On 12/21/2010 8:12 AM, Joseph Apuzzo wrote:
Once OEM's start recommending to deploy there software on Ubuntu, and
I see the customer set migration, then I will recommend Ubuntu. But
currently reality is that CentOS is one dam good enterprise platform
that has been used in production for many years.
I will agree with that. Keyword is enterprise. Enterprise apps don't
need to do things like:
From the web server grab a snapshot of another website and convert the
image into 3-4 thumbnails.
Combine all button images into a single sprite, crush it, optimize it,
and generate a single file. All automatically without requiring the
user to think.
Use the latest cutest edge MongoDB software and configure sharding to
scale out a web application to millions of users.
And do all of the above cheaply.
With CentOS you CAN do all of the above, but your setup and
configuration is going to be non-trivial and require a large amount of
system admin time....[well, you CAN just blindly follow some
instructions for downloading the source and running make on the
net.....however I figure that if your using CentOS your using it
partially for it's rock solid security.. and it is just plain stupid to
blindly follow some strangers instructions for compiling a daemon
process and installing it on your server and then try to claim your
system is secure.]
In short, unless you actually have the money to pay for a couple
dedidicated system admins, I have found just about everyone who uses
CentOS for "security" ends up destroying that security when they have
some really "cool" feature they just HAVE to have on their website.
What you can do to bridge to that point though is differentiate your
servers. IE if you just HAVE to run a Kaltura video processing
server[open source PHP web application which uses ffmpeg to convert
video files into iPhone, 3G, Flash formats in one batch process job via
web interface]...move all of that onto it's own Ubuntu server and just
use the API's to offload the work from your "secure" environment to an
easily configurable environment.
However, back to running Drupal...if your running Drupal you want to run
PHP 5.2 or better. CentOS is stuck with 5.1 so it is not a good
platform for Drupal unless you are paying those system admin guys to
compile all the dependencies you will need to make it functional.
You have to know your target usage to determine which to use. The
problem I have is I run to a lot of guys who "paid some consultant" to
setup a LAMP server for them. The consultant sets up a CentOS box
because it is "secure" and walks away. To update it to a usable LAMP
environment the consultant charge a fair and reasonable cost[that it,
nevertheless, way outside the budget of the client].
If you decide you need to generate a dynamic PDF file based on the
latest HTML5 spec using CSS3, that's fairly simple. It's about 4 lines
of PHP code if you have wkhtmltopdf installed. Takes a couple of hours
of coding and testing to integrate. But if you have CentOS, your gonna
need to have your systems consultant do that install and a small $250
project just had another $1000, at least, added to it. If you want to
keep it under $500 it's doable, but it means the PDF generation will be
outsourced to an external server and service provider. My experience is
that lots of small businesses, and even small departments in large
businesses, can justify a sub $500 project that adds a little splash or
user friendly behavior to their website. Once you go over $1000, the
project needs to go through a large management chain to get approved.
-Gary
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org
http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug
Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium
Jan 5 - Building a Community Site with Drupal
Feb 2 - Zimbra
Mar 2 - MHVLUG 8th Anniversary - Show and Tell
