Explaining the Proposal: Server Operating Systems

In The Proposal, we specified that we’d be installing two server operating systems as guests within our ESXi virtualization host. Those two server OS’s were MS Small Business Server 2003 (SBS2003 for short), and FreeBSD 7.2. Here we’ll explain why we chose these.

Customer’s Choice

As you may recall from the interview with Bob Bossman in Humble Beginnings, Bob told us that he happened to have a copy of SBS2003 that he wanted us to use. Now, there were reasons I had him say that (he’s a figment of my imagination after all) which I’ll get to in a minute, but first I’ll just mention something about geek-to-client relationships and communication styles.

The customer isn’t always right! Or at least, not at first. If he were always right, why would he hire a technical person like you or me? He’d already know everything, and he wouldn’t need us. So, if I had felt that there were really good reasons he should use something else, I would have spent a few minutes trying to ‘sell’ him on what I considered to be a better technical solution.

But I’d have done so respectfully, deferentially, and most of all, constructively. Professional scenarios are not the place to hone one’s OS evangelism skills, and they are absolutely not to practice the smarmy holier-than-though ‘my OS is better than your OS’ debate skills found in places like this, or this. We certainly understand that fanboy debates can be an interesting way to pass the time, but search out and destroy any hint of those attitudes in your dealings with clients and managers. They have no place there!

So, had I felt that Bob could have made a better choice for his server or client operating systems, I’d have spent a short time making a positive case for whatever OS I was pitching. I’d have explained the extra workplace productivity gains it would bring, or explained that I personally am more experienced in {some other OS} and therefore can deliver more value by installing it. And I’d have been watching for signs of resistance throughout any such pitch. Bob has hired me to carry out his wishes, not to impose my own preferences on him.

So this is another important principle: the customer may not always be right at first, but he’s always right in the end. It is his money which finances the the IT infrastructure you build. You can try (respectfully, constructively) convince him that better choices exist, but once he’s made up his mind, your job is to build what he asked (and paid!) for. I have heard more than one geek claim to have built something other than what the boss/client asked for, because ‘they were wrong, and they can’t tell the difference anyway’. I absolutely deplore such tactics, and would never recommend them.

SBS2003

So, why did I have Bob choose SBS? Well, the real answer is that it made sense as a starting point for this series, because as FictionalBiz grows, we can provide lots of recipes for operating SBS, and from growing from that to a more diversified IT ecosystem. Another reason was, as I mentioned in the ESXi article, I have experience with it – and experience is an important asset. having detailed knowledge of what a product is capable of and how it responds to various situations can often trump using a more feature-ful product with which one has none of that knowledge.

But in the make-believe world of Bob and his FictionalBiz, the following reasons would apply:

• Cost vs. feature set. SBS costs less than $500 to acquire, and provides:
  •  A strong base for building a Windows Active Directory (AD) environment, and AD is simply the best single-signon enterprise directory service on the market right now.
  • MS Exchange, which is still the best integrated groupware (email + shared contacts, calendars, and tasks) software around.
  • File and print sharing.
  • Windows Sharepoint Services for intranet use.
  • Fax service (which Bob hasn’t asked for, but it’s there if he needs it).
  • Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) built in, for patch management on all client computers.
  • Remote Web Workplace and VPN services, which Bob doesn’t need right now – but we will be ready for him when he does
• Large available knowledge pool to draw from. SBS 2003 is in use at millions of small businesses; is operated by hundreds of thousands of system administrators. Microsoft’s massive website holds lots of information about the product; if that fails I’ll find a gazillion blogs and forums where SBS users share knowledge.
• Compatibility. We know that Bob’s employees will be using Windows on their computers. Active Directory is the best way to manage them.

I could probably go on, but it’s really so obvious it hardly needs speaking about: if you’re using Windows on 5 or more client computers, an Active Directory domain is simply the best and lowest-cost way to manage them. Thanks to the European Union’s decision to make MS open up their server and AD protocols, we may someday see competetive AD products, but today, such products are simply nonexistent. So it makes sense to have a Windows server providing the AD, and SBS makes sense because it’s the most cost effective product for doing that.

And what are the costs? For your ~$500, you get SBS with five included Client Access Licenses (CALs, we call ‘em). I’ll explore CALs later in the book, but for now, let’s take it as a given that we need another CAL (at a cost of roughly $36) for our 6th user and each subsequent user.

FreeBSD

The proposal also specifies that FreeBSD will be used to host our Trac wiki and ticket management system.

You might have noticed that I’ve said the words ‘we’ and ‘our’ fairly often in preceding pages. I wasn’t using the Royal We; ITcookbook has another player, and his online handle is jpalmer. He’s got a long history of BSD administration, and so I am going to turn over the explanation of our BSD choice to him. The rest of the page is his writing – take it away, jpalmer!