There was a talk on January 08, 2014 at linux.conf.au Linux conference by Marc Merlin, Google server sysadmin and software engineer.
Quoting the description [1]: > This talk will look at how we upgraded our ancient linux distribution on all > the Google production > servers to a more modern one based on debian stripped down and built from > source. In his talk [2] at 13:50 Marc briefly touched the init system choice question. Perhaps it's worth taking into account. [1] http://linux.conf.au/schedule/30014/view_talk?day=wednesday [2] http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2014/Wednesday/71-Live_upgrading_many_thousands_of_servers_from_an_ancient_RedHat_7.1_to_a_10_year_newer_Debian_-_Marc_MERLIN.mp4 -- Алексей Шилин