Linux and VMware add up for Connecticut nonprofit

Newsforge.com ^ | 2005-08-23 | Tina Gasperson

[N3WBI3]

Family Services Woodfield (FSW), a nonprofit organization in Bridgeport, Conn., is dipping its toes in open source waters with the help of virtual machines.

FSW helps families through difficult life situations: anything from illiteracy, domestic violence, or HIV, to helping a youth coming out of juvenile delinquency or a family caring for an aging grandparent. FSW maintains partnerships with other agencies it uses as resources, and it is continuously designing new programs to better serve its constituency.

The agency receives government funding as well as private donations, and so must keep up with reporting requirements, and since it provides psychiatric care for children, it must comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). FSW is always looking for ways to get the most out of its $10 million-plus annual budget in order to better serve its client base of more than 23,000 people in the communities surrounding Bridgeport.

One way it has done that is to begin using Linux and virtual machines from VMware. FSW was a Microsoft shop before Joe Foran, the agency's director of IT, came on the scene seven months ago. Right away, he knew what needed to be done to save the agency significant money on IT costs. "I came over from Unilever, and I had participated a lot in their VMware projects over the last couple of years," Foran says. "I had a wealth of background and I knew where FSW could save money."

After making his case, the board of directors gave him free rein to purchase VMware and begin deploying it on two new Dell PowerEdge servers running Red Hat-based distributions. On those two servers are four instances each of Linux -- mostly CentOS and a basic custom kernel running a firewall. Applications running in Linux include CommuniGate Pro groupware, the LifeRay portal, Jive Messenger, a LAMP stack, OpenLDAP, Samba, and SSL-Explorer.

Foran keeps a separate Windows box going in order to house Medisoft medical billing software (for HIPAA requirements) and MIP accounting software. "Those are outside of the virtual environment," Foran says, "on the 'if it ain't broke' theory of operations management."

An anonymous donor recently provided FSW with 58 used desktops. Foran would like to roll them out to FSW clinicians, outfitted with CentOS 4, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, and Evolution, so he's performing desktop development testing with unused servers and VMware workstation.

Between Linux and VMware, Foran says he's saved the agency at least $79,000 in IT costs. "The cost estimate for

[N3WBI3]

OSS PING

If you are interested in the OSS ping list please mail me

---

This is a great example of an entity leveraging both open and closed source software to save money..

[ShadowAce]

[N3WBI3]

I almost forgot

[] Stallman is a leftist
[] Redflag is the communist chinese OS copied legally from redhat
[] The father of Linus ws a communist and lived in Moscow
[] DNC loves Linux
[] communism.org like Linux
[] N3WIB3 has sub-par english...

[ShadowAce]

Your "communism.org LIkes Linux" bulletpoint is incomplete. Don't forget that it also runs on Windows 2000. :)

[ShadowAce]

I run VMware on my laptop. It runs OK--for the most part. It still doesn't quite separate the process totally from the rest of my system. I will have some issues running Windows, and it seems to affect performance on the rest of my computer.

I had thought that one of VMware's strengths was that it separated the VM into a process jail of some sort ( It's not chroot, but I hope you get my point), so that issues affecting the VM don't affect the host OS.

[zeugma]

I like VMWare a lot. I use it to test new distros when they come out and I have time to do so. Works great with Knoppix!

[antiRepublicrat]

[X] Stallman is a leftist
[X] Redflag is the communist chinese OS copied legally from redhat
[X] The father of Linus ws a communist and lived in Moscow
[X] DNC loves Linux
[X] communism.org like Linux
[X] N3WIB3 has sub-par english...

All true! But this gets twisted in the eyes of some:

1. Well, no explanation, he is.
2. They also contributed a lot TO Linux.
3. We're getting Biblical, visiting the inequities of the parents onto further generations? BTW, his father's communism caused a lot of friction between them.
4. Or at least uses, because it works.
5. Same here.
6. Nobody's debating that :)

[N3WBI3]

I run VMware on my laptop. It runs OK--for the most part. It still doesn't quite separate the process totally from the rest of my system.

You should look at IBM's pseries virtul stuff its super nice.

[N3WBI3]

Thanks for the catch shadow:

[MikefromOhio]

LINUX BAD!!!!!


/Golden Eagle


:)

[N3WBI3]

LOL, I can just see camp chaos Napster movies from 99' LINUX BAD, LINUX BAAADDDD.........

[MikefromOhio]

LOL!!!!

yeah the Metallica ones were GREAT!!!

LOL

[Golden Eagle]

Keep that up and we may learn to get along.

Or maybe I should complain instead, so you'll actually keep doing it.

[ShadowAce]

You should look at IBM's pseries virtul stuff its super nice.

Do you have a link for it? Does it run on x86 hardware (we are talking about my laptop, after all)?

[N3WBI3]

I dont give a fat rats a$$ if I ever get along with a troll..

[N3WBI3]

Naa, cant do that but if your into development you might want to scope out a pseriers running aix5.2. You can partition the processors into 10 chunks (initially, you can further go down to hundreds), it really is Mainframe level LPAR stuff..

[ShadowAce]

...it really is Mainframe level LPAR stuff..

That's kinda what I thought. I was thinking that maybe they had ported it to x86 architecture when you suggested it.

[Bush2000]

Between Linux and VMware, Foran says he's saved the agency at least $79,000 in IT costs...

Surrrrrrrrre, he did. Till you consider the additional Linux administration costs..

[N3WBI3]

Surrrrrrrrre, he did. Till you consider the additional Linux administration costs..

Thats right bushie stick your fingers in your ears and sing real loud...