4.11 vs. 5.4 stablity

[Freddie Cash]

> I am running 4.11 on a dual amd box and have found it solid as a
> rock for running apache2, postgres, dns and postfix. But now I am
> thinking of upgrading. I wonder if 5.4 is as stable  for these
> servers that must run 24/7. And is it worth all the trouble to do, I
> have grown pretty lazy :)

We've been using it on dual-AthlonMP 2200+ and 2600+ systems with 3 GB
RAM and 4-drive RAID5 arrays (3Ware Escalade 7506-4LP) since 5.2.1 was
released.  They've recently been upgraded to 5.4 (skipped 5.3 as I
didn't want to re-compile all the installed ports during the school
year).  No problems so far, running Postfix, Amavisd-new, ClamAV,
SpamAssassin, Razor, DCC, Apache, PHP4, SquirrelMail, and similar
software.

We're also using 5.4 on dual-Opteron 244 systems with 4 GB RAM and
4-disk RAID5 arrays (LSI MegaRAID SATA).  Running Apache, MySQL, PHP4,
Squid, DansGuardian, and similar.  Will eventually house 12 jails to
provide each school their own web/mail/proxy and content filtering
server.

We're also running 5.3 on 10 UP firewall boxes (ancient Compaq Deskpro
P2 450 MHz systems with 512 MB RAM).  No problems shoving several
hundred gigabytes of data through xl and fxp interfaces all day.

Haven't done any benchmarking on these systems, as we're more
interested in stability and managability.  We've never had any
complaints about server speed -- it's always about network throughput
(on the WAN side) which is outside of our control.  :)  If we ever get
T1+ speeds into our sites, then maybe we'll look at server
performance.  :)

-- 
Freddie Cash, CCNT CCLP        Helpdesk / Network Support Tech.
School District 73             (250) 377-HELP [377-4357]
fcash at sd73.bc.ca               helpdesk at sd73.bc.ca