production server

[Asad Javid]

im planning to purchase a new dell server with 80x5 scsi harddisk and 2
gb of ram. i am planning to install qmail+antivirus+antispam etc. can
somebody suggest whether fedora will do fine with this or whether RHEL
ES  has to be installed. what performance difference does RHEL ES has
over fedora (apart from cost issues:) )
-- 
Regards,


Asad Javid
In Charge-IT Services Center
Dubai University College
Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Tel (off) -2242472-628

[Matthew Miller]

On Sun, Jan 25, 2004 at 09:24:17PM +0400, Asad Javid wrote:
>  im planning to purchase a new dell server with 80x5 scsi harddisk and
> 2
>  gb of ram. i am planning to install qmail+antivirus+antispam etc. can
>  somebody suggest whether fedora will do fine with this or whether RHEL
>  ES  has to be installed. what performance difference does RHEL ES has
>  over fedora (apart from cost issues:) ) 
Fedora will do fine. Or beyond fine. Red Hat will give you tech support if
you give them money for RHEL, though. I think the decision depends on the
amount of internal expertise and time you have balanced against how much
money you have to spend on things.

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm(a)mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>

[Felipe Alfaro Solana]

On Sun, 2004-01-25 at 18:24, Asad Javid wrote:
>  im planning to purchase a new dell server with 80x5 scsi harddisk and
> 2
>  gb of ram. i am planning to install qmail+antivirus+antispam etc. can
>  somebody suggest whether fedora will do fine with this or whether RHEL
>  ES  has to be installed. what performance difference does RHEL ES has
>  over fedora (apart from cost issues:) ) 
I have little experience with RHEL ES, but I've played with it during
the Beta. I think RHEL is geared towards customers who run on big iron
and have the need for commercial support contracts. Is this your case?
Do you need 24x7 support, or you can get along with community support?

Other than commercial support and high performance hardware (have you
read about the latest TPC-C benchmarks result with Oracle 10g and RHEL
on HP hardware?), Fedora can do anything you can imagine, let it be
antivirus, mail...

[Mike - W0TMW]

On Sunday 25 January 2004 11:24 am, Asad Javid wrote:
>  im planning to purchase a new dell server with 80x5 scsi harddisk and
> 2
>  gb of ram. i am planning to install qmail+antivirus+antispam etc. can
>  somebody suggest whether fedora will do fine with this or whether RHEL
>  ES  has to be installed. what performance difference does RHEL ES has
>  over fedora (apart from cost issues:) )
>  --
>  Regards,
>
>
>  Asad Javid
>  In Charge-IT Services Center
>  Dubai University College
>  Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry
>  Tel (off) -2242472-628 
As of a month ago (last time I checked) you can order Dell servers pre-loaded 
with RH Enterprise Linux.  I doubt there is any inherent performance 
difference between RHEL and Fedora.  RHEL is optimized for clustering and 
performance.  You can do this too with Fedora, but you have to configure it 
yourself and add the necessary supporting modules.

If you intend to use the Dell and Linux in a commercial endeavor, I'd suggest 
you go with RHEL just for the support.

Mike W

-- 
Registered Linux - 256979   (http://counter.il.org for more information)
NRA Life
ARS: W0TMW


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[Andre Costa]

On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 14:54:27 -0600
Mike Watson <mikew(a)crucis.net&gt; wrote:

>  On Sunday 25 January 2004 11:24 am, Asad Javid wrote:
>  > im planning to purchase a new dell server with 80x5 scsi harddisk
>  > and 2 gb of ram. i am planning to install qmail+antivirus+antispam
>  > etc. can somebody suggest whether fedora will do fine with this or
>  > whether RHEL ES  has to be installed. what performance difference
>  > does RHEL ES has over fedora (apart from cost issues:) )
>  > --
>  > Regards,
>  >
>  >
>  > Asad Javid
>  > In Charge-IT Services Center
>  > Dubai University College
>  > Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry
>  > Tel (off) -2242472-628
>  
>  As of a month ago (last time I checked) you can order Dell servers
>  pre-loaded with RH Enterprise Linux.  I doubt there is any inherent
>  performance difference between RHEL and Fedora.  RHEL is optimized for
>  clustering and performance.  You can do this too with Fedora, but you
>  have to configure it yourself and add the necessary supporting
>  modules.
>  
>  If you intend to use the Dell and Linux in a commercial endeavor, I'd
>  suggest you go with RHEL just for the support. 
And, of course, the longer life-cycle.

Best,

Andre

-- 
Andre Oliveira da Costa

[Robert Echlin]

Asad Javid wrote:
>  im planning to purchase a new dell server with 80x5 scsi harddisk and
> 2
>  gb of ram. i am planning to install qmail+antivirus+antispam etc. can
>  somebody suggest whether fedora will do fine with this or whether RHEL
>  ES  has to be installed. what performance difference does RHEL ES has
>  over fedora (apart from cost issues:) ) 
As Andre Costa says, RHEL has a longer life cycle.
If you don't mind re-installing (upgrading might work) every 6 months,
you can use RHEL, or check out the KRUD version of the Fedora distro.
They plan to keep providing maintenance upgrades for Fedora for 3 years.

Robert

[Matthew Miller]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 09:31:11AM -0500, Robert Echlin wrote:
>  As Andre Costa says, RHEL has a longer life cycle.
>  If you don't mind re-installing (upgrading might work) every 6 months,
>  you can use RHEL, or check out the KRUD version of the Fedora distro.
>  They plan to keep providing maintenance upgrades for Fedora for 3 years. 
Or, check out *regular old Fedora*, plus Fedora Legacy.

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm(a)mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>

[WipeOut]

-{snip}-
For anyone who has been following this thread and who is interested here 
is the decision I have come to regarding using FC1 on my new 
web/email/app servers..

I started by digging around trying to find a sutable replacement for 
RH9.. Many said Gentoo and Debian (Debian incedentally is the fastest 
growing linux distro according to the latest netcraft survey!!) as well 
as a few others like Suse..

So I started down the path of testing them out..

Firstly Gentoo.. The community are very active (hopefully FC will grow 
to be the same) and offer lots of help but unless you are very 
comfortable building your entire system from stratch and compiling 
software from source I would say stay away.. My experience of a few 
years on Linux was not enough to give me that warm fuzzy feeling when it 
came to *trying* to make it work.. After a 2 hour install process it 
took me about half an hour to break it..

Next I tried Debian.. The "Stable" version its too old and the packages 
are outdated.. There are offspring sites that are providing packages 
from the "unstable" branch to try and bring "stable" up to date.., I 
moved on and tried the "unstable" version.. This installed and has a 
much better installer but I could not see how to setup software RAID 
during the install and I didn't have even the faintest clue how to do it 
after the install so this was a problem, also I wanted to used LVM so 
that would have been another issue all together..

Now onto the RPM based distros I tried..

Firstly Trustix.. This is an awesome distro with a minimum install of 
only 90MB.. It is great for single service systems and appliances but I 
did find it a little restrictive and because they have changed the names 
of many packages and to when I tried to build some packages, by 
following the instructions, on it there were problems because it was 
looking for the wrong thing or in the wrong place..

I looked at SuSE, its nice enough but it is really far more aimed at the 
desktop area (something I think Fedora may also end up as!) than at 
being a server.. Probably becasue they rae commercial as well so to get 
a sever you have to buy a server, also there are no ISO's avalible for 
the free version..

Then I came full circle back to Fedora, for all its faults it does 
actually work well, and its compatible with all the software out there 
that is compatible with RH so thats a good thing..

My concerns with Fedora..
1) Redhat being in control of FC's destiny may force it down the path of 
becoming a home user desktop more than a server platform because they 
want people to buy RHEL which IMO is just way to expensive and we just 
could not afford it.. The RHEL WS is more expensive then Windows XP so I 
am not sure what they are going for there..

2) Upgrades from one version to the next may be rocky and that could be 
a problem on servers..

3) Security patches may take a while to come out leaving th server open 
to an attack if th exploit is remotely exploitable..

The things I like about Fedora..
1)It runs, works and feels like RedHat which I am familiar with, and its 
sponsored by RedHat.. (even with my concern in point 1 above)

2)Most packages that are not included with it should be able to run snce 
FC is exactly like RH..

3)With projects like Fedora-Legeacy starting up it means hopefully a 
longer life cycle..

4)Good hardware support.. ( My SATA server runs like a dream)..

5)and last but not least a fairly strong and growing community which 
will hopefully grow to rival that of Gentoo and Debian..

So the pro's out weigh the cons.. :)

Sorry for the length but I just thought I would share my experience..

Later..

[Rui Miguel Silva Seabra]

On Fri, 2004-01-30 at 16:50, WipeOut wrote:
>  My concerns with Fedora..
>  1) Redhat being in control of FC's destiny may force it down the path of 
>  becoming a home user desktop more than a server platform because they 
>  want people to buy RHEL which IMO is just way to expensive and we just 
>  could not afford it.. The RHEL WS is more expensive then Windows XP so I 
>  am not sure what they are going for there.. 
The value is relative, if you buy all proprietary software to do the
equivalent of what you can with RHEL WS then it would be far more
expensive.

However, if you mostly use GNU/Linux for things an almost basic server
installation can do, then it starts to become quite expensive.

Rui

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?

Please AVOID sending me WORD, EXCEL or POWERPOINT attachments.
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[Robert Echlin]

Hi, WipeOut
I also tried out some of the other distro's, putting particular emphasis 
on Debian stable as I wanted to use it on servers at work.
The problem with stable is that it is so old that the software my (now 
former) employer writes would not run on it.

Like you, I am back at RedHat Fedora for my personal system.
I put /home on a separate partition.
I back it up fanatically.

And I am ready to swing when I have to.

rme

WipeOut wrote:
>  -{snip}-
>  For anyone who has been following this thread and who is interested here 
>  is the decision I have come to regarding using FC1 on my new 
>  web/email/app servers..
>  
>  I started by digging around trying to find a sutable replacement for 
>  RH9.. Many said Gentoo and Debian (Debian incedentally is the fastest 
>  growing linux distro according to the latest netcraft survey!!) as well 
>  as a few others like Suse..
>

[Pedro Fernandes Macedo]

WipeOut wrote:

>  -{snip}-
>  Next I tried Debian.. The "Stable" version its too old and the 
>  packages are outdated.. There are offspring sites that are providing 
>  packages from the "unstable" branch to try and bring "stable" up to 
>  date.., I moved on and tried the "unstable" version.. This installed 
>  and has a much better installer but I could not see how to setup 
>  software RAID during the install and I didn't have even the faintest 
>  clue how to do it after the install so this was a problem, also I 
>  wanted to used LVM so that would have been another issue all together.. 
This makes me remmember the problems we had some time ago.... We used 
debian everywhere , from desktops to servers.. then , someone hacked one 
of the labs available to the students , hacked our machine that was 
running snort ... luckly they didnt do much more...  When we started to 
analize the invasion, we came to conclude that debian was not the right 
choice for us... as an computer science college , we need to have good , 
stable and new software.. debian was giving us only stable and good 
(sometimes , only stable)... So we went for redhat 9 ....

>  I looked at SuSE, its nice enough but it is really far more aimed at
>
>  the desktop area (something I think Fedora may also end up as!) than 
>  at being a server.. Probably becasue they rae commercial as well so to 
>  get a sever you have to buy a server, also there are no ISO's avalible 
>  for the free version.. 
After the change of policy from RH , we had to find a new way... my boss 
decided to use Suse... And I have to tell you...  I still didnt accept 
this decision...
 From my personal experience with suse , it's good as long as you use 
yast to do everything.. if you try to do things your way , then you'll 
have a rough time... and also suse likes to do what it wants.. for 
example , it didnt add the default route.... there are also other issues 
, but I dont remmember them all now..

>  1) Redhat being in control of FC's destiny may force it down the
> path 
>  of becoming a home user desktop more than a server platform because 
>  they want people to buy RHEL which IMO is just way to expensive and we 
>  just could not afford it.. The RHEL WS is more expensive then Windows 
>  XP so I am not sure what they are going for there.. 
I dont think this may happen.. If the guys at redhat are smart enough , 
they'll realize that there'll be always people that will use fedora as 
servers... So I believe that they'll use fedora to test new things they 
want to put in their enterprise line , because they know we'll test it 
for them in a real production environment...
One thing I dont like is the prices on the RH products... It's not 
reasonable to pay $2691 (about R$7100) on   RHAS Premium or even $491 on 
RHEL workstation.  Considering that the kind of pcs we use as servers 
cost around $1600 , it's not reasonable to pay so much for a distro... 
Specially considering that we have a very thight budget....


Pedro Macedo