Forum Moderators: phranque
The specifications on the dedicated machines are the same:
2.4 Ghz P4
1GB RAM
2-60GB HD (RAID 1)
Our main site is an ecommerce site that pulls about 95% of its data from MySQL. We have currently outgrown our current solution. Our site is MySQL intensive as that is the process that eats up most of the CPU on our current server.
Are there any KEY advantages of one over the other? I have to say I have worked in a FreeBSD environment for a few years on our current VPS solution - its easy to navigate and do things such as adding vhosts.
I just want to make sure we make the right decision on these servers. I'm not sure if it makes a whole lot of difference, but the Linux 9 solution will come with Ensim and the BSD solution will come with Plesk 6. (I've never used Plesk or Ensim)
I don't have a lot of time to spend configuring servers...so I want to make sure we have the most stable (and fast) solution...that works best for our needs (custom PHP ecommerce site with heavy MySQL usage).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
if you go to freebsd.org, you will
see that the 4.x series is recommended
for *production* use at this time
5.2 is for early adopters
+
As far as 4.9 or 5.2, it's like Apache 1.3 vs 2.
The 5.x branch has a lot of new code, which means a lot fo improvements. But new code is new code...
Still, if by Linux 9 you mean Red Hat Linux 9, then pick FreeBSD 5.2.
5.2 should be fine too.
as a windowish person, i gladly defer on this
to you.
but i would love to hear your experiences with
5.2
i tried 5.1 and had to step back to 4.8 due
to install failures
so, real life 5.2 experiences would be very interesting
to hear
+
I wouldn't even consider running a production class machine on 5.x yet. I'd even be a little teeny bit weary of 4.9, but might upgrade a few test servers in the near future.
In FreeBSD land, you don't need to be running the newest version, and it's often advantageous not to be. There's still a ton of 4.6 servers out there, doing very well.
With Red Hat 9 I constantly have some troubles, but I'm not sure this is Red hat or hardware. More software, but harder to maintain.
It works fine with single-cpu machines, never tried 5.x with SMP.
In FreeBSD land, you don't need to be running the newest version, and it's often advantageous not to be.
bakedjake, that's the best part about FreeBSD.
With Red Hat 9 I constantly have some troubles, but I'm not sure this is Red hat or hardware. More software, but harder to maintain.
Dmitriyf, the last time I installed linux (RH9 specifically), was on a 4-CPU IBM Netfinity. I think they call it xSeries now.
Anyway, the box crashed about 10 times just during the installation. And the had problems for the first two weeks of operation.
The problem with linux is the philosophy.
Things like "this new cool feature is enabled by default, but if you are having problems, then disable it and e-mail your report to ....." - do you want to see that in your dmesg report when the boxs just keeps crashing?
Well, try RH9...
Instead of a propper way of FreeBSD "this new untested feature is present, but disabled by default. You can enable it, but make sure to do this, this, and that before you do. If you are having problems ....."
We ended up ordering a dual Xeon processor system with 1GB of memory from our hosting company - I think this will handle our future growth...I at least hope so. It seems like overkill right now...but I REALLLLY hate moving to different servers!
It sounds like a previous version of BSD would be preferable. According to our sales rep it comes with Free BSD 5.2. However, the invoice I received today said 4.9. I hope there isn't any issue with multiple processors, but since they are the ones supporting the servers, I'll leave it up to them.
I have a client that runs a few dual cpu boxes with FreeBSD 4.7 - 4.9 and they all had been up and running since the last time we serviced them, that would be around 9 or 10 months or so without any reboots or tunning.
added: I should say the ones that run 4.7 have been up for that long, 4.9 was a box that was upgraded from 4.6.
I'd recommend whatever bakedjake recommends (he's the ultimate expert in servers around here ;)
