New (blade) server - stick with FreeBSD 6.x or wait for FreeBSD 7?

[John Nielsen]

On Monday 04 June 2007 05:30:37 am Per olof Ljungmark wrote:
> Kris Kennaway wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 04, 2007 at 09:46:00AM +0200, Ewald Jenisch wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I'm about to set up a new server that should run basically
> >> network-monitoring (MRTG, Cacti etc.). Hardware will be HP C-class
> >> blade based on AMD Opterons.
> >>
> >> Should I stick with FreeBS 6.x or wait for FreeBSD 7 (see
> >> http://www.freebsd.org/releng/index.html - "June 2007 Start FreeBSD
> >> 7.0 Release Process).
> >
> > Note "start".  The release is still many months away, so presumably
> > you do not wish to wait until then to install your server :) You
> > should definitely keep an eye on it though, there is a lot of good
> > stuff coming up in 7.0.
> >
> >> The question basically is: Will FreeBSD7 be "current" or "stable"?
>
> We are running several non-critical (including this T42 laptop) and one
> critical (SMTP) machine with -CURRENT and so far it's been a matter of
> getting the source from a good moment in time, mostly the snapshots. So
> far very few problems. You need a testbed to try stuff out on though.

Note that the bge adapters in the HP c-class blades require SerDes support, 
which IIRC was not present in 6.2-RELEASE but has (hopefully? maybe?) been 
MFC'ed since then.

JN