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Mandriva in the Enterprise?


Dyslexic
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Is it just me, or has Mandriva decided to focus on the SOHO market, and ignore the enterprise? I have a couple of aging Mandriva servers that are becoming burdensome to maintain. One is running Mandrake 9.2, and it doesn't do much; it basically just runs postfix. The hardware is dying, and I'm sure Mdv 2008.0 will be a capable replacement on newer hardware. Except for one thing: Mandriva has a habit of breaking the repository structure with every new release. I can understand the need to improve things, but retroactively breaking existing installations doesn't seem like a reasonable thing to do. It's even more problematic on the other old Mandriva server I have, which is running Mdv 2006. I try to actively maintain this one since it is supporting an office of 12 people. It runs DHCP and Kolab (a broken version of Kolab 2 beta, I might add). When I installed Kolab 2, I assumed they would release an update with the final version at some point. That was done but not until two years later, and packages are available only for Mdv 2008. To my knowledge, Kolab is the only feasible collaboration solution available with Mandriva. So then I started thinking that perhaps the Powerpacks are not intended for IT folks, but rather for demanding home users. I took a look on the site to see what Mandriva has for us IT types, and I found there is a "Corporate Server 4.0." Here's where things get really bad. There is nothing on the site that even attempts to explain why I should be interested in it. No white papers. No depolyment strategies. No evaluation guides. No suggested configurations. No case studies. Not even any mention of which software is recommended for workgrouping, auditing, ACLs, etc. For deplayment there's a cryptic description of something called "Pulse," but after reading that page I still don't know what it is. For hardware compatibility there's just an Nvidia Quadro graphic. The first thing that struck me is how completely useless that graphic is in providing compatibility information, and the second thing... WTF would put a Quadro card in a server?

 

I think it would be less embarrassing for Mandriva to delete those pages, and simply link to SLES and RHEL instead.

 

Am I off-base or missing something here?

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For Business, Mandriva have Corporate Server. Perhaps you should be using this as it's similar in comparison to SLES and RHEL instead of using an old free version. Perhaps download, and install it and see what it's got.

 

I found this link that provides info:

 

http://www.mandriva.com/enterprise/en/prod...rate-server-4-0

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Ian, it looks to me that the O/P seen the page you link and that was what he was rantng about (well at least they both bear the nvidia quadro logo). I think the point is that the corporate server is poorly marketed on Mandriva's site, that page is very basic and in no way inticing, a total contrast to say the product page for the powerpack. I don't see one selling point on that page, just a list of specs, which are meaningless on their own. The O/P is right, there is no way that any potential customer would be interested in the product after looking at that lack-lustre attempt to sell it to them, there's nothing there to compell anyone to be interested.

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Growth at the moment is very much centered on the mid-market and more and more vendors are switching focus to that market segment. Enterprise is very much a maintenance and services business at the moment.

 

I'm not sure if that is Mandriva's take on the market, but it makes sense. Red Hat and Novell kind of have the enterprise space tied down with their offerings, I would advise other distros to look the small to medium sized business space.

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I don't know what things are like in South Africa, but in North America we're seeing more new Linux deployments than ever before, mostly in departmental servers. People seem to be looking for alternatives to Exchange and Domino in both the Enterprise and SMB spaces and I don't see that Mandriva has shown any interest in either market. Novell and Red Hat charge enough for their solutions (not that Red Hat has a viable alternative to Exchange or Domino) that there's plenty of room for someone to come in under them. I believe that is what Sun is attempting. I know that Mandriva has had financial woes, but I still thought it would be more agile in adapting to the market.

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We have not changed the repository structure since 2007.0. We changed it in 2007.0 because the prior system was basically crack-addled; ah, with joy do I remember the fun of explaining the 'community / official' split to people. It took about two pages and they were still baffled at the end.

 

Corporate Server and Desktop are important projects for Mandriva, and we believe they'd have all the features you need. Comprehensive support packages are available for them. Pulse is a deployment / management system which can handle variegated groups of systems (Mandriva systems, other Linux systems, and Windows systems). Hardware compatibility for Corporate Server 4 is broadly similar to 2006, as CS4 is built off the 2006 basesystem (kernel 2.6.12 etc). The kernel is patched to add support for hardware when this is needed by major customers.

 

If you like, I can find someone to get in touch with you with more details about CS4. I will pass on your criticisms of the page.

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Is Mandriva a good platform for Zimbra?

 

I am speaking to more and more businesses in both the SMB and enterprise space that are displaying an interest in Zimbra. The nice thing with Zimbra is that it does not attempt to be a drop-in replacement for Exchange, but rather offers a whole new approach with some very powerful tools. It also scales nicely to the size of the organisation.

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As we are talking about the page, I do miss some things. I am aware that the page has just been launched and might get filled with more stuff later, but some things would be very useful on the Enterprise page. Take a look at this:

http://www.novell.com/products/server/

http://www.novell.com/linux/whysle10.html

A nice collection of things that will make the OS attractive to companies. And as we are at it: How does that Linux solution fare, compared to other server solutions?

http://www.novell.com/linux/compare.html?tab=1

http://www.redhat.com/rhel/

You see, Novell and Red Hat did it well. Lots of information packed into a website and still easy to read, even for non-experts imho.

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We have not changed the repository structure since 2007.0. We changed it in 2007.0 because the prior system was basically crack-addled; ah, with joy do I remember the fun of explaining the 'community / official' split to people. It took about two pages and they were still baffled at the end.

 

Corporate Server and Desktop are important projects for Mandriva, and we believe they'd have all the features you need. Comprehensive support packages are available for them. Pulse is a deployment / management system which can handle variegated groups of systems (Mandriva systems, other Linux systems, and Windows systems). Hardware compatibility for Corporate Server 4 is broadly similar to 2006, as CS4 is built off the 2006 basesystem (kernel 2.6.12 etc). The kernel is patched to add support for hardware when this is needed by major customers.

 

If you like, I can find someone to get in touch with you with more details about CS4. I will pass on your criticisms of the page.

 

Actually, I do remember changing my repository setup in 2006 when 2007 came out. At that point they had the same structure. However, that is no longer the case. At some point after 2007.1, the structure of 2006 repositories were changed to remove the "release" branch.

 

Thank you for your offer to put a sales person in touch with me, but I have already chosen SLES. One reason is that Novell has a wireless solution for Blackberry and Treo users, and Mandriva doesn't. Another other is that I simply don't have confidence in Mandriva's product for a mission critical deployment. Admittedly, I've only been using Mandriva on a daily basis since version 8.2, but in that entire time there has never been a focus on meeting the needs of businesses. It has always been targeted at hobbyists, SOHO and education.

 

I will continue to monitor Mandriva's progress in that vertical though, and would be happy to provide any feedback or input into the development of a competitive line of products and services.

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For Treo, BTW, all you need is a standard IMAP server, with which Mandriva is well-provided. I used to have a Treo 600 which I regularly used together with my personal mail server, which runs Courier-IMAP on top of Mandriva Linux 2008.

 

Blackberry uses a proprietary server setup - Blackberry hardware is essentially one giant trap to lure you into using RIM's proprietary, pay-only mail server setup - and hence you need to do a tie-up with RIM to offer Blackberry services. I don't know if we've investigated doing such a deal, as I'm not involved with that side of things.

 

My personal take on it is I don't know why the hell anyone sane would use a Blackberry - and have to pay RIM to do email - rather than just using a Treo or any Windows smartphone with a decent IMAP client, and use perfectly standard, open mail server software. IMAP can do everything Blackberries do (yes, that includes push email).

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I am aware that you can have IMAP push mail on a Treo. In another post I mentioned that I recompiled Mandriva's cyrus SRPM to support IDLED. It also requires the purchase of Chattermail for every Treo 600/650 in the company since Versamail, which comes with those Treos, doesn't support IDLED.

 

I think it's misleading to say that RIM charges you to use email. Yes, you have to purchase licenses for Blackberry Enterprise Server, but you also have to purchase licenses for any large scale collaboration solution.

 

Blackberries also have other advantages. They're easy to get up and running. Once you install BES, you have pretty much automatic support for instant calendar notifications and tasks. The administrator can also maintain the entire fleet of mobile devices from the server. I couldn't figure out how to do any of that with a Treo, so if you could point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it. Using persistent data on the Treo 600/650/680 for push mail requires charging the battery twice daily. With an instant messenger running, that's three times daily. The battery on my Blackberry Curve lasts for about 3 days with the same type of usage, except with an instant messenger running 24/7. While the Treo is doing its random data connections in persistent mode, phone calls go straight to my voicemail. With the Blackberry, calls still come in. The Blackberry is much thinner and lighter than Treo which looked pretty goofy protruding beneath my suit jacket. The Blackberry's trackball is much easier to use in a vehicle (not while driving, of course) than jabbing the Treo's touch screen with a stylus. A very minor consideration is that it gives you and I as Canadians an opportunity to support Canadian technology and the local economy. I could go on...

 

It may not have been a sane decision for me to switch users from Treos to Blackberries, but so far everyone has been happy, and it seems to have made good business sense in terms of the productivity we're getting compared to our Treos.

 

On the topic of Corporate Server 4... I don't really want to be too harsh here. I come to this site primarily to support Mandriva. But having a distribution that meets corporate needs isn't good enough. I need to know which large companies have deployed it, what issues they've had, and how they were resolved. I need to know what the projected lifecycle of the software is, and exactly what will happen for the next cycle. I need to know what the obsolescence strategy is. Having someone at Mandriva tell me all the great things about CS 4 is helpful, but I need independent peer review. That's how IT works, and that's what I mean by addressing the needs of business.

 

Thanks for taking the time to address my concerns, I really do appreciate it.

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...but I need independent peer review.
No offense, but how exactly is it Mandriva's fault that there are no independent peer reviews? If they were to, say, go asking people to do them - that would mean they weren't...independent...

 

:unsure:

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It's not Mandriva's "fault" per se, but it's something I need and can get for products from other vendors like Novell and Red Hat. Those reviews will come from Mandriva landing some small deployments initially and gradually working up to larger deployments. To do that, Mandriva will have to be very aggressive in going out and getting the business, which perhaps it can't afford to do at the moment. From that point people will start publishing evaluations. I really hope that happens, but right now I have to go with those vendors who have already gone through the growing pains. I do what I can by using Mandriva to prototype new ideas, but I haven't done anything with Mandriva on a scale worth documenting.

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