I have had some great success in the small enterprise (1-2 LAN fileservers per office), by migrating an average desktop PC over to Linux to serve as a Windows fileserver, router and database server. The hardware costs remain low - normally needing only additional RAM and disk space. Plus it creates a new use for a box that would be headed for the trash. Compare this scenario to purchasing a new Windows server with a 10 connection license of Windows, for the same overall performance.
Yes, this creates a need for a sysadmin with Linux skills, but these boxes tend to run months between reboots or downtime. Can your Windows server do that?
Given that most distributions of Linux are largely free and provide great performance on lesser hardware, it would seem that it would be a no brainer as an enterprise server platform. Laura DiDio in Linux vs. Windows: TCO Comparison provides some other interesting things to consider.
To put it simply, both Windows and Linux have much to recommend them. Largely, server operating systems have been commoditized. A corporation’s TCO and ROI are less factors of the underlying Linux or Windows operating systems than they are of the applications and services that support the server platforms.
The most startling revelation coming out of the report was the fact that more than 50 percent of the respondents said they had performed a thorough TCO analysis. But when asked to calculate their specific Linux and Windows capital expenditure and maintenance costs, 75 percent, on average, could not answer explicit questions about their own environments.
Sounds like somebody isn’t really doing their homework.
Businesses lack basic, crucial TCO information, such as the cost of a Linux or Windows server upgrade and what they are spending on network management, third-party applications, tools, utilities, ongoing maintenance, security, systems downtime, calls to the help desk and hardware and software breaks and fixes.
The absence of such crucial financial information makes it difficult for corporations to make informed purchasing decisions and heightens risks when choosing technologies that are ill-suited to their business needs.
Hardware and software will always break. Hardware costs on Linux over the lifetime of the server shouldn’t be any greater than with a Windows box - if anything it should be less given the hardware requirements are generally less for Linux to acheive the same performance.
Software maintenance depends on application choices and varies greatly field to field. If a Linux enterprise chooses to implement free software, in-house maintenance can be tricky. Open Source Linux adoption could be greatly aided by an increase of high profile, well positioned, 3rd-party support companies specializing in MySQL, Apache, Samba and the myriad of other Open Source applications required by enterprise servers.
Contrary to what the headlines would have us believe, the biggest threat to Microsoft’s continued dominance, at present, is not Linux. It is older versions of Windows. The biggest threat to Linux is not Microsoft, but rather integration and interoperability issues among various Linux distributions and their applications. The lack of enterprise-level application support and documentation for the aforementioned software packages also is an issue.
For my money, Linux is a great choice for the small enterprise.
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