[olug] replacing Windows Server 2003 with Linux distro

[T. J. Brumfield]

+1 for CentOS, which is Red Hat minus the branding to make it free as in
beer. If you want commercial support, then go Red Hat or SUSE. SUSE in
particular is very easy to manage with Yast, and they have good
interoperability tools to work in an existing Windows environment. If you
want a free version of SUSE, there is openSUSE, which just had a major
release last week.

I don't want to start another flame war because Ubuntu is massively popular,
but they do seem to constantly ship broken packages. People often say it is
fine in the enterprise because they have a LTS (Long Term Support) release.
But those are the same buggy packages, just with longer support. Ubuntu is
fine for your desktop, but I wouldn't put it on a production box in an
enterprise envrionment.

If file serving is your main concern, you may also want to consider Open
Solaris or a varient like Nexenta. It uses the Solaris kernel so you get the
ZFS file system. In addition to hardware and software RAID, it supports
"pools" which can be dynamically adjusted. It also supports
snapshots/revisions of files, is very fast, etc.
-- T. J.
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 7:52 AM, Curtis LaMasters <curtislamasters at gmail.com
> wrote:

> But we are talking about a basic file server for a small business. And I
> have extended a fair amount of volumes with great success on Windows.  I'm
> not being a fanboy here but it's there is no compelling reason to jump
> ship,
> then why?
>
> To the original poster; I prefer Ubuntu or Centos.  I have both running on
> 2800 series Dell's.
>
> Curtis LaMasters
> http://www.curtis-lamasters.com
> http://www.builtnetworks.com
>
>
>  On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 7:38 AM, Hurley Rod <RHurley at tenaska.com> wrote:
>
> > Other than NTFS (on server 2003) won't let you extend a volume without
> > corruption?  Or the amazing intermittent functionality of Microsoft's
> MPIO?
> >  Or perhaps just the $250 per incident (call India, get transferred to
> > Bangladesh, then to a page turner, then finally {after sending every
> > possible dump log known to man} getting to work with a developer?
> >
> > I'm just saying...and this was just this week.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: olug-bounces at olug.org [mailto:olug-bounces at olug.org] On Behalf Of
> > Curtis LaMasters
> > Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2010 7:33 AM
> > To: dstaehr at neb.rr.com; Omaha Linux User Group
> > Subject: Re: [olug] replacing Windows Server 2003 with Linux distro
> >
> > I know this is a Linux users group but what's the need to get rid of
> Server
> > 2003?
> >
> > Curtis LaMasters
> > http://www.curtis-lamasters.com
> > http://www.builtnetworks.com
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 11:22 PM, Dan Staehr <dstaehr at neb.rr.com> wrote:
> >
> > > What Linux distro would work well as a replacement of Windows on a Dell
> > > PowerEdge 2800  server?
> > >
> > > This is currently being used as a mail and file server for a small
> > > business.
> > >
> > > Dan Staehr
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus
> > signature
> > > database 5299 (20100721) __________
> > >
> > > The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.
> > >
> > > http://www.eset.com
>
>