upgrading from 4.10 to 5.3R, is it worth the upgrade just yet?

[Kurt Jaeger]

Hi!

> I have couple of 4.10 production boxes. is there any major advantage to
> upgrade to 5.3R ?
> 
> or should I just leave a working functioning system alone..

Here's a list of reasons why we are currently analysing this option:

  o filesystem snapshots
  o SMART Support (ATA disk monitoring and early warning)
  o fast background fsck
  o SATA support
  o pf
  o more recent IPsec (probably usable, it wasn't in 4.10)
  o jails: icmp, multi-ip support
  o new features in the ports
  o better threads (unsure, how much better?)
  o SMP/HTT support improved (unsure, how much -- we have crashes on
    some 4.10 systems?)
  o Changes in the networking code as described in
    http://people.freebsd.org/~andre/FreeBSD-5.3-Networking.pdf

We're not migrating any production system right now, but we've
installed two reference server (which will be used as baseline for
other 5.3/5.x systems). 

-- 
MfG/Best regards, Kurt Jaeger                                  16 years to go !
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