On Mon, 09 Feb 2004 13:08:29 +1300, you wrote: >Hi all > >Currently I seem to be expanding my client base a little, and have been >rolling out some Linux servers to them. But seeing as I don't have a great >deal of experience with all things Linux I'd like some frank pros and cons >about certain things. > >Firstly distro. My personal preference is Gentoo, I know where it puts the >config files, I understand the packaging system, patching is dead simple, >and overall I'm comfortable. But what are the pros and cons of Gentoo vs >say Debian? You hit the nail on the head there. All have their pro's and cons, so use the one that _you're_ most comfortable with. > >Secondly kernels. At home I use 2.6.2-mm, or in Gentoo speak mm-sources, >which performs fantastically. It's notably faster than 2.4.22-gentoo-r5 on >my laptop, and performed great under heavy load, ie compiling KDE3.2. So >stick with the tried and true but slightly slower kernel? Or the newer, >untested but faster kernel? I'd stick with 2.4. I use 2.4.24, downloaded from www.kernel.org. Much faster, and a clean compilation! Still having teething problems with 2.6.2 ( can't get the usb mouse to work, which is stopping me testing the oracle server side stuff out ). Servers rarely need loads of cpu power, unless they support database applications, or similar. For basic file and resource sharing, you want fast disks, lots of memory, network bandwidth etc. > >And finally filesystem. I really have no preference here as I don't fully >understand the differences between them. On my most recent server I used >Reiserfs and it goes great, but there's only 5 workstations on the >network. The next one is likely to have 20-30 clients accessing the >server, all via Samba. Again, pros and cons of using Reiserfs vs Ext3 vs >XFS. I'd use ext3, personally. Mainly because it's based on ext2, which has been tested by millions of users! Empirically, I've found that samba likes loads of memory.
I would look at some kind of redundancy. I notice one of the other posters suggested that LVM would be a good thing. I'd go along with that... although the syntax is a bit weird, you get the idea in the end ( especially if you come from an HP-UX background, which is where the syntax came from! ). The software raid stuff is very reliable, and it's very cost effective when compared to the hardware equivalents ( and beware, most of these are _not_ hardware raid! ). The other thing you may want to look at is monitoring your servers so that they tell you when things go wrong. I have found that Big Brother ( bb4.com ) is a very good ( and supremely flexible ) starting point. mrtg ( www.mrtg.org ) is also very powerful for tracking changes so you can be a bit more proactive in your support. > >Thanks > >------------------------------------------------- >Hamish McBrearty MCSE MCSA >Network Engineer >Rangi Ruru Girls' School >59 Hewitts Road >Christchurch >NEW ZEALAND >Ph 03 355-6099 >Fax 03 355-6027 >CELL 021 999770 >E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >-------------------------------------------------- > hth, steve >
