Re: Age old question: FBSD vs Linux

On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 10:57:52AM -0400, [email protected] wrote:
> 
> Actually, 2 age-old questions.  FreeBSD vs. Linux revisited and software 
> vs hardware RAID level 1.
> 
> I'm finally getting ready to bag owning and maintaining my own hardware 
> and renting colo space and move all the stuff I host to one or two 
> dedicated servers.  I've been using FreeBSD for over a decade, with SCSI 
> hardware RAID level 1.
> 
> I keep hearing rumblings about how FreeBSD has fallen far behind Linux 
> over the past few years.  I've encountered the occasional issue where 
> certain server software requires Linux, or at least supposedly runs much 
> better on Linux (JVM, etc).  I also get consulting work where I work on 
> Linux, so although I am much more familar and comfortable with FreeBSD, I 
> do have some Linux exposure, and it might serve me better to become as 
> comfortable with it a I am FreeBSD.  I'd like to hear the thoughs of those 
> here who've faced similar decisions, or at least extensive exposure to 
> both.

I haven't used any bsd since the old days of bsdi in the 90's. 

I'm sure you can find a linux system you like. I've mostly used OpenSuSe 
and Centos and have been happy with both. Other people have religious or 
experience based preferences for other distributions. If you run XEN or 
other virtualization system, you can abstract the OS from any drivers 
and make it easy to restore/move around on hardware, and virtual 
machines reboot real fast too. Heck, you could run both FreeBSD and 
Linux at the same time.

> Secondly, I am also hearing that software RAID has come a long way in 
> terms of performance and recoverability of late.  For example, vinum now 
> allows root partitions to be mirrored?  I will be going from SAS/SCSI to 
> SATA in any case.  It's become apparent that most customers would much 
> rather have a lot more storage than a few ms quicker access.  Again, 
> thoughts and experiences appreciated.

Sata works well in linux. That could not be reliably said 3 years ago.

I have taken to skipping the raid mirroring of / and using a solid state 
drive like the ocz vertex for a boot drive, and saving the big&cheap 
drives for /home or other non-OS storage needs. Mechanical hard drives 
are big and cheap, but the quality is a real crapshoot right now even 
with the big brands.


> 
> TIA,
> 
> James Smallacombe		      PlantageNet, Inc. CEO and Janitor
> [email protected]							    http://3.am
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> Eat sushi frequently. - Avi
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