Re: OT: OS choice for dedicated server

[Tim <tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 11:52:23PM -0500, Justin C. Sherrill wrote:
> Why are you limited in OS choice?  Do you not own the machine?  And is it
> multiprocessor?

  The OS choices are as presented to me by 15minuteservers.com.  These
are dedicated servers (as opposed to a colo server) so the provider
owns them.  In return, I don't pay for the server upfront (well the
setup fee probably covers it in reality) and I don't have to worry
about the upkeep (something breaks they fix it).  I might prefer
a colo except there's not a decent one within driving distance and
frankly after years of running ISP's I kinda like the idea of not
having to worry about the hardware.  :-)

  If you know of a cheap but reliable colo (I don't need tons of
bandwidth but it needs to be good bandwidth) that I can ship a colo
box to I might consider that, but the prospect of a dead machine in
the middle of the night that I am responsible for doesn't sound very
attractive at the moment.

> DragonFly is a valid choice right now - I'm planning to
> move shiningsilence.com to DragonFly over the next week, for instance, as
> I pick up some AMD64 hardware.

  Hmmm, I can get that from 15minuteservers as a custom OS install
but I wasn't under the impression that DragonFlyBSD is production
quality at the moment.  I do need stability and while I have remote
hands, it's limited to rebooting or re-imaging with OS.  I won't have
local console so if I am likely going to end up with a non-bootable
kernel I want to stay away from it.

  Thanks,

  Tim