MongoDB on RHEL vs. Ubuntu

Question

I'm looking to install MongoDB on an Amazon EC2 instance, to me AMI doesn't matter much... but maybe it should.

While searching online for how-to's, I've only found thorough guides for installing MongoDB on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). In discovering those, I've also found that RHEL is supposedly "really good at database hosting for mission critical apps."

How does RHEL and Ubuntu compare for database hosting? Does AMI matter, and if so why?

possible duplicate of Which Linux distribution is suitable for serverside development and somewhat easy to use? — TessellatingHeckler, Sep 16 '15 at 20:57
@TessellatingHeckler my question pertains to database, not server side development, not ease-of-us for the compute side of web hosting. — Elegant.Scripting, Sep 16 '15 at 20:57
It's not exactly a duplicate question, but if you read the question and the answers, it summarises to There's a different philosophy in terms of where to put files and how to break up big packages into smaller ones, but modern Linux distros will perform similarly. — TessellatingHeckler, Sep 16 '15 at 21:02
@TessellatingHeckler valid point! Do you think I should close the question? — Elegant.Scripting, Sep 16 '15 at 21:04
No no, I just thought it would be relevant. I don't know of a significant difference, but if someone comes along with an answer explaining that there are some, I'd like to see it as well. — TessellatingHeckler, Sep 16 '15 at 21:07

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 16 '15 at 22:21

As a general "rule of thumb" The real differences between the two are going to come down to the following

Redhat focus' on older, more thoroughly tested packages, as such it has rock solid up time.
Ubuntu focus' on more up to date packages, as a result you will generally get access to new features far more quickly.

From a database standpoint. I generally would consider RHEL to be a better option, as "features" aren't something that come out frequently, and stability is more of an issue. That isn't to say ubuntu isn't "stable", just that "stable" is redhat's whole bag. Its what they shoot for.

The other point to consider is "ease of use" and "comfort." If you are more comfortable with a debian based system, then that is hard to put a price tag on, ubuntu may be the choice to go with, the reverse is also true. If you have no personal preference, then I almost always go with whatever I find a more robust and thorough community for surrounding what I'm doing. If you don't have a preference, but there is information overflowing about how to do what you need to do on RHEL, Then honestly RHEL is what you should do. The hours you save yourself in troubleshooting in those cases is invaluable.

Awesome answer, thanks! If I were using Meteor, the web application development framework, would you suggest going with Ubuntu as opposed to Redhat because it's a newly developing technology? — Elegant.Scripting, Sep 16 '15 at 22:27
Hmm... I'm not too familiar with meteor myself TBH. In most cases a piece of software like that is going to run fairly independently of everything else, so it probably would run the same on either platform. Though depending on what packages meteor references, it may have a better time on ubuntu. — Gravy, Sep 16 '15 at 22:32

MongoDB on RHEL vs. Ubuntu

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