Open source means more than just replacements
- IT TOPICS:Linux & Unix, Management, Operating Systems
The practical manager will seek to do more with less, not just cut costs. In some cases, open source software allows you to accomplish more simply because the commericial alternatives were too expensive. For example, sophisticated network monitoring has been typically been out of reach for mid-sized organizations, but there is no longer any need to go without - check out OpenNMS. High availability computing is another area that is now accessible to smaller budgets through open source. Heartbeat and DRBD can be used to set up redundant services and data. With Linux and open source software, systems with automatic failure detection and rollover to backup servers can be set up for barely more than the cost of the second PC. When you can replace your file servers with high-availability Linux clusters that duplicate data for less than a Windows upgrade, that's truly significant.
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