Admin:OS strategy

Current situation:


 * One Linux login server
 * Everything else runs Solaris

Problems/goals:


 * Run as few OSs as possible
 * Avoid Oracle

There are four separate types of system in the TS cluster:


 * Login server
 * Web server
 * Database server
 * Storage cluster (NFS/LDAP) server

We want a single OS for each type, but a single OS for all types is not necessary (though it is desirable).

Options:


 * Solaris
 * FreeBSD

For storage, Solaris is the only reasonable option. Solaris, Sun Cluster and Vx provides a stable and reliable platform for storage clustering, and is mostly hands-off after it's installed, so little maintenance is required.

For the web server, an additional constraint is that it must run ZWS. (This might change in future if we move to a different web server.) The only option there is Solaris.

For login and database servers, there is no compelling reason to use Solaris, so FreeBSD is a better choice because it avoids Oracle.

Originally, we planned to run FreeBSD on login servers and retain Solaris on web servers. However, after further discussion we decided this doesn't make sense, so we will be retaining Solaris on both for now. We should look for a non-ZWS web server solution so we can migrate these to FreeBSD later.

The final configuration is thus:


 * Login servers: Solaris
 * Web servers: Solaris
 * Database servers: FreeBSD
 * Storage servers: Solaris