RHEL 4.0 or RHEL 5.0

[girishb]

Hi,

We are looking to deploy Redhat Enterprise Linux with database on HP DL580 Servers.

We would like to know RHEL 4.0 is best or RHEL 5.0 (latest release)

I know RHEL 5.0 is recently released in the market with virtualization feature...

How can we justify which OS is better and stable.

Thanks for the quick response.

Giri

[Tim Rotunda]

What db will you be deploying?
Tim

[Ivan Ferreira]

For now, you should Stay with RHEL 4.0 until the products get certified in RHEL 5. Oracle for example is not yet certified for RHEL 5. If you are going to use mysql, postgresql, you can run RHEL 5.

Virtualization is an interesting feature, only if you are planing to use it.

[Jarle Bjorgeengen]

Stay with RHEL4 unless you need xen-virtualiazition.

It's pretty obvious that RHEL4 is going to be more stable in production, given the maturity of RHEL4. History shows that i thakes 2-3 updates of new OS release to become stable enough for critical production.

FYI: xen is also coming with the next RHEL4 updadate , RHEL 4.5 (they've changed the versioning scheme .)

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Giri,

In pre-release I found virtualization to be completely unstable.

I found the early releases of RH to be extremely unstable and unreliable. It wasn't until Update 2 until I found them stable enough to use.

I work extensively with RH and find their quality control to be wanting.

I would stay way from RHEL 5 until at least two updates are out.

SEP
Shmuel Protter
NDS Jeruslalem
RHCE

[Court Campbell]

stick with RHEL4 for now. If you need virtulization got with SLES. The xen support is better.

[girishb]

Thanks to all for such a good response.

I need to deploy Oracle 10g OCFS on Redhat Linux 4.0 or 5.0

Can some body tell me OCFS is better or GFS.

[Court Campbell]

Well now you have opened another can of worms. OCFS can only be used on RHAS 2.1 and RHEL3(striclty speaking Red Hat here). PLus I think ASM is what is mainly used nowadays and not OCFS. You could buy GFS, I have heard great things. I assume you are going to implement RAC? If so you may want to look at polyserve:

http://www.polyserve.com/oracle_rac_clusters.php

P.S. don't forget to assign points. I am close to getting my wizard hat.