FreeBSD & Linux distro

[Jerry McAllister]

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 11:15:00AM +0200, Jonathan McKeown wrote:

> On Thursday 21 February 2008 23:03, D G Teed wrote:
> 
> > For example, no where in this have I heard a peep about backup
> > software. Anyone serious about IT is serious about backup. Yet there
> > is no support for EMC (Legato) Networker in FreeBSD, and this is why
> > our organization is migrating away from this FreeBSD.
> 
> Petty quibble: I suspect that you mean ``there is no support for FreeBSD in
> EMC Networker'' rather than the other way round. Picking a backup solution
> that can't back up some of your servers, and opting to fix the problem by
> getting rid of the servers, seems to me to be doing things the wrong way
> round - irrespective of which OS you're forcing yourself to get rid of.
> 
> Of course, EMC Networker may be so much better than any other backup
> solution as to justify the work involved in moving working services
> to a different platform - I don't know Networker so I can't really
> comment, although I agree with most of what you said about making
> sure you pick a platform which supports what you're trying to do.
> I say most because my own feeling as a sysadmin is that you must
> have a very good reason to run more than the bare minimum range
> of operating systems you can - which is an argument for moving
> away from some platforms if you're already running several. I
> am in the process of moving from multiple platforms, ranging
> from Windows NT4, through e-smith (server-in-a-box based on
> Red Hat), Debian, and FreeBSD, from 4.8 up to date. We are
> aiming to end up with a bunch of FreeBSD boxes, all using
> a standard build from a central buildserver, plus one or
> two boxes running Windows Server 2003 supporting users,
> who are all running Windows desktops and applications,
> including apps which run on the server, with clients
> connecting over the network. It's taken a while but
> every time we get rid of an old box my workload in
> supporting the rest of the system drops a little.
> Note: I'm not saying everyone should standardise
> on FreeBSD - that's just what I'm most familiar
> with at the moment, and when I started to move
> things round we had more FreeBSD servers than
> anything else, so it made sense to pick that
> and bring the rest into line, where we were
> able to, especially because the other OSes
> were mainly running on hardware which was
> due for replacement soon anyway, so that
> the migration could be seen as being in
> the ordinary course of maintenance and
> not extra load on busy systems staff.
> 
> (Sorry: when I realised I'd started
> my reply with a few lines which by
> accident were tapering off at the
> ends I couldn't resist trying to
> see how long I could keep it up.
> It's foolish, I know, but it is
> a fun exercise in picking your
> words carefully and yet still
> trying to make sense. If you
> aren't reading with a fixed
> width font, you may not be
> getting the effect of the
> layout anyway: so if you
> can't see it, I'm sorry
> for taking up yet more
> of your time, just to
> play about with line
> lengths and make up
> pretty patterns in
> your mail reader.
> I'll stop now or
> at least once I
> can taper down
> to the length
> of the given
> name I sign
> off with).
> 
> Jonathan
> (Whew!)

I'm impressed.

////jerry
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