FreeBSD Commercial Support From BSDI

As this release explains, BSDI are about to start providing support contracts for FreeBSD. Support options will include options from per-incident to 24x7 support. Linux already has a number of high profile companies providing support contracts, such as Red Hat, and IBM. It'll be interesting to see how much of an issue the availability of BSD support turns out to be.

Comments

Free, FreeBSD/Linux/Unix support

[Blue Lang]

As an aside, if you log into yahoo chat between 6pm and 2am EST on most nights and head into the "Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris" room, you can usually find some pretty kick-ass help. I go there and answer questions just as a way to keep sharp, and because I sometimes miss doing support.

They have a java chat client for the yoonix kiddies.

(No, I don't work for yahoo or make any money off of this, I do it cuz I like doing it.)

--
blue

Why would I need this?

[howardjp]

Typically, I managed to break it myself, why would I should I ask for help fixing it? :)

Re:Another checklist item completed

[gavinhall]

Posted by BSD-Pat:

Walnut Creek has supported FreeBSD commercially for a long time, you could have bought a service contratc or even per-incident service from them.

FreeBSD support is not new, however BSDi has a good reputation in the business world for support on BSD/OS.

This is a good opportunity for some more exposure.

-Pat

Re:Another checklist item completed

[seebs]

Walnut Creek already had a support department in place (Hi, Chris!). The support departments are starting to get merged, so those of us on the BSDI side are learning our way around the FAQs for FreeBSD, and I think the FreeBSD folks are starting to learn BSD/OS.

For what it's worth, I'm a BSDI support rep, and I think this'll be a great deal. Most of us know a couple kinds of Unix, and 90% of support work is based on troubleshooting skills, not system-specific knowledge. You'd be amazed at how many calls are resolved with "Did this work before? What's changed since then? Is there a typo in that file?".

Anyway, this isn't "the first", but it's certainly going to get more publicity than the Walnut Creek support did, just because of marketing.

Other BSD's? I dunno. I believe OpenBSD's guy at Comdex was saying that some company with a name like "netsec" was doing support for OpenBSD. There are lots of consultants doing NetBSD support.

Obviously, you're all going to want to know whether BSD, Inc., is planning *BSD support in general. Anything I say on that could turn out to be wrong in the future; about all I can say is we don't have a press release announcing it, and we don't have a press release denying it. It is somewhere between "impossible" and "guaranteed". I will say nothing more, and I want you all to know that that doesn't mean we will, and doesn't mean we won't. Stop trying to second-guess me. I'm a professional support rep; if I want to talk for a paragraph without saying anything, I can, and you'll never get a useful shred of information from me I'm not willing to give out.

Different tech support needs for Linux and *BSD

[toh]

I've set up quite a few production servers with both Linux (usually Debian, for sanity's sake) and FreeBSD (pretty much eclipsed Debian on the server side for me in the last few years), including mail (UUCP and SMTP), file services, firewalls, and even the occasional workstation. I could count the number of hours I've spent troubleshooting FreeBSD problems on one hand, while I've probably racked up a solid week or two of fighting with Linux issues (one of those weeks was spent pretty much exclusively on an $!@!! Adaptec Ultrawide controller and 2.0.x kernel). It's not that Linux isn't cool, it's just that it's often hairy as hell. FreeBSD by comparison has in a sense had much of the tech support work done up front, by making the system lean, trim, fast, and extremely well-organised from the start. You see the same effect of prior planning with the other BSDs, too - security for OpenBSD, portability for NetBSD. Linux by comparison is a bit of a kitchen sink.

All that translates to less of a need for tech support, but it's just as important to note that what support *is* needed will have to be that much more expert and focused. Not that BSDI will have any problem with that, but there's simply a higher expectation of sanity and function from a FreeBSD sysadmin than a Linux one, kind of like the difference between a Mac and Windoze user where consistency and ease of use are concerned.