[CentOS] EL 6 rollout strategies? (Scientific Linux)

Sat May 7 16:23:06 UTC 2011
Chuck Munro <chuckm at seafoam.net>


On 05/07/2011 09:00 AM, Benjamin Smith wrote:
>
> I was wondering what feedback might be offered by the CentOS community on their
> experiences using Scientific Linux?
>
> I'm a long-time Centos user, and am basically happy with CentOS. I understand
> there are delays getting EL 6 out.  We have been long anxious to roll out EL 6
> as soon as it's ready, but our time window for rollout is looming and we will
> need to act. (for business reasons, we need to rollout over summer, before Aug
> 1, we need to start regression testing now!)
>
> I was once a WhiteBox Enterprise Linux user and switched to CentOS 4 without
> issue, and am assuming that I might need to do something similar if we decide
> to go this route.
>
> Any feedback is appreciated!

I had to complete a new VM Host machine before CentOS-6 was ready, so I 
used SL-6 as the underpinnings.  It simply worked, once I ironed out a 
couple of unrelated hardware issues.  It auto-updates and lets me know 
when that's been done, but it doesn't reboot unless I want to, so 
there's little risk in allowing the updates.  Auto-update can be 
disabled if you prefer.

So far it has been flawless.  It's managing two very large software 
RAID-6 arrays and 7 Guest VMs on a dual-Xeon Supermicro motherboard.

All of the VM Guest OS's are CentOS-5.6 which works well for my 
applications.  I may or may not upgrade the Guests to C6, depending on 
need.  CentOS has been so reliable that I'm reluctant to move to a 
different platform.  I've used Ubuntu Server and it works well, but I'm 
more familiar with the RHEL way of doing things so I'll stick with CentOS.

One thing I don't know much about is an in-place upgrade of C5 to C6. 
There are some under-the-hood differences that must be taken into 
account, which I haven't looked into.

YMMV,
Chuck