2 Nov
2004
2 Nov
'04
8 p.m.
Patrick Kaell wrote:
But on our HP DL380 systems, it really makes sense to
use Redhat
Enterprise Linux. HP provides daemons, tools and a modified Redhat
kernel to support the RAID controller (if you do not want to reboot into
the BIOS everytime you want to change something on your RAID setup),
fans (syslog entry for a failing fan), UPS and so on.
I have to trust you on that, as our DL380s run on Windows. According to
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/linux/dl380-drivers-cert.html,
SLES8 is certified, but it says nothing about the added-value tools.
I know that SuSE is an option for Oracle (but HP does
not support
special features on the DL380 for SuSE yet). But be aware that Oracle
only supports Enterprise SuSE (not the consumer SuSE). And SLES is
expensive too: 404,84 Euro for 1 server/year limited to 2 CPUs:
http://www.suse.de/de/business/products/server/sles/pricing.html
Expensive, yes, but I once read a comparison where SuSE turned out to be
less expensive. I'd have to look it up.
Anyway, even on Redhat systems, I am beginning to use
only the basic
system (kernel, libraries, etc) and recompile everything myself from
source (./configure; make; make install). Reasons for this:
1. With the introduction of RHEL, Redhat dropped many packages. MySQL
has been dropped for PostgeSQL, some PHP modules have been dropped, RHEL
only includes Apache 2 and not Apache 1.3 and so on. The reason for this
is that Redhat wants to minimalize the number of packages to support.
RHEL is supported for 5 years, much more than consumer Redhat and
especially Fedora.
2. You are not dependend on RHN anymore. It is important that you
compile everything which needs special configuration (Apache, Webserver,
Postfix, etc) from the start. If you begin with Redhat packages and if
you need to patch because of security issues but are unable to do so
(because you cannot use RHN) and are forced to use the source from the
project's home page the migration may not be easy. Reasons for this are
that files may be on other places and that you may have config files
where some options are commented out. So you are automatically using
default values for outcommented options which are different depending if
you are using Redhat's packages or the source from the project's home page.
This makes me wonder whether RH is really a good option. If you pay for
support and the packages you need are not under support, what do you pay
for? If you compile like your own distro, all RH boils down to is the
existence of HP hardware-specific modules, isn't it? Does HP not give
you the source for that?
BTW, Apache an Postfix are part of SLES9
(http://www.suse.de/en/business/products/server/sles/packages/x86/index_all.…)
3. You may use the workstation version (Enterprise WS)
on your server,
which is *much* cheaper. The only difference between ES and WS: WS
misses some network daemons (no problem if you compile network daemons
yourself). There are no differences between WS and ES (apart from the
missing daemons), no different kernel parameters, nothing! Redhat even
recommends WS for clusters (because of the price):
http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/comparison/
RHWS = 179$ for 1, SL-Desktop = 544€ for 5
I just keep on wondering why anybody in the world uses RH, but maybe
that's just me.
Regards,
-pu