-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, Jan 25, 2006 at 11:53:01AM +1100, Simon wrote: > Hi all, > AT the risk of starting a flamewar.....I am being advised by consultants > that I need to 'upgrade' my Fedora Core servers to RH Enterprise as it > is 'more robust', 'better supported', 'easier to upgrade' etc etc.
It is `more robust' because the new features go into Fedora first where they are thrashed around for a while then finally trickle down to RHEL which is always running 6 to 12 months behind the leading edge. As an approximate rule of thumb, RHEL is old but stable and predictable whereas Fedora is new, fast moving and sometimes unpredictable. At the risk of starting a flamewar.... Fedora is filling the space that Mandrake Linux used to occupy. You should also note that although RedHat back-ports bug fixes and security updates into RHEL, there can be times where Fedora has bug fixes sooner simply because it is running newer upstream versions. > We > are currently running them as our webserver (informational only - no > transactions), mailserver and intranet webserver (this one is a bit > slow, but just needs more RAM). RHEL won't make your system run any faster than Fedora. It you find it stable then there is no reason why you can't stick with it. Basic services like email and web have already been heavily tested in any Linux variant and your chance of running into an issue with these is relatively low. > I am unaware of any major differences in the products that would require > us to change over and start paying for what we now do for free - > maintenance has been trivial, yum runs regularly via cron, downtime has > been non-existent. There are two main issues to think about... [1] security: you don't know what's wrong till it goes wrong and RHEL is better tested. On the other hand, most often configuration errors are to blame for bad security and no operating system will protect you from yourself (although some will pretend to be able to). Taking regular backups is an excellent security measure. Regularly checking logs, processes, network traffic and the root mail account are also excellent security measures. You can take these security measures with any operating system. [2] bug fixes: RedHat seem to take bug reports seriously when they come from RHEL users and you get a response (and usually a fix) in reasonable time (a few days). If you don't mind fixing bugs yourself, working around them or you just never have encountered any then probably no need to worry. RHEL is good for the "I demand that someone fix my problems" type mentality. Don't forget that RHEL is a support service not a software license, so you have to pay for the service every year (else your machine becomes unsupported). There is also the minor issue that most RedHat consultants train for RHEL and that's the thing they are most comfortable configuring. You can always choose different consultants, I'm building a list of Linux related organisations in Sydney (probably still incomplete): http://bespoke.homelinux.net/buslinks.html Feel free to ask around further... - Tel -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) iQIVAwUBQ9dissfOVl0KFTApAQID4w//fdx3LcHkobRFDHKv0/sz/l0yCPQN3C/j 8xrt319T1mtZcDbImYYpyWwAOve8XNpEzkB92CNjGPn/uQUvboYxdXgMszPHnKE3 4J1i5+ljsNvqKrXQvu6dcl9diqFZ9swGx0Ua5ijgyH+fl6qVu0QKRPh306Hc4yC3 bwMudOXk29SME6nn69WceZYmVE6HaPsF+d3RdsZ5Q8tZ7sEGVMf03fCMuI/5hEbI DQoceB9YoQbdY+b4QWG0EPGeVyb1n7gZAedGYnNH7MhTr9lxiDrERupE/5qHpBTE Ps/Q2FGUzGfmOEN4D4uKc6fcIoF4uUGpjaEir2aiyMGD/feNcDUYZxj8DfN8fefa E4pfa1SlwsqSmFFa58uDX1gyNiLzTUgEYLGTfVueQV9psP4GyVcwMy609ssrLHIc 6dDbeNgpPXQpwmc+RtygP0LHJXvT/0PPjEuCmaSGKbMpz//kmWclhIFg/ydKwFYP +y8cLrW5sG6tUKq0mbgm8homWJt92FdHN3ofh6GqKI9uKSWVDYavcHutb6V4r8t7 w0AMsT2e8qDRd4vbZE+0/p/Coaubu4rhVDuv041Ld6FVLvBuLBnnorWMjyczr+iT 4jHb2+VrGB9i/CrRsvxddz58j3Tsog+GH0PhGJThXnymqf7wwo2mEfajqL00/bAh t5H5Oz4L4SQ= =LYla -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
