Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Slashdot has a nice article and ensuing discussion about using Intel, Linux, Apache and Tomcat in production sites.

I say it makes TOTAL sense and YES I have done it for some small and medium sized organizations. The company I currently work for has discussed it several times and this would be a rather LARGE move.

We use Sun hardware, Solaris machines and BEA. That in my experience has been the "traditional" standard. However, I have personally been involved in migrating apps from Sun/Solaris to Intel(AMD)/Linux and that is no issue at all (keeping the same app server). Its a "no brainer" as they say, its all money savings and you can put in more hardware to increase redundancy and fault tolerance even over Sun machines (Sun is great, but too expensive, you can get 5 serious Intel machines for the price of a single Sun). Migrating the app server itself is more involved but STILL VERY OBTAINABLE and can save mega money. (Tomcat, Jetty, JBoss, Orion, not all open source or free, but MUCH BETTER AND CHEAPER THAN BEA.)

Some management types are still reluctant to use "open source" or free software. These people are behind the times and not dealing with reality. There are commercial support options for all of these products. These products are mature and stable and great performers. It is irresponsible NOT to consider them and it is ignorant to base not considering them on the fact that they are free or open source. In all cases open source products MAY NOT be the right tool for the job, but they should not be dismissed out of hand. (MOST people use open source in their everyday life and DONT EVEN KNOW IT. sendmail, bind, etc, these things run the Internet, if you send email, or surf the web, you use both of them daily, and chances are the webservers you are visiting run apache, etc, on and on.)

I think the consideration and discussion is healthy. And today, with the maturity of Linux, Apache, Sendmail, Tomcat, MySQL, Postgres etc, it only makes sense to consider them.

Want an example of a "production" site running Intel/Linux/Apache/Tomcat? I personally have been involved in Edsyndicate, a "managed" web application and portal, which uses just that. And if you want the real big time for Intel/Linux/Apache/Tomcat then visit Weather.com, and dont tell me thats not enterprise enough for ya. Its real, get a clue.   Using Tomcat or Jetty In Production?: slashdot