RE: [cobalt-users] Why I'll Never do business with Sun Cobalt AGAIN!

["Brett Barron" <bb2@xxxxxxxx>]

> I am planning to have this Cobalt run DNS, e-mail and web servers.
> I plan to install web-based e-mail and run popular programs like PHP,
MySQL, etc. I
> don't want to get 100 customers on it and deal with crashes

Cobalt make a decent product as good or better than any similarly priced,
and functioned alternative.  If you or your user/self-admins have limited
Linux experience, the GUI can be a significant advantage.  I've been admin
for 3 Qubes and five RaQs (ranging from models 2 - 4) for the past two
years.  I routinely see uptimes of hundreds of days.  The RaQ's simply don't
crash.  A Qube3 was unreliable after a memory upgrade, but that was traced
to a bad RAM module and corrected with a replacement.  If you keep patches
up to date, and read this and the security list for security tips, the RaQ's
are at least as reliable as any other Linux server you could select.  Now
remember that the 3i isn't a particularly fast machine.  You can fit 100
mom/pop type sites with static pages receiving few thousand hits/mo on it
easily.  You will NOT be happy if you try to run 100 heavily hit sites with
a few dozen users each hitting webmail or php/mysql apps every five minuets,
however.  As with any server today: fill it with RAM, it's cheap, and will
make a BIG difference if you do have considerable mySQL usage.


> If I make reliable backups using the *.raq backup to another server, can
it be put back >> > relatively easy? I mean, how much can you trust the
restore for server config files?

It is true that the standard Cobalt backup via the GUI is NOT suitable for
disaster recovery.  It serves a reasonable purpose of allowing users to keep
local copies of static documents and spool files, but that's about it.

But there are a number of alternatives which can help ranging from cron
backup scripts which do grab the necessary files (it's a popular topic in
the archives) to commercially available solutions from Legato, Arkeia and
others I'm sure.  While I would like to see a real disaster recovery option
built into the Cobalt product, I'm aware that most other server
manufacturers also leave it to the customer to select (and purchase) the
level of insurance which fits their budget/critical need.

--bb