Looking for some upgrade advice

[Bill Campbell]

On Thu, May 18, 2006, Fairlight wrote:
>Only Boaz Bezborodko would say something like:
>> I am leary of using MS products.  I've had really good experiences with 
>> Novell.  The server hasn't gone down except when I take it down.  The 
>> last time I did that was almost 6 months ago because the tape backup 
>> drive failed and I had to replace it.  When I took it down the server 
>> had been up for over 560 days.
>
>I suspect the only reason I haven't seen comparable uptimes on my linux
>systems is because the kernel updates require a reboot.  I talked directly
>to the 2nd in charge of the kernel, as well as some of the other kernel
>devs, and the consensus was that if I wanted a hot-swappable kernel, I
>could go and write the hot-swap code myself.  They didn't consider it a
>priority, or even desirable.

Our Linux machines tend to stay up as long as the power and UPS holds out.
I'm in the midst of replacing a Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 system running on a
350MhZ PII with SuSE Linux Enterprise 9 SP3 on an AMD Athlon-64, and that
old machine had uptimes measured in years.

My record uptime here is a FreeBSD 4.8 system (old because it
hasn't been rebooted):

  8:45pm  up 694 days 13:48,  7 users,  load average: 0.88, 0.25, 0.14

>Totally different envionments.  There -will- be a learning curve.  There's
>no avoiding that.  If you don't have an in-house linux admin, I suggest you
>contract one to help you at least get the initial system in, configured,
>and hardened--and perhaps maintain it on an ongoing basis.  You'll save
>yourself a lot of pain if you really don't want to learn it, or don't
>currently have the time.

Raises Hand! :-).

>As for Novell's ties to SuSE...  This is kind of a dodgy thing.  People
>just assume that because SuSE is owned by Novell now that Novell actually
>is designing the stuff.  To the best of my knowledge, SuSE is more a wholly
>owned subsidiary and functions more or less the way it used to before the
>buyout.  It's not like the Netware engineers are ensuring the quality of
>the linux that Novell is putting out.  The primary reason Novell even
>bought SuSE was so that they could have an in-house team that knew linux
>well enough that they could also put a linux kernel -into- Netware.  Their
>vision was Netware available with -either- a Netware or a linux kernel.

The reason we selected SuSE when we had to move off of Caldera was that
IHHO SuSE was the best engineered of the Linux distros.  I haven't had any
reason to change my mind on that.

I have been working with Novell for over a year now, and have been happy
with my experiences with them.  We're working primarily with SuSE Linux
Enterprise 9 (SLES9).  I've just updated our install server with their
Service Pack 3 to get support for the Latest & Greatest 64-bit processor
and SATA support.  SuSE 10 supports the hardware I had problems with with
SLES9SP2, but I prefer the Enterprise version for server applications.

>But aside from the level of tech support you can expect, I wouldn't read a
>thing into the Novell name being attached.  I think too many do.

Novell has made a committment to get all their own in-house systems on
Linux, and is working hard to get their desktop systems the capabilities to
work in a Microsoft Free environment (personally I'm using OS X for most of
my desktop systems now).

Bill
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