New Server, Choosing the OS and Migration

[brandonp]

I have a Plesk 7.5.4 / Fedora Core 1 server that I'm going to replace. I have the machine built and now I'm faced with a few choices.

Obviously, I'm going to install Plesk 8 on the new machine. But the real question is what Operation System that I should choose. I'm bouncing between Fedora and CentOS. Is there some advice on this decision?

The biggest question I have is in the long term future, is there instructions on upgrading the operation system. For example, how do you upgrade from Fedora Core 4 to Fedora Core 5 when Plesk starts to support that system? Or Centos 4 to Centos 5, etc.

I'd prefer to not let the OS get so outdated as mine has.

Brandon Petersen

 

[brandonp]

Upgrading the OS

So if Plesk suddenly starts to support Fedora Core 5 and I'm running Fedora Core 4. Would I do the following instructions to upgrade the operating system?

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq#head-046d8b21e4b28db2ccfc1686482e54ab2f97e2af

# yum -y remove kernel-2.6.14*
# rpm -Uhv [url]http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-5-5.noarch.rpm[/url] 
# yum -y update
# /sbin/fixfiles relabel

Then upgrade Plesk through the autoinstaller? Are there any special considerations that I would need to do for Plesk?

Brandon

 

[stupidnic]

I do not recommend the Fedora series at all.

Fedora has its advantages, and certainly are cutting edge as far as revisions of major applications (apache is in the 2.2 branch, MySQL is using 5.0, and PHP is in the 5.1 branch for the newest Fedora) as well as kernels (which will allow you to use newer hardware).

The biggest detractor in my eyes is the lack of extended support, with versions being phased out ever 6 months, that is a pretty heavy revision cycle. With the additional support of the FedoraLegacy group (which is great btw), you still can not be assured that your server will remain up to date for as long as it is in production. I personally have a RedHat 7.3 server that is still in production, and I am lucky that updates are still provided due to the large user base for this distro. Other distros have not been so lucky (read: RH 8.0). This factor alone makes me very leary of using Fedora.

My recommendation (opinion) would be to use a distro with a long development cycle as well as an established and relatively smooth upgrade path.

Specifically I am referring to Debian. Debian stable is regularlly updated (with security patches), and has a well established in-place upgrade system (via apt-get dist-upgrade). I know that Fedora has something similar, but my results having used it in the past are poor in comparison to the Debian results.

Debian isn't perfect, as the stability comes at the price of a lack of available upgrades to more cutting edge applications (for instance there is no PHP5 in Debian stable). You can add these to Debian via backports, but they are not officially supported by the Debian maintainers, so you are kind of on your own there. Additionally Debian's kernel is a little out of date (2.6.8 for the 2.6 branch) so if you are installing it on to newer servers (specifically most newer PCIe based boards) you will encounter some issues with unsupported IDE/SATA chipsets, as well as network interfaces.

Also Debian does things differently than RH (Fedora/RHEL/CentOS), so there might be a learning curve that you need to adapt to, so that might also influence your decision (things like config file locations; default run levels, which is 2 on Debian and 3 on RH; etc).

My limited experience with CentOS prevents me from commenting to much on it, however with it being tied to the established (and heavily supported) RHEL line, I think that it is safe to say that going with CentOS would avoid the pitfalls that I mentioned earlier with Fedora.

Either way, Debian or CentOS would be my choices.

As a bit of background I have a total of 7 Plesk servers that I manage ranging from versions 5.0.5 to 8.0.1. the last 3out of 4 I have installed have all been Debian 3.1 (the other one was Windows 2003, so it doesn't count ).

I hope that gives you some information on which to make an informed decision

 

[atomicturtle]

I'd say it depends on what you want to do, if you're running the latest hardware, and want the latest features then the Fedora's are the way to go. The down side is that the support cycle is fairly short, around 18-24 months. FC1 and FC2 are now no longer supported. So if you're not in a position to upgrade your system frequently, its probably not going to be the appropriate OS for you. That being said, FC6 is slated for release in october, and it will include a major focus on virtualization. Very exciting stuff.

For a more conservative approach, CentOS4/RHEL4 operate on a 5 year support cycle. If you're looking for a good balance of the latest apps (php5, mysql 5 in the centos extras channels, or my site) and yum support, CentOS4 is the way to go. If you've got a system with more than 4 CPU's, then RHAS 4 is probably the most stable linux platform available. In addition, you'll find that most commercial vendors will support 4ES platforms with hardware drivers, and 3rd party apps before any other distro.