On Sat, Feb 18, 2006 at 04:43:00PM +1300, listmail at brentfriedman.net wrote: > I am about to set up a new venture using Linux servers. I have used > everything from slackware to debian to ubuntu for personal and non-public > server use, but I haven't set up any "live" servers with Linux since > Redhat switched to Fedora Core. The servers will be running a php web > service, with a mySQL back end. > > I will not be the main admin for these boxes, as I will be pretty busy > with the business end of the venture. I am looking for a distro that has > as automated a update/patch installation system as possible, whether free > or less than $500/server/year. Also, it would be helpful if the update > system was GUI based. Any suggestions about what you are using in a > production environment would be really helpful. I'm a Red Hat Certified Engineer and a Red Hat Community Ambassador so I'm probably a little bit biased. I admin about a dozen Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based systems at work in a critical production environment. If these servers go down, so does a large portion of our business. We've been running Red Hat distributions for about 5 years. Our servers are used for mail, ftp, samba, web, bugzilla, code management, and some custom code. A base RHEL ES subscription which guarantees access to support and new releases runs about $350 per year depending on the level of support you need. There are mailing lists dedicated to the RHEL releases that have an active intelligent community that includes professionals and Red Hat employees. The signal to noise ratio is acceptably high (unlike the Fedora mailing lists). At home, I run Tao Linux which is a rebuild of the RHEL 4 sources. It's totally free but I do see that security fixes tend to lag behind Red Hat's release by a day or two. It's good enough for me but not what I would want to bet my business on. I am extremely satisified with both the quality of the distribution and with the support we've received both from Red Hat and from the community. Security fixes have been released promptly and back-ported where appropriate instead of just providing an update to the latest release (which may break binary compatability or break other non-related features). > As a follow-on question, I plan to pick up a few Dell Poweredge 2650 dual > xeon systems on ebay. Any thoughts on these systems running linux? There is a mailing list dedicated to Linux on PowerEdge servers. I know that there are Dell employees on it. The list is at http://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge I run my Tao Linux distro on a PowerEdge 400SC and it's been flawless. A quick scan on the linux-poweredge list shows that people are running Linux on the 2650s and a few people have had problems and fixes suggested to them. I've heard a few grumblings about the PERC controllers too so pay attention there. .../Ed -- Ed Wilts, RHCE Mounds View, MN, USA mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program