[Techtalk] RHEL/SLES/SLOX

[Magni Onsoien]

On 2004-02-17 19:04:51 +0100, Gina Lanik said:

> First one:
> 
> Our linux server farm runs on RedHat exclusively at the moment and we're
> considering moving to either Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) or RedHat
> Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for the boxen we need certification for (a couple
> of Oracle installations and the machines which will participate in the SAN
> environment I'm currently building). Pros/Cons WRT either? Suggestions what
> to run on the other boxen we don't need certification for? We basically
> have everything from backup server to domain controller, file servers, etc.

I am going to install RHEL Server (or whatever they call it) for a
client this week, and it's more or less the same as RedHat 8. There are
a few differences, mainly because this is purely a server edition and
thus you can't choose a work station installation fex. 

They have also released a Update 1 version, which is simply a changed
1st CD so it also has an Updates directory with current updates as of
mkisofs. Quite convenient. Therefore the installation comes on 4 CDs,
and you are asked to put in the first one again when all packages are
installed.

I have no (positive!) experience with SuSE (just a rather confusing one
on the computer of my ex's father some years ago), so I don't have any
pros for that. I guess SuSE and RedHat are similar enough so you won't
have any trouble learning the admin tools SuSE want you to use. 

But you may want to have some kind of centralized setup (rdist,
cfengine) if you have many servers, and then a deeper knowledge of the
distro is an advantage since you want to combine the mechanisms used in
the distro (it can be important to make sure your support deals are
valid) and the mechanisms of rdist/cfengine.

(Of course it's possible to learn how SuSE is doing it even with a RedHat
background, but you will have less confidence in the experience since
you have never done it the SuSE way and now you have to combine a way
you don't really know with another way.)

But if you are only going to use the methods RedHat or SuSe use, this
isn't really an issue. There are books and you are probably literate :-)

If you go for RHEL on the certified servers, you may go for either
Fedora or RedHat 9 on the others. I am  not sure I would recommend any
of them for servers, but it depends on how often you are able to upgrade
them. Fedora has a life cycle of about 9 months or so, and upgrades can
(probably) be done via apt dist-upgrade (at least it worked nicely from
RedHat 9 to Fedora Core 1). RedHat 9 has no official support, but both
Progeny (USD 5/month) and Fedora Legacy Project (free) provides some
kind of support, I guess Progeny will be best for you since they give
some SLA and guarantees. I have tried both and they work good - for both
we downloaded updates to our own (internal) ftp server and used apt on
the clients. Neither of them has come with many updates yet, but as far
as I know those that have come have worked as they should.

> Second one:
> 
> We've been looking for groupware server implementations (preferably Open
> Source) for quite some time now and stumbled across Suse Linux Open
> Exchange server (SLOX for short) a couple of weeks ago. Does anyone here
> already have experience with it?

No, but my opinion on groupware is "if the specifications are a copy of 
those on the Exchange spec sheet, go for the original" :) (Or maybe :( )



Magni :)
-- 
sash is very good for you.