[nycbug-talk] Mixed RHEL / FreeBSD environment

[Andy Kosela]

Matt Juszczak <matt at atopia.net> 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,

Can you elaborate more on the MySQL low performance on FreeBSD 7?  From
my own tests the LAMP or rather FAMP infrastructure works very well on
FreeBSD.  The performance issue is not only connected with OS per se,
but also overall planning of the whole infrastructure (hardware, HA, 
load balancing, etc.), so it's a much more complex issue than simply
FreeBSD vs. RHEL.   

We are trying to use Linux only on hosts that basically need it, e.g.
Oracle databases, OAS, multipathing to HP EVA/XP disk arrays, special
Linux oriented applications, etc.  For the rest of the servers in DMZ,
FreeBSD is the only viable option.  I am very happy with it for the
x86_64 architecture.  

Internally we use also HP-UX and are extremely happy with its
performance and maintenance.  IMHO it's much better for large scale
Oracle DBs or SAP than RHEL.

--Andy