[NTLUG:Discuss] Which Server Distro?

[Chris Cox]

On Fri, 2009-12-04 at 08:10 -0600, Michael Barnes wrote:
> I need to build up a couple of basic servers, primarily for ftp use, a
> few small web pages and a handful of small bash and perl scripts. No
> DNS, DHCP, SMTP, Samba or other complicated stuff.  These are no
> budget enterprise machines, the ftp boxes see around 3 GB of transfer
> daily.
> 
> I was thinking of using either Ubuntu or CentOS, possibly OpenSUSE.  I
> haven't fooled with CentOS for a while, but I'm using Ubuntu (or
> Kbuntu) on several desktops now with good results.  I need something
> that is going to be viable for a couple years at least.  That was a
> real problem with my SUSE machines.  Every time I turned around, a new
> version came out and I had to fiddle with my apps to get them running
> again, or just stay with the original install.  Hence, I have a bunch
> of SUSE 9.? and 10.2 machines I can't get updates to.

openSUSE and Ubuntu (even LTS to an extent) are consumer
based distros and do not provide very long term support.

CentOS "claims" long term support, but really they just tap
into the long term support arm of Red Hat, swipe the code
and compile it.  So, every CentOS is a dollar less going
to Red Hat, yet Red Hat is basically the support arm for
CentOS.

So... to be fair, I'd consider only Red Hat RHEL or Novell's SLES
for long term support.  Both are free, but you have to pay
for updates and support.

Red Hat has an advantage in that they are supported by
the plethora of closed source enterprise hardware and software
solutions out there.  SLES has an advantage in stability, speed
and integration with Windows and has the better mainframe
platform.  SLES has some of the same closed source hw/sw
advantage, but not as much as Red Hat.  SLES is also cheaper
than Red Hat and tends not to put abitrary limits on things.

I work for an enterprise ISV and we support both RHEL and SLES.
But our infrastructure is based on SLES.  And has been for
8 years.  No issues.  Logest uptimes I believe was 800 days
or so... but generally we have maintenance outages... so
that's unusual.

> 
> What distro suggestions might any of you have for something I won't
> have to worry will be EOL next year and can just build it and leave it
> for a while?

My professional recommendation is SLES.
If there's aspirin nearby, RHEL is ok.

> 
> BTW, new hardware is a bunch of used Dell 2850 servers.  I don't know
> yet how much memory, but they have five Seagate SCSI drives of unknown
> size.  I do know the drives are U320 series.
> 
> Thanks for your comments,
> Michael
> 
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