The Linux Big But!

“I love Linux, I support Linux, I would love to use Linux but….” You wont hear this just from me. The problem is a frustrating one. I for one have a number of Linux TSM servers and they have become somewhat of a problem. For example we had a situation where we decided to deploy a Linux TSM server and proceeded to setup the site. Problems arose when we attempted to connect the Library. As it turned out the version of SUSE was down level and the driver would not work. So we upgraded Linux and the library worked fine, but (there it is again) the RAID controller for the server would not longer work and there was no updated one. This has been and continues to be the problem with Linux. Sure companies beat their chests and yell, “We support Linux!” The problem is that it’s limited support and we the users who implement get left with what turns out to be a patchwork solution. I’m sure many will say, “But I have Linux working and it works fine.” Great! The problem is in the choices available to you hardware wise when architecting the solution. I can be pretty sure that I wont run into to many problems when solutioning for AIX, HP/UX, Solaris, or Windows. With Linux you have to do twice the homework and hope the hardware company keeps its drivers up to date. Just to risky for the data. Don’t get me wrong it has gotten better but there is a long way to go before I would commit to using Linux again.