OpenBSD and Linux: Insights into a migration project at the INI

    The Institute of Neuroinformatics (INI) at ETH / University of Zurich has always
been strongly Linux focused. In fact, over 90% of our clients run Linux. However, with
time we’ve also seen a number of problems we couldn’t fix with Linux: Real redundancy
on our firewalls with state synchronisation, life cycle and upgrade problems as well as
reliability issues.
    We evaluated OpenBSD two years ago and were surprised, if not astonished, by the
most professional approaches this OS and their developers take. We started to move one
machine after the other to OpenBSD and, in the meantime, migrated 80% of our server
infrastructure to OpenBSD. Not only that, it turned out it is also a perfect system to
virtualize.
    In this talk I will vigorously show the reasons why one migrates to OpenBSD, how
that actually took place and what problems we faced and still face - based on real life
experience. I will not only cover technical aspects but also managment and life cycle
issues.
    At the end, the audience should have a better understanding of when to use which
OS depending on their environment.