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Red Hat Network for the Masses
Outland Traveller writes: "A few months ago I sent some feedback to RedHat concerning their then $30/month RHN subscription service. I asked them to consider offering a $5/month low end version more suitable for home users with multiple computers. I'm sure that a plenty of other people offered the same suggestion, but I was still surprised when I opened my email this morning and found that the exact service I asked for is not only being offered, but that fast access to iso images has been added as well, among other improvements. I guess I now have to put my money where my mouth is :) Seriously though, this should be good news for people who download RedHat's .iso images but want to financially support RedHat in a way that makes sense."
If I want fast downloads, I'd paypal them a buck or two for a day or two of access to high-speed servers with ISOs. But a monthly fee whether or not I get anything of use to me?
Mandrake has something similar. It is called Mandrake Users Club and you can sign up as low as $5/month. I bet this is where RedHat got the idea.
http://mandrakelinux.com/en/club/
I don't know what the current costs of bandwidth are for RedHat, but assuming everyone who pays the $5 downloads all four CD iso's of 7.2, that's a good 2.6 GB. Sure, it's better than not getting anything for it, but the increase in traffic their going to have might hit them pretty hard. I've NEVER downloaded anything from the RedHat servers simply because the mirrors are so much less busy and a whole lot faster.
Personally, I'd much rather see the in-store retail versions of RedHat drop in price to the $10-15 range for the latest version. I'd be more than happy to pick up a copy (can't have too many Linux install CD's lying around). Most of the documentation can be found online, and there are probably a lot of people like many that just want the CD's and don't really care so much about support. Right now, the current list price for RedHat 7.2 is $59.95, and it can be bought for $48.95 at buy.com. This company really ought to think their strategy. The distro market is pretty competitive right now, and 59.95 is a hell of a lot of money to spend on a free OS.
The future isn't what it used to be.
I use debian. I love apt. But I'm considering moving some of the machines I support to red hat. For $5/mo/machine, it is really nice to have a single place where I can check on the status of packages and patches for every machine I manage. I don't know of a way to do this (currently) in debian.
Of course, I imagine it's only a matter of time before someone writes a post-install plugin to apt that will allow for an installation update to be written to a db or web page. So it's not inconceivable that debian gets a similar feature. But for now it doesn't exist, and it makes red hat very attractive for managing a non-small numbers of linux boxen.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
This seems like a very solid move on redhat's part. The RHN is a well run system that fits in perfectly with the open source philosophy, and the only thing that kept me from getting all my machines on it was the cost. But now, I'll probably go ahead and subcribe. Also seems like a good financial move, since locking people into a monthly subscription-for-service type contract is a great way to make a lot of money, and seems to be what most companies are striving for nowadays (especially MS). Hmmm, I wonder what kind of transfer rate I can get now on the ISO images from the T3 at work?
It's unfortunate that Red Hat has not offered this service sooner. I moved my home systems to FreeBSD only last week as it's much easier to upgrade to the latest release version (or even to the latest CVS version) or to get a package of a recently-released application. Similar benefits can be obtained from Debian GNU/Linux as well. Both can be upgraded at no cost.
From my experience of Red Hat, even if I did want to upgrade to a more recent version of Red Hat Linux, I wouldn't trust it to an automated system. I upgraded a Red Hat 6 production server to Red Hat 7 last year, and so many things broke I was quite disappointed.
I guess this service will be useful for those home users who want to automatically pull down the latest security patches, tho.
(For those who don't know, the quote is from Red Dwarf, a British comedy.)
Just bought my subscription today, didn't even know about the recent price reduction. The system views are nice. One of the features I like the best so far is the ability to compare systems.
Update the dev server, test, compare with production, and schedule an update...
mmmm.. nice.
On the other hand, I haven't even been able to *start* a download from the supposed fast servers. I wonder if everybody is download extraneous isos for fun now.....
So what is the exact difference between the $5 and the $30 subscriptions?
Do the $30 subscribers get more bandwidth, faster access to updates, or even more stuff?
Redhat has to offer something to still get people to get the more expensive subscription
I upgrade RedHat twice a year - I always run the most current. I look at the $60/machine as 2 purchases of a $30 edition (do they even make the $30 edition still). To have the machine update itself with a click of the mouse, even if I am away from the box out of town is a nice benefit as well.
Also the Instant ISO program. I hope they have the bandwidth, because I intend to take full advantage of it on release day. Saves me from a trip to the store, 2 or 3 weeks later.
I've come to love RedHat over the last 4 years of using it since switching from Slackware at RH 5.1. I'm pleased with the convenience this service offers, and I am quite happy to give them $5 a month to keep my server running well.
According to their site, the proxy caches updated rpms, and the satellite basically acts as a RHN server, serving up the web stuff.
Has anyone actually used these servers with the workgroup service? I couldn't find any reference to them in the Red Hat Network Workgroup User Reference Guide 1.0.
For that matter, has anyone used the Workgroup service? Opinions?
At home though, I have a 10 machine lab, most of which run Redhat on them. But still, if I want to get RHN, that's $240 per year. Like I told Redhat, I can get a Windows license cheaper than that, and that includes free use of the Windows update service. So if I have a two year upgrade cycle, I've paid $440 to Redhat, while paying about $200 to Microsoft. The difference being that if I remember correctly, that $240 annually to Redhat covers up to 10 machines, while the Windows fee only covers one. Still though, it's not like I grant myself a large IT budget for home.
Now that the cost for a home user to sign up has come down, I can definitely see myself using it. It makes updating much easier, and it allows me to do my part in supporting the Linux distribution that I prefer.
I finally managed to get to the Red Hat Network site, where it is described like this:
Red Hat Network is an Internet solution for managing one or more Red Hat Linux systems. All Security Alerts, Bug Fix Alerts, and Enhancement Alerts (collectively known as Errata Alerts) can be retreived directly from Red Hat. You can even have updates automatically delivered directly to your system as soon as they are released.
So this service does not actually offer the ability to upgrade to the next Red Hat Linux version; it only offers patches for your current version.
Does this mean Red Hat still has no upgrade facility other than rebooting the server and booting from the install media? If so, then despite the RHN being a useful service, it seems that Red Hat still doesn't provide the functionality I want.
If I could do a live minor upgrade (such as 7.1 -> 7.2) of a Red Hat system it would definately be a step in the right direction.
I also wonder how a major upgrade (such as 6.2 -> 7.2) could be made smoother, considering the substantial changes between major versions.
The Red Hat Network is a good start, but some more tools are needed to ensure that upgrades are easier to perform, and are more likely to succeed.
The issue of debian/redhat is not at issue here, since there's an apt-get for redhat systems.
What is at issue is that one system administrator wants tools that make it *really* easy for him to upgrade and install systems. And currently, if you want to push out 25 new software packages, that's non-trivial even with apt-get. You even mentioned something to this effect by writing an expect script.
If you come up with a point/click solution which scales to over a 1000 boxes, regardless of the distribution the site currently uses, my job has
just become 10 times easier.