* Nate Williams (nateyogotech.com) [020418 18:12]:
> > > > FreeBSD currently does not enable easy maintainance between critical release
> > > > points for large server environments. Using cvsup to maintain source builds
> > > > for environments like these ( say 400 servers or more ) is not only
> > > > unacceptable without an on staff developer and release engineer, it is
> > > > infeasible.
> > > >
> > > > For those of you who would be quick to note that "Corporations with
> > > > 400 servers should be able to afford a developer and release engineer"
> > > > please note that 400 NT, Solaris, AIX, or HP-UX servers can be
> > > > maintained by a small team of administrators, and do not require these
> > > > extra resources.
> > >
> > > So, for 400 NT, Solaris, AIX, or HP-UX servers you allow a small team,
> > > and for FreeBSD you don't even allow a single engineer? Seems kind of a
> > > double standard.
> > >
> > > And as a long-time administrator, I disagree that FreeBSD is more
> > > difficult to maintain releases across systems. I've done Ultrix, SunOS,
> > > Solaris, FreeBSD, and (ack!) Linux, and I find that FreeBSD is second to
> > > Solaris, but barely so.
> > >
> > > However, Solaris doesn't even provide anything remotely close to what
> > > Brett is asking, and they're getting paid alot for the OS than FreeBSD
> > > is getting paid.
> > >
> > > Nate
> >
> > I think you misunderstood. I meant you don't need release engineers for
> > any of the above, only FreeBSD. FreeBSD might be great, but it doesn't admin
> > itself yet. ;) Consider 4 sysadmins, and 2 release engineers for FreeBSD, as
> > opposed to just 4 sysadmins for NT / Solaris / AIX / HP-UX.
>
> Call it what you like, but I consider preparing/testing a release for
> our configuration part of the 'sysadmin' job. Certainly the IS staff at
> my company does hardware/software verification as part of their job, on
> *all* platforms (including Win98/NT/Win2K/WinME/XP, along with all of
> the *nix variants).
>
> If it makes you feel better, use the title 'release engineer', but the
> staff of 4 people should be more than adequate to do all of the tasks
> necessary to support your installations, regardless of whether FreeBSD
> is used or not.
>
>
> Nate

That is very convenient, but I wouldn't call it realistic. We're talking about
more than just verification here. We're talking about building and testing an
entire OS from source, and then distributing it among a large number of
machines. While I'm sure most sysadmins would like to fancy themselves
superpeople (I would!), most of us aren't. ;) The point here is that release
engineering is very much a larger task than using release patches. With a
large server farm, you are going to have lots of reasons to have folks soley
dedicated to just this task.

-- 
Benjamin Krueger
"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about."
- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
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