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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."
Wearing a Red Shirt while on the enterprise.
Oh wait, nevermind...
Do you Gentoo!?
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.
-- 4 8 15 16 23 42
We started using FreeBSD. It's stable, doesn't cost a bundle, and isn't dependent on .rpm's. Just my thought.
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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
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
You should choose neither! There is no Red Hat Advanced Server! They have taken all of their enterprise server capabilities from our product! We have sued the Red Hat Infadels out of existence! You will all be running SCO Unix soon!
-- SCO Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
My journal has hot
If you don't care about using their patches and updated RPMs then you don't need 5 years of support. But if you don't want to have to compile the src on every server or do your own patching some other way then the "consumer" version is not thw way to go. They tend to stop releasing patched RPM's after a while.
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.
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
If you really have enough in-house talent to not need Red Hat support why bother with Red Hat on a commercial level at all? Just download one of their ISOs (that is possible, right?) - or any other distribution for that matter - and do it all yourself. Correct me if I'm wrong but the number one reason to actually pay for a Linux distribution is the support that comes with it, isn't it?
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
If you are, you may need support for many years for that OS version 9.x. There can be libraries that your application relies upon, but those older-version libraries might not be present in newer versions of the software that contain exploits you would want to patch, or features you might like to build around.
Food for thought.
And if you don't need Red Hat's service plan... why not just run Debian -> Stable?
The ______ Agenda
After using Redhat 8, and then redhat 9, I can definately say that their talk about stability/bleeding-edginess of their consumer versions is true so maybe the rest of what they're talking about is too. You will definately want to ensure that whatever version of Redhat you choose is compatible with whatever software you're using. For instance, I use a perlTK app at work, the version that came with Redhat 8 AND 9 was missing things and wouldn't run the app. CPAN also refused to work, in the end I had to use a third party rpm to get my app working. However, once it got going it seemed to be fine. Just make sure what you want to run is compatible, setup a test box maybe, I mean you can't lose by using the free version to test it then decide from there.
The lifetime applies to security patches, which is a good point to consider - are your experts up to keeping usable RPMs ready for any and all security vulnerabilities releases, across a variety of RHL products?
There's also application support to consider; the "hobbyist" version of RHL breaks binary compatibility ever other version these days, it seems. Depending on how much non-Free software you want to install, this could be a problem.
Finally, the hobbyist RHL releases tend to have lots of instabilities. There are at least several glaringly obvious major problems in every release. I haven't used an Enterprise RHL, so I can't attest that they are any better; you may find with some experimentation tho that the Enterprise RHL releases are more stable and polished, and wont take as much of your experts' time in fixing dumb distro errors.
Well, my org was using Red Hat 7.x, plus the $60/yr Red Hat Network stuff keeping everything up to date. When RH announced their end-of-life policy, that meant we had to upgrade a bunch of monitorless machines, we had to be physically present to do it (can't do it over the network), and we'd have to do it every year.
.. which is a lot of folks.
Our solution?
All machines now run FreeBSD and are kept up to date with CVSup. No more corporate BS. The saved $60/yr/machine covers the cost of an admin running "make buildworld" every now and then.
Once you get BSD set up just right with your make.conf and stuff like that, it's so easy to keep up to date.
I'd recommend this (or one of the Linux distros that use similar tech like Gentoo or Debian). Red Hat has made life difficult for anybody between "hobbyist" and "enterprise"
..and support linux. That way you are sure not going to miss out on anything that could be in the enterprise version.
Think about a mission critical system that needs to run 24x7. Every time you have to apply a patch or upgrade the system, that's downtime you can't afford.
"Enterprise" servers are one's that just work and you don't have to mess with them. That is contrary to what most sysadmins like to do with systems - that is, mess with them constantly.
You answered your question yourself. If you don't want long-term Red Hat enterprise support, then go for the consumer releases. If you have enough expertise in-house to support it yourself, then great. Frankly, I would be surprised if any large organization would choose to do such a thing. Relying on hacker-experience in house is dangerous, unless you have a mammoth internal training program. The cost of enterprise-level support is far less than the cost of enterprise-level downtime. And that's not a sales pitch.
Furthermore...do you ever hear of large companies buying commercial Unixes (AIX, HP-UX, Solaris) without support contracts? Do they ever say, "we have lots of people who know unix...why do we need support?" It's the exact same thing. When it comes to support, it really doesn't matter if it's Open Source or not. It's still a big complex product which can't be allowed to break.
The advantage of Open Source comes in when you want a customized version of Red Hat deployed. You can rewrite and recompile the kernel and all applications to suit your needs. In that case, I doubt any external support organization would be able to help you.
If you don't stick close to the stock RH packages (roll your own kernel or apache, etc), there would really be no reason to go with a support plan, etc. If you stick closely to the RH packages, roll your own RPMS etc, it may be helpful to go with Advanced Server or the like. One thing to consider is if your org will be the same 5-6 years down the road as it is today. If it is a nice small shop that doesn't change a lot, it may very well be. If it is a traditional corporate environment, your dept may be filled with bean-heads in the next few years and it may be very helpful to leave them with a more vendor maintained rev with a support plan.
I think one thing to keep in mind is what will your tech department look like in 5 years. Shoot, 5 years ago who would have guessed things would be like they are now? Say your staff is halved in 5 years for whatever reason. Will not having official support matter at that time? I'm not trying to advocate buying Advanced Server, but you should at least keep in mind that crazy things can happen over the course of 5 years.
To some, the extra money is well worth the insurance you get.
For what my opinion it worth... We've got about 200 workstations (a decent enough size network) and we've got several RH servers... we standardize on every 3rd release (6.2, 7.2, and now 9) and don't have any problems. We've got redhat network subscriptions for updates and everything is rock solid. I see no need for "enterprise editions." Upgrading the servers every few years before end of life isn't that horrible for us... And there's usually compelling reasons like journaled file systems and new versions of ssh that justify it.
But you need to evaluate your own needs obviously.
It depends on how much you rely on RedHat after you install the product, and how much the company wants to continue to do that.
First remember to think in terms of the company. While you and your fellow admins might be uber-gurus you might not be with the company forever. Will they find other slashdot reading uber-gurus to replace you, or will they be left with less capable people?
Then consider what you do on your own. Do you install RPMs from RedHat, or do you "use the source"? Do you update your own kernel? What do you do if there's a security flaw or bug in a software package? Do you use the source or the RPM.
RedHat offers an attractive model for companies who don't want to depend on having "Bob the admin" around and would rather depend on the idea that "RedHat" will be around (the former usually isn't there as long as is around.)
Everyone company has a different culture and answer, those are some of the questions to consider.
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
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.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke
Why would they charge more for SMP and Memory > 4 Gig? I could have sworn that SMP was available in the standard kernel and that the Memory > 4 was just a patch.
Of you have the talent in house and do not need support then I would suggest Gentoo? Or maybe SuSE if you want commercial support.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If you ever want to run an Itanium2 with Linux you'll need Redhat Advanced Server. And cough up the dough too. For both the machine and the software license. Intel did a deal with Redhat to give first shot at itanium2's for porting. And with an Itanium2 there is a lot of porting to be done.
I'd personaly go with an opteron myself. You dont need to reorganize your software for the architecture so it will run efficiently. Also you are not tied to Intels linux compilers which are pretty poor quality for the itanium2. Gcc has been ported to the itanium2, but it has not been optimized well yet. And Intels compiler is just very very buggy.
RedShodan --------- Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
We've created a minimal distro based on 7.2, with nothing that's not essential. You can optionally install RH's high availability tool "Pirahna" (snaffled from advanced server), but that's it. No X. Just enough stuff to admin the box. Everything else get's installed from source. The distro is easy to maintain; updates are downloaded by a cron job. Product End-of-life is worrying tho ....
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Not every organization, large or otherwise, has the in-house talent to do their own open-source maintenance and support. Maybe they have most of their machines running Windows, maybe not.
Beyond that, a lot of experienced tech executives, having been burned by a lack of support in the past, are not going to chance it without a service contract like the one Enterprise offers.
The arguments for and against are like the arguments for and against buying insurance, because the support contract is a form of insurance. You will never convince me that the full coverage I pay for on my vehicle isn't worth it, because at the moment my car was stolen and totalled, I received more money back than I'd ever paid the insurance company. On the other hand, you'll never convince my girlfriend -- who drives an '83 Accord -- that anything other than the minimum liability insurance the law requires is necessary.
We're both right, because our situations are different.
This was recently discussed on the Beowulf list.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
There is a significant difference between the correct stability/reliability tradeoff for a desktop/hobbyist operating system and a production server operating system.
This difference is especially apparent with Linux distributions. A distribution intended for desktop use will, by nessisity, include unstable software and libraries so as to allow constantly-unstable software like media players to work. On the other hand, a server distribution will run tested, stable versions of everything.
If Red Hat is actually claiming 5 year product lifetimes for their server products then it's probably worth getting them. That will allow you to not do a reinstall until your application needs a OS upgrade - instead of needing to reinstall because Red Hat no longer supports the old version.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
We have several servers running 7.3.. They run just fine. it's linux and really as long as you keep your apps and kernel up2date everything is fine. The only advantage I can see to upgrading to another version of RH is the apps that come along with it. So if the server is running RH7.3 with all patches and software upgrades on it.. I say let it run. In fact my OS of choice for servers is RH7.3 because I feel that anything above that is starting to become bloat ware. I just install 7.3.. do up2dates and customize to my liking. Has worked well so far.
As one who works somewhere where the pointy haired idiots don't even want to hear the word Linux, I would kill to have your problems.
Quit whining and pick one you lucky little bastard.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
In my organization, we use Oracle applications (Collaboration Suite, iFiles, etc.), and Oracle will not support installations on any Linux distribution other than AS 2.1. The way that they package updates and installers makes it impossible to use anything else. My point is that you need to look at the requirements of any software you may be running before making a decision.
What makes your boss feel more secure? Is your boss the kind to totally trust you and your judgement, or do they like to see some 'backup'?
Also, would you like to be totally on your own, or would you like to be able to say "Know what? I'm sick of this problem!" and call up Red Hat support? This could be helpful in shifting blame away from yourself.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I've been told straight out from the RH sales folks that they really couldn't care less about the "comsumer"/free as in beer version of RH. They don't believe that market penetration at the desktop level for general use is where they need to devote resources, therefore, they're going for the server and high-performance workstation market. Thus, we have the Enterprise AS/ES/WS products, with long-term support and more attention/quality focus. I for one like this idea of 5-year support cycles, but am worried about the increased costs, in particular at the workstation level.
I'm in the same situation as the article poster. I'm running 6.2 up to AS as well, and am somewhat confused as to what I will do with my workstation users. There's little to no economic incentive to prefer Enterprise WS over WXP. RH 7.3 and 8.0 lose support at the end of this year, and I'm not sure that 9's support will last much beyond that. It seems that the "comsumer" grade products will have only about a year of support. And, with no "apt-get dist-upgrade" equivalent, I'd have to visit these boxes personally to perform upgrades. In some cases, that's impossible for me to do, as they're embedded all over the country in remote-sensing applications.
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.
We are running into this here at work. We've been deploying RH 6.2 workstations from the beginning (more than 2 years now). We wanted a standard software configuration and stability. Until March, we've been receiving RH 6.2 security updates from redhat. Now, RH isn't providing them any more.
We are planning on upgrading to RH 9, but patch/fix support for that is only scheduled at a year! Where do we go from here? Yearly upgrades? There goes our stability model.
I was told that RH's "Enterprise" workstation product only comes with an additional year of security fixes and support, coming in at 2 years. We really need something on the order of 3-5 years.. Does anyone have any suggestions?
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
There are a few ways of looking at it. The most simple being that Red Hat 9 et al are great for the desktop because they include the newest desktops and office apps without hassle. The AS edition is for the server where stability, lifecycle and support are more important.
If you are running commercial apps on the server, then have a look at what they officially support. We have two Websphere 5 servers and IBM supports Red Hat 7.3 and Suse 8.1 Pro (I may be wrong on that Suse version) on the server and Red Hat 8 for a development system. In this case, we also want support from IBM, so using AS makes sense even though Websphere works fine on Red Hat 9, Debian, etc.
The answer is really just a combination of what you're looking for. For a team of Linux experts who will update their own software, Red Hat is merely an installer. If you're going to update with RHN, then a long product lifecycle is important to keep your system secure.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
I work for a branch of a Canadian provincial gov't. We're moving from the consumer versions to the enterprise ones.
;) I just don't have time for that shit. A bit of money (and it is really only a little, when you're spending corporate $$) for less hassle? Sure...
One simple reason: I (the sole admin for 30+ servers, with development work to do on top of that) don't have the time to run around every year upgrading the systems as the version of redhat they're running gets end-of-lifed. The lack of security patches that can be quickly rolled out means that we need the longer support & release cycles.
We have several custom applications that are a real pain to install -- there is no install script. The procedure goes something like:
- install package foo
- install package bar from source
- customise the following 10 config files
- repeat for each of 10 - 20 dependencies
- grab the custom code from cvs
- compile & install
- test
- migrate user data
- no downtime allowed.
Repeat that for 30 servers with different apps, and you're starting to get the picture. Believe it or not, I'm actually a competent admin (RHCE even
Now, I did think about moving to debian stable, or freebsd, or something, but for the people left when I bugger off in a year or so, I decided to have mercy and keep the environment they're used to.
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?
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
If not from redhat then from third party vendors. I think that eventually people like Oracle, Peoplesoft, etc are going to support their software on RH AS exclusivly because they won't have to come out with a new version every couple of months but will instead have to follow the 3-4 current versions of AS. If you don't think you will need this kind of third party support, or will only need it for some of your servers then maybe split your shop, RH AS for those platforms that need to be more stable and less of moving targets, and the standard distro for webservers, whatever that can afford to be broken once in a while because it's tracking the bleeding edge.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Just to add to your indecision, look at SuSE Enterprise Server 8. Runs on just about everything, up to 32 processors/64GByte, costs around $750/year per server including maintenance. And SCO may have a hard time with SuSE.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
You folks realize that AS currently consists of RH 7.2 with a few updates. AS is still using a bloody 2.4.9 kernel!!! Go look at the srpms on redhat's site.
s e/ 2.1AS/en/os/i386/SRPMS/b /redhat/linux/updates/ent erprise/2.1AS/en/os/SRPMS/
http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterpri
http://ftp.redhat.com/pu
There are a handfull of pacakges that aren't in 7.2, but you can download them. This will change with the next release, but right now it's pretty much RH 7.2.
It's all about the support, and certifications people!!!
IANALBIPOOGL (I am not a Lawyer, but I play one on GrokLaw.)
Where I work, we're seriously considering shelling out the dough for one of the Enterprise editions, even though it feels like a bit of a scam to me.
We use several large-capacity machines to store and serve brain imaging data, and we have a lot of in-house programs that we've developed over the years. If we have to keep upgrading our version of Redhat every few months, we'll end up spending all our time testing it to make sure it's sufficiently secure, as well as re-tweaking our in-house programs. Now, you can say that we shouldn't have to tweak anything, but inevitably there's SOMETHING that doesn't work the way it used to. If we were dumb enough to deploy without testing, it'd cost us lots in downtime; as it is, it costs us in development and testing time. And then we end up having to use crap like 8, which isn't all that stable, or 9, which hadn't been out for all that long when they made their final announcement about ending support for 6.2 and 7.x.
Now, for people who have lots of gurus and lots of time to do in-house support, Enterprise probably isn't necessary. For us, it might be a good option.
I've never been a big fan of Red Hat. We replaced our Red Hat 6.2/7.0/7.1 servers here with Debian (some stable, some testing) and haven't looked back. There's something so comforting about never having to worry about versions and upgrades -- it's as if we've got infinite support.
Plus, I've found IRC people (what I refer to as "REAL tech support") most helpful on debian-related channels. How many times have you called up Red Hat because you needed support? Google and mailing lists are probably a more effective method anyway.
If you know your Linux, Debian is probably what you want. If not, there are several options besides Red Hat. Don't be afraid just because the name is different!
I am now running RHN and couldn't be happier. The auto-upgrades have performed flawlessly with exceptional download speed. I contemplated using apt to substitute for RHN, but the PHBs agreed to the RHN expense. It is a great way to support a Linux company, and fairly reasonable in price ($60 basic, $90 enterprise). Manual updates are no longer an option without daily checks of bugtraq. Even then you could be too late. I had a system with outdated openssh that was cracked 2 days after the bug was announced. I was away at the time and couldn't have fixed it anyway.
I am now on RH 9 standard edition. No stability issues at all. The other versions appear to be marketing hype. But there is nothing scientific about that comparison.
---RHCE 7-2k
- Use a consumer Red Had product and reinstall all of your systems every year.
- Don't care about updates and simply live with bugs and security holes.
- Monitor the security/bug lists and build custom patches yourself (or find a third party to do it for you).
- Use a Red Hat enterprise product.
- Don't use Red Hat at all.
The most palatable option for our business has so far been option 5, mainly due to the cost and hassle of self-maintenance or using an enterprise product. Not to mention that Linux in general is not mature enough in certain areas that are important to our business. Our only viable option to date has been other Unix/Unix-like products.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...
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
So, I've seen various opinions on this, including one from Redhat. Why do I need a license for each machine running RH. Doesn't their software allow me to install one copy of Advanced (workstation/server/whatever) to any number of machines? Ok, so I can't contact their network from each machine to get updates and I get zero support, but what if I don't care? I've never needed support, and I'm used to updating RPMs by hand. So, why can't I just continue on like this?
If you have the in house talent to provide your company with support and do your own upgrades, then what reason would you use red hat? Grab a free, unadulterated distribution, like Slackware, and do it from scratch.
I think red hat's strategy in having "consumer" and "commercial" versions is pretty much what you stated that they rh salesman stated. "consumer" versions can have the latest and greatest, while the "commercial" versions can be slightly older, but stable, production proven versions. In any evolving software, the more time you can let people bang on software, the more stable it will prove to be. Also, more companies will target those stable versions than they will the bleeding edge stuff, unless they are forced to through a new kernel feature.
Why on earth would you choose RedHat? Haven't you read this ?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Why are you asking Slashdot then? Why don't you go ahead and build your own distribution? Why don't you just burn a copy from an ftp server and modify it for yourself? I personally think that Redhat is providing something corporations want, they'll often stick with what works for a long time. If your company can support itself why are you asking this question?
From the nature of the question, it would seem that you have not had to make very many enterprise tech decisions. You are not thinking like a manager. Let me explain.
There is value to RH ADV SRV. You yourself mentioned a few of them. Inexperienced decision makers tend to error on the side of being cheap instead just buying the right product. The end of life support is enough to tip the scales. Upgrading a out of date RH distro that has been hacked all to hell is not something you would want to do in the enterprise level numbers.
The cost of licensing ADV SRV is a very small portion of the lifetime costs.
www.bleepyou.com
I have been looking at this problem for the last few months. I admin a small business network and the idea of paying an extra thousand plus dollars per year for per seat license for the same thing we have been getting for nearly free does not appeal to me, for a broken (no SMP, etc), non redistributable product. The choice is for me now is which distro to move to as as the option of only running the "unstable" redhat release with a very limited support life (errata, bug fixes, etc.)
Ike
p.s. Redhat has lost me as a loyal customer over this, I have been running RH since 4.2
Yes, the salesman is correct. :-) (isn't that something that almost never happens?) :-) but because, for example, they backported some features from kernel-2.5 into the distribution kernel, thus triggering some weird stuff in the VM on systems with lotsa spawning processes from Perl, or they were early adopters of glibc-2.3, thus breaking some assumption some threading applications were making, etc. All that is fine on my home computer, it's not fine on the servers that pay my bills.
;-)
The Red Hat Advanced Server is indeed the best choice for the enterprise. The consumer-grade Red Hat is interesting indeed, has nice features, but sometimes is just a bit too much into the cutting edge.
I've run several times into issues with various pieces of software when running them on the consumer grade Red Hat. No, it wasn't because "Red Hat is buggy"
If you're a small company and want to use the consumer grade Red Hat because it's cheaper, there are some tricks you can play. One of them and probably the most important, is to not start using it as soon as it gets out. Wait for a few months, i'll say at least three, then deploy it. This way, the most obvious bugs will get squashed out. Once i even deployed RH8.0 instead of RH9, because at the time SpamAssassin was not happy at all when running on 9.
Now, Red Hat choose to shorten the support for older versions of their consumer grade distribution, therefore making it more difficult to apply my advice. So, use your best judgement.
Overall, i'll say Red Hat has a three-layered approach to stability:
1. They have the so-called the Rawhide distribution, which is their perpetual beta, from which a new consumer grade distribution emerges every 6 months.
2. The consumer grade distribution, from which RH Advanced Server emerges every 2 years or something like that.
3. Red Hat Advanced Server.
IMO, the consumer grade distribution is a beta for RHAS, only they don't call it that way.
really. it's a graet desktop distro, and all the server goodies are there. same too of suse i guess, though i've never tried suse. they have done some nice work in their corporate edition and they have really nice gui interfaces, but you can easily do it all with vi and a term. in my class, i have a p3 933 with 512mb ram runnign 9.0, and it acts as a Xserver for 7 clients, runs ftp/http, has 4-5 ncp mounts at any one time, has 3-4 copies of OO.org and moz open at any one time, etc. plus, every where i go on campus i bring my old notebook, and bring up X remotely. amazes the hell outta people. when my students are in the lab, i'll have them share files via ftp and have more than 30 connections concurrently, and lots of other stuff. now, this is hardly "enterprise", but my uptime is over 150 days. i pound it really hard, and still no crash. none. seriously, drake is quite good.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I thought RedHat was the greatest thing in the world until I tried Debian. I now use Debian 'stable' on servers, 'testing' or 'unstable' on workstations/etc.
.debs for me, but hand tweaking is usually necessary.
It is hard to beat having security patches backported for keeping a system stable. (The other main reason I switched to Debian is that its the only distro that will install run on all the different hardware I use like PA-RISC, Alpha, Sparc{32,64}, and MIPS without jumping through any hoops).
Before anyone jumps on me with a "this other distro is even better", let me clarify that I'm posting this only to say that I think there's a better option than RedHat. In particular, other great distros like Slack and Gentoo that don't have binary package management systems (for better or worse) aren't really comparable to RedHat. Mandrake, from the few days I've used it, just seemed like a flashier and even more bloated version of RedHat.
The only downside I've found to using Debian over RedHat (or the other distros that are based on RedHat) is that some commercial apps are geared towards RedHat and only release RPMs. In particular, Compaq's Linux support software/drivers are almost exclusively in RPM format. Now 'alien' does indeed convert them to installable
And yes, it is much easier to use 'apt-get' than dealing with the RHN to get 'up2date' working.
"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.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
We switched from RedHat to SuSE several years ago.
Our reasons for making the transition were:
- SuSE's stable enterprise/server editions are far less expensive than RedHat's
- DB2 UDB and Oracle are both Certified for SuSE enterprise server editions
- More specialised sub-distros available if you don't feel like twiddling
and paring down the full distro yourself.
- I supported RH from 1997-1999 (IRIX, SunOS, Solaris, BSD 4.2 and 4.3 before that)
My opinion is that the support database for SuSE is better than RH,
and that SuSE's support is much, much better -- and not nearly as often required --
compared to SGI's or Sun Microsystems.
- When we made the transition from RH to SuSE, SuSE was streets ahead of RH in security.
While not entirely up-to-date,
Marc Heuse's
article is a succinct and readable yet technically comprehensive introduction.
Areas in which RH and SuSE are roughly equal are:As we're primarily an AS/400 development shop, with Linux just providing part of the infrastructure, it's been fortuitous that our choice, SuSE, has turned out to be the most stable distro for the AS/400 and PPC platforms.
We dealt with no salesperson in either case. Just bought the disks and support packages we felt we needed, and based our judgement entirely on what versions of what were already available on the latest release. Possibly because the RH and SuSE distro cycles were out-of-synch with each other, the latest SuSE had the more recent patch levels when we made the transition. But every time I've checked, this seems to be the case.
I have to concur with the posters here and throw my (non-red but debian) hat into the ring. I used many different distros (most RH based) until I grew up to Debian. It might be harder to install, but I don't believe anything else, including RH, can come close to Debian Stable. It is simply a whole level of stability higher than anything else in the Linux world.
Still, I fear Redhat's motives. Their code and RPMs are frequently found to be full of security vulnerabilities and remote root exploits. Now they are only going to release patches for "consumer grade" versions for one year?! Sounds almost as bad as the offerings from Redmond. Redhat should offer patches for security flaws and bugs for much longer than one year.
The other thing not to loose sight of is that Redhat is charging an arm and a leg for the Advanced Server options and for support. Advanced Server seems to be somewhat proprietary (and likely to become more so.) Redhat's offering looses something that was once a positive aspect of Linux -- relative freedom from vendor lock-in. Watch out for rising prices once they have a captive audience!
Finally, and this may be the weakest point, but the fact that Linux runs on commodity hardware and has such a large community for grass-roots support contributes to its cost effectiveness. If the intent is to run high end hardware, and pay through the nose for support contracts... what's the benefit over HP-UX, Solaris, AIX? All of those are proven operating systems from companies with years of experience providing support. HP's support is the best I've ever seen.
There's a lot of freedom in sticking with the most widely deployed versions of Linux, the ones with the biggest communities behind them. Give Debian and SUSE a good long look.
"Hey Albert, Good luck exploring the infinite abyss."
I'm surprised at the level of ignorance shown in some of these posts. Deploying Linux in the enterprise is different from installing it on your own machine. The company I work for has several Linux installs including 6.2, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0. The rapid release cycle just doesn't work for us. We have enough things to do (such as running a business) to keep updating multiple servers to the latest release.
The Red Hat Advanced Server product is just what we want. It is stable, well tested and has a long support life. The cost goes towards an annual support contract which removes the fear that Linux has no backup when there's problems. Knowing that pay for, commercial software (such as Oracle) and specific hardware models are certified for this platform makes life very easy. You need to think how some of our customers who are used to Sun or Microsoft feel about using a "toy" operating system. To them, the financial costs are not the issue, having a mature, stable and supported platform on which to run their applications is all that counts.
We've standardised on Red Hat Advanced Server ES for our Linux customers, but we're still using 8.0 internally. We have enough UNIX experience to manage our own boxes, but for customers, Advanced Server is perfect.
Red Hat may not be the most hardcore distribution, but it is the most respected in the business world. That's why we are happy to use and recommend it.
This isn't really a direct answer to your question; it started out as one, but it gradually morphed into "what distro should I use" instead of "what Redhat should I use." At this point it's only tangentially related to the original question, but I'll go ahead and post it anyway. It may not help you specifically, but other people reading it may benefit.
****
I'm an RHCE (not an especially tough cert, btw, but someone who passes it is at least competent), but I don't overwhelmingly like their distro as a server. I should point out, however, that I have not run their Advanced Server, so I am unsure how valid my opinion is there. I have run quite a lot of RH boxes over the years; I stopped using their system around 7.0.
I'm presently running a network of about 80 machines. Most of them are Debian, and are incredibly easy to manage remotely. We have a few remaining old RH boxes, and they're very difficult to deal with in comparison -- hard to administer, hard to patch, just a royal PITA.
The support-contract option with RH can be a nice thing to have, but you say you have a lot of inhouse talent already, and Debian is very, very good as a server. I think it makes a rotten desktop client (personally I like Mandrake for that), but Debian stable is *extremely* stable, and Debian testing is just fine for most production servers. If you happen to want to run it as a desktop, you can use unstable for that, which is the bleeding-edge stuff that may break horribly.
Debian's entire emphasis is on two things: stability, and being managed remotely. They do not casually break things; by the time it gets even to 'testing' it's usually very solid. Their distributed community is really, really good. It's a great example of just how good truly free software can be.
It does, of course, have problems. My biggest gripe is probably that installation is always a new adventure. The installer is old, text-based, and not updated frequently. Getting it running on newer hardware can be a real pain, and once you have it running, you can run into weird dependency problems sometimes. (for awhile, as an example, when I did a base install, updated the source lines from 'stable' to 'testing', and then tried to install a recent kernel image, the install failed with a requirement for 'dash', but I couldn't install either dash or ash because both required ash! My solution was to drop back to stable, install ash [which had no dependency], and then switch back to testing. ) That particular problem may be gone, but every time I install a new batch of servers I run into a whole new batch of problems, be it unsupported hardware or what have you. I have never had a problem *once I have the server running*, but getting it up and stable in the first place is probably Debian's weakest point. RH has their wonderful Kickstart system, which is just lightyears better, one of the things I really, really like about their distro.
The cost in switching from RH to Debian is probably not trivial. It took me probably six months to learn, and I'm still picking up new tricks and tips. But I believe you will see an excellent ROI, as it's amazingly easy to script updates across vast numbers of machines very quickly. It's just a cleaner design, and it's easier to work with remotely. You don't really have to worry about intentional obsolescence.... there are people out there who, with great care, have been running their Debian servers for 5+ years without reinstalling. The Debian teams react very, very quickly to security issues. And it's both free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer.
RH, on the other hand, offers much better installation, and they have a custom version of the kernel that many people swear by. It's the best-supported of the Linux distros, and if you have a substantial investment in scripts and the RPM format, or if you need commercial application support (eg, Oracle) it's probably not worth switching. And it's easier to find people qualified in RH.
So what's best? Purely up to you. I can tell you that I'm extremely happy with a combo of Debian and Mandrake.
The five year product support lifetime really isn't something you upgrade to for your current team. It is for those that come after you leave.
Think of it this way: you deploy what the consumer version of Redhat, 3 years from now you and all of your best Admins leave for a new company. Suddenly new admins come in... with a much lower knowledge level of Redhat than you.
They come in at the end of the product support from the vendor (and, regardless of the fact you may not need it, they may.)
I would recommend that you deploy the most recent stable version that has the longest life left on the support time. Bite the bullet and upgrade everything to lower your cost of ownership in the long haul. Nuances between versions may be insignificant to you, but in the long run it is worth it to lower the knowledge level required for support. In 3-5 years, revisit the decision if you are still there. Don't do it half-ass. Make it a project for your department.
"Look! There! Evil, pure and simple from the Eighth Dimension!" --Buckaroo Banzai
Why would they charge more for SMP and Memory > 4 Gig? I could have sworn that SMP was available in the standard kernel and that the Memory > 4 was just a patch.
Why? Four reasons:
1. If you can't figure out how to patch and recompile a kernel, you pay up.
2. If you can, but your boss wants "Supported 24x7" written all over the OS of choice, you pay up.
3. If neither of the above apply, but you have some spare cash, and just feel like helping RedHat out, you can pay too...
There is nothing wrong with that that. In fact, I like that model. If you are (1) you pay the "stupidity tax"; in (2) you pay the "corporate assurance tax"; in (3) you are essentially doing a charity contribution (albeit, not tax-deductable). I find myself in any of the three categories once in a while. However, Redhat just came out with a new one -
4. If you can't use Redhat9 because it's such a major pain-in-the-butt, you pay up for a decent distro (advanced server).
<rant>
It took me a couple days just to recompile all the things necessary because of the stupid Kerberos location (everything in
</rant>
It's not fun... Even if have the tools and the expertise in-house, it's just too painful to deal with. The time it took me to build a redhat9-based server multiplied by the $/hour my labor is worth probably was more expensive than buying an "Advanced Server" in the first place. (but on the other hand I am reading
Jobs? Which jobs?
I heartily agree. The first thing the fools should be doing is switching to Debian stable if they want an easy free system.
Just because redhat is the most popular doesn't mean it's the best. The learning curve when switching from RH to Debian is minimal and the benefits far outweigh the "support" that redhat provides. Support shouldn't be needed if you've got a decent IT team.
Advanced Server is too expensive - I work in a university. So I'm left with the choice between upgrading way more often than I'd like or switching to another distribution - too much work to contemplate at the moment, but Debian would be the choice if I did. (Of course if I stop using Red Hat, the Red Hat mirror I run for the university will go away... It would be kind of nice if Red Hat gave AS free to unis, or maybe to people who do evangelism for them :-)
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
If not, then get away from RedHat. Far FAR away.
The main reason to move onto Red Hat Enterprise Linux is for Oracle support, as you simply won't get any under 7.x-9. If you're not dealing with ever calling up for support for either Oracle or RedHat itself, then why bother paying so much for Linux?
However, the higher-ups won't be happy about giving up an external support resource. The only way around this is documentation, and lots of it. Relying on debian packages? Running a custom apt repository? Document your policies and stick to them. Don't just install some random Linux, make an in-house distro, and with it, the documentation needed to upgrade it. This isn't a toy for a teenager and his Pentium box, it's a corporate-grade Linux distro. No downtime, no compromises. They'll want you to be able to train staff quickly, and in the end, you *are* replaceable. Don't make it too hard on yourself.
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
We still run some redhat 5.x boxen in our datacenter. Many 6.x too. Recently, 7.2 and 7.3 prooved to be pretty reliable, too.
... as long as you know a lot about it and you feel comfortable with it. Since i deployed AS on some critical servers, i find myself looking at debian and *bsd more and more...
Then came the Advanced Server thingie. I've had more problems with it than with any RedHat before, even had to fix kernel bugs to get my hardware to work properly. RedHat was aware of this particular probelm, but even with paid support, we only got 'fix in the nex errata' reply. So much for a support.
It does not matter if you have rh AS, 7.3, debian, *bsd