoft Exchange can be set up "securely" in a few
> minutes.  How odd it takes 6 months to set up
> whatever-mail-service-we-are-planning-to-use on linux ;-)  Is that why
> people choose exchange on M$ over X on linux?  Because of all that time
> it takes to set it up?
>
> I'd like to understand a little more as to why.  I'm freeing up for time
> shortly and I'm planning to set my own mail server up so that I can have
> email thats at least as reliable as the postal service again (although
> strangely I've started receiving mine today but it might be a fluke).
>
> -Andy
>
> Lisa Lorenzin wrote:
>
> >john davis wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>>>Let me see, you are the pasty white guy who whines about eating
veggies
> >>>>cooked on a grill which had previously cooked meat.  Like your opinion
> >>>>matters.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >
> >what tanner actually wrote, from the archived article that you quoted:
> >
> >
> >
> >>I can also bring my table top grill if necessary.  If I'm the
> >>only vegetarian there, though, I can make do with just a small
> >>part of the grill (which I understand has had meat cooked on
> >>it before, but would ask to not have meat cooked on
> >>
> >>
> >
> >"not eating veggies cooked on a grill which had previously cooked meat"
> >!= "not to have meat cooked on that small part that day, at least until
my
> >vege stuff was cooked)."
> >
> >i suggest you take your own advice:
> >
> >
> >
> >>Yeah don't say anything if you don't know what you are talking about.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >my point:
> >
> >if you're going to be a pedantic a**hole, you'd better be Right, 'cause
> >there are plenty of other pedantic a**holes out here who will see your
> >nitpicking and raise you same.
> >
> > lisa
> >
> >ps.  and yes, kevin, i should know better than to feed the troll.  but
> >it's monday.
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> TriLUG mailing list
>     http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> TriLUG Organizational FAQ:
>     http://www.trilug.org/~lovelace/faq/TriLUG-faq.html
>
>