On 8/12/05, Robert Staph <rstaph at digitalimpreza dot com> wrote:
> Some people get away with running beta software in a production environment.
> I'd have to say that m0n0wall is one of the safer beta software out there in
> relation to that.  I've got a 1.2b9 thats been up since the day it was out,
> no issues, but its not on a production level connection.
> 
> But still, if you think beta is perfectly fine for a 100% uptime production
> environment, I wouldn't want you working in my NOC.
> 

Count me amongst those who also won't be working in your NOC.  :)  

Beta is nothing more than a label not necessarily in any way
indicative of the performance, stability, or capabilities of the
actual product.  Usually, yeah, no way in hell would I run "beta"
software on a production anything.  m0n0wall is the only exception I
make to that rule.  I don't upgrade the day it comes out though (well,
not on critical systems, I do at home), but after using and testing it
and watching the list for a while, I have no problems deploying into
real production environments.  That is, any of the 4.x based beta
versions.  I wouldn't have done so with the 5.x versions because that
was too big of a change for my comfort level.  I have a box running b9
that pushes hundreds of GB a month of production Internet traffic that
was running b3 for many months before I upgraded it.

-Chris