[Lilug] Ugh, Searching for a New Distro

[iN8sWoRld.net]

I would second (third?) going the virtualized route (I'm running Ubuntu
server on VMware ESXi myself).  I haven't used Redhat in years and while I
realize its strengths, theres something to be said for being able to spin
something up quick and provide results.  Virtualization rocks not only for
ease of setup (in this case dealing with the RAID controller hardware for
you), but for portability of the Linux server you create on top of it to
new hosting hardware in future, backing that server up, or just taking a
quick restorable copy of the server before a major upgrade.  You can also
then run another smaller server (even a hated Windows server ;) on that
hardware alongside your Linux server if needed, and easily shuffle
resources (memory/disk space) between virtual machines as needed.

Nate
On Jul 14, 2015 11:58 PM, "Lewis G Rosenthal" <lgrosenthal at 2rosenthals.com>
wrote:

> Hi, guys...
>
> On 07/14/15 05:30 pm, Justin Dearing thus wrote :
>
>> Chris,
>>
>> If its that much if a change to use something not debian based, consider
>> FreeBSD if that supports your hardware. Its not Linux, but its a great unix
>> server OS. Sticking to actual Linux, CentOS 7 is fairly new and might
>> support your HP. If money exists in a budget somewhere, you can also just
>> pay for RHEL and make them figure it out. I would shy against putting
>> Fedora on a server though.
>>
>>  I would agree that CentOS 7 is probably the next best choice in this
> case (or RHEL). The nie thing about CentOS is that pretty much whatever
> works under RHEL *should* set up nicely under CentOS (as such things used
> to do under WBEL before CentOS). Fedora is just not "for" this.
>
> (Full disclosure: For Linux, I'm a SuSE guy, coming out of a Novell
> background. That said, as much of the *nix stuff ported to OS/2 has come
> out of Fedora, I've had some wider exposure in recent years.)
>
> I was also of the belief that the latest OSS RAID driver for HP would work
> for the B120i, but looking now, I see that I was mistaken (nice going, HP).
>
>> That being said, you just need to make a debian install ISO with a custom
>> kernel with that raid driver, or load that raid driver at startup. I don't
>> think that would be too hard to do if you just "burned" the install ISO to
>> a USB key, booted in rescue mode and then installled the kernel module to
>> the usb drive and edited grub to load that module on startup. Yes its been
>> a decade since I built a kernel from source. but I think google will
>> confirm I'm not crazy here.
>>
>>  Well, building kernels from source is not as much fun as it once was
> (particularly for production systems). I've also found upgrading to be more
> complicated, as I've had to remember which system was running a custom
> kernel and would need extra attention so as not to break something -
> particularly something as potentially devastating as a filesystem driver or
> RAID driver.
>
>> Thinking totally out of the box, why not put VMWare ESX or some other
>> hypervisor on the bar metal and make one giant VM with all the resources.
>> Modern hypervisors are really light weight and will abstract all your
>> hardware away, assuming your hypervisor has the preoper raid drivers.
>>
>>  This is an option, of course, though not entirely without its own
> potential pitfalls. At least HP provides a certified driver for ESX.
>
> A truly supported option would be RHEL.
>
> Links:
>
>
> http://h20565.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c03582943-1&sp4ts.oid=3907937
> http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c03871499
> http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c03742583
> https://access.redhat.com/articles/118133
>
> Good luck, Chris.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 5:17 PM Christopher Merlo <cmerlo441 at gmail.com
>> <mailto:cmerlo441 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     My hope for an awesome day, installing Debian on a brand new server,
>>     was dashed by a proprietary HP RAID driver:
>>
>> http://askubuntu.com/questions/498133/how-to-install-ubuntu-14-04-on-hp-dynamic-smart-array-b120i-logical-drive
>>     (It looks like I can add a driver after I've installed Ubuntu to my
>>     unrecognized logical drive?  Not sure how this helps.
>>
>> https://launchpad.net/~hp-iss-team/+archive/ubuntu/hp-storage?field.series_filter=trusty
>>     <
>> https://launchpad.net/%7Ehp-iss-team/+archive/ubuntu/hp-storage?field.series_filter=trusty
>> >)
>>
>>     This is the only kind of server I have access to because public
>>     education / county purchasing / you'll use HP and like it.  I haven't
>>     used a non-Debian-based distro in I don't know how long, but I guess
>>     I'm going to start.  So, what do you recommend?
>>     -c
>>
>>  Cheers
>
> --
> Lewis
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Lewis G Rosenthal, CNA, CLP, CLE, CWTS, EA
> Rosenthal & Rosenthal, LLC                www.2rosenthals.com
> visit my IT blog                www.2rosenthals.net/wordpress
> IRS Circular 230 Disclosure applies   see www.2rosenthals.com
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
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