[Bioclusters] Operating system choice.

[David Robillard]

Good evening everyone,

I'm in the process of building a compute farm and my main concern is =
with the Operating System choice.

As a unix systems admin, I'm not a big fan of Red Hat linux products (or =
anything RPM based for that matter), because of dependency problems =
inherent to RPM. I would prefer to go with Debian GNU/Linux or with =
FreeBSD. Unfortunately, my Upper Management team thinks Linux and Red =
Hat are identical.

I thus face two barriers:

a) The OS needs to be compatible with Platform LSF and Veritas NetBackup =
client.

b) I need proper arguments to demonstrate to Upper Management why we =
should NOT use Red Hat.=20

Therefore,=20

Does anyone have experience with LSF/NetBackup on Debian or FreeBSD?

Could someone help me put together a "sales pitch" for either Debian or =
FreeBSD? Otherwise, the OS choice will be a business choice and not a =
technical/systems administration choice. Hence I'll be "stuck" with =
it...

Here are some details or the environment:

-I have 5+ years experience running Solaris, Debian, FreeBSD and Red Hat =
machines.
-This compute farm will be running on x86 architecture, the Intel Xeon =
CPU.
-Gigabit ethernet will be used for interconnect, nothing fancy here.
-Master node will be connected to a SAN and will be backed-up by Veritas =
NetBackup.
-Compute nodes will boot via PXE/Etherboot (undecided yet) and mount =
their kernel via NFS. A local drive will be there for swap.
-The applications running on this compute farm are in-house algorithms =
which don't use MPI nor PVM.

Thanks for your help,

David

--
David Robillard
UNIX systems administrator
david.robillard@galileogenomics.com
+1 514 270 3991 x285
Galileo Genomics