Hello, Dean: On 8/28/06, Dean Michael Berris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I don't want to start a distro war (again), but I would like to know how many people in the list will actually trust Ubuntu on the Server as compared to something like CentOS/RHEL, SuSE, or Debian ?
But you did, anyway! ;)
I have the following criteria for evaluation: * Vulnerability Assessment * Security Update Frequency and Relevance * Robustness (no unstable/untested software installed) * Stability (predictable and non-erratic behavior) * Unbloatedness (contains only essential components in base system) * Scalability with Hardware (should support hardware for scalability (SAN, RAID, Gigabit Ethernet Channel Bonding, Hot Swappable Drives, Failover Power Systems Support, Clustering (HPC/HA) ) ).
There is no "one-size-fits-all" way or ROT for this, but go for distros that have "enterprise-grade" support, i.e. certification on hardware/software platforms, etc. Check with your vendors for this. Personally, given the budget and the choice, I'd go for the enterprise Linuxes (RH, Suse, et al). Check the SLAs, too. Again, eyeball the budget. Also, I don't think there's any setup-then-forget distro -- sooner or later, you'd have to upgrade this or that package because of known vulnerabilities, critical updates, etc. "Release early, release often" don't work well with the enterprise, too, I think -- just go with a stable branch then stick with it, and then just update soon as a "mission-critical" issue crops up. This is where a good SLA comes in. I haven't personally tried Ubuntu on an enterprise server, but hopefully with LTS it will mature. (At least that's the goal.) Stick with the heavies/reliables for now, and if you have time to play around, why not test Ubuntu (I hear it's also been industry-certified, too?) on the side, for staging servers and such? Hope that helps. -- Ian Dexter R. Marquez http://iandexter.net | [EMAIL PROTECTED] (XMPP) _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
