Linux and Windows

Paul Smith

I just tried to do some searching on salary.com. I found the average for a Linux admin is about $82k. However I could not find anything for Windows Server admin, Active Directory Admin, Windows Engineer, etc. 

But based upon my own experience being a Windows Admin in the past, they do tend to make less than any *nix admin. However, I have also found that most Windows admins have a lower skill set compared to most *nix admins. Their understanding of how networks, monitoring and SANs work is usually very poor. 

Lastly, the costs for Microsoft licensing are just insane. I mean a standard windows server OS license is in the range of $900 per server these days. Plus on top of that you need CAL's for any PC that will connect to that. Add on the costs for web services CAL's, SQL server per/CPU licenses, Exchange services, Exchange CAL's, Windows management services, Windows Identity Manager, etc. And you need to refresh every couple of years. Pretty pricy if you ask me. Most Linux OS's are free. Many applications that you can run on top of Linux that can do the same things as Windows are free, nginx, apache, LDAP, mySQL, etc. 

I would, however, not recommend Linux for the desktop. It is too clunky for most users and the application range is not as robust or well developed. Windows 7 and MAC OS would be my choice for the desktop. 

As far as monitoring the *nix space, there are many solutions out there that are also free, such as OpenNMS, Nagios, Zabbix, OpsView, etc. Add on top of that a centralized logging solution, you can pretty much run any large company this way. With the correct policies in place for how to build and monitor your environment, it makes it a breeze. 

The real problem lies in the way management sees the world of IT and support. They think that if they have not paid for something, then there is no outside expert resolution for issues. They want that nice warm fuzzy feeling they get that if something goes wrong and their admins can't figure out why things are not working, and they can call up Microsoft and get some real support. I remember a story about a corporate legal department who came across a GNU license agreement from a vendor. They had no idea how to deal with it and wanted to add all sorts of liability clauses about possible future copyright and licensing conflicts. It was just nuts. 

But in a final note, and don't get me wrong, Microsoft makes some amazing products. And the out of the box, the tight integration between products is really solid. Windows server is a very good product and AD is a really good directory service. I've used ISA and TMG servers and they are stellar firewall/proxies. 

In the end, every organization is different and has different needs.The IT systems they depend on are just tools. And the tools will be specific to that organization. If they use a lot of nails to do the work, they should buy hammers. If they use a lot of screws to do their work, they should use screwdrivers. You could probably go the opposite way, and it might work, but there would probably be a lot of damage and it would nto be very efficient.