Something else that SuSE provides support for that RH does not is a clustered file system. SuSE has OCSF2 and RH supports GFS on all platforms *except* z.
Please correct me if that has changed. Marcy -----Original Message----- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mark Post Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 8:34 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [LINUX-390] RedHat or Suse? >>> On 2/27/2012 at 09:59 AM, James Vincent <[email protected]> >>> wrote: > SUSE is good too if you choose that > path but there isn't really anything "technical" that should force you to > switch (baring any vendor application you have that claims it only runs on > one or the other.) The technical differences have certainly narrowed when everyone moved to the Linux 2.6 kernels, but there still are some. High Availability clusters are supported by SUSE on System z, for example. The SLES Starter System is going to make a reappearance soon, with versions for SLES10 SP4 and SLES11 SP2. SUSE has tended to introduce new System z features sooner via backporting, but again that gap has narrowed over time. Talking to the people that work on the proof of concept projects with customers (IBM and IBM business partners), there are other differences that I've been told favor SUSE, but they're not necessarily things that by them self would make a customer switch providers. Because of the large lead in install base, SUSE on System z tends to get certified by ISVs sooner, especially with products such as Oracle, SAP, etc. I like to think that the time I spent in NTS meant we are able to provide better advice and problem resolution for System z customers, but that's even more subjective than most of the other points. :) To answer another response, we do have customers that deliberately run both SUSE and Red Hat on all their architectures, including System z. Personally, I think that's a good idea. From the customer's perspective, it gives them a certain amount of leverage, since they're not locked in to any one distribution provider, and they are able to maintain their in-house skills if they ever need to switch away entirely from one of them. (I wish we had really been in that position at my last company, but we weren't.) Mark Post ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
