You wouldn't know it from the shouting match, but Windows 2000 and Linux can play side-by-side in the same league. Here's how.

Windows 2000 has slowly taken the field to defend Microsoft's LAN server dynasty, but Linux is making a series of it. Sooner, rather than later, you're going to run into customers who want both. And it will be up to you to turn a double play.

Don't think your NetWare and NT customers are ready to send Windows 2000 or Linux up to the plate? Think again. While concerns about Windows 2000 system requirements (and Win2000 Active Directory's (AD) stability and Linux's perceived immaturity) still exist in CIOs' minds, both operating systems are gaining corporate fans.

This is also because both OSes have made major improvements. Windows 2000 was first with its July 2000 release of SP1. Corporate buyers were assured that Win2000 had passed through the infamous version 1.0 teething phase. Toward the end of 2000, the operating system also gained some much needed server-level applications with Exchange and SQL Server 2000 in the fall.

On the Linux side, the long-awaited release of 2.4 in January 2001 gave Linux the journaling file system (JFS), logical volume management (LVM) and large memory-handling abilities that buyers wanted to see from an enterprise-level server.

Together, Windows 2000 and NT commanded 41 percent of all server OS shipments in 2000. Al Gillen, manager of International Data Corporation's system software research, predicts that Windows 2000 will represent almost 71 percent of Microsoft's server OS shipments by 2001's end.

Microsoft won't pitch a perfect game, though. In a report, Laura DiDio, an analyst for Giga Information Group, states that, "mainstream corporate [Windows 2000] deployments will begin in earnest in midyear, steadily climbing in the third and fourth quarters" but selling Windows 2000 has its own unique Microsoft-driven problems. "The licensing and complexity issues surrounding Windows 2000 deployments are enough of a challenge to thwart even the staunchest Windows organisations," DiDio says. "The looming ship date of Whistler [Now Windows XP]" is causing customers to ask, "whether or not they should delay deployments to Windows 2000 Professional and Server, and wait until after Whistler ships," she adds.

Linux, of course, faces familiar problems of open source: fear, uncertainty and doubtâ€"problems that are in no small part kept alive by Microsoft. Even so, Linux carries a big bat. The OS now controls 26 percent of the server market, second only to Microsoft, according to IDC. Microsoft operating systems still may be the big contender but Linux keeps making a game of it.

They're taking the field

So with both operating systems taking the field, what do you need to know to make sure they'll work and play well with each other? The answer: a lot.

For starters, both servers' software should be kept up to date. That doesn't, however, mean that you should immediately update to the latest bleeding-edge code. We know that, but we know administrators who think nothing of trying out the latest Linux update or Microsoft Hot Fix on working servers. That's a mistake. A bad mistake.

Instead, unless you have a concrete reason to make a change--you need a specific driver or bug fixâ€"-you never should install the latest and greatest. Hot Fixes are especially dangerous this way.

The same is true for Linux 2.4. While SuSE has a commercial version out of the 2.4 kernel, the other business Linux distributors, Caldera, Red Hat and TurboLinux, have opted to wait until they've thoroughly tested out the newest and best. Unless you're a Linux expert yourself, you'd be well-advised to follow their lead and wait until their distributions are released before moving to 2.4.

Throwing Internet heat

The foundation for any server in 2001 is the ability to work with the Internetâ€"-and that means putting the Domain Name Server (DNS) into play. Fortunately, both Linux and Windows 2000 have excellent DNS servers that are completely compatible with each other's clients.

Which should you use? We prefer Linux's Berkeley Internet Name Daemon (BIND) 8.0, but frankly Windows 2000 DNS service, subsumed within AD, is good and leaves NT's DNS looking old. It's really a matter of which system you feel more comfortable with. You could, for that matter, run multiple DNS servers on both Linux and Windows 2000 servers on a single network without a hitch.

If your clients aren't using fixed IP addresses, you should look into deploying Dynamic DNS (DDNS). With DDNS, machines with addresses assigned by Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) are much easier for other systems to find. That, in turn, means you'll need to edit your DNS configuration far less often. And, by also using the newest DNS option, Service Resource Records, your customers can use DHCP to assign dynamic IP addresses to servers.

Put DDNS together with Microsoft's Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS) and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), and you'll have a hybrid network that automatically can handle both IP and NetBIOS names. You then can take this one step further with Samba Server Message Block (SMB) file servers on a Unix machine and have them appear on WINS, as well. For the sake of simplicity, though, we recommend giving Samba servers a static IP address.

The upshot of all of that is you'll have a hybrid server system where your client PCs can access both Unix and Windows file and print and other services, with little administrative time wasted on resolution issues.

Making the directory hit

In theory, on the Windows side, you don't need to bother with WINS anymore, thanks to AD. That looks great on paper, but implementing AD in the field is still difficult, even when all of the servers are running Windows 2000. On a hybrid network, with NT and Unix servers still using the NT domain style, the complications can get very scary.

Nevertheless, some customers demand AD. Fortunately, you can get AD- and Unix-style directories to get along. One way to hit this home run is to use Windows Services for Unix (SFU) 2.0, enabling one-way password synchronisation. The name of the game here is simply to avoid using Unix directory services entirely. This can actually work quite well in situations where the Linux servers work entirely on the back end, well away from interactive users.

With this one-way synchronisation method, all password changes are handled by AD. This doesn't, however, give you a single login to both networks. You still have to log in twice, in many circumstances. A user can still have problems using the Linux password utility to change their password. All this method really does is enable you to make it possible for user passwords to be set on the Windows 2K system and then automatically have the Unix systems synchronise them. It's no game-winner, but it does cut down considerably on the constant confusion of unsynchronised user/password systems.

Batting practice
If you want to do more, start taking your LDAP practice swings now. Under the surface, AD uses LDAPv3 as its core protocol. To make AD work with Unix/Linux LDAP servers, you can use the C application programming interface (API) to allow AD to talk with external LDAP servers that also use the C API.

If that sounds like too much workâ€"and we can tell you from personal experience that it isâ€"you can make your life easier by using LDAPv3 compliant servers on both Windows 2000 and Linux. The best of these is Innosoft's Distributed Directory Server (IDDS). It runs not only on Windows 2000 and Red Hat Linux, but also on AIX, Compaq's Tru64 Unix, Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX and Sun's Solaris, making it the most flexible choice. Another alternative is Novell's eDirectory, with Linux, Solaris and NetWare (and now, AIX and Tru64 Unix) support. Don't be fooled, though. Getting AD and Unix directories to play as a team is always a custom programming job, even with the best tools.

Tossing out file systems

You can argue with the CIO all you want about which server file system is best (it's FAT32 for Windows 2000 and ReisterFS for Linux, by the way) for networking, but what you really care about is getting clients access to remote file systems. There are two ways, one Unix-based, Network File System (NFS), and the other, Microsoft's Server Message Block protocol (SMB).

NFS is an industry standard for users to share files across platforms. But NFS is not an all-star, because of it's security problems. Proper network security can prevent those from becoming an issue. SMB doesn't have NFS's security troubles. But, even with its newest version, Common Internet File System (CIFS), it's really a solution only for Windows clients requiring access to Windows or Linux servers.

For our purposes, you easily can use both to give your users maximum flexibility. SFU provides NFS server, client and gateway services for W2K. The gateway is used to give Windows PCs access to NFS shared file systems just as if they were SMB shared files. Windows 2000 Professional comes with its own NFS server so it can access Unix NFS files without any additional software or the gateway.

Microsoft is not the only company, however, that enables you to let Windows users access NFS shares. Hummingbird's Maestro Suite has long set the standard for Windows-based NFS services.

On the other side, the open-source Samba is the best of SMB servers. Almost all Linux distributions include it, and it can be compiled and run on most Unix boxes.

While Samba's advanced functionalityâ€"-such as being able to run as an NT primary domain controller (PDC)-â€"won't work under AD, its primary file service runs exceptionally well.

There are, however, two potential trouble points. The first is that the Windows 2000 domain can't be set for Kerberos authentication only. Since AD's default is to allow NT style authentication, that shouldn't be a problem. You also must be sure to be running Samba 2.07 or higher. Earlier versions won't make the Linux/Windows 2000 team.

Playing for the championship
People often talk about Windows 2000 and Linux like they're in head-to-head competition. But that's not always the case. We expect to see more situations develop where the two operating systems will need to work together as teammates.

Even Microsoft agrees. While the details of bringing .Net to Linux and other operating systems are vague, Microsoft is showing more willingness to work with Linux than ever before. Even if Microsoft's promises turn out to be vapour, Ximian (www.ximian.com)â€"-formerly Helix Code, led by the Gnome leader Miguel de Icazaâ€"-is porting the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), a core interoperability mechanism in .Net, to Linux.

Even with such efforts, interoperability won't be easy. But integrators who get the pair to work together on an all-star team can expect to see major-league profits.

Microsoft steps up to the small-biz plate

Do your small-business customers want either a Linux or Windows 2000 server solution? If they do, you'll be glad to know that there are several easy options you can pursue to bring a major operating system to their SME networks.

For your Microsoft customers, the best option may be Microsoft's Small Business Server 2000 (SBS2K). It comes with the Windows 2000 server, Exchange 2000, Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000 (firewall, Web cache and Net connectivity management), SQL Server 2000, and a shared fax service. The Win2000 server also includes Internet Information Server and other Net applications, such as FrontPage 2000, for small Web sites.

All of those programs, however, must run on a single server. Microsoft has done serious tuning on Exchange and SQL Server to make them fit on a single server. According to Microsoft, you can run SBS2K on as little as a Pentium II 300MHz processor with 128MB of RAM. The company recommends, though, that you use at least a 500MHz Pentium III with 256MB of RAM. We found even these recommended settings to be on the low side.

After trying lower-powered systems, we tested SBS2K on a Dell PowerEdge 1300 with twin 500MHz Pentium IIIs and half-a-gigabyte of RAM, where SBS2K ran well.

Don't get any starry-eyed ideas about using this US$1,499 server and five-client access license (CAL) package for your regular SQL and Exchange customers. Both the OS and applications are limited to no more than 50 workstations.

SBS2K also enables you to easily manage multiple customers' servers. The combination of remote management tools and the new Health Monitorâ€"-which not only monitors server conditions but also can be set to react to them-â€"makes SBS2K very attractive to integrators with customers who need only part-time administrators.

The bad news is that SBS2K doesn't work and play well with other servers. The server must be set up as the root domain controller of an Active Directory (AD) forest. Forget about deploying it as a local branch-office server for a larger network. Adding insult to injury, you also can't establish trust relationships with external NT domains or other AD forests, and the SBS2K Exchange Server can't connect to other Exchange servers outside its own domain.

What all of that means is that SBS2K is strictly a small-business server package. If your client outgrows it, you really have no choice but to shift them over to the full-sized Business Office Server 2000. But if your customers are unlikely to grow beyond SBS2K's hard limits, it's an excellent choice.

Take a swing at Linux for small business

With most business-grade Linux distributions, you already have every software package a small business could ever use. Putting them all together, though, could be tough. If you know Linux well, it's not a problem. If you don't, you should consider putting the small-business Linux software suites into the field.

The best known of these is IBM's Small Business Suite for Linux (SBSL). This includes DB2, the WebSphere Application Server and Lotus Domino. These programs are integrated together to provide small businesses with all of the messaging, Web site and data management that they could ever need. Better still, if your customer wants to start play immediately, the package's install program lets you install the entire package, or only part of it, in as clean a manner as we've ever seen a back-office suite go up.

On the user side, SBSL also includes WebSphere design tools for Linux and Windows, and Lotus Notes, SmartSuite and Domino Designer for Windows. At a price of US$499 per server and US$90 per client with a hard limit of 100 users and full support for the Caldera, Red Hat, SuSE and TurboLinux distributions, SBSL is as an attractive option.

Say, though, that your customers want simply a "best of breed" Linux server. You could build your own, or you could deploy e-smith's Server and Gateway 4.1. This Red Hat 7.0 distribution-based package takes a simple ideaâ€"-deploy preconfigured, top-of-the-line open-source programs with an easy-to-use installation and management programâ€"-and easily runs with it.

The e-smith product includes the Apache Web server, the Qmail e-mail server, the Squid proxy server, a Point-to-Point Transfer Protocol (PPTP) VPN, Samba, and all of the other network server/Internet gateway basics. It's an impressive package, and with its preset support for Windows, Mac and Linux clients, it will appeal to even offices that have autographed photos of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on the CEO's wall.

If the technology doesn't do it for you, the priceâ€"-US$595 for an annual subscription that gets you the software, upgrades and unlimited technical support, via toll-free phone, fax or emailâ€"-is mighty convincing. And, your most cost-conscious customers will love that you actually can run the server on as little as a 60MHz Pentium with acceptable results. On our test systemâ€"a 100MHz Pentium that's seen better daysâ€"it had no trouble handling the load of a 25-user small office.

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