CentOS - Oct 2018 - Upstream and downstream (was Re: What are the differences between systemd and non-systemd Linux distros?)

On Sat, October 20, 2018 8:23 am, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 05:52:12PM -0700, Japheth Cleaver wrote:
>> The wider EL community is trapped between a rock and a hard place
>> somewhat. If you try to direct Fedora into the needs of EL users,
>> you stand a good chance of getting told to pound stand, and that EL
>> is getting in the way of bleeding-edge progress. Traditionally,
>
> For what it's worth (I hope something!) I think this is an outdated
fear
> or
> assumption. Before Fedora.next, the "default user" for Fedora was
assumed
> to
> be an indiviual desktop user, and the overall Fedora OS offering meant to
> be
> one-size-fits-all but modeled to that user. That wasn't working, partly
> for the reason you identify here. Nonetheless, something like 20% of
> Fedora
> usage is on servers, and a lot of people work with Fedora in parallel with
> a Enterprise Linux deployment. We needed to find a place for those users
> to
> have a voice.
I would like to hear the reasons of those who chose to use Fedora on their
server. Specifically what advantages one has found compared to other
alternatives. And also what kind of server that is. Single
user/home/family one? Serving some department or similar (say 100 people,
who may need services 24/7/365)? I know, this is just my curiosity, as I
did make my own choice, but curiosity grossly fueled by the fact that my
choice is grossly different.

Always happy to hear different [from mine] opinions which may be based on
different objectives.

Valeri
>
> So, Fedora Server was explicitly chartered as not just for its own sake
> (although we intend to make that true as well) but also the intentional
> upstream for downstream enterprise Linux consumers. That doesn't mean
that
> every change there goes into RHEL, or is RH blessed or even Red Hat
> aligned
> ??? but the needs of EL users are *definitely* taken into account.
>
>
>> wider EL-using community. Does it want direct feedback in the form
>> of tickets? Should people form SIGs? Obviously RHEL7 is not changing
>> init systems, but where should one talk about the future?
>
> If this is your interest, I'd really encourage you to get more involved
> in Fedora Server. We could use your input.
>
>
> --
> Matthew Miller
> <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
> Fedora Project Leader
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On 10/20/18 7:42 AM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> I would like to hear the reasons of those who chose to use Fedora on their
> server. Specifically what advantages one has found compared to other
> alternatives. And also what kind of server that is. Single
> user/home/family one? Serving some department or similar (say 100 people,
> who may need services 24/7/365)? I know, this is just my curiosity, as I
> did make my own choice, but curiosity grossly fueled by the fact that my
> choice is grossly different.
> 
> Always happy to hear different [from mine] opinions which may be based on
> different objectives.
We are running about 50 development servers for the Storage Systems 
Research Center in the University of California, Santa Cruz. All Fedora. 
We will be updating all machines to F29 as soon as it is released. The 
reason is that we want the students to have access to the latest 
development toolchain, libraries, and other tools from the Linux world 
in a reasonably stable fashion. Fedora is the best fit. Not bleeding 
edge, but not outdated either. Our infrastructure servers, such as file 
sharing, cluster management, etc., are all Fedora machines too, for 
homogeneity and simplicity.

We don't need 24/7/365 uptime, but in my memory, there has been no 
downtime caused by anything in Fedora in the past decade. And we always 
do in-place upgrading when a new Fedora comes out. Upgrading from one 
Fedora to the next never failed us in the past decade either in my memory.

Occasionally, one or more machines will be loaded with CentOS 7 for a 
few months for running Lustre or some other CentOS/RHEL certified software.

This is unrelated to the campus-wise Linux clusters that are managed by 
the university IT department, which maintains hundreds of CentOS 
machines for the whole campus.

I also know colleagues who maintain Fedora as servers from my other 
jobs. These were for all kinds of services: email, file storage, 
development, etc. Why Fedora over CentOS? I guess Fedora is more fun to 
play with and is stable enough for these applications. As I said before, 
in-place upgrading for Fedora is pretty reliable. And doing it once a 
year (or every 6 months) to get the latest software is a good bargain 
for a techie.

-- 
Yan Li

On Sat, October 20, 2018 10:22 am, Yan Li wrote:
> On 10/20/18 7:42 AM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>> I would like to hear the reasons of those who chose to use Fedora on
>> their
>> server. Specifically what advantages one has found compared to other
>> alternatives. And also what kind of server that is. Single
>> user/home/family one? Serving some department or similar (say 100
>> people,
>> who may need services 24/7/365)? I know, this is just my curiosity, as
I
>> did make my own choice, but curiosity grossly fueled by the fact that
my
>> choice is grossly different.
>>
>> Always happy to hear different [from mine] opinions which may be based
>> on
>> different objectives.
>
> We are running about 50 development servers for the Storage Systems
> Research Center in the University of California, Santa Cruz. All Fedora.
> We will be updating all machines to F29 as soon as it is released. The
> reason is that we want the students to have access to the latest
> development toolchain, libraries, and other tools from the Linux world
> in a reasonably stable fashion. Fedora is the best fit. Not bleeding
> edge, but not outdated either. Our infrastructure servers, such as file
> sharing, cluster management, etc., are all Fedora machines too, for
> homogeneity and simplicity.
>
> We don't need 24/7/365 uptime, but in my memory, there has been no
> downtime caused by anything in Fedora in the past decade. And we always
> do in-place upgrading when a new Fedora comes out. Upgrading from one
> Fedora to the next never failed us in the past decade either in my memory.
>
> Occasionally, one or more machines will be loaded with CentOS 7 for a
> few months for running Lustre or some other CentOS/RHEL certified
> software.
>
> This is unrelated to the campus-wise Linux clusters that are managed by
> the university IT department, which maintains hundreds of CentOS
> machines for the whole campus.
>
> I also know colleagues who maintain Fedora as servers from my other
> jobs. These were for all kinds of services: email, file storage,
> development, etc. Why Fedora over CentOS? I guess Fedora is more fun to
> play with and is stable enough for these applications. As I said before,
> in-place upgrading for Fedora is pretty reliable. And doing it once a
> year (or every 6 months) to get the latest software is a good bargain
> for a techie.
Oh, great, I now can see the world with your eyes! And last part about
servers life cycle wise doesn't sound much different from what I do using
FreeBSD and jails. The only difference is maybe in how frequently I have
to reboot Linux (any flavor) due to kernel or glibc security update
compared to reboot of FreeBSD.

Thanks a lot!

Valeri
>
> --
> Yan Li
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++