Hi everyone,


Appreciating and looking for advises on a selection ...

I've been given a requirement to use one of the following distributions for a series of experiments with database servers (Vertica and most likely PostgreSQL too):

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11

Debian Linux 6 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

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Which one would you pick and why?


Thanks greatly for help.

Since you haven't told us any details of these "series of experiments" (could be related to performance, migration, specific features requested by devs, specific versions requested by Middleware) I'd say check the person who gave you the assignment, then check which distro runs the database and version you require, check the distro and vendor bug tracker for any problems, then decide.

Any of those could work, but

• do you want support? if you do, you'll have to choose one with support.
• do you need free (as in zero cost)? If you do, and that is in opposition to the first part, you won't be getting paid for support.
• what support period do you need? If it is, say, a one week experiment, this may not be the most relevant of considerations, but if you intend to leave it in place for a number of years, you should think about it
• do you have relevant experience; for me, given that openSUSE is my 'daily driver', I'd probably find Suse to be the easiest to adapt to (but still might choose Centos), but my experience isn't really relevant to you

The other things that I'd check are

• do your target databases make any recommendation about which file system to use, and do your target systems support those recommended systems? Sometimes there is recommendation for, eg, a raw filesystem, and let the database manage it itself (or, eg, ext4) for performance, and if a target database makes that reccomendation, you'd have to take it seriously (unless you know that your system/trial isn't going to load it much)
• are there other requirements, such as security/firewalling/cms etc, etc; if there are, particularly security, I'd look into SELinux and Apparmor, and which distros support the one of the those that you find easiest to adapt to

I don't know honestly. Each distribution has it's own strengths and weaknesses, but honestly, you should consider things like stability, up-times, software reliability, and support vectors.

The best choice isn't obviously any of them, and often you have to think outside the box to get what is most reliable.

As mentioned, CentOS would be a good target, Hardened Gentoo might be another, Slackware's good for anything, LFS can be good if you want to build it customized for a single or multi purpose, and even there are the BSDs like OpenBSD.

all are a bit old
that should be
RHEL 6.6 or 7.0
SELS 11 sp3 or 12
Debian 7.8 or 8.0

or the LTS 14.04 ubuntu


as to what OS ??????
with the only maybe of Postgresql


any OS

BUT
if the database is Oracle
then use the Oracle Operating system
RHEL7 should be using by default "Maria DB" ( the replacement for MySQL)