So I have been looking over my current workplace and asking around at my old places to get an idea about where things were.. and came up with the following statistics.. which are really rough ended. I am trying to get better numbers versus off the cuff.

Servers [~800 boxes across various sites [not counting clusters]]
EL-2    ~5%
EL-3    60%
EL-4    30%
EL-5    ~5%

The majority of EL-3 items are going to be in place for at least  2+ more years with many of them probably going to EL-5 and some going to EL-4. It usually depends on what the Enterprise software is supported for, how comfortable the people are jumping to another version if they dont absolutely have to, etc.

Workstations/Desktops [~300 or so]
EL-3   ~5%
EL-4   75%
EL-5   20%

EL-4 is going down and EL-5 is going up. The EL-3 are people who have a desktop that needs to interact exactly with the code they have run on their servers... and the desktops arent used much except for that.

Most of the clusters are at either EL-4 or going to EL-5 in their next interaction and will be running on whatever they are based at for hardware lifetime [~4 years] so that scientists are using the same code-bases. If they need newer stuff they will go to the next cluster.

I started asking around yesterday after reading the Scientific Linux email about them having to put EL-3 on life-support versus end-of-life because several science projects have not been able to move to a newer code base and might not until their next 'project' starts. It got me to think about what EPEL software I could place where and when (beyond my desktop and 1-2 servers). The biggest realization was that I couldn't use FUNC for a while because most of our systems will not work with it :). Sigh.


--
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"