Re: [Veritas-bu] Nbu 7.0

As to not running on CentOS – The only thing I know of off the top of my head that blows up on install is Oracle products but that is simply because they put a routine in that tells it which OSes they’re allowed to run on. You can certainly run Oracle products on CentOS (unsupported by Oracle of course) by simply tweaking the file that stores which OSes are allowed OR by modifying the /etc/redhat-release file to make it say it is one of the supported RedHat versions.

Of course in my post I did also say that running CentOS as your master server is a bad idea even if you could make it run due to support issues.

I’d disagree with what you say about the release cycle of CentOS – since its releases are tied to RHEL’s it has the same release cycle (delayed somewhat). However, I’m not suggesting it should be supported by Symantec or any other vendor.

Here we run RHEL for 95% of our Linux needs (and 100% of our Production Linux needs). We have CentOS and Debian installs for very specific one off systems or workstations. It is fine to say to the user “it might work, but it will be unsupported” but to try to pretend there is some inherent badness in other distros as opposed to RHEL isn’t appropriate in my view. I know of one Atlanta based cable network that runs Ubuntu/MySQL for most of what they do in the Linux arena (including web servers) where they formerly ran HP-UX (UNIX). The folks there wouldn’t be caught dead running RHEL or any RPM based distro.

From: JC Cheney [mailto:joseph_cheney AT symantec DOT com]
Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2010 3:50 AM
To: Ed Wilts; Lightner, Jeff
Cc: VERITAS-BU AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Nbu 7.0

Not tested. To compile and maintain the client code is a relatively simple process; to compile / test / qualify all of the media and master server functionality is a huge undertaking.

It’s not just a matter of “compile it and see if it runs”. You have to test all of the supported peripherals such as robots, tape drives, storage arrays, etc. and then try to maintain this on a platform that is built by a group of volunteers around the world making who know’s what changes?

People such as Redhat and SusE have very well defined hardware qualification plans and detailed release cycles; this is just not the case with CentOS.

Add to this that there are relatively few people who use CentOS in a datacentre environment (compared to Redhat or SuSE that is) and it quickly becomes commercially unviable.

From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Ed Wilts
Sent: 14 July 2010 20:15
To: Lightner, Jeff
Cc: VERITAS-BU AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Nbu 7.0

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Lightner, Jeff <jlightner AT water DOT com> wrote:

CentOS is compiled from RHEL source and is intended to have full binary
compatibility with RHEL.

Intended - yes
In practice - mostly

There are cases out there where applications intended to run on a RHEL distro will not install without modifications. The distributions, although based on the same sources, are not the same. There are applications out there TODAY that won't install or run correctly on CentOS but will install and run correctly on RHEL.

RHEL is not self-hosting - in other words, it's possible that the binaries you get can not be built with the sources you get. That's happened in the past due to compiler bugs but I haven't heard of it happening lately.

CentOS, as a client, is supported by Symantec according to the current compatibility list at ftp://exftpp.symantec.com/pub/support/products/NetBackup_Enterprise_Server/337048.pdf. It's not supported as a master or media server. We don't know if it's because they tested it and it failed, or if they tested it, it worked but they don't want to support it, or they simply didn't test it.

In general, I would expect that you could make a NBU 7 master install on CentOS and it would likely work. It will not be supported by anybody.

Depending on the tier of the hardware that you're running the master server on, the list price for the x86-based Linux master/media runs from $5K to $12K and that doesn't cover any clients or options nor the backup hardware or media. A RHEL subscription can be had for $349 per year.

My personal opinion is that the $349 per year should not break the business case.

.../Ed

Disclaimer: I'm a Red Hat Certified Engineer so I obviously have some bias to go along with my experience.

Ed Wilts, RHCE, BCFP, BCSD, SCSP, SCSE
ewilts AT ewilts DOT org

Proud partner. Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

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