Across the board (all HW), we use both RHEL and SLES. The real question must be: what applications will you be running? What certification do those vendors offer?
The challenge on zSeries is that the platform is still a bit foreign to some SW vendors. I have not encountered an OSS or public package that had any affinity for PC or RS/6K -vs- mainframe for quite some time, so it is a question of certification. (Unless there are obvious hardware needs, like audio. But probably not for the workload you are considering.) While the vendors have little or no re-coding to do to see their wares run on Z, they still have (if they are good) the full gambit of QA and such to go through. That takes time. Time is money. (I hate it when that happens.) OSS packages (most of which are bundled in with either distribution) have less of that cert to go through, so what packages do you need to run? What I mean is this: If you're going to run SAMBA, either will work. If you're going to run 3rd party package A which is certified for RHEL, then you need RHEL. If you're going to run 3rd party package B which is certified for SLES, then you need SLES. A few forward-thinking ISVs cover both of these distributions, and some even go as far as to support Debian or Slackware or CentOS (or all!). For those packages, and for OSS things like SAMBA, it boils down to which distro is more workable in your environment. I recommend that you try both of the vended distros and at least one of the "free" distros (CentOS, Slackware, or Debian) so that you will know what you're getting into. Assuming you are running on VM, you can try them without the cost of losing an LPAR to that task. I hope this helps. -- R; "Evans, Kevin R" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: Linux on 390 Port <[email protected]> 08/30/2006 11:22 AM Please respond to Linux on 390 Port <[email protected]> From "Evans, Kevin R" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To [email protected] cc Subject SLES vs RHEL Without wishing to stir up a firestorm here, we are working on a proof of concept project here with RHEL on z series hardware. I have noticed that most of the questions here seem to be about SLES...so I was wondering why? Is this because: RHEL is more stable (therefore less questions)? SLES is used by more people (therefore more questions)? Something else? We are not set on a distribution yet although will be a choice between SLES and RHEL. Inquiring minds want to know <g>. TIA Kevin Kevin R Evans Software Engineer Staff IV Lockheed Martin Information Technology Federal Bureau of Investigation 1000 Custer Hollow Road Clarksburg WV, 26306 304-625-5870 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
