Linux vs. Windows
Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) studied over 200 Linux server organisations, and found that Linux doesn’t have a higher Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) than Windows. Linux management is now fast, effective and inexpensive, thanks to sophisticated management tools. Linux servers are a cost-effective alternative to Windows, as there are far lower acquisition costs.
The following results were found when EMA analysed the cost factors cited in previous studies:
- Patch management – sophisticated management tools reduce the amount of time Linux administrators spend on patch management (less than 5 minutes per server per week).
- Provisioning – one third of Linux administrators can provision a Linux server in less than 30 minutes.
- Management and support – respondents with sophisticated management tools all report Linux management is the same or easier than Windows management. 97% of people believe the management of both systems is the same. 88% of organisations with Linux and Windows spend less effort managing Linux servers.
- Storage management – organisations with sophisticated management tools did not find any significant difference in storage management effort or utilisation for either Windows or Linux.
- Reliability – many Linux administrators (17%) report no downtime at all and the majority of respondents reported 99.99% or higher availability for their Linux systems.
- Consulting and training costs – 79% of organisations spent nothing on Linux server consulting, and 63% spent nothing on training.
- Configuration management – respondents have more versions of Windows than Linux servers. There is no impact on Linux management when supporting multiple versions of a given distribution.
- Resource costs - salaries for combined Linux/Windows administrators are only marginally higher than for Linux-only administrators. Linux server skills are readily available.
- Problem resolution – in a significant amount of cases, problems in Linux servers are diagnosed and repaired in less than 30 minutes, over 8 times faster than industry average.
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