Which Red Hat Should Be Worn in the Enterprise?

weatherbug asks: "I've recently been appointed as a member of a team to help determine the direction our organization is headed with Red Hat Linux. Currently we're using multiple versions from Red Hat 6.x through Advance Server 2.1. However, now that Red Hat has effectively separated their distributions into a 'consumer' (Red Hat 8,9, etc) and 'enterprise' (Red Hat Adv. Server 2.x, etc), we aren't sure which version we want to adopt. A Red Hat salesman recently told us that the 'consumer' version of Red Hat was mostly for hackers and hobbyists who weren't concerned about stability and wanted the most up-to-date software, while the 'enterprise' version would be more stable and have a five-year product lifetime. As a long time Linux system administrator, I feel that this is a sales tactic and that there really is no compelling reason for us to ever use the 'enterprise' version. After all, it is Linux and it is open source, and we have enough in-house talent to not need Red Hat support. Why would we ever need or care about a five-year product lifetime? Am I wrong, and if so, could you set us straight? We'd be interested to know what other large organizations have decided to do."

Comments

Red Hat 7.3, with bugfixes

[bytor4232]

For now, our company has been deploying Red Hat 7.3 with all the latest bugfixes and security releases patched in. However, 7.3 is ending its product life at the end of this year, so we may have to "rethink" our strategy with using Red Hat.

Re:Red Hat 7.3, with bugfixes

[wossName]

Let's see, I still have a couple of machines running Red Hat 6.2, which hit EOL in March. Number of any kind of updates for RH 6.2 since March: 0.

Looks like EOL really means EOL. That's why I'm currently looking into Debian for a "long-life" distribution. Never thought I'd do that...

I just found the e-mail from Red Hat:

In accordance with our errata support policy the Red Hat Linux 6.2 and Red
Hat Linux 7 distributions have now reached their end-of-life for errata
maintenance. This means that we will no longer be producing security,
bugfix, or enhancement updates for these products.

benefits

[frieked]

I think there's more to it than just some support and a 5 year lifetime... Enterprise addition will support many things that the other versions do not: 2 CPU's & massive amounts of memory for example

go with RH 9

[adamruck]

ive tried pretty much all of the RH versions, and I find that RH 9 is the best. I have never had a single crash once, ive never had any trouble with any of the configuration utilities, and ive never had to mess around with hardware issues(kernel modules and so on). It might just be that RH 9 suits the hardware im using very well, but I cant say the same things about any of the previous versions. Well thats my suggestion.

Support for Oracle...

[nyc_paladin]

I know that if you have Oracle in your environment, Red Hat is going to push you to use Advance Server 2.1. Too be honest there is not really that much difference between the two except how they configured the kernel and advance server is specialized for clustering. Which you can do on your own. But if you are looking for support for products like Oracle or any other corporate solutions go with advance server. If you are just using it for email, web server, file server, etc (isn't linux wonderful) then stick with the "consumer version". It's cheaper.

Discussed on beowulf list

[Col. Klink (retired)]

This was recently discussed on the Beowulf list.

Which to choose

[uslinux.net]

7.x - obsolete for business (EOL 6/30/03) 8.x - replaced by 9.x 9.x - good for desktops, at home or work, provided that *if* your company pays for Red Hat support, you don't expect to get any help. AS (Advanced Server) 2.1 - good for business, but being replaced shortly. AS - New upcoming version (3.0 or 2.2?) is the next step from AS 2.1. 8+ way CPU support, 16GB RAM, etc. ES - Business server version for small/mid sized businesses. 1 or 2 way CPU systems. WS - Business desktops. Basically, the AS, ES, and WS offer 5 year support. That probably doesn't matter to a home user, but to a business, it's good to know you can build a server and then only need to patch it for the next 5 years, without worrying about whether the next glibc upgrade will break your applications. You don't need to buy the 5 year support plan now, but if you have a problem in 6 months or a year and need extremely fast help, you probably won't get it with a "home user" release. What Red Hat is saying makes perfect sense. AS, ES, and WS will be basically the same system. WS will include desktop components that AS and ES don't need. AS will include kernels for beefier systems and will include clustering software - things ES users won't need. All three will be thoroughly tested and will provide a solid, unchanging (save for patches) target. Home users will still be able get the latest and greatest. As to your answer, if you're doing this for a business, go with AS, ES, and WS. The only reason you should be using Red Hat 9.x in a business is for your desktop if you're 1337 and want cutting edge software.

Here's a way to look at it:

[fizban]

When someone has a problem with the server, do you want them calling you when you're on vacation, relaxing at home on the weekend, sleeping, etc., or would you rather have them call Red Hat support?

Re:A few ways of looking at it

[digidave]

Whoops. Websphere officially supports Red Hat AS 2.1 and Suse 8.1 Pro, not RH 7.3.

Advanced Server

[irix]

You have to consider 2 things...

1. RedHat 9 is only going to have 1 year of errata published for it.

2. RedHat Advanced Server is going to be the target for a lot of Enterprise application vendors.

For #1 - what are you going to do for errata after 1 year? Upgrade to RedHat 10? Find another source of binary patches, or hope that some other commercial entity decided to build them? Build them yourself? You need to figure this out

For #2 - many application vendors like Oracle are aiming at RHAS, simply because the "commercial" 8/9/10... distros are a target that moves too quickly. I assume that others (Veritas, etc.) are in the same boat.

My organization is small enough that people running Linux on their desktops take care of themselves and the Linux servers are few enough to be upgraded as needed. However, if your orgzanization is larger you need to consider what RHAS provides. I'd be interested in what people who have larger RH deployments are doing...

ENTERPRISE means conservatism!

[swordgeek]

"I feel that this is a sales tactic and that there really is no compelling reason for us to ever use the 'enterprise' version. After all, it is Linux and it is open source, and we have enough in-house talent to not need Red Hat support. Why would we ever need or care about a five-year product lifetime? Am I wrong, and if so, could you set us straight?"

Well I'll try to set you straight without being patronising or snide about it.

In an enterprise environment, a business is run on stability and predictability. Red Hat is free, which is fine, but how much money will your company pay to make sure that someone is there to take responsibility for but fixes over the next five years? I'll give you a hint--if you're a private, profit-making company and YOU are expected to fix the OS after a year, then get out now--you'll be living in hell for another year until your company goes under.

As cliche'd as it is, companies buy solutions. I don't want to buy Red Hat v8 or 9 or SUSE whatever, or slackware or Windows XP or Solaris--I want to buy a system that does the job I give to it, and I want a vendor to back it for at least half a decade.

If you're a professional company, don't even consider trying to 'do it yourself' with hobbiest level software. Get a conservative, supported package; and work with the vendor as much as possible. Don't waste time and money trying to go it alone.

Re:I'm more worried about...

[jeremy_hogan]

So for the canned answer go to:
http://www.redhat.com/mktg/which_rhl/

But most of the folks in this thread have summed it up just as well.

1) If you need 5-7 yr lifecycle, extended product/tech support, ISV certification, go with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux line
2) If you are more of a do-it-yourselfer, need more recent bells and/or whistles, have a smaller deployment, with less dependance on third party solutions go with Red Hat Linux (or the vendor that you already know, etc)

A few things I wanted to clarify:

When the fellow mentions the "stability" trade off, that means stability of the API/ABI, libraries, etc... not how often it crashes or not.

Also tech support and RHN are indeed available for both lines. There was a post that indicated that we took away RHN for his product. We limited the free/demo RHN product. While he could have purchased the full version, switching to BSD worked for him.

Lastly, for those who have pointed out the gap we seem to have left between hobbyist and enterprise, we are looking into that as well. We are always looking to fill in the gaps in our offering.

Re:I'm more worried about...

[malfunct]

For those that don't understand why a 5 to 7 year product cycle is important here is a small summary:

Some companies have a large amount of (legally required) testing that goes into the selection and deployment of a new OS. This testing costs a great deal of time and money and so is done infrequently (thus the large number of institutions still running windows 3.1 and HUGE number still running nt4). These types of organizations need a garuntee from the distributor that the software will be supported for enough time to break even on the testing cost or they can't justify using the product. There are many contracts written between businesses and Microsoft garunteeing a product support lifetime and RedHat is wisely working on the same sort of situation to win over some of those businesses.