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