[nycbug-talk] Mixed RHEL / FreeBSD environment

[Matt Juszczak]

Hi all,

Has anyone ever tried a mixed RHEL and FreeBSD environment?  We're 100% 
RHEL right now, but migrating to a new data center.  Considering the 
options and the amount of BSD fans in the mix, we'd like to switch at 
least the lower trafficked boxes (utility boxes, jump boxes, etc.) to 
FreeBSD.  We are also debating making our webs FreeBSD, because of some 
research that shows Apache seems to run nicely on FreeBSD compared to RHEL 
(if not better in certain circumstances).

100% FreeBSD is not an option, for the fact that for now, we're going to 
keep our database boxes (which will only have a LAN connection) RHEL. 
This is because of the recent issues with FreeBSD and MySQL performance 
vs. RHEL.  We've done our own testing, and have had good results, but feel 
like coupling a data center migration AND an OS change on the DB servers 
(where we are most likely to have performance problems) is too many 
changes at once.

What are everyone's thoughts?  Is a potentially mixed environment like 
this potentially beneficial?  Stupid?  I'm also very curious to know of 
people's research on Apache/PHP with FreeBSD vs. Linux.

Thanks,

Matt