Microsoft servers - supportable?

[Boerseun]

A few years ago, when I was still in the IT bizniz, we regularly had the following issue:

 

You have a mission-critical server, running some flavour of Windows Server.

The customer, of course, has a solid SLA in place with Microsoft.

The server crashes.

After checking up on the error logs, a call to Microsoft results in Microsoft sending you a registry entry to change, to fix the 'bug'.

Upon hacking the registry, a teeny window pops up that says the moment you make changes to the registry, Microsoft will not support your box anymore.

 

The registry is an invention of Microsoft that holds all applications hostage if they want to run on this particular platform. All variables of all apps loaded on these machines are stored in one single point of failure. If Microsoft builds it so shoddily that it has to be hacked afterwards by 3rd party support personnel for clients who bought the product in good faith, then surely Microsoft cannot then throw its hands in the air and say that they will stop supporting the client? Firstly, the client signed the SLA in good faith, expecting Microsoft to come to the party on their side of the deal. Secondly, Microsoft cannot be pissed at you by following their advice? They did, after all, told you to hack the registry, upon which the little window pops up where they indemnify themselves of all responsibility towards whatever might result from your registry-tweaking.

 

So, to cut a long story short:

 

Is Windows Servers actually supportable, at all, in a corporate environment, given the above? I think not.

[C1ay]

I think what's really missing here is a corporate class action against Microsoft. IMO, and likely the legal system's, a bug is a product defect. In other products where defects cost consumers significantly we see class action litigation to recover costs related to the defect. Microsoft's defects cost the corporate world crores of man hours of lost production. In an environment where they are not using their customer base to debug their beta versions this toll would not be so great. It's past time for their customers to hold them accountable for the significant consequential damages they cause.

[Zythryn]

Never had the second issue, and out of all the support calls I made, only once did I have the first issue.

This was between 11 and 2 years ago.

 

So to answer your question:

Is Windows Servers actually supportable, at all, in a corporate environment

 

Yes they are.

Now if you asked if Windows Servers were supportable in your particular corporation given what you mentioned I would have to say no

[Boerseun]

Okay - I prolly should have rephrased that:

 

Is Microsoft Servers supportable when the solutions Microsoft gives you knowingly nullifies your SLA with them?

 

In other words, is there a way in which Microsoft can support their own products and actually take responsibility for the consequences?

 

Keep in mind, 99% of support personnel working for Microsoft are overpaid snot-nosed brats who don't know their asses from their elbows. Or that's my experience, at least. We had a few MS "Superboffins", fresh from Redmond, to help us with a server migration at South Africa's biggest commercial bank a few years ago. They simply sat there without being able to help us at all. Me and my team ended up writing a program in Delphi that managed the complete migration process with a few clicks from the user end. A process that Microsoft said was simply impossible. The same level of support comes with actual crashes, after Microsoft lets you know in no uncertain terms that your support will be invalidated upon fixing what they supplied broken in the first place.

[Zythryn]

Sounds like you have the unfortunate happenstance to have dealt only with the first level of tech support.

We never had any suggestions that would void our SLA.

However, we mainly dealt with at least the 2nd level of tech support.

Most of our support calls were to commerce server or exchange server groups. It may be that the tech support department you got stuck in was a black hole (sure sounds like it).

I would also suggest sending your experiences to MS (someone specific if possible, VP of customer relations or such).

[Boerseun]

Sounds like you have the unfortunate happenstance to have dealt only with the first level of tech support.

Unfortunately, not.

We never had any suggestions that would void our SLA.

I guess you should count yourself lucky, then!

Most of our support calls were to commerce server or exchange server groups. It may be that the tech support department you got stuck in was a black hole (sure sounds like it).

This wasn't 'tech support' on a call basis. We had high-level Microsoft techs with us (two US-biggies) on-site throughout the extent of the project. My company came up with an infrastructure design that was validated by Microsoft, tested in both Redmond and SA before signoff by Microsoft, my company and our client. Then, when the dung hit the aircon, Microsoft basically washed their hands in innocence, because of registry hacks (that they came up with... you gotta applaud the double-handedness here).

I would also suggest sending your experiences to MS (someone specific if possible, VP of customer relations or such).

Haha - that won't help one bit. If Microsoft were really serious about upping the quality of their products, and they actually followed up on such issues, they'd need to buy an entire State in America just to have the manpower to go through the issues.

 

As a case in point, try to follow one of the incredibly helpful troubleshooters that ships with any Microsoft product. When you follow them step-by-step, they all end up saying the same thing:

"You have encountered a problem that the troubleshooter can't help you with. Please contact a Microsoft representative."

And then contact a Microsoft representative, who'll tell you "Please run the troubleshooter."

The simple reason for this is that Microsoft really has no clue why half its code is broken, and why machines running Microsoft products continually crash for no apparent reason.

 

I mean, if you run Microsoft Office, on a Microsoft Windows XP machine, on hardware that's on the Hardware Compatability List, and the thing bluescreens, why, exactly would that be? Who should take the knock for lost productivity in an apparently simple case such as this? Let's say that it's a fresh install of Office, on a fresh install of XP on a brand new machine that's not on the internet, and nothing else have been installed on that machine that could conceivably cause conflicts. This is certainly within the realm of possibility. So much so, I've actually seen it happen.

 

End of story, Microsoft blows.

[Zythryn]

I disagree with your conclusion as a matter of fact, but I certainly see why your experiences would lead you to that conclusion.

In the decade of experience with them, there were issues, we brought many to the attention of managers or elsewhere 'up the ladder'. Over the years, many of those issues improved.

In my experience the wizards are there to help troubleshoot simple issues. If they can handle it, they solve the problem, if they can't they point you where to get more detailed help. And yes, I agree the success rate is lower than I would like;)

[Buffy]

Windows Server horror story of the week from Ed Foster's Gripe Line:

One IT manager returned from the Thanksgiving holiday yesterday to discover that he'd come very close to losing the user permissions on his network, as well as his sanity. "Two of my server admins were working this past weekend applying the latest security updates to Windows Server 2003 R2 on our main departmental server," he wrote. "The upgrade starts performing checkdisks and blowing away all of our ACLs with NTFS permissions. This is a server that is tuned for security with probably several hundred Active Directory groups to allow us to provide the granular application of security permissions necessary in a complex business environment. I am so far beyond stunned on this I don't even know where to begin. If we've avoided utter disaster, it's no thanks to Microsoft."

 

The admins had noticed the server was running Chkdsk.exe on the hard drives after bootup, but assumed it was one of Windows' standard maintenance routines. Fortunately, after updating some other equipment, they looked again and saw that the server was pouring out line after line of "Replacing invalid security ID with default security ID for file XXXXX." Realizing that the NTFS permissions were being trashed, one of the admins did a hard power-down. "The only thing that saved us was, as soon as they became suspicious when they saw the Chkdsk messages scrolling by, one of the admins slammed the power button and killed the server," the IT manager writes. "They booted the server again, skipped the Chkdsk, then they both scrambled late into the night to identify damaged directories and repair permissions. It could have been a lot worse."

Microsoft's excuse was that they should have read an obscure knowledge base article, but the patch *itself* did not warn that all of WindowsServer2003 R2 had to be installed before the patch (they had had to skip several items because of incompatibilities with their software environment)...

 

We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company, :)

Buffy

[Zythryn]

I hate that part.

You should have seen how careful we had to be with the first incarnation of Site Server suite. All five 'parts' of the program as well as certain updates and patches had to be installed in exactly the right order in order to work.

Major pain.

[Theory5]

Jeez, with all the stuff Microsoft does I'm amazed that people still buy their servers and computers. Now I have been working on 98 XP and Vista my entire 16 years (okay okay, I've only lived about 16 years so lets say Ive had 6 years of experience with Microsoft.) so I'm kinda really use to it and I'm useless with linux. But still, all the hangups and viruses, and faulty anti-virus and firewall programs, I would like to get maybe that sun operating system, and double boot it and play around with it. but unfortunately I'm sticking with Microsoft for a while.

Hmm maybe someone should write a program that allows us to enter code into Vista and XP to do what we want.......... I'd buy it even though I can barely program in Liberty basic. :-)

oh, and in CIT (computer information technology is a course at my school, the instructor lets my play around with the computers cause i know what im doing (most of the time :-P)) Im trying to make a cluster, and I cant switch one computer to NTFS to make an active directory so i gotta reinstall the OS. WHY PUT A CONVERT.EXE COMMAND IF I CANT USE IT! :-P

[Zythryn]

Well, the thing is, for every day we had issues with MS servers, we had hundreds of days without such issues.

And, they allowed us to grow and prosper, so that is why I still use them.

Your results may vary;)

[Boerseun]

We once had a NetWare server disappear on us. This was in the late 90's, and my client was the South African department of Correctional Services.

 

In any case, when an inventory was made of hardware, hundreds of servers were written down country-wide and accounted for, in preparation for hardware upgrades, etc. There was, however, one server that fell through the cracks and simply couldn't be found physically. Based on the IP address, we could pinpoint it to a single building in Pretoria. This was a production server, and was in operation, dishing out files. But nobody could find it or tell us where it physically stood. Eventually, they found it in a safe in the building, where us contractors obviously didn't have access to.

 

The logs showed that this particular machine, having had access to a UPS, of course, was up and running with its last reboot more than three years ago.

 

It was up and running, dishing out files, doing what a server is supposed to be doing, without being down (intentionally or otherwise), for more than three years, without any issues at all. I want to see a Microsoft server even coming close to do that. I know it won't top it, but coming close will already be an unheard-of feat for Microsoft. That's why people went NetWare years ago. Microsoft only got the market share they have in the server world by badmouthing other vendors. Really. Their products are certainly not even close to being up to snuff. Unless, of course, your techs install servers in order to play solitaire, minesweeper or pinball. In which case, Microsoft servers are the way to go.