Quote Originally Posted by DFriedl View Post
I don't disagree. It depends on your environment and what you're trying to accomplish. If you have the luxury of compiling the kernel and building the OS Gentoo-style for a customized server, say a hardened Apache webserver, as a VMware template, then deploy identical (both OS and "hardware") VMs as needed, you have as many servers built to do exactly what you need and nothing you don't with no more investment in time than any other system. An Ubuntu laptop set up for word processing and home "stuff" is an entirely different animal, but both are Linux. And so is the non-Windows appliance that some vendor sold you that supposedly require no OS maintenance. Basically, the planning is more important, but the level of customization is the benefit.
Sounds like you may be a fellow VMware admin? We don't utilize Linux based templates at all. Our company has really taken a stance on purchasing SLAs for just about everything. And RedHat is really gouging on support costs if virtualized. In some cases, it is actually cheaper to purchase a physical server and a standard support agreement. There has just been too much time lost trying to solve issues with distros like CentOS, so Linux based servers are being deployed less and less in our environment.

Another negative about Linux VMs is that VADP is not sufficient for backups. We do disk level backups with CommVault Simpana and file level restores are only possible with Windows VMs. The media agents are not able to index the contents unless you use volume level, which we don't do because we need the ability to do a container restore. This means that we end up having to purchase a full blown fat backup agent as well, so we can restore ACLs and files.

It sure feels like I should be on another forum right now.