Which Linux is best for Oracle servers?

[Maheriano]

We got a pile of physical and virtual servers here at my work and they're all running IIS with Oracle which isn't really the best combination. I've only been working here since July and my occasional Linux suggestions are finally making it up the chain and they're going to implement a test server with Linux. If it all goes well they're going to port over all the IIS servers to Linux and have me take care of them!

Someone here mentioned using RedHat because of its commercial support and it, "...seems to be the best distribution for Oracle." I see that Canonical also offers support commercially so I'm wondering how an Ubuntu server install would communicate with Oracle. Is RedHat really better?

[rolandrock]

Someone here mentioned using RedHat because of its commercial support and it, "...seems to be the best distribution for Oracle." I see that Canonical also offers support commercially so I'm wondering how an Ubuntu server install would communicate with Oracle. Is RedHat really better?

Oracle will give you some support on Ubuntu (contact oracle support for details) but they package by default for RedHat and SUSE.

Of course, which *nix is best for you depends on your hardware, testing, product assessment, proof of concept, budget, application criticality, scaleability, cost/benefit analysis, current skill set, current support arrangements and all the other lovely things that keep systems analysts employed.

If you ask on this board 'should I use Ubuntu?' then the answer will probably be 'Yes'. We tend to be advocates ;o)

If you do go for Ubuntu, please let the community know how you faired, good or bad. It is always useful to hear real-life enterprise experiences outside of the web/mail/print/file server arena.

My own experiences with Oracle have been on Sun Sparc, IBM AIX, HPUX, Xenix, Windows and a few other Unix variants so I can't advise directly on Linux dists.

Good Luck.