Futureproof OS recommendation

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nwzholleh
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Futureproof OS recommendation

Post by nwzholleh »

Hi All,

Currently im running CentOS7.9 with Zimbra v9 NE.
Just wanted to know whats the direction for Zimbra recommended OS?

The plan now is to start opting for Oracle Linux for my Zimbra server environment.

Any recommendation or concern that I should know if going this road?

Thanks
phoenix
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Re: Futureproof OS recommendation

Post by phoenix »

Pick any of the CentOS 8 'clones' and it will work well, I currently use RockyLinux and there's no difference in installation or performance. ;)

BTW, I forgot to mention that you can do an in-place upgrade to RockyLinux 8 - there are a ton of 'how to' articles on the internet. I'd suggest you do some research on how to do it. Obviously you'd need to backup your current system before the upgrade. You can stop (and disable) your ZCS server then run an upgrade once the O/S is upgraded.
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barrydegraaff
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Re: Futureproof OS recommendation

Post by barrydegraaff »

If you want to have the ability to do dist upgrades, Ubuntu is best. And if I look back in time I must say Ubuntu has been a constant in the Linux distro world. Where they don't seem to change course too much.

Since it seems RedHat wants to focus on RedHat that would be an alternative if you want to stay on an RPM based distro, but it would only make sense if you also want to pay for their support.

Personally I would stay away from Oracle, probably from being traumatized by their database product licensing.
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nwzholleh
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Joined: Thu Sep 29, 2022 8:27 am

Re: Futureproof OS recommendation

Post by nwzholleh »

phoenix wrote:Pick any of the CentOS 8 'clones' and it will work well, I currently use RockyLinux and there's no difference in installation or performance. ;)

BTW, I forgot to mention that you can do an in-place upgrade to RockyLinux 8 - there are a ton of 'how to' articles on the internet. I'd suggest you do some research on how to do it. Obviously you'd need to backup your current system before the upgrade. You can stop (and disable) your ZCS server then run an upgrade once the O/S is upgraded.
So by upgrade you mean from CentOS7.9 -> Rocky 8, then upgrade ZCS with Rocky 8 package is it?
Say I have multiple node, the upgrading of OS + ZCS would also need to abide by ZCS upgrade flow? LDAP -> MTA -> Proxy ->MB
barrydegraaff wrote:If you want to have the ability to do dist upgrades, Ubuntu is best. And if I look back in time I must say Ubuntu has been a constant in the Linux distro world. Where they don't seem to change course too much.

Since it seems RedHat wants to focus on RedHat that would be an alternative if you want to stay on an RPM based distro, but it would only make sense if you also want to pay for their support.

Personally I would stay away from Oracle, probably from being traumatized by their database product licensing.
By database product licensing meaning?
If I were to proceed with Oracle, any other kind of subscription/license like payment (eg. repo full access) that I should know of?
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barrydegraaff
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Re: Futureproof OS recommendation

Post by barrydegraaff »

Oracle has a tendency to change licenses on their products, Google "oracle license change java" they also change the licensing on their Oracle DB product (personal experience). They are free to do so, but it rarely works out for anyone other than Oracle, this is my opinion.

The only reason why they did not change VirtualBox and MySQL is because the open-source portions are guarded by GPL. Which I guess would also make Oracle Linux a safe option. But unless you want Oracle support, why would one choose this?

I liked RedHat, but the change of CentOS 8, the push for XFS and SystemD and honestly the implementation of SELinux, made me go to Ubuntu.

But make your own considerations, Zimbra will work on CentOS, Oracle Linux, Rocky Linux and Ubuntu. There are no plans to change this OS line-up at this time. (Other than dropping old versions and adding newer ones)
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JDunphy
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Re: Futureproof OS recommendation

Post by JDunphy »

barrydegraaff wrote:Which I guess would also make Oracle Linux a safe option. But unless you want Oracle support, why would one choose this?
Putting my biases out there.

I run Oracle Linux because it was the only option to transition at the time and they had a script to move from centos that worked well enough that it didn't require a reboot. From memory, there were 2 other factors that pushed me toward Oracle... 1) they track very close to RHEL and they do that quickly - usually within hours of patches 2) If you need support, you don't have to change the OS.. centos to RHEL always seemed strange to me. Now they offer free servers on their oracle cloud platform and the new announced deal this week with IBM/RHEL makes the relationship closer. They also provide a lot of patches to the linux community including kernel patches. I do not run their kernel however. So why choose Oracle, you do not want to visi

Having said that... for individuals you can get RHEL free by creating and account and doing this yearly. Note: I was a Sun Catalyst developer for 10 years so it was painful choosing Oracle but now I really prefer it for Zimbra. I would imagine if I had been a java programmer instead of a c programmer, I might not have been able to choose Oracle. ;-)

Ref: https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-isos.html
Ref: https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-8.html
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