RE: [cobalt-developers] RaQ replacements

["Rick Ewart" <cobalt@xxxxxxxxx>]

> > Interesting information.  I notice that you reference 
> majority of concern
> > with Plesk.  Do you have the same feedback about Ensim? 
> 
> When you install Ensim you use their "Ensim Operating System 
> Installer" to 
> install the underlying OS. Which is RedHat-7.3 in their case. 
> When you then 
> install their "WEBppliance Pro for Linux" and the related patches it 
> apparently takes care of the vulnerabilities which exist in 
> the ancient 
> RedHat-7.3 distribution. 
> 
> So in that regards it appears that Ensim takes care of the 
> problem, but I have 
> too little experience with Ensim to judge how thorough their 
> approach is. 

I am certainly not an expert with Ensim, however I have a couple of
boxen running with it - dual P3 servers I built with the intention of
doing shopping carts and other dynamic sites with.

Truthfully, I like these MUCH better, and feel a lot better about them
from a security standpoint. Essentially there are about a dozen or so
rpms you aren't supposed to mess with, but otherwise go for it. I
manually process the updates, doing a rpm -qa | grep "rpmname" instead
of up2date. This keeps me out of trouble as the rpms I am supposed to
leave alone have ensim in their names. Not too much danger of screwing
up.

Also, I like being able to load it on my own boxes so that I don't have
to get locked into a specific manufacturer. I use 2U boxes. Their power
supplies are normal ones you can buy at CompUSA or whereever. Helps me
sleep a bit better at night with respect to that.

Re: their timeliness, it isn't ALWAYS perfect, however it has been
CONSIDERABLY better than Sun. Add to that a decent forum/community
simliar to the Cobalt world, and it works really well. RackShack has a
great Ensim forum. There are a couple of folks there that really excel.
Essentially the Staubers, et al of this "world".

Re: WEBppliance Pro, I have heard a lot of complaints about switching
over to it from the old version, however they really seem to like it
once they get there. 

My experience is very positive so far, and I would never consider
another Cobalt box (even if they were not EOL), after playing with them.
Then again, your requisite knowledge of Linux is higher, but still not
too bad.

HTH.
Rick