Digital Adventures of Cyril Pauya

We have been using open-source software for our servers at NDMC for the past months.  Being an educational institution on a tight budget, we cannot afford to buy licenses for commercial software so we choose to use open-source and free software, specifically GNU/Linux variants.

We were using Ubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support (LTS), which means it will be supported for the next five years (until 2013).

Then Bong, who has been experimenting with different variants of open-source server software suggested the following line-up:

• pfSense - powerful Firewall, based on FreeBSD
• Untangle - open source network gateway, web filter
• eBox-Platform - domain controller, file server, print server, proxy server, mail server, and a lot more, based on Ubuntu 8.04
• FreeNAS - file server, NAS server, based on FreeBSD

I added Proxmox Virtual Environment - an open-source virtualization platform to the list.  This allows us to create one or more Virtual Private Servers using just one computer.  This is our alternative to VMWare’s ESX.

The considerations for the above servers is also timely for our scheduled upgrade from 1.5Mbps to a 4Mbps Internet connection sometime next month.

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