O n Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 09:13:33AM -0400, Marcos Ortiz Valmaseda wrote:
> Regards to all list.
> I have several questions about OpenBSD that I don't have clear.
> Look, we are a investigation team that we want to implant a DataCenter for
> PostgreSQL, and we are thinking to use to FreeBSD like the plataform to let
> the databases( or the clusters of the db) and to use OpenBSD like the firewall
> to the outside. But we are very new in OpenBSD and we want to know if we could
> build a product above OpenBSD for all: like plataform and like firewall,
> because then we can use only one project and time to build the product would
> be more short.
> if we would use to
> OpenBSD like a firewall Which would br the best solution to do that ?
> 1- With a redundant firewall
> 2- With a centralized firewall
> etc
OpenBSD is widely used as a (redundant) firewall: pf is developed on
OpenBSD, and software like pfsync makes it easy to build a redundant
firewall. The network stack has been tuned extensively, etc. In short,
OpenBSD is quite possibly the best firewall platform available today,
and is very likely the best *nix firewall platform. And it's certainly
cheaper than Cisco.
As to PostgreSQL: it works just fine on OpenBSD. I'd encourage you to at
least try (benchmark) it to see if OpenBSD can suit your needs. FreeBSD
wlll do fine as a database platform, too; but OpenBSD has a stronger
focus on security, and - as you point out - running a single OS is
easier.
If you decide not to go with OpenBSD, you may wish to consider
OpenSolaris instead of FreeBSD, which will allow you to use ZFS and
DTrace, both of which may be useful in a PostgreSQL deployment. There
are good reasons not to use (Open)Solaris (you may consider it "not
truly free", Oracle may kill it, you may have trouble finding people
with experience, the userland utilities lack polish, etc), but at least
it does offer some useful things in exchange for the headache of running
two different OSes.
OpenBSD is not usually used on "big iron", so if you want to have one
huge(ly expensive) database server, you may wish to go with something
else. Reputedly, Linux and (Open)Solaris both do well here; I honestly
couldn't tell you if FreeBSD is a good choice.
Joachim
