Chapter 9. Migrating From Red Hat Linux

To illustrate the methodology, tools, and best practices discussed earlier in this book, this chapter presents an example of the process using a Linux-to-Solaris migration. The example environment is based on a small company of about 40 people, developing Internet software and services. They initially standardized on the Linux platform for the entire company because of its low acquisition cost, but were recently bought by a larger company that had standardized on Solaris systems. The acquired company was already looking into alternative platforms for their commercial production environment to handle the flood of customers who access their services, but in light of the acquisition, they decided to widen their scope to include all of their information technology systems.

In our example, we follow this migration project through the entire methodology, detailing key activities and decisions along the way. We begin the chapter with information about the initial business case and the high-level decisions about which platform to migrate to, and then detail the assessment of the current environment following the previous sections' methodology and tools. From there, we work through the architecture until we get to a design to prototype. The chapter concludes with the implementation and management of the environment.

This chapter contains the following sections:

• "Overview of Linux" on page 161

• "Justifying the Migration" on page 168

• "Architecting the Target Solaris Environment" on page 170

• "Implementing the Migration to the Solaris Environment" on page 174

• "Managing the New Solaris Environment" on page 175