On 18/08/2021 14:07, Christian Vieser wrote:
Hi out there.
Since CentOS 8 support ends end of this year (in favour of CentOS Stream
8), it's time to make decisions where to move.
There are two forks of CentOS, Alma and Rocky Linux, but nobody knows
whether they will survive the next years. Then there is Oracle Linux,
but there is always some threat that Oracle will turn it into a paid
product any time.
Oracle could charge, but given the length of time it has been available
without charge I am not sure they will gain anything from a change.
With CentOS Stream we probably will see more often new kernels that are
not supported by the actual Spectrum Scale version, as we have already
seen it from time to time with RHEL/CentOS. So this means more testing
and manual work with pinning kernel versions on our clusters.
We just successfully passed an evaluation of Oracle Linux and decided to
move there with several products running on CentOS. Only restraint with
Spectrum Scale was, that we had to fake the /etc/os-release when
configuring object service, since the mmobj command has some specific
code distinguishing between RHEL and CentOS and fails with other release
identifiers.
You would likely need to have done more than that because by default
Oracle Linux has it's own "unbreakable" kernel. You can go back to a
stock RHEL kernel but it's a pain.
At least they are not being as devious as the Spectrum Protect lot that
actively look for an RPM called redhat-release. Most pointless thing in
the world as it is not like it takes any time to knock up an RPM to
mimic it.
I would like to hear from other CentOS users here: Where are you moving
to? What are your reasons?
Going to be Alma I think. Firstly CloudLinux have been rebuilding RHEL
for a long time, so it is not a huge additional effort to package it up
in ISO's etc.
Call me a cynic but my view is the $1m a year funding they are claiming
to put into the Alma rebuild is mostly likely money already being spent
on the CloudLinux rebuild. Lets say they where spending $900k already so
it's an extra $100k which is a lot but for that amount of publicity and
advertising it is a total bargain and throwing the towel in would be a
PR disaster.
I also like the fact that they are neck and neck with Oracle for getting
patches out. Way faster than CentOS has been historically which in the
current threat environment is only a good thing.
Rocky to my mind seems the weakest of the lot.
However I don't think any of the three is a wrong choice as they all
offer scripts now to migrate an install between them. For us it would be
mirror a different repo, fiddle with some xCAT tables and redeploy for
most of the machines.
JAB.
--
Jonathan A. Buzzard Tel: +44141-5483420
HPC System Administrator, ARCHIE-WeSt.
University of Strathclyde, John Anderson Building, Glasgow. G4 0NG
_______________________________________________
gpfsug-discuss mailing list
gpfsug-discuss at spectrumscale.org
http://gpfsug.org/mailman/listinfo/gpfsug-discuss
