Not that I am disagreeing or anything, more questioning...but would we say

OpenBSD is better then Nokia Checkpoint Firewalls (disregarding cost

here)...
-----Original Message-----

From: owner-misc@openbsd.org [mailto:owner-misc@openbsd.org] On Behalf Of

Joachim Schipper

Sent: 11 June 2009 10:14

To: misc@openbsd.org

Subject: Re: OpenBSD HA
O n Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 09:13:33AM -0400, Marcos Ortiz Valmaseda wrote:

quoted text
> Regards to all list.

> I have several questions about OpenBSD that I don't have clear.

> Look, we are a investigation team that we want to implant a DataCenter for

> PostgreSQL, and we are thinking to use to FreeBSD like the plataform to

let

quoted text
> the databases( or the clusters of the db) and to use OpenBSD like the

firewall

quoted text
> to the outside. But we are very new in OpenBSD and we want to know if we

could

quoted text
> build a product above OpenBSD for all: like plataform and like firewall,

> because then we can use only one project and time to build the product

would

quoted text
> be more short.

> if we would use to

> OpenBSD like a firewall Which would br the best solution to do that ?

> 1- With a redundant firewall

> 2- With a centralized firewall

> etc

OpenBSD is widely used as a (redundant) firewall: pf is developed on

OpenBSD, and software like pfsync makes it easy to build a redundant

firewall. The network stack has been tuned extensively, etc. In short,

OpenBSD is quite possibly the best firewall platform available today,

and is very likely the best *nix firewall platform. And it's certainly

cheaper than Cisco.
As to PostgreSQL: it works just fine on OpenBSD. I'd encourage you to at

least try (benchmark) it to see if OpenBSD can suit your needs. FreeBSD

wlll do fine as a database platform, too; but OpenBSD has a stronger

focus on security, and - as you point out - running a single OS is

easier.

If you decide not to go with OpenBSD, you may wish to consider

OpenSolaris instead of FreeBSD, which will allow you to use ZFS and

DTrace, both of which may be useful in a PostgreSQL deployment. There

are good reasons not to use (Open)Solaris (you may consider it "not

truly free", Oracle may kill it, you may have trouble finding people

with experience, the userland utilities lack polish, etc), but at least

it does offer some useful things in exchange for the headache of running

two different OSes.
OpenBSD is not usually used on "big iron", so if you want to have one

huge(ly expensive) database server, you may wish to go with something

else. Reputedly, Linux and (Open)Solaris both do well here; I honestly

couldn't tell you if FreeBSD is a good choice.
		Joachim