Preferred Distribution

[Ken A]

Hugo van der Kooij wrote:
> On Thu, 10 May 2007, Oliver Falk wrote:
> 
>> On 05/10/2007 03:00 PM, --[ UxBoD ]-- wrote:
>>>  I am having to setup a couple of new mailservers where
>>>  I am working on contract at the moment, using Dell
>>>  SC1435 rack mounts.
>>>  The problem is that RedHat ES4 kernel is so old does
>>>  not recognise the SAS RAID card.
>>>
>>>  Now my question is should I get them to purchase
>>>  RHES5,
>>
>> If you don't need support, there's no need for EL5.
>>
>>>  or go for either CentOS or Fedora ?
>>
>> Both is fine. Fedora should recognize it AFAIK.
> 
> I do not recommend Fedora in anything even resembling a production 
> environment. I hate to install a system which will be out of security 
> updates in about a year.
> 
> If you just want the system go for Centos 5 and use RHEL 5 if they want 
> to spend money on support.
> 
> Hugo.
> 

FC works fine in production. Whether it's a good choice depends on what 
hardware/software support you want/need, what else the box is doing, how 
well you can lock it down, and of course who you have to please! Busy 
spam-stomping machines can have a short hardware life-cycle too. Next 
year's hardware will be faster.

FC7 will have better virtualization support than Centos5 does. You might 
need that, you might not. It might be buggy. You might not want to deal 
with that, or you might think it's a challenge.

Securing a bare bones MailScanner box doesn't require that your entire 
LAMP install and all binaries be up2date. Of course it's best to have a 
box completely patched, but if vulnerable items are not accessible, it's 
as good as patched, well almost... Some can't sleep with that. Some can. 
Your choice.

-- 
Ken Anderson
Pacific.Net