Choosing FreeBSD Over CentOS Linux 64-bit

EGS

EGS

Hello FreeBSD users & developers:

For over 5 years now I've had dedicated servers yet have never been able to learn how to properly manage them or fully utilize or even keep the operating system up-to-date. My first dedicated servers were powered by FreeBSD and then somehow after continuously upgrading to more powerful servers, I made the decision along the way to migrate over to Linux, 64-bit CentOS specifically.

For the past 2 or 3 years now, my servers have been compromised, hacked, and exploited time and time again, and my growing business has continuously gone down as a result to hackers and DDoS attacks. I don't ever remember having such issues when I ran FreeBSD, so I am finally making the decision to move to a new hosting provider and purchasing a new dedicated server, and this time I am switching back to FreeBSD 64-bit. I hope that I will be making the right decision, but I do have a few questions..

Is FreeBSD 64-bit generally more secure than 64-bit Linux, specifically 64-bit CentOS? I read somewhere here that FreeBSD has only a couple hundred vulnerabilities while CentOS has more than 1,000; is this an accurate estimation? Also, is learning FreeBSD and managing the server generally easy, and fairly similar to Linux? I really want to know if I'd be able to run Plesk control panel on FreeBSD 64-bit and also be able to learn how to run basic SSH commands. I also assume that the scripts and software that I need to run my sites will still be compatible on FreeBSD, such as vBulletin, Squid Cache, Zend Optimizer, IonCube, cURL, MySQL, and PHP?

Also, does anyone have any experience in comparing the operating speeds of CentOS 64-bit and FreeBSD 64-bit? I would hope that FreeBSD 64-bit would be equally as fast, and equally if not more stable?

This is the server configuration I plan on running FreeBSD 64-bit on. I would appreciate feedback and answers to my questions from experienced users as soon as possible, especially if anyone knows if I could run into any problems running FreeBSD 64-bit instead of CentOS 64-bit? One of the major concerns I am having is migrating my sites, especially my main eBusiness, which is a pretty massive site and forum consisting of over 60,000 members and more than 500,000 posts. Will dumping my MySQL database and transferring my site be an easy transition from Linux to BSD? 64-bit is a must due to my server specs:

Intel Xeon X3430
8GB RAM
2x 500GB SATA HDDs
Hardware RAID 1
FreeBSD 64-bit Latest
Plesk 30 Domains
100Mbps Switch Port Uplink Connection
 
Sorry for making a reply but it seems the administrators have disabled the edit function so I can't edit my post. :( I am going to need to restore my massive MySQL database in which is like 3GB of 9GB, depending if I'm doing it compressed or not. How am I going to do it? It's not a SQL file or a SQL.GZ file but instead a bunch of files that came out of a TAR.GZ file including FRM files, MYD files, and MYI files. I don't know why my server backed up my database in this format but I would be able to restore it within FreeBSD right? And FreeBSD supports Apache and modrewrite? What about a firewall? I know there's a free firewall built into Plesk; will FreeBSD support it?
 
I can only answer to your security related questions.

A patched FreeBSD server and a patched CentOS server should not expose any vulnerabilities per OS level.

Your problem is the services that you expose to the Internet and frankly regardless the OS, if you continue to expose your servers to vulnerable services you are going to be hacked again. Take some time to read about securing apache with PHP and jailing your clients. Also, control panels may come in handy for administration but they make the system more vulnerable to attacks.
 
This is what you need to do: "learn how to properly manage them or fully utilize or even keep the operating system up-to-date". Afterwards, you will be able to maintain your servers properly. Also, as gkontos said; learn about security and how to secure your servers.
 
EGS said:
Is FreeBSD 64-bit generally more secure than 64-bit Linux, specifically 64-bit CentOS?
Click to expand...
Simple answer, no.

The reason your box got hacked is because you didn't keep up with security updates. FreeBSD will not save you from this. If you treat the FreeBSD box the same as you've treated CentOS it will get hacked too.
 
As other people said, read on security.

Keep OS up to date, keep your applications up to date: Apache, PHP, Plesk etc. Keep your web apps up to date: vBulletin CMSs etc. Intall mod_security with good rules. This will protect you against many attacks. Also having non-common (not Linux) system will give you little bit extra protections against script-kiddes whose scripts are designed to attack Linux servers.
 
On a side note many Linux users are leaving CentOS for Scientific Linux due to the delays in patches with CentOS. So CentOS is a bad choice regardless.
 
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