Open Source Success: Overseas Family School. Michael Clark <michael at metaparadigm dot com>

Transcription

1 Open Source Success: Overseas Family School Michael Clark <michael at metaparadigm dot com> 1

2 Presentation Overview What is Open Source? Can mean many things - one interpretation Open Source Case Study: Overseas Family School OFS Background Client Requirements Why OFS specified Linux and Open Source An Educational Perspective OFS Open Source Architecture Custom Management Software Development Some thoughts on current trends and strategies Conclusion 2

3 What is Open Source? 3

4 Open Source Software You rely on it every day Two thirds of web sites are served using the Apache Open Source Software The biggest sites on the Internet such as Google, Ebay, Yahoo and Amazon are using Open Source Software Approximately 20% of all new servers are shipped or installed with the Linux OS 4

5 Open Source Software You rely on it every day The vast majority of the Domain Name System (DNS) is implemented using Open Source Software Linux, an Open Source Operating System is being used by Corporations, Governments, Schools, Businesses and Individuals. The Fabric of the Internet is built on Open Source Software! 5

6 What is Open Source? Open Source can be seen as 3 things: Open Source Software Open Source Development Model Open Source Community 6

7 What is Open Source? Open Source Software Software that is unencumbered Source code for developers Binary code for users Allows free redistribution No costly licensing fees, change to a support model Allows creation of derived works You have the source to change it to suit your needs See for a full definition 7

8 What is Open Source? Open Source Development Model A superior development model that takes advantage of this access to source code Build on existing code, lower cost of development Shared common benefit Amortise development cost with others Open collaboration using the Internet End users can contribute directly to the development process it is not being done behind closed doors 8

9 What is Open Source? Open Source Community The individuals, IT vendors, end user corporations and business that are producers, consumers or supporters of Open Source Software Communication is rapid and distributed Many choices for end user support Go straight to the developers for support Get commercial support from a OSS solution vendor such as Red Hat, Novell, Dell, HP, Sun, IBM, etc,... Use the source Luke, do it yourself! 9

10 Open Source Case Study: Overseas Family School Client Requirements 10

11 Overseas Family School Background An International School in Singapore Around 2500 students from 60 countries Around 300 staff Total OFS community of about 7000 Students, Parents, Faculty, Staff. Started in 1991 From Pre K to Grade 12 and University College International Baccalaureate Curriculum Authorised K-12 by International Baccalaureate Organisation, Geneva Central campus near Orchard road Website: 11

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13 OFS: Client Requirements Reliable, Maintainable and Secure Ability for easy remote management High availablity solution Free from the viruses that plague other systems Cost Effective A school is more sensitive to cost than most organisations Complete coverage and complete integration All components to be fully integrated. Remove manual tasks and provide a unified management interface Cross Platform Compatibility and Access The system must provide access to users both within the school and online externally using any OS or browser 13

14 OFS: Client Requirements User centric not IT centric Put users in control of the system Development platform Provide a platform to build a completely integrated school management application Focus on standards vs products LDAP vs Active Directory J2EE vs.net Microsoft free Our client exercising their right to alternatives 14

15 Why OFS specified Linux and Open Source Linux provides reliability and maintainability Cheaper than big metal solution Higher reliability and manageability compared to competing commodity server OS Cross Platform Compatibility Standards based software on Linux offers native protocol support for other OS's: MS Windows, Mac OS 9 & X Development platform Provides a complete environment for development of a strategic educational administrative and academic integrated management system 15

16 Why OFS specified Linux and Open Source Complete Able to find solutions for all main enterprise problem domains applicable to the school's business Linux and OSS provided the most flexibility Packaged solutions without source can't be integrated as easily sometimes never when point and click is the only interface Cost effective ROI includes customer costs too Linux can be cheaper to manage with the right internal human resources Wide availability of OSS solutions on the Linux platform with no license fees Able to lower risk of project by reducing expenditure 16

17 A Brief Educational Perspective Education Sharing of knowledge and building upon the knowledge of others Open Source Sharing of source code and building upon the source code of others OFS Chairman, David Perry: Open Source, Open Minds See the similarity in goals 17

18 OFS Linux Server Architecture 18

19 OFS Open Source Architecture Platform overview Network, Security Servers, storage and backup Fault tolerance and monitoring Services overview Enterprise class mail and directory File, print, caching and netboot Intranet, extranet and remote access Custom management software Internally developed administration and academic management system 19

20 Linux firewalls Use low cost commodity Intel based servers No expensive license fees like proprietary solutions More flexible than a closed-box appliance based solution Not tied to inflexible product features - can implement yourself Can run an IDS (Intrusion Detection System) High availability solution protects system from machine down time Uptime just as important in a school environment Servers check each other through a heartbeat link Partner machine automatically takes over if there is a failure Open Source software used: iptables, freeswan, heartbeat 20

21 Low cost Intel based app server cluster Cluster commodity Intel-based Linux servers Provides similar performance to Big Metal (traditional UNIX) at about ¼ the cost Huge reduction in user licenses for proprietary OS users for and file server 400+ concurrent users on a variety of services 6 application servers Dual CPU 2U rack-mount machines (12 x 1GHz+ CPUs), 15GB RAM (6 x 2.5GB) 2 firewalls, 2 development servers, 2 backup and management servers all running Linux 21

22 Storage Area Network Need enterprise class redundant storage A school can't afford to lose 1000's of users' files, and critical business data just like any other business Linux has full support for SAN Storage Area Network provides shared-storage capability required for High Availability clustering 6 application servers connected by fibre optics to a high availability storage system 28 x 73GB 2 Terabytes of storage 22

23 Enterprise class file system File system journalling is required for an enterprise class server system Data integrity and fast recovery after crash Ext3 is fast, reliable and built on proven 10+ year old technology Other free alternatives JFS (from IBM) and XFS (from SGI) Big savings compared to expensive proprietary solutions used on Big Metal systems 23

24 Backup system Need a system to backup 1.5 Terabytes of data Linux has full support for Robot Tape Libraries 2-tier backup system Storage staged on 2 remote backup servers with IDE disk arrays totalling 1.5TB 2 Robot Tape libraries backing up staged image weekly Many expensive enterprise backup systems Why spend $10K on an enterprise backup software when $3K can buy 2TB of low cost IDE storage 3-4 weeks of on-line daily incremental backups Disaster Recovery Housed in separate building to main server cluster Open source software used: rsync, mtx and tar 24

25 So what does it look like 25

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27 Clustering High Availability Clustering A school is like any other business work stops if servers are down for a day while waiting for service and spares Services (such as mail, web, file server, etc.) can be relocated anywhere on cluster 5-10 minutes service downtime in case of server failure Services are automatically moved between servers upon failure detection Much cheaper than commercial equivalents such as Veritas or Microsoft Cluster Services Open Source software used: cluster manager 27

28 System event monitoring Pro-actively manage system rather than re-actively We can respond to problems as they occur rather than react to users complaining the system is down. By the time they call, we are already addressing the problem Protect investment in infrastructure by monitoring environment Mon is an extensible monitoring system providing alerts and ability to interface with pagers or SMS We monitor almost everything: web, ERP, file server, , system reachability, server room temperature, UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), storage components, etc. Proprietary monitoring systems are expensive Open Source software used: mon, snmp-utils 28

29 SMS text message alerts Provide notification of critical server events Linux software for interface to GSM modem enabling the sending of SMS messages Implemented using home grown mail to SMS gateway Management server sends alert through an internal mail to SMS gateway We really want to know if the server room airconditioning fails on the weekend Open Source software used: smstools, postfix 29

30 System Reporting We need full infrastructure reporting for capacity planning and system management Monitoring of: Internet bandwidth utilisation, LAN traffic, server disk space usage, system load and memory usage, application activity Real time statistics and access to historic system management data Cacti provides easily manageable solution for configuring charting of statistics from SNMP capable devices or custom statistics gathering scripts Open Source software used: cacti 30

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32 Directory server Single source of user information to allow unified login Same login and password used for all services Remove duplication and the cost of managing multiple sources of user data Almost all services can be directory enabled Mailing lists and mail server authentication Extranet and web application authentication File server authentication Account information and group membership Equivalent proprietary solutions are expensive Open Source software used: openldap 32

33 Mail Server Enterprise mail systems need advanced features such as roaming and account synchronisation POP not up to the task Needs to be LDAP Directory enabled Support for IMAP and SSL Enterprise mail systems need zero-configuration No need to configure mail clients. Login scripts query LDAP and generate mail client configuration Big savings compared to proprietary mail systems No per mailbox license fees Open Source software used: sendmail, cyrus-imapd 33

34 Virus and SPAM Protection Enterprise systems need mail and file server virus scanner The level of SPAM with Internet has dramatically increased over the last few years making this essential Able to implement using complete open source solution No per user license fees No yearly upgrade fees Plenty of expensive proprietary alternatives Cost over $20K for a school the size of OFS Open Source software used: clamav, spamassassin, milter-sender 34

35 File Server Requirement for seamless file server access from Apple Macintosh client machines 600 Macintosh computers running Mac OS X Netatalk Appleshare file server Provides native Macintosh network file server client support from the Linux server LDAP enabled providing unified login Roaming desktop and application preferences No per user licenses Open Source software used: netatalk 35

36 Content Filtering and Caching Enterprises require local caching to maximise usage of expensive Internet bandwidth charges OFS experience almost a 40% hit ratio close to doubling effective throughput Squid cache software provides free alternative to expensive caching appliances SquidGuard provides content filtering which is essential in an educational environment Firewall policy routing enables transparent caching No need to set proxy on client computers Users are unable to bypass content filtering Open source software used: squid, squidguard 36

37 Network booting OS installations on 600+ machines using traditional methods is time-consuming, expensive and error prone Machines are net-booted from a 'golden' image residing on the boot server Machines are always up-to-date Deployment of new software / upgrades only requires a reboot OFS have about around 600 of their machines net-booted Machine can be instantly switched between different images Multiple OS support: Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, PPC Linux, i386 Linux Machines are currently all running Mac OS X 37

38 Apache and Web Folders Apache is the 'winner' in web server wars and it's free Well supported by the community and feature complete All staff and students have personal website with remote access from home Secure SSL support providing 128bit encryption for e-commerce WebDAV Web Folders provides standards compliant web publishing remote access combined with SSL for security WebDAV client built into Windows versions since 98 Free clients available for Mac OS 9. Built into Mac OS X Open source software used: apache + customisations 38

39 Web mail An enterprise extranet portal requires remote web access to services Squirrel Mail is an open source web mail reader implemented in PHP completes the feature set of an enterprise mail system Support for LDAP address book giving access to corporate directory Features such as spell checking and integration with Language translation systems Easily customisable for customers portal look and feel Implemented using SSL for secure access Open source software used: squirrel mail 39

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41 Internal Application Development 41

42 Jboss Application Server JBoss is an enterprise class Java application server comparable to offerings from BEA, IBM and others Java is our chosen programming environment Recent surveys show more Java programmers and Java jobs on the market than any other single technology. Platform independent Linux has excellent Java support Provides important application development infrastructure Big savings compared to the commercial equivalents which can cost $30K+ per CPU plus support Open source software used: JBoss 42

43 Oracle Database Many databases available on the Linux platform both commercial and free At the time of implementation, none of the open source databases provided the data integrity and transaction support required for an enterprise class application Okay, so we recommended Oracle Oracle is a recognised leader in the database arena for both reliability and scalability Oracle itself has adopted Linux as its preferred platform It may not be free but it runs on Linux 43

44 Enterprise Resource Planning A complete enterprise system requires an accounting system No mature Open Source products available on Linux Oracle Financials and SAP both available on Linux OFS chose Oracle Financials Met requirement for close integration with the OFS Custom Management application Okay, so its not free but it runs on Linux Deployed Oracle Applications on Linux in A first in Asia Pacific we believe 44

45 OFS Custom Management Application Metaparadigm helps design and develop a custom educational management system at OFS Strategically In-sourced and built with Open Source Implemented in Java with the JBoss Application server Provides complete user and group management and is fully integrated with LDAP directory, system and file server Automates provisioning of accounts, file server accounts, websites and remote access When a student enrols, they automatically get an account, server storage, remote access and web mail No need for manual provisioning 45

46 OFS Custom Management Application Provides an integrated school wide system all main school functions Enrolment, Billing, and File server provisioning, Library system, Security card printing, Timetable, Business planning reporting, Online Class and Home work, Attendance, Parent Access, Online School Shop and POS, Academic reporting,... and the list is growing Represents man years of software development by 5-8 full-time in-house developers over the last 6 years Development is done end-to-end on Linux workstations Using over many open source tools and libraries, CVS revision control system, Wikis for team collaboration and documentation Using the same tools as the Open Source community 46

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48 Some thoughts on current trends and strategies... 48

49 Thoughts on trends and strategies Out-sourcing vs In-sourcing Very popular buzzwords these days... Packaged software vs Custom software When is it right to develop your own software? The new development model Is Open Source just another buzzword? Strategic In-sourcing Gaining competitive advantage through business intelligence A proposal 'Open-sourcing' Combining Open Source and Strategic In-sourcing 49

50 Out-Sourcing vs In-Sourcing Out-sourcing A very popular buzzword with CEO's, CIO's and of course outsourcing companies Good for commoditised systems and processes Issues with demarcation Burden of documentation such as service level agreements, the problem of buck passing, etc Harder to adapt to rapidly adapt to changing business needs Requires vendor agreements, contractual changes, etc Can save money! 50

51 Out-Sourcing vs In-Sourcing In-sourcing What companies end up doing after their out-sourcing engagements fail ;) Good for strategic systems and processes Less problems with demarcation inter-departmental rather than inter-company Easier to adapt to changing business needs Customer is in complete control Can save money! 51

52 Packaged software vs Custom software Proprietary software model Good time to market Usage is controlled by licensing Can be complicated and hard to manage Meets business needs in a generalised way Your competitors are using the same software Harder to change Wait for version X Limits opportunities and integration flexibility Only the vendor can help here i.e. vendor lock-in Not good for IT systems strategic to your business Where is the competitive advantage? 52

53 Packaged software vs Custom software Custom software model Longer time to market If you think ahead you can still beat the market Still needs building blocks App servers, databases, development tools Can be costly to develop Need a good software development team Meet business needs more closely Easier to change to meet new requirements Essential for IT systems strategic to your business Create competitive advantages through improving process specific to your individual business 53

54 Strategic In-sourcing Strategic In-sourcing of software systems Are your management software systems of strategic importance to your business? OFS management think theirs are! Their belief is completely integrated systems allow companies to blossom Gain competitive advantages through developing custom software to closely match your individual business needs Many examples from industry: Dell supply chain automation is internally developed custom software Google strategic insourcing 54

55 The new development model Open Source provides a superior development model Better quality code, research shows less defects per 1000 lines of code than equivalent proprietary software Alter the software to match your business instead of altering your business to match the software Commodisation of basic components OS and tools are now commodties Moving up the stack to middle ware: JBoss App Server Shared common benefit 'Co-op-ertition'. Share cost of building generic code instead of re-inventing the wheel. Who's using this new development model Apple, IBM, Sun, Oracle,... 55

56 A proposal: 'Open Sourcing' Open-Sourcing Taking advantage of Open Source Software / Community and Development model to develop custom software systems Gain access to the building blocks at a low cost Custom software is expensive to develop. Accessing the wide range of open source software components can reduce costs dramatically Access to source allows for a high level of customisation and integration with internal systems Follow the open development model Tangible advantages to contributing your code Getting you changes upstream means less maintenance Get free testing, bug fixes, feature enhancements to your own code 56

57 Conclusion Linux and Open Source are superior Provides a superior development model and complete platform offering greater flexibility than packaged solutions on a proprietary OS. 5+ years and the customer is still happy :) It is a myth about the cost of managing Linux An non-integrated Point and Click system can be run with lower cost staff but will require more staff to achieve the same result and will be more prone to errors and inconsistency The high level of integration that Open Source Software allows means more opportunities for custom automation 57

58 Conclusion But it's not purely about cost A lot of what OFS have implemented couldn't have been achieved with proprietary systems Software development and integration is expensive The free in Open Source is not about cost as many believe; it is more about the freedom of ideas Benefits are reaped by streamlining of internal processes and systems and improving competitve advantage Highly skilled human resources are the key to developing and running strategic integrated systems using Open Source 58

59 Thank You Michael Clark <michael at metaparadigm dot com> 59