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Red Hat Announces Enterprise Linux
OldBen writes "RedHat has announced the product stable to replace the mainstream releases for enterprise use. RedHat Enterprise Linux AS replaces Advanced Server (with quite a price hike to go along), ES is targeted at "entry-level" servers, and WS is for workstations. See the details at RedHat's website."
The linux distro they run on Star Trek?
Does it include Majel Barrett-Rodenbery's voice?
Perhaps all these fancy titles with words like "Enterprise" in them will make large corporations see Linux as a solution for their projects. That's the main thing stopping linux... recognition.
I am a filthy pirate.
I know its redhat but isn't this more public relations material than news for nerds? What's new to Advanced Server that good administration didn't give you before... anyone?
Fnord.sig
Maybe THIS will convince my boss to move to Linux (RHWS) on our desktop systems.
KARMA TAG! You're it.
The price hike sounds entirely reasonable because of the increased support responsibilities involved. I'm actually kind of supprised they didn't raise the prices more.. Just my 2 cents.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
You don't really believe that support is free, do you?
-BrentES server is $800 ???? I know that most of that is for the support, but on the face of it that is a lot more expensive then MS server would be for a similar sized box (2000 server with 5 CAL's is considerably less). Of course once CAL's are calculated in it might be slightly cheaper, but large server software costs + large workstation costs($300) = too expensive. One of the big advantages of linux is the cost, if it is only going to save you a small % vs. windows I doubt many organizations will bother to switch.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Are Red Hat Enterprise Edition versions protected by any licensing requirements?
What parts are not open-source?
What's to stop someone from just posting ISO images online?
I'm just a little fuzzy on what's being paid for.
Thanks in advance for the answers
evanchik.net
A company who purchases these expensive versions of Red Hat are getting support. When you download a distro off the net you don't get good support from the company. In a corporate world you can't dick around with things if a critical server is not running. It's better to have the support in the event something happens, then not have it at all...
Please explain what their yearly subscription gets you? I don't understand what they're providing. Security updates? Doesn't that already happen in RH for free?
:)
I can certainly understand paying them for tech support. We've all been there.
it's because of the packaged support, just like all redhat products.
Large companies buy it - it helps them get past the idea of using "free software". Other users buy it to get installation support, which is worth it if you've never touched *nix before.
Personally, I download the free version and subscribe systems I manage to the RHN service, which makes updates simple, and is well worth the $60/year.
Red Hat is attempting to both leverage the cost-advantage of Linux, but also offer enterprise-class service and support. This is an essential step for Linux to take off in the business arena, since no CIO is going to stake his career on a grassroots OS. He/She has to have a financially stable vendor that can be relied on to handle the R&D to provide regular upgrades, as well as provide emergency support as needed.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Sorry, But....
Our shop has been evaluating the purchase of AS for some time now. It's been 1500US/yr and 2500US/yr
for a few months at least.
This latest offering is only adding ES and WS for
those who still need/want support but don't want the
full enterprise price.
Given that the question comes up so regularly, perhaps it's worth considering that the use of the word "free" to describe something that is neither unrestricted nor available at no cost might not be the best idea a person ever had.
I write in my journal
And, you go around and troll.
/etc, so what do you mean there?)
RPM is actually a pretty good packaging system, and RPM-based distros are what will bring linux to the consumer, because the common idiot can run the system.
You _CAN_ use a stock kernel, and they offer many precompiled kernels that you can use. The files are in an acceptable location (i.e. configs are in
Also, you can DOWNLOAD it, so you arent paying $$$$$. Anyhow, I prefer Debian/Gentoo, so dont call this a redhat plug.
Open source is great, but crappy source really does suck. Hey why don't you just run a Microsoft operati... Sorry my computer crashed. What was I say? Oh yeah, never mind.
For a mission-critical business system (like one that MAKES REAL MONEY for a company) this is not a bad price to pay to keep running.
ALso, if you've only got one or two boxes like this, paying RedHat $2500 a year would be a lot cheaper than keeping a really good UNIX sysadmin around.
I think if you look at the competition (Microsoft and Commercial UNIX vendors), this would be pretty good deal.
I am glad that they have made this change. We were kinda screwed when Oracle said that they would ONLY support the "Advanced Server" version of RedHat and RedHat said that they were only going to support 7.1 until the end of the year.
However, I cannot believe that they don't offer some type of per incident support basis. There are a number of places here in Indiana that want to add RedHat instead of NT and or NetWare, for say 20-30 servers, but they don't want to pay $2,500.00 a server for 7X24 support! Both Novell and Microsoft offer a per incident support, and when I called to complain about this I was told that RedHat isn't competing with Novell or Microsoft, but Sun. I don't see it that way.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
It's because they're offering 5 years of service with the software, which is pretty good if you ask me.
For home/hobbiest users, there is the free downloadable Standard Linux. But, with at most 12 months of security updates, this isn't really a viable option for use in any environment outside the home (and not even for a lot of them). Personally, I want to use my computer, not be updating it all the time.
My situation at work is this: I'm a researcher. Since I'm one of just a few with any expertise, I'm the de facto sysadm for about 25-30 machines running RH 7.2 which we installed just about a year ago. We use the machines mostly as desktops. Lots of people don't run anything besides ssh, mozilla, and OpenOffice plus the usual suite of calculators, CD players, etc.
Since my real job isn't taking care of these machines, and since I don't want to interupt people's work, upgrading every 12 months is out of the question. But, spending $180/yr/machine on support I really don't need is also not a great option. All we need is security updates for these systems so we don't get hacked. That's it. I don't need Oracle certification, etc.
But, I don't see any way in RedHat's plan to give me minimal support for a long period of time (2-3 years) for a reasonable cost. Of course maybe their update RPMs will be available somewhere since, after all, this is free (open source) software. Barring that, it looks like RedHat will cost us a lot more than MS would.
I'm also of the opinion that this model of release every 4 months is not viable anymore. Things just aren't progressing that quickly any more. IMO, RedHat should be making a new release of their standard product every 18-24 months and releasing service packs that update critical packages like the kernel and X (to deal with hardware compatibility), security updates, and maybe essential applications like KDE, GNOME, mozilla. I'd be more than happy to pay a reasonable amount ($50/yr/machine) for something like this.
My OS longs to be free!!!!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
No, i just think that the cost of support with free software is less important than it is when using proprietary. In proprietary software, anything that makes the software work, or not work in the case of support, is hidden from the purchaser. They therefore depend on the supplier providing advice, which the purchaser cannot get elsewhere.
With free software on the other hand, all the source is freely available. The company would already have techs. available able to find out what has gone wrong -alternatively, usenet is always a goldmine.
Steve
The last 5%. Hell, perhaps even the last 1%.
/usr/local/etc/ssh or /etc/ssh for SSH configs? And then making all those little tweaks work together. All that stuff costs staff time, which is really, really expensive, requires more knowledge management in house, and means you may or may not be in the mainstream -- and the closer you are to the mainstream, the easier it is to find cheap support.
Ever notice the difference in working with software that nearly works, and software that does work? It's a lot easier if you buy something that end-to-end works out of the box. Not remembering a lot of custom compile options, specific setup preferences. Pissing about in meetings deciding whether to use
And it's a familiar Linux environment for your admins.
(Of course, this all assumes that the new Red Hat stuff actually satisfies all that.)
You're actually paying for a year of support with the purchase of one of the Advanced Server (and derivative) products. As a matter of fact, prices have been lowered in the new pricing structure, but limitations have been placed on number of processors and amount of memory that may be used.
I'm happy to pay for errata. $349 per server is too much for errata. I don't want any kind of support from RH other than errata.
I use RH now, and have for years. But I'm actively looking for another distro. Plus, I'm tired of the marketing b.s. that accompanies their segmentation of the market.
Does somebody actually pay money for Red Hat. I thought everybody downloaded for free from their web site.
.0 or .1 releases, and buying the boxed .2 (normally stable) version. You get a lot more CD's with it plus a really handy 'survival CD' that contains some very useful tools if your having a non-boot day ;)
We do both!
Normally download the
Oh, and my computer now has a nice "Powered by RedHat" sticker now! Worth the price alone!
Do they do heavy system modification to change how Advanced server handles memory or threads or something? Sorry, I'm ignorant here, I have always used redhat from the ISOs and pay for entitlement.
Revolutions are never about freedom or justice. They're about who's going to be top dog. -- Kilgore Trout
the number of RHCEs at the red hat operations building pouring buckets of water over their web server to keep it from exploding from the brutal, merciless slashdotting it is now receiving. -jms258
What's going to stop me from buying "WS" for $300 and using it as a server? Will WS refuse to download certian RPMs from up2date or something?
As far as I can tell, Red Hat does not have "files in the wrong place" any more than any other Linux distro - instructions for a lot of things intended for other distros are still very useful guidance for RH users like myself.
The packaging system may not automatically resolve dependencies, but it's bloody good as it is. I download an RPM, and use 'rpm -ivh' and I'm up and running 99.9% of the time. If I need some other RPMs, it'll tell me. If I need to su to root to install, it'll tell me. If it can't or shouldn't uninstall a package it'll tell me. Plus I can override it's warnings if I like.
If by stock kernel you mean the kernel that comes with the OS, then you are completely and utterly incorrect. If the kernel didn't work then why the heck would they ship this system? You can even download 'pure' kernels from if you like. No one's stopping you, but the stock kernel is perfectly fine and recompilable as is!
And I'm not paying massive amounts of "$$$$$" for Red Hat either. RH 8.0 cost me only £35 (about $55), which is a whole heck of a lot cheaper than Windows 2000/XP. Heck, if you like, you can download the entire thing for very little or nothing.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
You can't put RedHat in the Enterprise, but you can put Enterprise in the RedHat.
No, wait, you CAN put RedHat in the Enterprise, but you-no wait...crap...nevermind
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Its all about the support. Even the "Pro" editions, which do include support, have only minimal support, you out of luck if you need to configure even included sodtware, such as INN.
With "Enterprise" edition, I assume you get support on a broader range of implemntations, as well as support beyond 30 days. I just wonder if their staff is up to it :^).
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
...a price of $800 gonna price Redhat out of a market that is believed to replace the billion dollar UNIX market that SUN and IBM dominate ?
Even an unlimited license of Mac OS X Server is $999 ?
Al other UNIX operating systems cost a hell of a lot more don't they ?
Maybe you won't buy it because you only need the software and *not* the support and *not* the Redhat Network management tools, but those big iron buyers will want the same level of support of their previous purchases.
I just hope they'll continue to release community editions ala Redhat8...
blaah !
$800 and it doesn't have apt-get. Broken RPMs? I'm sticking with Debian.
Hunger is the best sauce.
I work for a company (that will go nameless) that offers 24/7, 1 hour callback tech support on the product.
No, its not redhat.
We charge over $20,000 for A SINGLE USER.
This is very _very_ competatively priced.
no
The trick:
Pay for ONE SYSTEM to be on the red hat network. Tell up2date to keep the files it downloads. Write a script to grab all of those and install them on the rest of the machines too. (Assumes default install etc...)
Better yet, be a real geek and type ftp updates.redhat.com and then use get.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
We hear/see a lot of comments about not wanting to pay the M$ tax when buying workstations.
I think the simple solution to people not wanting to pay the Redhat (damn where can I put the $) tax, is to not pay it - use another distro.
That's what's so great about linux, you don't like redhat don't use it, you don't like Slackware don't use it, you don't like Debian don't use it etc etc etc.
I thought the whole thing about OSS was choice, we just need to convince those brainwashed by Redhat (such as Oracle) that they should aim to support other distros, come up with a certification program so that people can build their own that is supported by Oracle.
Just my humble opinion.
I would suggest installing apt for rpm. See http://freshrpms.net/apt for details. Once that is installed and configured, updating to the latest redhat patches is as simple as:
apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade
If ES is based around Advanced Server, is it still based around Advanced Server 2.1?
Will it still have the same bugs as AS 2.1?
Are they finally going to throw a Java application server in there?
Will there be filesystems available other than ext2/3?
For many companies, tho, the certification for standard vendors like Oracle are extremely important. If you don't have these, it doesn't matter how free your operating system is.
Can anyone clarify for me whether these "subscriptions" are explicitly licensed for exactly one machine? Am I allowed to download the workstation product for $179, create CD's, and then install it on 100 machines? I understand the problem of only having purchased 1 entitlement for the Red Hat Network; the question is am I permitted to install it on N machines for $179, or am I required to pay N times $179?
The Red Hat WWW site is surprisingly uninformative about this question.
Red Hat has definitely been inching up the scale.
;-)
Journal filesystems hitting maturity, logical volume management, asynchronous I/O for the database guys, TPC-C benchmarks (unaudited though?), improved clustering
There are still things Linux lacks (last I checked) that the conventional UNIX vendors have added to their systems over the last five years: things like hot-swap memory, hot-swap CPUs, memory failure resiliency (OS quits using memory if recoverable but warning-sign single-bit ECC memory errors get too great), kernel hot-patching, multipath IO, workload management stuff, and ever-more SMP/NUMA scalability.
Still, seems like Red Hat is making great strides. Hat's off! (ugh, sorry about that, couldn't resist.
--LP
And even if most or all of the source IS available to tinker with, how much tinkering can a sysadmin do before he/she voids the service/support contract?
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
I once thought of Red Hat as a geuninely good thing, and I do have to give them a lot of credit for helping make Linux more widely accepted in the workplace.
But over the past year or two, based on their activities as a company and the merits of their distribution, I've been trying to convert all of the Red Hat servers at my workplace to Debian as time permits.
I simply cannot bring myself to pay the up2date tax when apt-get is free and just plain works better. So instead I waste a lot of time tracking down and trying to install release-specific RPMs, which is a huge pain. Even Microsoft provides free updates for their operating systems (which, in many cases, cost less than an equivilant Red Hat license).
I'd still rather administer a Red Hat server than a Windows server because it IS still Linux after all. But as a company, I really can't see much difference these days between RH and any of their enterprise-level competitors.
There's a nice page here explaining the differences between normal and Enterprise versions.
;-)
Very useful for the suit to choose which Redhat is suited for him
blaah !
Now that you've mentioned Redhat....
When is Redhat 8.1 due out? They've had three betas. I think it's due pretty soon. Is this press release going to coincide with a OS release soon?
Jeff
That's why they invented 'Open Source' - to keep the suits from being confused.
"Better yet, be a real geek and type ftp updates.redhat.com and then use get."
I dunno, I like the automatic md5 checksuming rhn does, I like that I can manage everything from a single place...
true, I could do that myself as well, but...for $60 a year, is it worth my time? Even with a couple dozen servers? Maybe, maybe not.
The real story underneath this all seems to be that if you want stable, long-term support for your RedHat installations, you will be forced to purchase their new Enterprise products. Support for their SOHO/Community products will be more limited, and versions will be only supported for 12 months or so.
If you *need* the support for your servers, this might not be the worst deal.
But for workstations, this seems to be terrible. $299 for a basic workstation? I can get Win2k Pro for $150 or so with limited support, or I can get Debian (or other various Linux distros) for free. Yes I would get good added support for that $299, but how often do you need that level of support for workstations? Buy an alternative with a longer life cycle (Win2k/XP, Linux, whatever) and buy per-incident support. Workstations are usually not monolithic -- you have a whole forest of them (tens, hundreds, thousands, depending on the size of the organization). The more workstations supported by that orginization, the less monetary sense this seems to make.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Your not paying for Linux your paying for the support. Also companies have someone other then microsoft to point the blame at when something goes wrong... :)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
Redhat has training for RH-Enterprise AS here
Mind you it's just a 5 day course. Personally, as an RHCE, I'd like there to be an "Enterprise level" certification; I don't think a regular RHCE could just jump right into the Enterprise product line and utilize every new feature. There's a lot of stuff in the course that is just not encountered if you admin a small number of boxen, such as fail-over clustering with pirahna.
However, if the course is over $2800, I'd hate to see what the cert would cost.
My company won't go to Linux until they find a vendor willing to offer indemnity protection against lawsuits claiming we're using copyrighted software. To date, Red Hat has refused to do so. Our opinion is that it's the distro's responsibility, not the end-user. Does the Enterprise edition offer anything like this?
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
So does this mean if I want to run a test server on my Redhat WS system, I won't find server packages on the CD? So how many flavors of Redhat are their going to be now, five? 3 Enterprise flavors, desktop, and download edition? Are they all going to use different packages? Will 8.1 download packages work on WS? So far the press releases have been really confusing, RH might want to think about clarifying what will be changed/allowed/restricted.
The big advantage of Linux is that is supposed to be cheaper and less restrictive! I realize that Redhat comes with lots of software besides the OS, but lets face it, it is free software, so your not going to convince many hobbyists that paying $250 for Redhat WS is a bargain. I realize on the enterprise level $250/machine isn't bad, but it sure as hell isn't a bargain.
While there is nothing wrong with the idea of RedHat charging whatever they want with their "enterprise" versions, what I really want is security errata for at least 3 years. I don't want no 'freakin "enterprise version" - just gime me the errata. This is not good, I like Debian, I use it at home, but migrating all the servers at work is a real PITA. While I accept that Linux is way better in many ways compared to Windows our clients necessarily don't think the same way. For them, Linux has been always the flexible, cost-efective solutions. By pricing their distribution in the same league as W2k Server RedHat really is pissing off a lot of customers.
Just give me the errata for a smaller fee, please.
my big beef I guess is the End Of Life being so short. What if I want to keep running RH7.3 for a while?
;)
cough *Debian* cough
Well, when our IIS server broke, we had problems with different incompatible version of Windows 2000 Server, Professional, etc different version of IIS. The guy from Microsoft charged 600$/hr for the senior tech plus 400$/hr for a junior tech, all this because my stupid boss dislike Apache. Long life to stupid ASP pages. grrrrr
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you your next slashdot editor!
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
Is it just assumed that this is a per-year cost? If not, then I could see how this would be very advantageous over MS related products, where your licence is up for revision every year. I am guessing when you buy RedHat, you are buying it and not leasing it. If I had to make the decision, that would be a big selling point.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Great, now we have trim levels for distros. Anti-lock brakes? Sorry, you need the EX for that. I don't care if you don't want a sunroof; EXs come with a sunroof.
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.
You know absolutely nothing about computers, do you?
"different incompatible version of Windows 2000 Server, Professional, etc different version of IIS"
Fucking moron. Your IIS server didnt break, you were too stupid to use it. You deserve to pay a grand an hour to get it 'fixed' (or installed)
Seriously, if you cant run IIS, what makes you think it's going to be easier to run Apache? A fucking chimpanzee can run IIS.
Idiots are idiots, changing the OS doesnt make you any smarter.
That's the best decision you ever made.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
can you add/modify GPL software with proprietary code and sell it?
Yes you can. Charge as much as you want.
And as soon as you sell even one copy, your customer(s) can demand the source. They can then give away copies of the source, build from it, modify it, install their home-built version on extra machines, etc.
And if your proprietary software is sufficiently closely integrated with the GPL code (see the GPL, LGPL, and their interpretations), your proprietary code also comes under the GPL. So you have to give the source to THAT to your customers, too, for them to modify, give away, or what-have-you.
If your code is a separate add-on (rather than a modification that actually includes somebody else's GPLed code), you can additionally sell or license it under any other terms you want. It doesn't stop it from ALSO being available under the GPL - but you can make it available under other terms as well. (For instance: Letting your customer modify it and include it into some other non-GPLed system without having to GPL that.)
You can do the same even if it DOES include GPLed code, PROVIDED you get the appropriate additional licenses from ALL the authors of the GPLed code you included. (For much GPLed code that may be very difficult or impossible.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I think this is going to cost Redhat mindshare as newbies (and perhaps CS departments) shy away from their expensive distros. I'm not sure how many they actually sold, but it was nice to see a boxed Redhat at BestBuy for around $50. If you don't have broadband, it's probably worth $50 for the CD's and the printed install guide.
If the free download and the "Enterprise" what-ever are too different, it will have an impact.
I wonder what situation this leaves Cheap Bytes and other CD copiers in?
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
The way the vendors of these large products (let's use Oracle as an example) cover their asses in "product reliability" is to "certify" specific versions of Linux that they've tested and feel pretty confident about saying, "Yes, this will run stable and we believe we can recommend it."
So we end up with products like RHAS (and now RHES) and SLES 7/8 from the major Linux players. This helps make sure that -everyone- has covered their asses.
See, you and I know that we can take a copy of Oracle 9i and put it on a copy of RedHat 7.3 and expect it to perform rather reliably, right? We've worked with both the products enough to understand their quirks and how to support them. But if something does go wrong along the way your boss wants to hear something more than, "I've done this before and it worked! I have faith in the setup I've recommended." Your boss wants someone he can point a finger at and expect that they're going to provide a solution.
I've had a very hard time in the past few months bowing down to the concept of paying $799 for a copy of something I can pretty much download and patch-up myself. But the guys with the shirts and ties still think it's cheaper than a Sun/Veritas licensing solution, and it definately is cheaper than a Win32 alternative, so they're willing to shell out the cash. Why should I argue with them when after it's all paid for, it's still Linux. ;)
Bottom line? All of these certifications and extra costs for support we'll probably never use is a way to generate revenue while everyone is covering their ass and their product.
My $.02 anyway...
If you automatically renew your support, you might wind up paying for support you won't be able to use. If you're running 7.x or 8.0, your support will run out on December 31st of this year because Red Hat has EOLed everything which is currently in release as of that date (6.2 errata support ends at the end of March). I'd either:
a) Make sure to upgrade when 8.1 comes out
b) Turn off autorenew and pay for up2date 12 months at a crack, coincident with new releases
Also make sure to upgrade as soon as 8.2 comes out, as 8.1 will no longer be supported 12 months after release. You don't want to pay for support you're not getting. In order to continue to get errata support, you'll have to keep up this cycle, ad inifitum, or buy Advance Workstation (which has 3 year support, IIRC). In other words, you stay on the upgrade treadmill or lose your bargain. At least you have a choice, like you say.
Best of luck to you. Don't upgrade your kernel by hand, and remember to always install software from RPM, and backup and custom configuration stuff. You don't want to have to completely re-image a machine just because you have to upgrade the OS in order to get support you've paid for, do you?
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I'm just a little fuzzy on what's being paid for.
mostly it's the 5 years service and support that is being paid for from what I can figure out
Note that five years of enterprise-class support for an enterprise-class server product is REALLY CHEAP!
Enterprise-class means that a business can trust it to perform mission-critical functions and preserve mission-critical data (such as recievables). For, say, a phone company's real-time call accounting application that could be several million bucks per hour of outage. (All the calls are free.) For, say, a commodities broker that could be MUCH more.
Also the vendor certification program for hardware is probably part of why enterprises would pay in.
Also the fact that a major support player has beaten it into sufficiently good shape that they CAN support it for $160/year (minimum 5 years), and WITHOUT charging another arm and leg every time somebody tries to USE the support. That shows confidence - implying low bug rates and easy configuration.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Or you could use autoupdate, which works better and doesn't require you to dig through menus on the rhn website to update a box. Also, I've had rhn just drop boxes I had entitlements for. Look for me to change distros before the end of this year.
"I simply cannot bring myself to pay the up2date tax when apt-get is free and just plain works better."
Er, what? up2date is free. Red Hat requires you to register the system with Red Hat to obtain updates and fill out a a survey every few months to keep your system up to date.
If filling out a survey isn't your thing, or you have several systems to maintain, Red Hat provides unlimited access to errata, plus the newest release ISOs, for $60 a year per system. That's FIVE DOLLARS A MONTH. I'm sure you spend a heck of a lot more time than that "tracking down and trying to install release-specific RPMs." If your company can't afford to spend five dollars a month on updates for their servers, it has larger problems.
It honestly sounds like you haven't really researched your options. Do yourself a favor and go check out the purchase options for Red Hat errata. Seriously, $60 a year is a deal for access to errata plus the newest ISOs!
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Do those of you out there who've had experience with Red Hat's support find it worth paying for? My experience with other companies has been that support does little more than make the high up muckety-mucks think that their asses are covered. How does Red Hat stack up?
To Do: 1. Take over world 2. Pick up Milk and Bread on the way home
and none of it answers my real question(s)!
What would it cost to get up2date to continue to work on my Red Hat 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 systems?
I standardized on RH 7.x because of their apparent willingness to support systems with up2date - notice that they are still supporting RH 6.2!
But, with this news, I have to say, I'm quite upset. I've just finished deploying the last RH 7.2 system and now I have to - immediately - start using 8.0?
This is smelling quite unpleasant.
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
actually I think the reason why there are those that still are hanging on is the fact that they all bought ms, sun, ibm solutions back in the dot com era and really are not ready for a change.
Therefore companies Like Redhat, Mandrake, are just moving into the older markets (those that bought prior to that dot com environment) Who really do need to update. and those who are just feeling the pressure of a tight economy but have no choice but update.
For the "home" user right now linux's user base consists of users who are technically savy, these users probably won't care if once a year they have to upgrade.
Then you have say small or even medium businesses who are trying linux because, hey its free. Red Hat is pulling out of this market and that's something I'm very concerned about.
Basically regardless of whatever else you want to say about linux the real value lies in the fact its free. Of course there are other costs and factors involved, but really the price being $0 is the initial draw. Philosophically I think linux and its updates should be free forever(ie longer than one year). That's just the way I am and its how I've viewed Linux since I started using it with Red Hat 5.0. In general the way Linux is becoming semi-proprietary and non-free its not only disturbing, its something I'm just not interested in. The world needs and deserves a Free OS that they can rely on for years of faithful service. Isn't that what Linux was always about? Or am I now after all these years out of touch with today's Linux? Is it time to move to FreeBSD? They won't ever become nonfree or limit updates? Right??
Knowing that Red Hat is going to a one year support plan who in their right mind is going to use it anymore for the types of uses we've taken for granted? I'm sure not going to be deploying it anymore.
Red Hat is free to do whatever they want but small shops, churches, charities etc who have relied on Red Hat can no longer do so. After 8.1 has its run I'll be moving on to another distro(probably Debian) and also move to deploying another linux at any clients. Actually at this very moment my father's small law firm is finally about to join the 90's and get a server for his peer to peer lan. Up until recently there was no doubt it was going to be a Red Hat box, now there's no chance of that.
Red Hat doesn't owe me or anyone else ANYTHING. But at the same time its sad that I can no longer rely on a company I've relied on for so many years. It's kind of like the "free" ride is over and part of Linux has changed forever. There's no one to blame but even if there was I don't think it would make me feel any better.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Now since the advent of Solaris being free, Red Hat has now decided to charge $2400 for an entreprise edition of Linux?
Go figure, damned if ya do and damned if ya don't.
Usagi Yo
I call bullshit and marketing.
Well, nice try. But you're wrong. Do a bit more research.
There are custom motherboards involved, custom low-level software involved, and I believe custom chipsets. Stratus figured that maybe they could cut their+customer's costs by using commodity CPUs (and memory and peripherals, etc) back 5-10 years ago. I'm not sure it ever sold that well because people buying million-dollar servers don't benefit that much from shaving a few thousand off the CPU. But the binary compatibility is nice.
Also, with Itanium and Itanium 2, there is support for a lot of this fancy hardware error recovery stuff in Intel-based chipsets for the first time (see the E8870 chipset docs and look for "Advanced Platform RASUM".)
--LP
"Monopolistic practices that push other competitors out of the server business"
Don't be a liar/drama queen that doesn't even happen.. Red Hat does not have nor will they ever have a monopoly on linux. They sure as shit don't have a desktop monopoly like MS does. So what was your point again?
Oh but I forget your own of the resident Microsofties who regularly trolls Slashdot defending MS and spreading semi-FUD about linux in every post.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
The least expensive Linux environment I could find on RH's site was $179 for the WS version. The least expensive "server" was $349 for their "basic edition" of ES. This differentiation between the server and workstation formats is a trend I see throughout the commercial distros. SuSE has gone so far as to remove functionality from its basic offering (version 8.1) in what seems to me to be an effort to direct us towards buying their spendy "server" product ($800+)
RedHat's pricing for the Itanium processors was not given (it's determined by OEMs), but a small blurb announced that the (cheap) version 7.3 for the Itanium has been discontinued!!!
While I can't fault these corporations for at least trying to turn a profit, the trend has caused me to step back and re-evaluate the use of Linux for very small business file servers. The last four servers I built have been freeBSD and it looks very much like that will continue until they, too, decide that they can gouge the customers with insanely high prices for what has been, up until recently, a "free operating system".
My next desktop will almost certainly be Debian.
I wonder what Linus thinks of all this.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
well i guess that one thing in the price tag is for all the support red hat is providing. for the most expensive enterprise edition you get support 24/7.
and the the litel cheaper edition you get support 12 hours a day evry buissnis day. i think that no oficiall support is somthing that scares peopel.
BIG boss: why isnt the server working
tech : ehh we dont know we are loking in to some mailinglists asking quiestions on irc hopfoly wil get it working in a coupel of days
BIG boss : i told u not to buy crap you are fired
or
BIG boss : why is our server down
tech : we ar talking with redhats support we should get it working real soon
BIG boss : great
ok pherhaps you wont get the answer faster from tehier support but you have someone to blame except your self when somthing goes wrong.
and that seems important
Here are links for pricing on RedHat Enterprise Blah Blah and Windows Server 2003.
RedHat seems very competitive at most levels especially considering that there are no CALs to worry about and I don't think the Windows prices include the kind of service included in the RH Standard editions.
But where RedHat really slips in this price structure is at the bottom end web server pricing. The cheapest RH server you can get is $349, which is dangerously close to Windows Server 2003 web edtion at $399.
I'm sure he will respond for himself, but I'd like to point out that he said the "server" business, not all Linux business. I have no idea what the numbers are on enterprises running Linux at the server level and who their vendor is though.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
If red hat makes moeny from this stuff, SCO will probably claim the linux code was based on their IP and sue them too.
Vote for Pedro
Oracle support has pulled our asses out of the fire a few times. OTOH, a coworker was telling me how once he worked with Oracle consultants that were still using the PL/SQL Vol1 book.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
I said "server market". I'll let you figure out why, since you seem to be so intelligent.
So what was your point again?
Right.
Oh but I forget your own of the resident Microsofties who regularly trolls Slashdot defending MS and spreading semi-FUD about linux in every post
You can call me "the equalizer".
$700 for MS win 2k server? what world do you live in?
With the MS Win2k server all you get is the server and 5 accesses! No support [MS phone support is more $$ than phone SE#!], magrinal quality updates, and a system that cuts you off after 5 connections!
The $700 license doesn't include Software Assurance. It dosen't include email or management tools either! For an MS network you will pay another $150 per box just to connect to the server [actual windows licenses not included!] Just posted at HardOCP was MS finally changing their licensing to allow multiple partitions on the same box. Previously, you had to pay "per instance per processor" of Windows on your boxes!
In short, It's a steal. If you can't see that you obviously don't actually work in IT to see how bad MS has gotten! As you learn your way around, you get experience that doesn't go away--then you can fully support you own boxes for real savings. [even after your big raise for saving the Co $$$]
I predict Red Hat will round out it's product line with a Small Business Edition with the following features:
Why will Red Hat do this?
This is a warning to Red Hat: you are alienating your small business customers! Give me a product that meets my business needs as outlined above, or I am going to take my business elsewhere.
You have been warned.
Looks like I'll be putting Sun boxes in instead. And I don't particularly like Sun boxes.
Cheaper. Who would have thought.
With Sun support, I get hardware and software support. Still have to pay the hardware support with RH.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I'm working on pushing Linux as a viable server operating system alongside our Solaris and AIX servers and while I recognise that Red Hat are still finding their feet with regards to the enterprise, our experience so far is making a serious deployment quite difficult.
The reason is that our first systems for web usage used Red Hat 7.3, some of which we have updated to 8.0. Along the way, Red Hat announced that these systems would not have long term support, and servers should be using Advanced Server (at significantly more cost, but ultimately not a problem, just a bit of a shock for the PHB who thought that Linux was "free" (as in cost)). So we bought a copy of AS to do our testing on. Now we are faced with an upgrade and our test cycle is still at its initial stage.
Now AS is being replaced by ES and AS is the new high spec version. I am in favour of these more business focused ideas as I think it will help Linux adoption, but all these changes are hurting us trying to push the server product as being rarely changing (comparable with Solaris etc).
Yeah, I know we can still support our older systems, blah, blah, blah, but if you think that's how the business world works (and wants to work), you're mistaken.
Price Hikes?
What do you believe would be a fair price for what Red Hat is offering?
Draconian licenses
First, nobody's forcing you to. Second, seeing how they must give you 10 days written notice, it must take place during the business's normal business hours, this is not the only license offered for their product line, and the maximum penalty is 20% for taking advantage of them. I hardly view this as Draconian given that Red Hat's total market share of their target market is still smaller than most of their competitors. Red Hat is putting a lot behind their product, and I personally would be more shocked if there wasn't some enforceability clause in there. The honors-system & capitalism just don't mix. Again, I would like to reinfoce the fact that this offering is geared specifically towards businesses, not individuals.
"Enterprise"?? What's that, a buzzword to sell more licenses?
Absolutely. And probably a very smart move. Adopting your product to your customers habits is almost always a good idea.
And the licensing, oh boy. What do you mean I can't install my copy everywhere??? I already paid for it, damn it!!
This version of redhat is targeted at businesses, not home/power users, hobbyists, and all others who would get no added benefit from their offering. In most people's view, businesses should play by different rules than neighbors. A quick analogy: Neighbor Bob asks me if I will teach him to use widget X. I gladly show Bob free of charge. I am always glad to help out a neighbor. Next, Business Bill's shop comes to me and asks that I teach them to use widget X. Now, I would be glad to. For a price.
Monopolistic practices that push other competitors out of the server business
Would you care to elaborate on this point? For generalization purposes, the 3 main branches of GNU/Linux stem from redhat, slackware, and debian. All of these are alive and kicking. Let's not forget SuSE. Though not as popuplar in the U.S., SuSE has garnered a substantial portion of the international market. IMHO, suse is redhat's nearest "enterprise-level" linux competitor.
And yes, if you don't like it, your can run Debian. Or SuSE, or slackware, or any of the other 150+ distributions. Oh, you want an engineer to go along with all that piece of software? I'm sure the company that sold you your hardware will be glad to help you out. Redhat is just another choice.
And for the record, I am a jaded linux/slashdot user. >:b
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
I've been running a stock 2.4.20 kernel with the preempt patches on my 8.0 desktop for a few days now..
I wish someone would have told me I couldn't use a stock kernel before I compiled and ran it!
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Do you think that every company/organization that uses Linux is going to have in house programmers ready to fix any coding issue? Ugh.
No, but when an issue requiring a programmer arises, they'll be able to recruit from a much larger pool than for proprietary s/w, where you can only choose the owner of the code.
And usenet? WTF? For a REAL business?
Yes. The support on Usenet, for both open source and proprietary products, frequently exceeds that available from vendors, in promptness, and quality. I've seen total cluelessness from vendor reps. An intelligent person who's already been through the same problem (or similar) that you're facing is frequently much better than vendor support. And certainly cheaper.
Dude, its 2003 not 1998.
Yes, indeed. We no longer have money to burn and must spend it sensibly, that means not giving money away for proprietary solutions if good solutions are available for much less elsewhere.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Yes, but its for your computer. Keeps it from catching those W32* viruses
HP offers SuSE and Red Hat configurations on their servers.
Sun will probably have to go with SuSE, because Red Hat freaking hates them and they recently abandoned their own Linux flavor.
It's not Red Hat's fault if other Linux vendors implode. They're not out there demanding that certain apps only be available on Red Hat. They didn't do that with Oracle, who has worked closely with SuSE as well as Red Hat.
You don't like that Red Hat and Dell are partners? Fine, buy something from HP. No one is demanding you buy anything from Red Hat.
Of course, if you're used to having your decisions made for you by your local Microsoft Sales Rep, maybe having all these choices is just too much overload.
--mandi
$2500 USD a year for 24/7 tech support with a 1 hour response time is well worth it IF you're a business that is making lots of money, and thus has lots of customers, and cannot afford downtime.
$800 USD a year is worth it IFF you're a medium to large company which is doing well and has a good established client base. A little downtime is acceptable, but tech support is still vital so it's as minimal as possible.
$60 USD a year is the price they should sell Red Hat Linux at with up2date support, and perhaps a month of phone support to let new sysadmins call in with setup questions. This, almost anyone can afford, and it's a good bargin *IF* you get permenant access to errata.
I work for a startup company, we cannot afford the $800 price point for Enterprise Server, and we have competant people here who don't need phone support (well, once in a blue moon for things like PERCRAID3 controllers...), but without the up2date access... it's not worth $5.
Red Hat.... you are in a position that Bill Gates wishes he was in. You can afford to charge big money for all the support that costs you money to maintain, AND you can still collect peanuts from individuals who would like an easy-to-maintain system that isn't windows. Wise up!
Windows XP is something like $300 retail, and it will have a good 5 years of free online updates. That works out to about $50 a year plus $50 for the box. Multiply that by a few million home users, and that's the market you're ignoring.
Think about it... you already do the work to generate the errata, all you need to do is keep mirror sites up to date (most mirrors do this automatically), and keep your up2date network functioning.
I saw it mentioned briefly before, but I think most people have missed it. I saw it mentioned some time ago on Linux.com:
Current is an open-source implementation of an up2date server.
I've used it, and it does work, however I'm waiting for multple channel functionality and some other features before I switch to using it instead of apt.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
You don't like that Red Hat and Dell are partners? Fine, buy something from HP
Are you for real?? I can replace 'Red Hat' here for 'Microsoft' and I'd be making the same insightful point.
Jeez.
--maybe find a local person who will work per incident and be on call for you? That might be a less expensive option. Heck there's tons of guys here on slashdot are unemployed or underemployed, maybe you can find a part timer on call here.
The snags with using the "one download and spread it to all the others" are:
My solution used an NFS directory to store the downloaded RPMs (but an rsync to local filestore on each slave machine would be equally good) and there's also some gotchas to work out (like creating soft-links in the master machine's /var/spool/up2date dir to link across each RPM there to your downloaded central copy [to fool up2date into thinking it's downloaded it already],
plus remembering to do "up2date --nox --packages" on your master machine after installing the downloaded RPMs on it, so that RHN know about your updated RPM setup).
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Standard Edition, with 5 CALs = $999 suggested retail price.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Bottom line, there is no free lunch.
Hopefully Redhat is going to grow and become profitable, then maybe they would come back and provide some products to small business/non-profit market.
Between the time, some smaller companies should be able to fill the gap, i.e. provide security updates to out-of-date rh version.
BTW, if you are open-source supporter, there is no surprise here. Since proprietary software is not evil, Redhat has done nothing wrong -- maybe except the audit part, but no one is forced to buy their software either.
And if you are free software supporter, then there is still the freedom to support out-of-date redhat distributions.
And if you (myself included) are cheap ...
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
they just seem to have eliminated the "basic" version which was $600, the premium has always been $2500.00
Score: -1, Pro-Microsoft
Karma: Crappy (see above)
Oh, oh! That's why I get moderated down! It's because everyone's biased against me! Not because I behave like an idiot! It's all your fault, not mine!
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
You can call me "the equalizer".
I'm going to start lots of posts to tell people of the wonders of shit eating.
And I'm gonna change my sig to read:
Score: -1, Pro-Shit-Eating
Karma: Crappy (see above)
And then I can claim that I'm not really a twat, it's just you people are all brainwashed into Anti-Shit-Eating thoughts.
You can call me "the equalizer".
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Holy fuck, what hole did you crawl out of?
So you're a shit-eater? Mmmkay. I can live with that. You can have the "equalizer" title. I've used it up already.
My earlier comments: [Linux is still missing] things like hot-swap memory, hot-swap CPUs, memory failure resiliency (OS quits using memory if recoverable but warning-sign single-bit ECC memory errors get too great), kernel hot-patching, multipath IO, workload management stuff, and ever-more SMP/NUMA scalability. ... Sun/HP/IBM were calling their Unix offerings five years ago 'enterprise' without having any of those features (even though the mainframe mostly did.)
Response: I'm afraid you're mistaken. Sun, HP, and IBM have had all of those features for much longer than 5 years
OK, I respect you a lot but I have to differ. I stand by my statement, although I might qualify it just a tad by turning my "without having any of those features" into a "without having nearly any of those features." I went and looked stuff up to check my memory. According to my papers, 6 years ago was AIX 4.2, HP-UX 10.10, Solaris 2.51.
Hot swap CPUs/memory were not out then for any of those vendors (one potential caveat below). 4.5 years ago we had AIX 4.3, HP-UX 11, Solaris 2.6. The first Unix vendor I remember starting to hype that stuff (and they would hype it if they had it, right?) was HP, with HP-UX's memory resilience which showed up in HP-UX 11 in September 1997. HP-UX 11 could also detect certain types CPU failures and notify the admin to shut down the processor, but this was not quite hot swap; it was swap-at-next-reboot. Likewise, IBM had some processor 'resilience' at that time. I think Sun was the first major UNIX vendor to have hot-swap CPUs, with Solaris 2.6 on its Ultra Enterprise 10000-only servers in 1997. I don't remember if the UE10000 ran Solaris 2.5 or not (perhaps you were closer to that as a Solaris admin?) but I really doubt hot-plug CPUs was in there any earlier, "much longer than 5 years" like back in the Solaris 2.4 and earlier days.
Sun also introduced multipathing IO to the high-end UNIX environment with the E10000s, and the other vendors followed within a couple years. HP had a tool called Process Resource Manager for workload management for a long time, maybe even back in 1995; I don't recall when a comparable offering from Sun came out, and I don't think IBM's workload manager came out until 1998 or 1999. In terms of SMP scalability, 5 years ago in late 1996/early 1997 UNIX vendors were showing off 8 and 12-way TPC-C SMP benchmarks and maybe one of them had a 16-way benchmark out, but you didn't see 20, 32 and 64-way benchmarking till later after they had worked a bunch of kinks out.
Anyway, I think saying Sun, IBM and HP Unix offerings had "all those features" for "much longer than 5 years" is just misremembering. I'm open to correction however.
--LP
You don't get that choice with Microsoft. You buy Microsoft from HP, Dell, Gateway, whomever, that's all you're going to get, right? You still have to deal with Microsoft no matter who your hardware vendor is. You want Linux? HP is going to offer you a choice of two different distributions. Sun wants to if they can.
How do you compare that to microsoft? Where do you get a non-Microsoft version of Windows? From any vendor?
The difference in the Linux space is that there are dozens of possible distributions. Hardware vendors can pick and choose who they want to partner with; they're not being strong-armed into anything by the software vendor. If they pick Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, even freaking Lindows, it's a decision based on "who can we count on to not let our customers down" not "we have to have Windows products on all our hardware or we can't offer it on any hardware and it'll never sell".
Red Hat isn't out attacking anyone. They don't go around buying every other Linux company just because they can. They're not making extensions to glibc or gcc or apache and refusing to let SuSE or gentoo or StickUpYourButt Linux have access to them.
--mandi
KRUD (Kevin's Redhat Uber Distribution) is a growing phenomenon spreading out of Colorado, for those who might not know.
In principio erat Verbum.
Major league hardware like a quad Xeon IBM x360 is a significant investment (the last one I bought was about $60,000), and a big enterprise (there's that word again) switch can be almost as much. Large scale, mission critial services cost money. Red Hat's Enterprise AS is just a small portion of TCO.
Red Hat provides software, and the service behind it at many levels. They are just scaling up to a specific demand.
To be honest that was my first reaction as well and to some extent i still think that. Im a system administrator for a relatively small company (22 servers) Running a mix of Mandrake Redhat (i started to bring this in but have sort of cooled a bit) and Sco Unix *shudder* Most the Redhat boxes are running 7.2 patched and up to date etc etc. I like the 7.2 release and i dont particularly want to upgrade when the machines are doing their jobs reliably and without a problem. As most of you know when you set up a server with the base OS there is extensive customisation to bring the machine into a production environment. This in iteself provides a good reason to not be upgrading so often as we all have better things to do than rebuilding machines over and over. Anyway i digress I am starting to look at this in a slightly different light. As has been said before we dont actually have to rely on RedHat for support. I myself have decided that i am going to get more into working with the source and do more of the work myself. Hell i know that i will learn things to boot. As things stand though the current RedHat products offer small to medium business little. And this move has made me re evaluate things.
What, like this?
Very similar, only on a credit-card shaped CD. Tho I'm sure you could do the same with Knopper - except finding CD-R's that shape is a pain in the butt here.
Sorry, I shouldn't have said "much longer than 5 years". I was mainly thinking of the E10K, which as you've stated, was released in 1997. It supported either Solaris 2.51 or Solaris 2.6. Also, it did support hot-swap CPU and memory (through a process called DR or dynamic reconfiguration). Another thing that Sun servers have had since 1995 or so at least is the ability to notify you in syslog of single bit ECC errors. While not dynamically configuring out the memory, at least you were notified before those single-bit correctable errors turned into a double-bit error and took down your whole box.
:-) and 2003 - 5 = 1997 or pretty close.
Kernel hot-patching took a couple of years longer, and is now implemented through a process that is basically "patch-now while your system is running, then on next reboot the patched kernel is actually put in place."
I guess it probably is closer to 4.5 years ago, but my brain has been damaged from too much "Slashdot math"
Cheers.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon