On 05/17/2011 08:23 AM, Tom Hill wrote:
I've worked with open source and commercial solutions, and while the open source systems were almost always far more flexible, and cheaper up front, they certainly required more work to get going.. Once setup and running though both types of solutions had pretty equal amounts of maintenance, with the commercial solutions requiring somewhat less time/babysitting for upgrades and to enable or use new features or functionality. I worry far more about upgrades to proprietary appliances (where it's often the whole system image), than I do about a few package updates on a Linux machine (followed by a service restart, or two).
But still, pretty well worded. :)
Tom
Can't speak for other brands these days but F5s have two hard disks in them. You can upgrade the software on the hot-spare, boot off that and confirm everything is working. If it isn't you can just switch back. Paul