[nycbug-talk] Mixed RHEL / FreeBSD environment

[matt at atopia.net]

Pete, 

Thanks for your help. The only thing that would run rhel would be the DB setup. ALL webs would be freebsd. So we wouldn't be using multiple OS's on the same class of box. 

M 

------Original Message------
From: Pete Wright
To: Matt Juszczak
Cc: talk at lists.nycbug.org
Subject: Re: [nycbug-talk] Mixed RHEL / FreeBSD environment
Sent: Mar 23, 2009 19:40


On 23-Mar-09, at 4:00 PM, Matt Juszczak wrote:

> 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.
>


Hi Matt,
I don't think having a heterogenous environment is inherently evil per- 
se.  Having worked in a pretty heterogenous environment (several IRIX  
flavours, several RHEL versions as well as sun, NT, OSX) I found that  
if you have a decent provisioning, asset mgmt and config mgmt  
infrastructure in place that will make managing the environment much  
much easier.  granted - all those things will help managing any  
environment won't they? :)

 From a high level POV - i'd just suggest that you keep your OS's  
homogenous from an application or service perspective.  Having a mixed  
hat of FreeBSD, RHEL httpd instances for the same application can get  
a little unruly and harder to manage.  Yet if you have a pool of  
FreeBSD httpd's hitting a layer of RHEL app servers and mysql  
instances that *should* help mitigate some of the complexity.

just my two bits...

-p