Ia there a good alternative to Microsoft windows server for enterprise?

Question

Hi Guys, I work at a small (22 FTE's) public(not-for-profit) art galley. We are currently a mixed pc/mac office with various departments, all with different needs. Communications/Design are Mac. 2/3rds of the Curatorial is Mac, 1/3rd PC. Public Programs is mostly Mac with one PC. The accounting, giftshop, and Databases are all PC. The giftshop and accounting use ACCPAC. The collections (artwork collection that is) department uses FileMaker Pro backend, with a frontend called "Virtual Collections". We very much dislike Virtual Collections BTW. Our other database, which handles membership, and financial donation tracking, is @EASE. Because we are not-for-profit our overall budget for IT is relatively small, and the system is the way it is because of years of neglect, and stop-gap purchases. We use a Microsoft Server with Exchange. We are in the process of building a new gallery, and with it the ability to start fresh on a number of levels. One of which is our Server. Personally I'd like to see us move away from the Microsoft server ecosystem. It is cumbersome, requiring lots of IT support (which we contract out by the way, and costs us a tidy little sum yearly on top of MS Server licensing etc.) Our Management team is considering going to an all PC environment with the (I feel mistaken) attitude that "if all computers are the same flavour, the whole system will run more smoothly and thus be less expensive to manage". As on of the Mac users within this system, who knows a little about, but is no expert in, computers and networks in general, I'd like to be able to open a dialogue with management at this crucial juncture on alternatives to the system we now use.  I had run across a website some time ago that outlined the "real cost of owning and operating Microsoft Servers" but can not seem to locate it anymore. It basically broke down all costs of running a Microsoft environment, and concluded that, over time, it is not very cost efficient, especially for small enterprise. Has anybody run across any really good server alternatives to Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Windows Server (I think ours is 2008)? We are a relatively small city, and the IT/Networking companies here all seem to push Microsoft as a be-all-end-all. I'm not so sure. I'd like to present viable alternatives with sound arguments to back them up. Can you guys help? Or, an you point me toward someone who can? Thanks guys, keep up the good work, Tmamer 

Answer 1

Have you ever got this resolved?
I noticed your VIP and Public IP are not on the same subnet, i thought they had to be?
like both 10.x.x.x and subnet 255.0.0.0 or something like that?
Could this be your problem?
I am trying to setup a two node cluster Oracle Rac 10g on IBM Blade Center H with HS21 XM blades.
My problem is trying to setup HA and not have a single point of failure and in order to do this, it almost seems as if i need 4 network interfaces in the HS21 blade so i can team 2 together.
Did you guys purchase any addition expansion cards for these servers for that reason?
My understanding is that each HS21 have by default 2 nics, and they each go to one of the two internal cisco switches (within the entire bladecenter).
So if for instance we have one of the cisco switch die, like the one that has the public interface plugged into it, then we could not longer access the rac and that would be a single point of failure. So unless we can have 4 interfaces on the blade, and have them 2 teamed with each nic going to one of the cisco internal switches. So if any one cisco switch die's it just uses the other one.
Any thoughts, suggestions?