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The Increasing Cost of Red Hat Linux?
An Anonymous Coward asks: "I work at a company with a large number of Linux servers in the data center. We're currently evaluating what distribution we want to use moving forward. Upgrading to Red Hat Enterprise from 7.2 would cost ~$350k just for the systems we already have deployed. Due to the change in Red Hat's release policy, we either have to move to Enterprise, or change distributions. Also, we don't have Oracle on any of these systems, but we will need it in the future. This leaves us with rather limited options. I'm interested hearing what other Slashdot readers are running, and planning?"
Debian works well and the price is right! Wonderful install procedure too.
And I'm planning to go home and play America's Army.
I may need to reboot 3-6 hours from now, but I've never had to learn how to edit a configuration file.
(Disclaimer: That's not really true, but you get the point.)
paintball
Usually, enterprises aren't interested in free or next to it. They want stable and supported for a stable price.
How much more would Suse cost? I have worked at facilities before that switch from windows to Suse recently and they said it was a lot less expensive in the long run.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
does that cost include count the SCO license?
oh come on, thats not flamebait!
We made the upgrade. Its a godd choice. You know what you get, you get oracle/ibm/big gun stuff.
AND
you support open source / free software.
I, for one, welcome our new RedHat overlords.
*giggle giggle, snort snort* I made a funny just like the others that used this quote did!
Windows 2003 Server. :-)
Seriously though, we have RedHat 9, Windows 2003 Server, Solaris 9, and Windows 2000 Server in our data center. Its a University, so most of it is free (Oracle too).
To factor in the cost of all those SCO licenses! Ouch!
"This leaves us with rather limited options"
.....
Actually you have ONLY ONE option
SCO.
Muhuuuhoooo........
I'm changing my vote to Anti-Microsoft zealots.
paintball
Why upgrade to RedHat enterprise when you can do the same things with the free versions, or, perhaps, some other flavor of Linux? Why are you asking this question? It's all open source!
Have you evaluated the cost of moving to the supported versions of SuSE, etc? What's the cost there? How does it compare to Red Hat?
Also, if you find you don't need support, then why use the "enterprise" editions at all?
Finally, what'd be the total cost of moving to Windows? Probably a lot more than $350k, I'd wager. It sucks, but it's probably just time to pay the piper, or deal with supporting yourself... that's just how the market is. RH have to make a profit somehow.
The Free desktop that Just Works
I think the first thing that should be asked is, what do you need to do with it? Distros have a strengths and weaknesses. If you just ask, what distro, you end up with a giant flame war over which distro is better. Also, Have you considered possibly using a version of *BSD?
Slashdot...it's like Fox news, but without the biased sl...or maybe not.
It would be nice If you put up a webpage displaying whare that $350k goes, and how its used.
For all we know you may be a s-sysadmin. Im not being mean, I really would like to know...
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
Seriously, we use Debian / Qmail for pop3, Debian / Apache for web, Debian / DBJDNS for dns, and Freesco for Dhcp and firewall.
If you're running or will be running Oracle you probably want RedHat, but do you need to upgrade all of your boxes?
Vertical
72 CD D7 52 D0 7E D8 47 44 91 D5 84 D1 59 F1 A9-This is my 128bit integer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Switch everything over to Debian and spend the $350k on "training" and new laptops.
Better yet, spend $300k on training/laptops and get yourself a nice bonus for cutting $50k from the budget.
Read, L
If you're looking for support (which is what I'm assuming your reason for going with Enterprise server is), then either pay for Advance Server or go with a different cheaper distribution and put the money you saved into someone that can search Google and find out how to make "RH only" stuff work on Debian or something.
We run oracle (both 8 and 9) on Debian, as well as most of our internet infrastructure (with the exception of proprietary programs that are stuck on Win2K for the time being). Most of the vendors of Linux based apps that we have worked with are willing to provide support even with Debian being the distro we chose (and then the ones that have complained, I've just called for another technician that was more distro-agnostic and gotten right through).
Have you considered Windows? You can get it for free on kazaa.
Debian. Or Slackware. Just be sure to have a copy of either Knoppix or Slackware Live CD handy. Write down what the CD auto-detected. Select appropriate odules when installing proper distro.
And MySQL for the database.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Switch to BSD! I hear FreeBSD is nice. Also in the enterprise. And a license that does not make $neckties nervous.
Am using Slackware 8.1 on LapTops and SlackWare 9.0 on the servers... it runs better than RedHat or SuSE and the difference in the number of required patches/fixes (even just those for security) is amazing... ratio of hundreds to one. oh, yeah I work on and the machines support network security applications...
I'm a sys admin for the CS department at a large university. Our backend is all large Dell PowerEdge servers running normal RH9. RH ES is probably great for a lot of your machines, but others should be just fine without it (just with RH9). Don't pay the price for the extra features unless you really need it...
maybe you should try the fine products of SCO
and if you do, i suggest you say so and post
your home and work addresses on slashdot
You can just make your own build of redhat. Every piece of the OS is available as source rpms from redhat themselves, for every linux OS they sell.
Get em, compile em and install em. Of course, the nice gui installer is not free, nor is the support. But updates and the OS itself is free and will always be free. Its GPL'd. What you pay for is support and peace of mind. Thats typically what data centers prefer these days. I know that the managers see only free as in beer, so they look like heroes for saving on the budget, but what really counts is uptime and reliability. TCO stuff. So it costs 350K... How much would Windows cost you, and how much functionality would get from it? How about the equivilant PA-RISC machines or big AIX boxes? E15k's?
It turns out to be quite a deal! The support you get is worth it, and compare the price of that to a support contract with Sun!
Debian is great in the server enviroment. Here is the advantages/disadvantages, though:
Advantages:
1) A rock solid distro.
2) Very easy to add packages (apt-get)
3) No licensing fees or vendors to worry about
Disadvantages:
1) Your admins need to know what they are doing!!
2) No company to blame when things might go wrong.
3) Can be very difficult to configure on X due to limited amount of auto-detection tools. (ie. Note #1)
4) Patches seem to be a little slower than other Distros.
Hope this helps!!
How would your cost add up to ~$350k? Could you give use numbers. That may sounds like a big number, but it's also relative. If you end up with a cluse the size of LLNL, I would call $350k low. And what would you be paying $350k for? Would it be worth it if you did? Statements like yours where you make it seem like switching distros is the only solution have to be clarified.
If you want an easier install procedure, IBM backup and it's certified by the US ministry of Defence? Get SuSE. It's a really well organised distro (better than RH, as I've found out) Good luck with your quest.
You need to look at what you are paying for, and what you need. With Redhat you're paying for a package (eg, physical box of stuff), some of their packaging expertise, a small amount of their own custom goo, and presumably support. You're also indirectly funding GNU and Linux development. If that's not worth $350k, there are a number of options out there.
I personally use FreeBSD. No, I'm not suggesting you switch, but since I use it I'll detail it as another point of view. I download the software, for free, and pay no licenses. I also don't get a pretty box, support, and I've done nothing to fund development. The pretty box is available, for a fee. Support is available from a number of companies, for a fee. You can fund development as much or as little as you like with donations.
Without telling us what you need, we're not going to be able to make a recomendation. Maybe you use some Red Hat "feature" a lot that's worth $350k/yar, maybe you don't. What I can tell you is there are more expensive (price Microsoft!), and less expensive (eg, FreeBSD) options. There are also many, many, many options in the middle.
Beautiful, stable, "freedom"* distribution that just works, plenty of software for club or corporate members, very reactive staff (since they're willing to save their heads right now :-). Try it, buy it...
*Reminder: "Freedom", apart from the "free" aspect of things, is also used to replace the name of a bunch of arrogant, anti-american bastards in the old Europe...
All generalizations are false, including this one...
If you are sick of RedHat's extortive licensing fees that you instead switch to Windows XP... :)
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
That's esentialy what you are paying for if you go with the RedHat enterprise. The assesment you need to make is;
1. Do you need that level of support.
2. Is there a cheaper way to achive the level of support you do need.
3. Dose 1 or 2 requiere switching vendors.
For the cluless. It has nothing to do with the software itself. I.e. You can download RedHat and install it on as many PCs as you like virtualy free.
PS: Support for large numbers of critical solaris and/or Windows servers costs just as much or more. I should know since I work for a company that makes most of it's money off this sort of thing.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
The strategy I'm taking is to use the RedHat high end products for running commercial applications (like Oracle). For everything else, standard RedHat is fine. The developers like that RedHat keeps pace with the new stuff they're working on.
/etc/sysconfig, /etc/profile.d, etc... very modular.
The advent of http://www.fedora.us bodes well for the future. I expect to see more 3rd party support for the RedHat standard package. That's the nice thing about RedHat finally opening up their devel process.
At worst, you could just take the standard distro that RedHat bases their advanced products on and use the security patches from the advanced on the standard distro. For example, install RedHat 7.2 and install any patches from the currently support advanced product. The only thing is that you'll have to rpmbuild --rebuild the src.rpm's as they are released.
I really like RedHat's way of doing things. I like their python based configuration programs. I like
And who'd 've thunk... RedHat is basicallly IPv6 ready out of the box. I didn't notice that until recently. Very easy to setup 6to4, radvd, etc. Even Mozilla is compiled with --enable-ipv6. Thanks RedHat!
Red Hat are in business to make money - they do this by providing paid-for distributions with full support, custom-tweaked kernels and applications, and provide a validated platform on which to run commercial apps like Oracle.
Want to put that together yourself? Go for it, nobody at Redhat is stopping you. All the stuff they integrate in their product is free, just go do it yourself.
But don't complain because you can't do it yourself and don't see why you should pay Redhat to provide you with a quality product.
Its not like you don't have a choice of vendors, or that your apps only run on a single vendor's platform.
Linux is never free - you either pay for it with money, or you pay for it with your commitment to the GPL and/or the time you invest into making it work for you.
We need people like you in the Linux community i.e. 'waah waah linux is too expensive, even when i can download it for free' like we need a frickin hole in the head.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Can you explain what makes Red Hat's release policy. Change the price so so much?
Gnu For President 2004
Nope, we will not be spending anymore money on Redhat. Looking elsewere. Maybe even back to the MS-company
One thing that you get with the licenses is centralized updating from redhat's servers. I find that on my networks, its easier to setup your own server and do it yourself. That way you don't have to pay RedHat and depend on each of your servers getting it from an outside source, you just need to have your update server grab it and share.
Of course, companies like redhat are good for businesses as well, because a lot of companies don't have the time to do a lot of their own support (or the technical savvy/staff), so having that option out there is a definite plus.
"Sed Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?" -Juvenal
Debian is as stable as you can get. If they want the support, they can hire someone to do it in house (and in doing so contribute back to the movmement), or pay another company for support. The cost either way will undoubtedly be less then shelling out more than $350K for Red Hat, licenses. I Vote DEBIAN, but I am sure would work as well ;0)
Fuzzy_The_Quantum_Duck
=0)
==================
Damn Slashdot cut the last 2 Chars from my name!!!
What do you want? Enterprise-level support without paying for it? Do you think that the support contracts offered by HP, IBM, Sun, or Microsoft will have more value for less money?
This is the Free Software movement, not the Free Support movement. You can still download the software for free, and pay some kids $20 an hour to support it if that's what you want. Quit complaining that the world doesn't give you everything you want for free.
The value of Red Hat for an enterprise is not that the software is free of charge. The value of Red Hat is that the source is free from restrictions. Other than that, they're just like any other enterprise Unix vendor.
You want to run Oracle with Red Hat, period. (Well, you want Red Hat unless you want to pony up 250k for a sunfire box, or go back to 2003. Saving money is the objective, right?)
However, you can safely run other servers on GPL Red Hat, or Debian, or SuSe, or....
We moved to BSD for most of our Unix needs.
Someone please explain this claim. I have no experience with buying anything from Red Hat, but I was certainly under the understanding that the software was freely copyable. Further, if you bought one copy you should be able to install it on as many systems as you wanted. Sure, support is an issue. And if you want Red Hat to give lots of support for a lot of systems you should expect to pay for it. But couldn't AC and his company hire more people and support the systems themselves with that $350k? Don't they need support staff anyway to work with Red Hat? They would have to have support staff if they moved to Debain or other distros, so is there really a reason to move rather than stay with Red Hat and support yourself? Is there something about using Red Hat that I'm unaware of? Where is this $350k cost coming from?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
We're currently running on FreeBSD 4.8, but we have plans to switch to FreeBSD 5.x real soon.
I thought that you only had to pay for the machines that you actually wanted support for. Buy one license, install multiple times. That's how it works. This $350k number sounds to large to me.
Hire me...
By all means, get Redhat support if you're just trying to make your company feel good about spending money on something. But their support is terrible. By terrible I mean completely worthless at solving any sort of problem easy or complex, big or small.
They aren't much worse than anyone else's support so far as I have experienced. But still somehow I was shocked at just how completely worthless they are.
We're currently evaluating what distribution we want to use moving forward.
Well, you could install just about any distribution on a laptop and hook it up to one of those Evolution Robotics laptop robots. Those go forward (and backward, and sideways) quite easily. Oh, you meant in the future? Well, why didn't you say so?
Pointy-Haired Boss: "We need to do this on a going-forward basis!"
Dilbert: "Thanks for ruling out time travel. You're usually not that helpful."
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
My company has hired a small independent Linux technical support provider to help with this.. They have a service where they create patches and updates for RH 6.2-8.0 when new security vulnerabilities are out. They test them, package them as RPM, and distribute. So when 12/31/2003 comes around, you don't have to upgrade to 9.0 if it isn't feasible.
Its kind of expensive and may not work for everyone, but its worth a look:
http://www.pantek.com/linux.php?subsect=rhupdates
In this economy when the "big" Linux players are worried about the "big" issues, I prefer working with a smaller company like these guys because they work harder to make their mark.
my company had the same issue. i just compiled the enterprise distro. if you already have a 7.2 system running put the srpms on that machine and do an rpmbuild on the ones you need. once when you have the compiled rpms your pretty much set, just need to unpack to some partition and set up grub.
we did this because we wanted to run oracle on linux and oracle only supports redhat enterprise or united linux enterprise. there was no way i was going to pay thousands of dollars for a free linux distribution. of course this means we don't have any support from redhat but we have a lot of linux guys at work so it's not an issue for us.
Quite so. We've recently bought RedHat Advanced Server and it cost a little under 3k USD just to run Oracle servers on it. You cannot download RH AS for free. You have to pay for it.
Unfortunately this is called vendor lock-in. Although you can probably run Oracle on Debian, Oracle will not support you in anyway.
My advice? Move to *BSD and use postgreSQL. That camp of free software doesn't have any vendor lock-in.
...because they were losing money on it. According to the 10K report they filed with the SEC, Red Hat's revenues from retail boxes had dropped 20% over the past year, and they predicted an even steeper drop for this year. So they decided to shift their focus to their profitable Enterprise Server business, and open up the base distribution to more community involvment.
If you don't mind doing the support yourself (or contracting with 3rd party), the Red Hat standard distro should run everything the Enterprise versions do. Keep in mind, too, that last I checked, Red Hat 9 wasn't certified to run Oracle anyway (in fact, 7.3 is still probably the best choice for that).
--Mythos
I'm not saying it's the answer to your problem, I don't know, you'll have to decide.
Now, before we move on I'm going to tell you how Debian sucks. This is not to say that other distributions do not suck, or that Debian sucks more or less than the others - this is just something that you might run in to and should be aware of.
Debian sucks because:
Yet, we chose Debian because it rocks (and RH sucks) in these areas:
For a server you put in a data center and don't want to touch again unless absolutely necessary, I think Debian is great. It is extremely easy to stay up to date with security, and that is pretty much all there is to it. I still have nightmares from the days where I was mirroring entire RedHat distribution trees (or at least their massive update directories) in order to keep those systems up.
But really - in the end - it is not a few hundred bucks per server that should make the difference. It is my impression that if you pay for your RedHat, you can have a nice update service as well.
You'll be shelling out thousands of dollars per server for the hardware, an order of magnitude more (over the years) for support (eg. your time), so a RedHat subscription fee really shouldn't stop you from going RH.
On the other hand, if some of the above made you think - I can promise you that Debian certainly is a viable alternative at least for the machines I've dealt with so far.
I personally believe that Slackware is the best server implantation that you can go with. It's the most Unix distro IMHO. Also you deal with source files, not RPM's, personally I greatly dislike the use of binaries. The best thing is that Slackware is Free, and it's stable. I know a lot of different people whom have had problems with Redhat, switched them over to Slackware, which has a slightly higer learning curve, but, they were happy with Slack.
Support, you say? Debian has a nice directory of qualified Debian consultants, and in general, it makes sense to have a few Linux experts inhouse to deal with emergencies.
How many hours of Redhat support did you use last year? Divide the number of hours into the support contract cost. If the hourly rate is over $100, (and I'm betting it will be way over) consider getting on-demand support from independent consultants, instead of using a pre-paid contract. Some consultants will even let you buy reasonable (e.g., 10 hour) blocks of support time, which you can use in small (5-15 minute) increments. You have MANY support options. Explore them to see which will save you the most.
Use any savings for training. As your in-house expertise increases, your support costs will decrease. The nice thing about Linux is you only have to pay for the support you need. Too many companies forget that.
Learn to use Google effectively too; 99.9% of all Linux questions I get in a year have already been answered, and are just a quick inquiry away.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Never take recommendations from anyone who spells the word with two c's and just one m.
Laugh stupid, it's a joke.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
SuSe is cheaper than AS, how much cheaper i do not know. but unlike most distro's they offer an "Enterprise Edition."
They also offer priced to fit support, and now have the backing of IBM and Sun, and they support oracle.
and this is coming from a Gentoo zealot.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
Have you considered calling / writing to Red Hat's sales section with your concerns? You may be able to negotiate a more acceptable price. Especially where there's such a significant sum involved.
==========
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There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
And enterprise? unless you need to run certified applications (i.e. Oracle) in all and each one of them, an enterprise version is not needed. You can also use some of the UnitedLinux distributions if you want to run a version with certification for applications.
But my best bet is that you need a few for special applications, and the others could be "plain" linux distributions. So you must choose between an unified distribution for all for a common maintenance/patching/etc with high costs, or do something that may need a bit more of work, but a lot less of money.
As a RedHat stock holder i think you should pay the 350K and be happy you aren't paying much more to M$, Sun or IBM. But if you don't want to, why do you need enterprise? Does Enterprise event require that you pay RedHat to use it? Personally I'd call them up and negotiate an arrangement where you get the coverage you want and pay them fairly for what they give you.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
slackware
The new "low cost" server option at my company is RHAS on a dual Xeon box connected to a huge EMC disk for network storage. F*$%ing overkill, bigtime. And they wonder why we can't do anything cheaply. This is the small, minimum production grade server standard embraced. JHMFC.
In my opinion (not so humbly, though), the only thing you're getting from big, expensive RH is the guarantee that Oracle will support whatever f-ed up configuration you come up with. It's still GNU/Linux at heart (there, RMS, ya happy now?) Sure, RH promises not to change it as often, but honestly I just upgraded an old RH server running 6.2. It's been running and stable for something like four years. It worked, so aside from patching and security, I left it the hell alone. This is something that large companies can't understand. Once it works, don't upgrade every damn chance you get - keep the old solid configuration running until you have the time and the need to do an upgrade.
Personally, since I believe that having three truly hard-core linux geeks that know their shit onsite is better than any professional support line you could ever call, I'd go with standard RH and order me some geeks instead. For $350k, you should be able to get a very nice set of them, and they'll be right there to save your ass if anything goes wrong.
This is why I have no future management prospects. I just can't think that way - I worked in small shops too long to think that throwing money at stuff fixes anything. We found ways to keep stuff running on a mix-and-match room full of old hardware - no support contracts, no officially supported configurations, just guys (and one lady) that knew what the hell they were doing. Once I moved into the big corporate world, I had to give myself a lobotomy to even understand their mindset towards problem-solving.
I'm the linux guy at work. People ask me all the time what distribution, and I answer RedHat. People understand, sort of, that RedHat linux is an alternative to windows.
RedHat has kind of been the IBM of Linux distros, i.e. a nice, safe, household word kind of a choice. My very microsoft boss at my very microsoft job was able to go to CompUSA and get a shrink-wrap RedHat 9, install it on his laptop, and now we've got a choice in which OS to use for development.
Plus, what are people going to think about "those flakey linux people", when the name they could trust is pulling out of the market (at least that is what it is going to look like). To a lot of people, RedHat == Linux. And if RedHat goes away, that says to them that Linux is gone away. Not good.
And are they REALLY loosing money on the consumer sales?
I'm (obviously) unhappy about this.
-- ac at home
I HIGHLY recommend Apple products.
i'll tell you more after i'm done cleaning out my desk
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
I'd consider this when getting the level of support you have priced from RH. Think about it: will there be many questions for which you are willing to pay $1000 a pop? Are there many questions to which you couldn't find an answer by Googling? Or is it more of a CYA action in case your team fouls up? I'd hate to think you'd be wasting over a quarter million dollars for an inept admin.
--Chag
...you really need to be careful about which distribution you choose. Officially, Oracle will only support their 9i Server product on RedHat Enterprise and SUSE Enterprise. It would be really bad to call Oracle for support only to be told you are S.O.L. because you're not running on a supported platform.
That being said, you can run Orcle 9i Server on other, less costly distributions. Personally, I run a development Oracle 9i server on debian 3.0 (woody).
The trick to Oracle compatability is the gcc and glibc versions. For Oracle 9i, you need gcc-2.95.4 and gblic-2.2.5. This happens to match exactly what debian 3.0 currently supports. Unfortunately, most other distributions have long since upgraded to gcc-3.x series and glibc-2.3.x, on which Oracle will not install or run.
To verify what versions of these packages a given distribution supports, you should use Distrowatch.com.
I was personally involved in porting our company's software to Linux. I chose to support Red Hat, thinking that their big name would mean that they were somehow better as an organization.
I WAS TOTALLY WRONG!
I recently tried phoning Red Hat Sales to try and buy support, and it has been more than 1 week, and I have been unable to get them to respond! My first 3 attempts to contact Sales were ignored, and finally I got someone on the phone. They directed me to someone else, and after an initial e-mail, they have yet to contact me after I sent them 2 follow-up e-mails. It is absolutely ridiculous.
You would in this day-and-age that Red Hat would be salivating over someone who is willing to pay them money for support, but they seem competely disinterested in helping me give them money. I have already complained to my superiors that we should consider supporting a different flavor of Linux, because if this is how responsive Red Hat's Sales unit is, imagine how unresponsive their Support unit it.
I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere whether this is a sales quote or a quick calculator job? Sales people are flexable, especially when it comes to big sales. If your calculating 350K there is probably a Red Hat representative out there who could make you very happy (and would be very happy). Of course if your company needs 350K worth of support, then you'll need to be more creative.
But this sound like someone who is quick with the calculator and just as quick to react.
Quack, quack.
And where did you see a reference that the poster was a homosexual?
Save your advice for your buddies, will ya.
Seriously. Then you would have a real UNIX platform that is stable and has real support behind it. Don't think that RedHat is going to be any different than the big UNIX vendors.
Tell them you'll switch to Windows if they can sell you the server licences cheaper than RedHat. :)
Communism was just a red herring.
Looks like Redhat wants to charge like Microsoft for their software.
Switching over to FreeBSD as we speak...
Frank Madison
For Unix Based Hosting Visit
http://www.innovativecreations.com
Hi,
I installed Oracle 9i on SuSE Linux a year ago (must have been 8.0 or 8.1).
It basically worked out-of-the-box with only one minor glitch that is documented at SuSEs website. Their Enterprise Linux is also certified for Oracle.
(I tried the normal version, must be professional now)
Another open question is why you need Enterprise? The underlying OS is the same, recompiling the kernel is something every CS undergrad could do for you. The only real issue is support, but I think that should be negotiable, since you can look at other companies too! Turbolinux and Connectiva are also companies that have their Enterprise Linux certified.
Four companies to ask about support? Go kick some ass!
... at least it's still free-as-in-free-speech. That's what you really want. Right?
It's an annoying fact that you have to run AS if you want to run an Oracle DB on it or a BEA JVM. You can't get Oracle to install on RH8/9, and BEA will blow up on you with either of those distros. But you can get around this by running RH 7.2, which is was AS is based on. Oracle will install fine on that, and BEA will not blow up. Obviously you're not going to get support from Oracle/BEA if you let it slip that you're not running their software on AS. Oracle in particular is notorious for this.
What's even worse in some ways is that you have to use a two year old kernel. Thus you're stuck with inferior threading (among other things.) I've read a lot of this about how AS contains other "optimizations" for running things like Oracle that makes up for this. I think it's a load of BS. You do get built-in clustering (piranha), though you could get the RPMs for that.
At my company we run AS on our Oracle db in production. It's one of about 20 Linux servers we have there, and the only one not running RH8. In our dev/qa enviros we run Oracle on RH 7.2. We do not run BEA becuase we didn't want to run AS on our app server farm.
I agree. I have never dealt with any sales organization as unresponsive and unmotivated as Redhat's.
Mod parent up - the grandparent is a misinformed idiot.
The Free desktop that Just Works
Fast forward to end of 2002, and we had become disgusted with Red Hat's road map for its' Advanced Server license. It seemed as though we had lost all of the benefits of the GPL.
There was no way we were going back to M$, but there was a movement from higher up top to change distributions. To make a long story short, we passed on SuSe and chose the often corporately overlooked Gentoo.
The benefits of this move are stunning. We have been able to hire 16 additional employees to handle our own fork of Portage, and 22 additional employees to provide support. Not only to we do a "ghost compile" for each box (many different Pentium and Athlon systems), we also take a minimalist approach. The combination of those two choices have enabled us to increase performance per box to something like 26% faster on average.
With the obvious help of the Gentoo open source community, we have created a low cost, self-sustained IT department that can function well into the next decade. Thanks Gentoo!
If you absolutely want Red Hat support, go ahead and buy one contract per machine.
:)
But if you don't need the support, that's another problem. Their licensing agreement says that the "Advanced Server" product is distributed under the same terms as the products it contains. Most of them are GPL'ed free software (as in free speech), and all of them are freely redistributable software (as in free beer).
You can find the licence agreement here. The licence agreement itself is Appendix 1,towards the end.
You are puzzled because they don't distribute the binaries (RPMS, iso images...) for free. The only obligation RedHat has under the GPL is to make the source *not the binaries !!!* available to everybody for free. And they do comply (see here.)
This means that you can buy one RedHat Advanced Server box, or copy it from a friend, and install it on as many machines as you want. Or you can compile the sources and burn an iso image
Fabrice
Here's what you do:
1. Hire 1-5 high school Linux geeks part-time.
2. Pay them 15-20k a year. They will rejoice! Sweeten the deal with an unlimited supply of Twinkies, Mountain Dew and Hot Pockets.
3. Sit back.
4. In your next conference with the big cheese, tell him how smart you are for solving the company's IT problems.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
nuf said.
... Knoppix ;)
I work at a company with a large number of Linux servers in the data center.
Hey! You hiring?!? I'd like to get away from being a Win* Admin...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
At $350K to upgrade, you are talking a serious number of systems. I'm not saying you can talk them into giving it to you for free but whoever is doing the purchasing should be able to negotiate something better than full retail. You are mainly buying support so things to point out include multiple identical systems, internal support for end-user systems, etc. that mean they won't have to answer too many really dumb questions.
Favorite really dumb support question: do I have to plug it into the electricity?
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
you may as well consider solaris x86.
Oracle runs real well on it. Unfortunately, only 8i for now, but oracle has announced that 10i will be on solx86.
Plus down the line, you have the option of buying your hardware and OS from the same vendor: Sun.
Sun's current x86 server line are actually cheaper than Dell's offerings, so I hear.
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In Soviet Russia, overlords welcome YOU!
Yahoo and Microsoft's own hotmail run on FreeBSD. Also the apache team uses FreeBSD as their os choice on their servers. FreeBSD handles large amounts of i/o and tcp/ip traffic and that is its strength's. SMP support and threading are its weaknesses.
Just my two cents.
Also you can run Oracle if you install the Linux abi package on FreeBSD.
http://saveie6.com/
What are you getting for that $350K? What level of support for how many servers with what turn around time? Is that an annual cost? If not, how long is it?
Otherwise, the information you'll get will be mostly worthless.
You're paying for support.
That's riddiculous. Less than $350K? For an installation that large, they will obviously need more than one person for the job. Even if they get a coupe of kids right out of college, there's still a good chance the salaries will be in the $50K range. Hire 3 people, and within 2 years you're within the $350K range. And, all this is assuming the people you hire are as skilled with Linux as a Red Hat support professional.
I'm using Debian/testing, and I'm very happy about it.
Changing of distro means reinstalling everything, and it can be a pain if you have many computers. With less than 350 k$, I suggest you hire a linux expert providing support for your company, you'll save some money!
Agreed...
Also thanks for pointing out that this upgrade will most likely involve quite a massive amount of systems, it seems obvious that the idea mentioned above to hire someone to do the support is a very bad idea considering hiring a support person is really a terrible idea...
You just can't allow that kind of stuff in the real world... Not only is it quite a bit to handle for a large and experienced support team but it's a very scary thought to have one person do all the support on their own...
I'm curious about a couple things. First, what do people call Redhat support for? I mean, I understand if you have a 9i cluster or something but what else? You could google a fix in way less time for pretty much any Redhat problem. How often do people have problems with their Redhat Linux systems? When 7.2 was out, I had Redhat 4.2 machines running on P-233Mhz with 100 web hosting customers each happily humming along with 1000+ day uptimes.
Once I moved into the big corporate world, I had to give myself a lobotomy to even understand their mindset towards problem-solving.
This is required at most corperations for accepting a management position.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It depnds upon your budget needs..
You have already mention the need to use Oracle which is $5k per cpu..
If you switch distros you want to make sure you are not placed in the saem decision 6 months or 2 years down the road again..
Thus I recommend looking into using debian instead of SuSE..
As you know SuSE is partnering with vendors such as Sun and thus wil be in the same bussiness model as Red Hat in wanting to charge for enterprise versions either through support or etc..
Do not forget to factor in training costs of employees of going from distro to the next...
Also do the idiot checks, take a demo/dev version of Oracle and do test installs on the distro your considering..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Slack is great for servers, you can easily install as much or as little as you want, and it's rock-solid. If you're looking at Oracle, look at PostgreSQL first - by the time you exceed its capabilities, a big Sun box running Oracle will be pocket change.
I think the main issue is that we want to run Red Hat, but even with extra geeks, it's not going to help the security patch issue. Phone or email support isn't a big deal for people that already know how to support Linux in house.
After 12 months, you either upgrade, to the new buggy unstable version, or you stare at bugtraq all day and hope that nothing you are running comes up with a new security hole.
That's really not an option. RH is screwing up big time.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
You won't get any argument from me about Oracle, it is an excellent database. But I would pick firebird, it is open source and free. If you are open to an open source operating system, then why not an open source database? Also, Interbase (the initial commercial source drop) has been used in many commercial applications. It's just another option.
Gentoo works great. You get the latest stuff and it's stable. You also don't get the sense of self-loathing that an Apple simpleton or a Debian dinosaur gets.
Only a fag would use anything else.
Now, I have 70 Linux servers around the country, and a steady stream of new customers. I've been installing Redhat 8.0 on new deployments because 9.0 doesn't work well with our application. So, we've everything from 7.0 through 8.0 in the field. Over the past few months, Redhat dropped up2date support and patches for Redhat 7 and 7.1. I feel guilty installing 8.0 on new boxes because I know support for it will be dropped at the end of the year.
I don't wish to buy into Redhat AS or ES because I don't understand what I'm paying for. *I'm* the Redhat support. I just need something that will receive patches and support for more than one year. The 5 year lifespan of the ES versions is nice, but I've NEVER called Redhat for support. I don't plan to.
I build the kernels for each of the servers. I use vanilla kernel.org source with XFS. We sell 2, 4 and 8-way servers. Am I missing out on anything from the "optimized" Redhat Advanced Server kernels? What are other people in this situation doing?
I think it's confusing because we initially chose Redhat for the accountability aspect of having a corporation behind the distro. Now, I'm not sure who they're targeting. I would imagine that most firms that select Redhat Advanced server and are willing to pay the price (>$1000/license) would have a staff talented enough to support it. So why the mandatory support costs from Redhat?
Edmund White
http://flickr.com/ewwhite
My company looked into this last year when were deciding which distribution to go with for a new project we were working on. I think the main issue was that only a few distribution/version combos were certified by Oracle as offically supported platforms (which is required to get support from them). I believe the last free version of Red Hat supported was 7.1. The same goes for pretty much all other Linux distributions. If you wanted an Oracle certified OS, you needed to purchase each distributers "enterprise" versions since the freebies are no longer submitted for certification by each distributer (for obvious rea$on$).
Evaluate what each of your servers is and will be used for and then pick the right tool for the job. Those servers that will/might need Oracle could be better off with something Oracle appoved RH, Suse. Those servers that run other apps. mail, print, archive, web, etc can easily be run with Debian, Slackware, etc. If you have some desktop boxes you could use Mandrake, Xandros, etc. One size does not fit all. Mixing could safe significant dollars. Without significat admin. costs.
I guess they had to jack up their prices to support all the wonderful new job opportunities they are creating.
The high-end distributions from both Red Hat and SuSE offer "asynchronous input/output" and my database vendor says it makes the database faster. Can someone please explain to me how asynchronous I/O works? Is it available except in these enterprise-price distributions? If not, why doesn't the GPL require its availability?
Basically earlier this year Red Hat announced a fork in their product line. They now have Red Hat Linux (the open source distro still freely available) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The current version of RHEL is 2.1 which is based on Red Hat Linux 7.2, but there is currently a public beta that people can register to try for the next version of RHEL.
RHEL comes in several flavors, WS (workstation), ES (Enterprise Server), and AS (the old Advanced Server). RHEL software will be maintained for up to 5 years from it's release and telephone and other support options are available for it. I don't remember the cost per box, it varies based on the product you buy but you can find the most current pricing at Red Hat Ordering Site . Notice that RHEL ES is $350, this includes a 1 year Red Hat Network subscription to get your updates.
Now the weird thing is the license. Basically Red Hat only distributes open source software, we all know what that means, but the Enterprise line of products come with a license agreement that is written to cover the product, not the individual pieces of software. Every RHEL box that you have installed MUST be paid for. If you install 2 boxes off the same set of software with out purchasing a RHEL license, it invalidates all RHEL licenses at your site. However, I know that there are dispensations made for development vs. production machines. A Red Hat salesperson explained it to me once, but the knowlege has been displaced by something more important.
All the while the Red Hat Linux product line will also be freely available. The difference between the two is basically support and lifecycle. The Red Hat Linux product is not supported outside of the software being maintained for up to one year after it's initial release. The Red Hat Linux product will continue it's 4-6 month release cycle while the Red Hat Enterprise Linux product is every 12 to 18 months.
Someone in an earlier thread made the comment that now the Red Hat Linux (free) product would now be an unstable platform, that Red Hat was now making every product a major release. Yes every product is not versioned as a major release, 8, 9, 10, etc. However, the beta for 9 was actually called 8.0.xx and the beta for 10 is called 9.xx which leads one to believe that in the early stages of Red Hat Linux 9 that it was actually going to be called 8.1!!! Perhaps there was some versioning decision made in the marketing/management ranks over there. Either way, outside of a little gcc kruft which was not Red Hat's fault, Red Hat Linux 9 has been rock solid for me, and I should continue to expect a STABLE product coming from them in this area. New features will be made in the Red Hat Linux platform first, then they will be pulled into the RHEL product as it evolves.
Anyway, that's my understanding of how it works after talking with a bunch of people over at RH.
--Runz
Red Hat is very flexible in cases like this. They'd rather have you pay 1/2 list. Then have you do it yourself.
Just have one of your team keep wondering out load what prevents you from buying 1 copy, and installing on all your systems;-)
IANALBIPOOGL (I am not a Lawyer, but I play one on GrokLaw.)
So let me get this straight, you'd consider paying someone right out of college more than $20k to start with, and then you think their salaries should all be doubled in 2yrs? Considering the average ANYTHING support professional, I'd say it's a fair guess that half of them just touched the OS for the first time yesterday and are piped info from engineering to maintain the facade.
I'm estimating that you have 150-200 servers (depending on what RH package you get). If those servers aren't generating revenue, or supporting a business unit that generates revenue, it's time to downsize your datacenter. $350K sounds like a lot of money, but it's all relative to revenue. If it's only 2% of last quarters revenue, then why would you consider making a huge IT change just to save a few bucks. Again, if $350K is really a lot of money for your business to be spending on OS upgrades, than maybe it's time to downsize that datacenter because it's not generating the revenue to justify it's existance.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
The catch; using a commercial piece of software in the mix. In our case, a certain database. Being closed-source and totally non-self-servicable in case of serious problems or bugs, it is imperative to have a support contract for the commercial software. Almost all the RDBMS vendors have now altered/clarified their support policy: they will *not* honor a paid support agreement if you are running the free version of Red Hat underneath their software.
Why this policy exists is a question I will let somebody else speculate about...
There is exactly one major RDBMS vendor I could find that will officially support its software running on the free version of Red Hat (as of April 2003, at least), and that vendor is IBM with their DB/2 product.
Unfortunately, we were too time-constrained to port our system to DB/2, so in the end we caved and paid for Red Hat Enterprise so we could get RDBMS support on our existing platform. To this day we have not called Red Hat tech support once and don't expect to do so, ever. The thousands of dollars we paid covered the 3 minutes of effort the sales guy put in over the phone. Not a bad deal for Red Hat. If I were starting from scratch, knowing about the new support policies from the RDBMS vendors, I would have done the project using DB/2. PostgreSQL would have been an even better choice, except our project required real-time database replication, and PostgreSQL is just now getting to the point where that works well enough.
.... and support the free OS's with a large installation base for a bit longer. Redhat 7.3 and 8.0 have a large install base. It seems ridiculous that they would drop patch support for these versions so soon. We'll see what happens, though.
Edmund White
http://flickr.com/ewwhite
Right on. I run RubyForge on commodity hardware - 2.4 GHz CPU, IDE, 512 MB RAM. It handles an average of 24K hits per day plus a couple hundred emails plus CVS and SSH, no problem. If you know even a little bit about what you're doing, low end hardware can take you a long way.
The Army reading list
If you buy servers from IBM, HP, or Dell (among others), you can just buy support hours - and for a lot less.
Rather than buy the OS for every server, buy the support, and just copy the OS. It's my understanding that this is permitted with RH AW/ES/AS. If you don't need the enterprise version, then don't use it.
-Mark
I run a small computer consulting company, one thing I usually do is replace their linksys/dlink/netgear broadband router with a linux box. Although much smaller in scale that what you are talking about, I moved from redhat to debian for the exact same reasons you are talking about. Once RH moved to its frequent .0 releases with one-year updates, I knew I had to pick a different distro. Debian is fast, stable, and compact compared to red hat. The package system kicks major ass as well. I don't need support, the only problems I have ever run into were hardware related (or my own stoopid errors)... I will, however, say that dselect is one nasty mofo of a whatever it is... If I want a new package, I just search the debian site for it, and use apt-get. Like others have said, if the support is what you need, you will have to evaluate whether its cost-effective vs other major unix-y providers. If security updates is what you want, then there are several cheaper alternatives to red hat. Redhat needs to provide an alternative for those who don't want actual support, but do need long term updates for multiple years - otherwise, they will see their piece of the Linux pie shrink. That may be what they want, it may be a simple business decision on their part to make mo money. However, I know many, many people who are ditching red hat for the exact reason I did.
Styrofoam IS biodegradable, you're just impatient!
Exactly. That's the problem. Redhat versions with a large install base (like 7.3 or 8.0) are losing patch and security support soon. I can't believe that Redhat would force this on its users.... So with new servers, I feel awful installing RH8.0 because I know it's going to be EOL'ed soon. But I can't justify the cost increase ($150 to $1500) to my customers....
Edmund White
http://flickr.com/ewwhite
Not to be argumentative, but I think a couple of things below need to be cleared up:
* Updates. Usually there are no updates to the stable distribution except for security fixes. This is *very* good when you actually have to maintain your systems.
I think you're saying that Debian only updates their packages except when it's a security update. AFAIK, Red Hat is very conservative about the updates they release and only release for security/bug fixes also. Unless you're running Rawhide....
* Updates. "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade", and voila you have a list of security updates available - and you're about to install them. No subscriptions, no fees, no wondering where to get them from. It just works.
Not only is there apt for rpms, but there's an even better utility called yum (yellow dog updater, modified). Yum makes it incredibly easy to set up your own software repository, making it easy to keep your machines updated. Not only are apt and yum available, but Red Hat recently announced support for yum and apt repositories in up2date, therefore eliminating the subscriptions and fees previously associated with up2date. Thank you very much, however, for not comparing rpm to apt!
* Simpler package dependencies - it is actually possible to configure a web server without installing GNOME (ok, this particular setup is *probably* still possible in RedHat) - in general you will find that for dedicated servers, you end up with a 100-200 Meg system where the RH system it is replacing was well over a gig.
I know that Red Hat provides a server installation and allows you to custom select groups of packages you want installed. I'm not sure if it can fit inside a 200MB footprint, though, but I'm pretty sure it'll fit inside of a gig....
I've just installed a RedHat box that is self-supported. Why? Aside from not being in the US and therefore getting shite support from the "big name" companies, it's got nothing to do with RedHat! It's because our vendor guarantees their product under this particular version of the Linux OS.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
that you're only required to upgrade to Enterprise edition. In our case we run Oracle cluster(RAC) we've no choice but to use a more expensive Advanced Server(AS) version. Oracle only supports Oracle cluster on RedHat AS atm, regardless of the fact that AS provides no extra value to the extra cost. E.g. we paid more to buy AS just for more options like High Availability, but we've to turn it off for Oracle cluster to work properly. Why force us to pay more for something that doesn't work with your damn product? After much protests Oracle plans to support RAC on Enterprise edition NEXT YEAR. #$@$
:)
Many posters up there thought that one can always seek support elsewhere. They're obviously don't understand the situation or haven't work in the same field. You could say Linux supports can be found everywhere, but we can hardly find support for the commercial apps on them. Say if Oracle only offers supports on Redhat AS, you've no chance to seek support from Oracle when you're running it on, say, Debian, though it works perfectly in my experience.
However, don't get me wrong. I just rant about the increasing cost but Oracle+Redhat solutions are still the most cost effective around. Oracle and Redhat aren't stupid, they'll increase cost up to the point that you still think it's worthy to pay. (unlike Microsoft, their stupid licensing pratices made a lot of companies around here switch already
Ask what you can do for Debian. ...and your good will will return to you.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
To demonstrate that if a company starts acting like MS it gets treated like MS. I'd take a hard look at the transition costs moving to SuSe. It'll take some testing, no transition is painless. I like Suse Enterprise servers, so I'll admit to some bias. Hey, you have to have standards. When a Linux provider starts acting like MS (forced upgrades, ever escalating prices) maybe it's time to bitch-slap them back into line.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
... we know it's you!
Yeah Microsoft sure is great for playing games
*sigh* another Xbox fanboy...
Will I retire or break 10K?
Over the last 6 months, I've noticed a declining interest in KRUD, which I attribute to several factors (low cost bandwidth due to broadband reducing the demand for CD distributions, more commercial distro users moving to more expensive Red Hat versions, and others). Interestingly, this has come at a time when many people have stated an interest in continued support of older Red Hat distributions because of the new Red Hat End Of Life announcements.
We'd like to be able to continue to do KRUD, and are exploring electronic distribution options, and broadening our offerings.
I think that KRUD provides a valuable service, both in providing an easy, secure, complete, up-to-date distribution, and in providing an alternative to Red Hat's soon to be discontinued 'hobbiest' versions.
Right now, we're evaluating providing support for 7.3 and 8.0 after Red Hat's End of Life in December. It's going to take us close to a full time engineer to do the updates, I estimate. So far, I've had only about 10 requests to provide End of Life support, which is not even close to being able to cover the costs to produce. The price would drop to a more reasonable level if more people order it.
It's interesting that many people are expressing interest for longer support for older Red Hat releases, but few seem to find any value in it.
If you're interested in pre-ordering, please feel free to contact me.
Geek Social Butterfly
If you have a problem, and have the source, can't you just fix it yourself?
Er, not exactly. RedHat is a listed company, and as such, they are in it for shareholder value. This means that they have to get their stock climbing, which means they need lots of bells and whistles at regular intervals -- just the same as every other listed company from AT&T to (yes) Microsoft to Yahoo!. Making money is one of the best ways to increase shareholder value, true, but even better is the perception in the market that you are going to make money. You create this perception by doing new things that look great in press releases, not quietly touching up the odds and ends of your distribution.
SuSE, on the other hand, are not a listed company, and so they don't have to play these games. They are, in fact, in it purely for the money, and so their first interest is (should be) making customers, not fat cat shareholders, happy. The first thought with SuSE is not (should not be) "will this increase shareholder value" but "will we be able to sell more copies with this".
Which is why, in my mind, SuSE has the superior product. SuSE 8.2 is beautiful, and no, I don't work for them, I'm just a very, very happy costumer.
The sad thing is that sooner or later, SuSE will cave in to the call of all that money that going public will get them. Then they will (have to) go the same way RedHat is going, and the quality of the product will suffer, because SuSE too will take care of the needs of their shareholders before they consider the needs of their costumers. At this point, either a new, non-public distributor will turn up and take SuSE's place, or some Gentooesque system will make most of this stuff obsolete. What ever happens, I'm going to switch pretty soon after they issue stock.
The moral: Don't do business with a public listed company if you can help it. By law, they have to think of their shareholders before they think of you.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
And maybe I'll see you in AA.
The ocean parts and the meteors come down
Laid out in amber, baby.
The original poster quoted $350,000. For that price couldn't you hire a few competent linux admins and have in house support? Having good people on site who know your needs is surely better than any company's telephone support.
This may be a troll, but most enterprises stay with whats working. Why do you feel the need to upgrade all your linux servers? What will a 2.4.22 kernel get you that your not getting with a 2.4.10? Oracle (and DB2) are not kernel dependent.
A new enterprise database? Fine start a new pilot project. Document honestly what you find and make a migration path. Decide on a Win32 migration path to MS SqlServer if you have too. Whatever is best for your company.
Your question demands more information.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
I say go with SuSE Enterprise Server.
It has some nice features like remote auto install and YaST for a very nice system installer and maintainer.
SuSE Enterprise also supports x86, IBM mainframe, I/P series IBM servers, Itanium2 and AMD Opteron processors. This gives you a lot of flexability to add new hardware to the network to improve performance and the knowledge that the new machines will run perfectly with exsisting servers.
SuSE also has great tech support services at a much lower rate than redhat. You can feel confident that your server software is also run by the German Government and praised! by them.
SuSE's max turnaround time for support is just 2 hours!
SuSE is also United Linux Compatible and LSB compliant.
Suse Prices are not too bad either:
x86 single server 749USD$
Itanium Single server 448USD$
Opteron Single CPU 448USD$
Opteron Dual CPU 767USD$
Opteron Quad CPU 1405USD$
Opteron 8 CPU 2585USD$
These include 1 Year Maintainance and Service.
At home I run the developer edition of the Oracle 9ias enterprise database as well as release 2 of the Oracle 9ias Application server. I have successfully installed to Red Hat (version 8.0 not Enterprise), Mandrake and also a Debian Distribution. At work we are running a development environment on Red Hat 8.0 and production using Solaris 8. Since we are using pure java and j2ee code our software runs flawlessly across the systems with no changes whatsoever, even considering the fact that some of the developers on the project run Windows systems on their desktops where they actually write some of the source code modules!
If you expect support from Oracle concerning an Oracle installation of any kind whatsoever on Red Hat Linux you best be using Enterprise and yes the support pricing is quite high compared to what most of us are used to running Linux over the years.
I would suggest running your most critical servers on Red Hat Enterprise and if you have supporting environments, perhaps a development or test environment, use Red Hat 8.0 (or even Debian or Mandrake) and save yourself some cash outlay in that way.
If you have the talent within your staff to self support I can attest to the fact that Oracle products run as advertised on Red Hat 7.3 and 8 (have not yet tried 9) using the install procedures Oracle outlines for use on Red Hat Enterprise, but as has already been pointed out, Oracle will not support installations with problems unless you have the Enterprise edition as your underlying Linux Distro.
The Matrix is real... but I'm only visiting!
The Matrix is real... but I'm only visiting!
I've been trying to figure this out, and it would seem that there is nothing in the license that stops you being able to legally give me a copy of (say) RHES, and for me to run that copy, with no access to up2date and no support contract. (Like a lot of the other posts say, I am the support - my only concern is having a platform that commercial software supports!)
The license seems to refer to the services that come bundled with the software, not the software itself. I believe that the JVM cannot be copied from the standard distribution but removing is trivial.
Interesting notes: to summarise, it's probably perfectly legal for you to copy me RHEL ES, however you would probably also have to provide me all the updates if I wanted them (which may violate your license to receive them). The big dollars is with regard to the updates, and I believe they are made publically available by SRPM - and even then, its probably also technically allowable for you to mirror all the update RPMs somewhere.
I installed Lotus Domino recently on a Debian server because I didn't trust the machine with a consumer Red Hat and it wasn't cost effective enough to get RHEL. I'd be very interested to hear if you can or can't just copy/mirror RHEL.
I would imagine that Redhat would jump at the opportunity to provide a healthy discount to that $350k.
I suggest you actually talk to a salesdroid before making any decisions.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Its free, stable, great in the server room, and you can buy support for much less then $350k...
Man thats expensive.. Did RedHat loose some of their common sense?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I suggest that you company switch all the servers to OpenBSD and hire Theo de Raadt as a on site full time employee for 350k/year, I'm sure he'd be interested.
The fact redhat didn't want to budge there $299 RHEL WS price on 18000 units was insulting. We have no choice but XP at this point if we have a prayer at winning the proposal. Then again, I still tend to beleive that our business unit is leaving out some details.
Not only is there apt for rpms, but there's an even better utility called yum (yellow dog updater, modified). Yum makes it incredibly easy to set up your own software repository, making it easy to keep your machines updated. Not only are apt and yum available, but Red Hat recently announced support for yum and apt repositories in up2date, therefore eliminating the subscriptions and fees previously associated with up2date.
Excellent. Please direct me to the free APT-RedHat and Yum-RedHat archives of almost 10,000 packages that are continuously receiving security updates for their "stable" release and bleeding-edge updates for the more courageous users who opt for "unstable." And show me the bug tracking system that I can use to report bugs in those packages to the maintainers.
"There's apt for rpm" is a red herring, because apt is only part of the story. Debian is attractive because there is a world-wide group of volunteers who keeps it up to date, maintaining packages that they themselves use. And it is the most comprehensive binary archive out there, by far.
I use RedHat, and its out-of-the-box experience is light-years ahead of Debian. But as far as package archives there's no comparison.
Companies have different overheads. $350K should by a $100K Guru ("Keeper of The Distribution") and a couple of $60K Guru-in-training helper types. That's $220K, add 28% for good beni's, another 10% for "rent", and some change for toys.
That should, in fact, handle most companies well into the Fortune 500. The Fortune 200 may need abit more, but then, they'd have alot more machines to armortize support costs against.
This is the "material cost". Now, many companies use an "overhead" method. Such companies can easily account an employee as double their salary, or more. But, I see no reason why a new employee should be encumbered by X% of the CEO's salary. The CEO expense is fixed and exists with, or without, the new hire.
Just wanted to throw my 2 Canadian cents in this discussion. Check out this project if you want headache free workstation/server replicated installations and management. It has been working wonders for me.
You sure didn't go to my schoool...and for that I'm glad.
I am annonyed. Why is a "Ask slashdot" post being made by a anonymouse coward?
First off I don't know that many people who thinks "Ask slashdot" is productive to getting any good response.
Anyone who bases their business decisions on a "ask slashdot" should be shot. Cause that's a very good way to utterly fuck up your business/project/thingie/life.
Few if anyone here is going to give you a 20 page reply about what they use and why they used it. Without a detailed report any response you get would be no better then doing research on your own.
So please for the sake of not making slashdot a dumb and stupid place stop posting these kinds of questions!
You learn next to nothing in school, it's really impressive when you think about it. They manage to make entire classes in which you have to absorb volumes of material and yet somehow, if you memorize every detail of that material and retain it, you still only walk away with a 10th of what you figured out playing with the subject on your own the first week...
You don't learn in the classroom, it's primary purpose is to give a piece of paper and 4yr+ setback on the world of technology. You learn in the field.
> I'd say it's a fair guess that half of them just touched the OS for the first time yesterday and are piped info from engineering to maintain the facade.
Duh. That's how multi-tier support works. The first person to answer the phone isn't oing to be some exalted guru. They'll know how to answer some questions (the FAQs that people run into all the time) and hopefully can intellegently gather info or just plain route the question to engineering. That way by the time the (expensive) engineers look at it they already have the relevant info and it's all in the tracking database already.
The usefulness of a service contract isn't relative to the quality of the phone grunts - it's the top of the food chain that matters. If you come across a REALLY bizarre problem who is going to be better equiped to investigate it? Redhat employs a large number of VERY senior kernel/glibc/etc coders - if they can't solve your problem probably noone can.
Hopefully you'll never run across a case that would require that level of expertise, but if you do it'll be there. That's a level of assurance that most organizations can't build internally for $350K.
(Of course, you could just do what a lot of people do and rely on mailing lists for support for really hard problems... it works great but it's quite understandable that large businesses are willing to pay for something more formal)
At where I work, what we're doing is moving our Oracle servers to RHAS 2.1. Any other Linux server will run RH 8.0. (In fact, tomorrow I'll be on-site at a subsidiary replacing a SCO server with a RH 8.0 server.)
I've seen a lot of people here mention Debian. That may work for you, but you WILL need to ask yourself, "Will I need Oracle (the company)'s support services?" If so, then Debian is NOT the choice for you. Oracle only supports RHAS and UnitedLinux's enterprise-level distros. That's the only reason we're running any RHAS at all: we need Oracle support.
Just my $.02...
Right now I am writing this on Slack 9, I agree with you but the average Linux sys admin has trouble even comprehending how to recomp a kernel! The problem is db apps like Oracle! It still uses the 2 series gcc and won't work on Slack 9 unless you back compile a separate kern yourself, you can install both 3. series gcc and 2.95 the problem is linking them to the glibc right! then you need to forget your XF86config 4.3 alltogether unless you check out which X version you need for 2.95 gcc, and run a separate X with it (in general a can of worms) It will work if you do it right but then you need to use X with some of the Oracle guis! Catch 22. The Oracle library deps are out of date! You are screwed if you make even the simple mistake of not installing X quite right. I am sure that there is someway to build Slack to run Oracle but this is a little bit of a long way around. Might be a good idea to document the process! I love Slack also for its transparent in your face approach, you even need to enable permissions so users can burn cds, or access /dev/cdrom for that matter! It is a great way to force people to learn real unix style security! A little draconian but I sure love to be able to easily take a pico at my security logs without using an X gui first! I am not up to speed yet on VI and Emacs, so pico is a God send! Maybe thats why redfat nuked it, to make it harder for sys admins to run without their versions of guis, hey that almost sounds like a MS trick. Nah they couldn't be that stupid, could they?
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
I've had incredible luck using Knoppix which is
a version of Debian. Debian is the Linux that
keeps all the other Linux's honest. Honesty is
the Best policy... and Debian is the Best way
to go. If you think you really know Linux, go
with Debian.
I buyed RH many times, but never the profesional or enterprise version. They were too expensive for my country(3rd world one). :-(
When RH decided to drop the 20-250$ price products, they left that price window it open for all other distros to come in and steal RH market share.
I'm too don't know what to do and what to recomend to my customers. Suse? Mandrake?
If you have only 100$ to spend in a server OS, then, you wont be running RH, and that is just plain sad.
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
FUD, Wrong Assumptions, Wrong asserted conclusions. Lot's of rude and incorrect accusations flying around. First, go read the section in the link below about "roll your own"
h tml
http://www.redhat.com/advice/ask_shadowman_may02.
Then set up a mirror of the RedHat Advanced Server Source RPMS, and a mirror of the Source RPMS of the RedHat Advanced Server Errata. Now, go read
http://current.tigris.org
Now, take a redhat 7.2 server, with minimal install and kernel dev bundle, do "rpm -qa --last" and then build the AS packages in the order they were installed on a 7.2 server. Installing each one after you build it. Put the binaries into your own CURRENT server. Now, go read
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6473
You can create your own Linux distribution with the same updates that RedHat Advanced Server has, and it will have the same lifecycle that RedHat Advanced Server has.
The only thing you don't get is RHN, Support from RedHat, and "certified" compatibility and support form RedHat Certified ISV's like Oracle, BEA, IBM, HP, Dell, Netcool, BMC etc.....
Also, your costs are out of whack. RedHat Edge Server Basic subsciption
only costs about $350/year per dual proc server.
At my company we "rolled our own" distribution based on RHAS Source RPM's and we maintain our own CURRENT server with the errata. But we still buy RHAS licenses for servers where we are running 3rd party software that offers RedHat Certification.
-Ben.
Everyone here took this time to be a complete zealot over which distro is the best. You completely missed the point to this guys posting:
He wants to know what his choices are, since Oracle supports RH, and RH is expensive.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
"Of course, you could just do what a lot of people do and rely on mailing lists for support for really hard problems... it works great but it's quite understandable that large businesses are willing to pay for something more formal"
Indeed, even though the mailing lists generally MORE senior guru's than redhat employs and are quite likely to respond if those REALLY Bizarre problems come up.
Seriously though, aside from those really bizarre problems an enterprise level organization should already have internal staff qualified to handle anything that should arise. For $350kish they could hire 3 talented programmers to work the 3 most critical projects they use and those programmers will be dedicated to them first, when they aren't busy solving one of those critical issues then they can be busy working on features that interest the company.
This works well for the company, they would gain some support from a very loyal community. They leverage the power of open source to get features they want without beg and pray (and know what it's going to cost them). And those Mailing lists become even more legitimate as a support means (those senior developers are alot more likely to notice and work with other senior developers than some random joe posting "my computer no work"). They get what they want, they are giving something back to the world at large. They contribute to the programmer economy AND they have punished redhat for bait and hook techniques to force upgrades.
I could be wrong, just something to think about.
I'd suggest gentoo. Of course there's no corporate backing, but if your company considers that ok as gentoo is completely free, then go for it. If not, don't put your ass on the line and go with SuSE.
If you use gentoo, here are a couple tips.
1. forums.gentoo.org. You can get help on anything here. There is a thread on how to get oracle running on gentoo as well.
2. Use a test platform. This is always a good idea, but you can also build binary packages on your test machines that you can then copy over to the production machines to avoid the long downtimes associated with portage and still get all the functionality of a source-based system.
3. Make sure you know gentoo well before putting it into production use. You will find a lot of tricks and stuff which will make it much better that you may miss the forst time around.
4. But most of all, if using a distro with no commercial support is hazerdous to your job, do not risk it.
Good luck.
Isn't Linux supposed to be GPL? Make copies for each system. Oh, but Redhat could be adding in special non-GPL applications (it's not a violation of the GPL to run a non-GPL application on a GPL OS). And I presume they are adding in support. Do you really need that support? Why not download Debian or Slackware, install a system and configure it as you like, and then duplicate it to all your servers. Then if you need a special non-GPL application, buy it for just the servers you need it. Of course if you need that application on every server, you're probably in for a lot of cost, anyway.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Appparently the Debian zealots hit this thread hard.... impressive young one.
I agree completely. I've been trying for over
4 months now to get an answer from their
sales department to one question:
Does Redhat offer an educational discount
and/or a site license option for their
Enterprise line?
After about the 5th inquiry, I finally got a
response, but not a direct answer to the question.
I was told that the sales guy might be able to
offer a "deal" on a quantity purchase.
I can only infer that the answer to
my question is "no".
With that many machines, you'll get better pricing. The organization that I work for (which is huge, but has about 200 linux boxes) pays approximately $200/box.
For us, it was worth it because we are guaranteed a supply of patches & support for a minimum of five years. Red Hat public releases churn every 18 months or so, which is too much work to maintain.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Seems to me if you had an enterprise worthy IT staff you wouldn't even worry about Oracle or Pay to Play Linux. Youd used Slackware or BSD for your os's and PostGres or MySQL for your DB. Donate 25% of your 350k support bill to the FSF or some OpenSource Project and get training for your IT staff. This way you can become self-reliant and not have to call RH everytime up2date dosent work.
-N
listen, let's remember here people.. redhat was one of the first linux distrubtions, and they lost a lot of money & market share because they supported GNOME rather than the 6-12-months-ahead KDE project, all because they wanted a completely GPL'ed solution. They sued SCO first, so don't forget, they are in this on the politics side, not just for the money.
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
...But why doesn't he just upgrade to RH9 for his Oracle app and run another distro for the other stuff? Certainly, many data centers carry a variety of OS on their servers... Even in our (mostly) Windows back room, we have a couple Solaris machines and a couple Linux boxes and everything works out just fine. (Except for the Windows stuff which present constant niggling, unexplained/undocumented problems. Exchange server? What a nightmare. Thank god it isn't the actual external mail server or the real relay.)
Anyway, this is a bummer, because I certainly do appreciate what RedHat has done for the comunity. I know MY first box ran RedHat. It is too bad the prices are so high, but if you run a business critical app, it is almost neccessary to have 24x7 support available. Even though you'll use it two or three times in your whole life, when you need it, your ass will be saved. I've called MS support one time and only did so after a lot of work...But finally, we had no choice. It was get the thing up or we're out of business. OK...We'll call Microsoft. They did suggest a lot of things we had already tried, but ultimately did help us. We had to pay something like $300 for the call, in addition to our enormous annual Microsofft budget, but we got it running.
My urge is to move everything to something else, but our CIO lives in the dark ages and won't listen to any suggestions that aren't Windows...Our two linux boxes function as load balancers for...IIS. They exist because our Win NT 4.0 balancers were choking and we didn't want to spend $25,000 on new Windows hardware to cover the same task. I weep because I know that the two balancers would serve the site better than the six win2k boxes which do the same job now. The Sun boxes were installed with the phone system. Same weekend, we put the Exchange 5.5 server in. You can guess which has gone down more times since.
Right now it is Exchange seven crashes, Sun ZERO. Not even a reboot in the last 12 months! And the last one was because of a wide-scale, longterm power failure that outlasted our UPS and generation capability.
Who did what now?
So I haven't really given you any answers, but I hope I've offered some good points to consider.
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
At my office, we have - I kid you not - interrupted our RHES evaluation because
a) we lacked enough licenses
b) 'evaluation licences' were expiring
Madness. Do they not realize that they need people sneaking unofficial unsupported copies in as departmental and development servers?
We can buy a 1-way Sun (with Solaris, of course) for under $2k with our volume discount - RHAS is more expensive!
It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying, that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.
Fact: *FreeBSD is dying
Would the better or best be
http://knoppix.net
http://knoppix.org
4. REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System.- 1.html
http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_2
So if you buy one RH AS version, you must agree that you don't increase the number of installed systems without buying additional licenses.
That sucks and it is not in violation with GPL folks!
4. REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System.- 1.html
http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_2
So if you buy one RH AS version, you must agree that you don't increase the number of installed systems without buying additional licenses.
That sucks and it is not in violation with GPL folks!
... dump the toy OS and start running Windows.
I never have to go into the registry, as long as I accept that I occasionally need to reboot.
paintball
To be devil's (or Red Hat's) advocate here:
1) How many machines are we talking about? For 350k you can get:
140 AS premium servers, 24x7 support, including HA clustering
233 AS standard servers, 12x5 support, again, includes support for HA clusters
500 ES standard, 12x5 support
1002 ES basic servers 12x5 minimal support
This being said, if you made your quote for a straight 140 servers with AS premium, and that includes all your test/development workstations, you're overpricing yourself. I highly doubt you need that kind of support on your development sandbox.
All of these include support, RHN, and a stable platform you won't have to upgrade for 5 years. Most companies like yours, who have on-site linux support, probably only need ES basic for the majority of their servers as a CYA type of support. Part of what you'd be paying as part of that 350 is the 81.6$ per server for an enterprise RHN entitlement, which gives you the download and centrilized management features of RHN. (Which if did work this quote out based on full retail for ES base, central patch management for 1000 servers is nice).
Sure, you could just go with 7.3, upgrade to 9 by dec 31 so you don't have to take the time to patch everything yourself going forward, and then do the same thing next year (lousy way to spend new year's eve, if you ask me :). Red Hat's enterprise offerings are here to:
A) save you time, you don't have to go through the upgrade dance every year, and don't have to patch servers yourself, and also can rely on the fact that the enterprise distribution has probably gone through a bit higher level of testing.
B) Give you third-party app support. If you need Oracle, Veritas, EMC or any of the other certified software for Red HAt, you'll be able to call them when the app goes wrong, or you need help and not have them look at you funny because you're running "Crack Rock Linux X" made by the kid down the street, even if it is "just Red Hat with added package X".
C) Give your boss (and quite possibly you) piece of mind and/or a way ot cover your ass. If the non-commerically developed linux you bring in breaks, you don't have someone you can wave your reciept at and say "HEY! I payed you money, fix it NOW/FAST/ETC", and your boss will most likely be looking at you to make it work. When it's a Bug, it helps to have a vendor to pass the buck on to.
As a last note, for everyone who had problems with sales, I have a couple suggestions, having dealt with enterprise sales people for many years. First of all, call at the start of a quarter. At the end of the quarter, a few may be more willing to deal, but most have already made quota (I have yet to see a sales force without a quota) and are less.. "caring". Second, The support responsiveness is documented public on the Red Hat web site. If it falls outside of those guidelines, complain! (emergency situations beside the point.. if the US is under nuclear attack, don't expect a call back ;). You paid money, you have the right to have them follow the contract.
4. REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System.- 1.html
http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_2
So if you buy one RH AS version, you must agree that you don't increase the number of installed systems without buying additional licenses.
That sucks and it is not in violation with GPL folks!
I work for a midsized county it department, we run almost exclusively debian servers, our main Oracle 9i server is running Debian Stable, and runs just great, Debian is by far the simplest and most efficient linux install to maintain in my estimation. Go Debian!!!
That is such BS.
If you didn't learn anything in college that's your fault. Then again maybe your just a techie.
Any grade school kid can figure out something in a week on their own. And unfortunately, almost any idiot can get into college these days. But to go to college and suffer a 4 year setback? That takes a special kind of stupidity.
'nough said
Has anyone else run a diff between AS 3.0 beta1 and Linux 2.4.21 kernel sources?
There are some downright scary differences...
Expect RH to respond to the whims of their paying customer base in a manner not necessarily in the best interests of Linux.
You can use the GUI installer but you have to remove the logos and other RedHat trademarks. They get rather irked if you don't. This is why the distro Pink Tie exists which is Red Hat without all the trademarks.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
let me guess, you didnt go to college?
... hi bingo
The main issue for me personally is that Red Hat guarantees only 1 year of updates and fixes. With security updates constantly being posted, this is a major undertaking. Since I rarely install a new release the moment it hits the FTP sites this means that the effective lifecycle of a RH release is rather short. An upgrade every few months seems a bit much.
I thought I remember reading that SuSE's consumer edition provides 2 years of maintenance. This may not seem much but it would be double what Red Hat guarantees. Unfortunately, revisiting the subject recently, I can't find any such guarantee on SuSE's web site. Does anyone know what the situation is at SuSE? A Linux distribution that allows unlimited copies plus double the lifecycle of Red Hat's might be worth exploring.
Talk to anyone supporting the main system of an international airline, suburban railway, any large retail chain, etc.
Linux is just a toy compared to Solaris on Sun Sparc systems.
On the other hand, Linux is much better than Solaris on x86. But why would you use x86 hardware for any server when Sun/IBM hardware is reasonably priced for what you get and it's infinately more scalable. Oh please don't mention clusters, as very few NON-SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY places are using them for business. And then there's support!
In other words, you agree to pay money for each installation you make. That license also gives Red Hat the right to audit your "facilities and records" for a year, but that's another topic.
Try Demon :-(
they hack up your mission critical servers and convert them into public counter-strike servers.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
Exactly the same situation that we are in. Red Hat was previously my distribution of choice. But with the licensing of their new releases i found that they are not catering to our needs anymore as we dont need their support. For this reason and i have found that Mandrake seems to have more of a community spirit, we have started changing over to Mandrake. Its not about the money - we are quite happy to purchase our operating system, and the support if we require it, but to be honest i dont require RedHats support and we are now financial customers of Mandrake. I do tend to feel that in some ways RedHat seem to have lost site of their heritage. This though i was in a way expecting since in the chase for the dollar Heritage is one of the first things to be forgotten. For this reason i am also starting to look at Debian for "set and forget" servers Though i hope we do see some changes from Red Hat in regards to this.
Really, its not like you were getting support anyhow. At at least the people your dealing with in bug reports are working with you, not for your dollar.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
firebird is a web browser
Mental Illness Alert!
...responsible for several Redhat servers and workstations, I can tell you that we're beginning the process of switching to Debian.
Stable (if some of the software is a little outdated), easy to maintain and upgrade, no registration required to use apt (see how far you get on RHN without that), and far cheaper.
It's find it amusing to speculate on the future of Oracle. I just read some of Ellison's prognostications on the future of the company and I couldn't help finding his smug, overbearing manner enjoyable not to mention his flair for style. He's the reverend Mr. Black. He reminds me of an uncle of mine in his sixties still hanging out at the beach trying to make it in the teen scene talking about the virtues of maturity and how bigger is always better. Okay Pops.
But cheap personal sniping aside, the clearest conclusion I could draw after hearing about how Oracle owned bioinformatics was that the dude is insane and pretty much detatched from reality. They may still have a line on a lot of juicy contacts, but they're not going to be around in ten years.
So, you're absolutely right Oracle is silly. No point in drawing any conclusions on the actions of one rather odd company.
just of note: redhat employes some of the top coders in OSS, such as Mr Alan Cox. they also have a very good standing with the community in general. although i agree with the statement about mailling lists coming in handy, you cant rely on them like you could on somebody who is contractually obligated to support you.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
Most posters seem to be focusing on the support aspect. For us, the much more important factor is security patch availability. Even Red Hat 9 is only supported until next April. So if we reinstall all of our Red Hat 7.2-8.0 boxes with 9, we'll have to start all over again within 6 months to go to 10. That ain't gonna happen.
We've been paying for basic Red Hat Network subscriptions for our 30 servers ($60/server/year). The jump to a basic ES (Enterprise Server) subscription ($349/server/year) is too steep. Why the huge price differential for essentially the same thing, just a longer support lifecycle?
We're a department at a state university so we can't afford the prices for RHEL. We asked Red Hat about educational discounts but they will only discount WS (Workstation), and then only in blocks of 100.
We're looking at SuSE and Debian as the likely alternatives, but it is sure hard to give up our knowledge and experience with Red Hat. It seems to me that Red Hat needs to find some middle ground between the poor home user and the flush enterprise accounts.
For 350K, I'm sure you can create your own distribution tailored specifically for your needs.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Where I work we also have several Linux servers in a datacenter. All these servers run Slackware Linux 8.1 or 9.0 and that is not about to change anytime soon since managing them is a breeze and upgrades are cheap and easy.
Ever looked at Mandrake ? It usually is rated better than RedHat on the desktop (and servers) these days, besides it is the closest to RedHat of all other distributions. And of course, if you're now willing to pay, just download the CDs and do it all by yourself.
Currently I am working with a lot of Sun kit - and their sales guys. They are absolutely thrilled with Red Hat's new pricing, becuase suddenly they are competitive again.
Consider - a small Oracle DB on a 2 processor machine. The cost of a decent 2 processor server is about $2000, and then the cost of RHAS is about $2700 as I recall. Suddenly the cost of a V240r doesn't seem that bad. We pick them up for a lot less than $4700. Of course we have a pretty good deal with Sun, and the poster may get a good deal with Redhat, but we've done the analysis, and RH does not stack up for us in this example. For me, in is interesting that we have said "no Linux", not because it is a "hacker OS" or it can't do the job - but because it is too expensive to deploy. And before anyone asks, we didn't do any TCO voodoo to prove the point!
Other things Sun have on their side:
- Scalability on the same architecture. Yep, I know 2.6 will scale, but it isn't even properly released yet. We develop on small machines (240s, 480s) and deploy on 15Ks without even thinking about it - apart from making sure that the app can use the CPUs
- Solaris - damn good OS, excellent support and an understanding of what enterprise computing is about
- Support. Judging by some of the comments here Redhat support is somewhat lacking. Having called regularly on Sun support, I can say it is quite exceptional - even when problems are not their fault, they will engage with other vendors to get a fix
Try veritas.
Taco Bell raised their prices and their popularity went up. People thought that they were getting a "better" product.
..........FULL STOP.
Or perhaps only the mission critical stuff?
Deleted
$350k is a hell of a lot of money for something that's mostly GPLed.
I don't know how many servers we're talking about, but at (pulls number out of hat) $3000 per server, you could buy an extra 100 servers to use as redundant failover machines, leaving $50k to pay for installation. Surely that would give you more reliable service than a support contract could?
I'm not an IT admin or anything (no need for enterprise stuff :) ) but I'm just curious. What is there to stop you from copying the binary (assuming it is the GPLed free software and not proprietary stuff)? Why recompile everything? Why not just use the binares that are free? Can't one do that? While I"m at it, can't someone mix and match across distributions? Take one package from RH, another from SuSE, another from Mandrake, then Debian, etc. I know it's a lot of work and may introduce compatibility problems but I'm just wondering if that is illegal?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
And hire a competent sysadmin.
The term "Services" as used in this Agreement means, collectively, the Support Services and RHEN, each as defined herein. The term "Installed Systems" means the number of Systems on which Customer installs the Software. The term "System" means the hardware on which the Software is installed, which may be, without limitation, a server, a work station, a blade or an engine, as applicable. The initial number of Installed Systems is the number of copies of the Software that Customer purchases.
They want you to pay for each box that they are providing support for.
You can install it upon as many boxes as you want. But they won't support it. The initial support costs are part of the initial purchase price of the software. You buy one copy of software, you get support for one system.
C'mon people! It's been over 24 hour without a new SCO story. i need a place to vent my constant and continuing rage against them.
I'm going through withdrawal symptons without that opportunity.
It's like stabbing pains in my side. I feel like I'm going to die. Oh no.... Arrrgghh..... Help me someone... please...
Gurgle... gurgle...
Pink froth pouring out of mouth.
A dead body lying prone on the hardwood floor of a Manhattan studio.
Get the chalk...
because :) but the legality of this is questionable.
a) oracle was compiled for that specific GLIBC version = you wont get the same version of libc with debian. it will run fine on debian? yes. will it be running 24/7 for years? not sure. should you have just one small bug in oracle that is trashing your data - it will cost you money. lots of it.
b) if you need oracle you probably use the enterprise features of the rh AS kernel. async io, big mem, scheduler optimizations, HT specific optimizations and whatnot. you wont get these with a stock kernel. of course you can still download the enterprise kernel srpm and use it on a different distro
Suse is the only other distro doing major development work for the enterprise (like 64 bit support, Opteron, etc).
Corporate IT needs a distro where consultants and support are available, etc.
The cost of Red Hat has grown very extreme.
At my last gig I was responsible for ~30 Linux servers, all running Red Hat. There were about 5 of them running RHAS 2.1 and the rest were running 7.x
I spent a couple of days with the Oracle DBA benchmarking our applications and found it interesting that 7.3 was a tad faster than RHAS 2.1. Hardware was IBM x345, dual 2.4GHz Xeons, 2.5GB RAM, ~200GB RAID 0+1. Yes, hyperthreading was disabled.
I find it odd that Red Hat's "Enterprise Linux" is missing some key enterprise features that can be found in its consumer distribution (such as Logical Volume Management). BTW, LVM is broken in Red Hat unless you compile your own kernel, otherwise you can't mount snapshots.
In any case, Red Hat's new pricing scheme is flat out extortion. I had enterprise support on my servers and ever single time I reported a problem, I was either delayed until I found the solution for myself online or flat out told "That's not supported." You might wonder what's not supported. How about LDAP authentication? The automounter?
There are some things about Red Hat that are wonderful. And some that are pretty good. In the wonderful category, their installer is just the bees knees. Especially if you're kickstarting your servers. RHN is a nice tool but fundamentally flawed in that you must use Red Hat's repository; imagine 30 servers downloading the same 45MB of RPM's over a T1 at the same time over https (which can't be cached). yum goes a long way towards fixing this.
Debian has some nice points but IMHO has a lousy installer and zero enterprise management tools (such as RHN for Red Hat). People have been bitching about the installer forever and nothing seems to be getting overhauled there.
If I were doing this from the ground up right now, I'd go with RH 9. Keep your eyes open and keep track of major releases by RH and evaluate for yourself when an upgrade is necessary. RHEL is made up of many components that have been deprecated in the mainstream release (such as CUPS, I think Sendmail may also be deprecated). For LVM features you need >8.0 anyway. Use yum for your package management, build your own local package repository, and spend a little time learning about the guts of RPM.
As far as I remember, what was different about RHAS compared to normal Redhat is that the AS version supports Asynchronous I/O, which standard versions of Linux don't have.
Asynchronous I/O allows the Oracle server to hand off disk writes to the OS, without having to hang around to find out whether it wrote ok. If your OS doesn't support asynchronous I/O, you have to simulate it with I/O Slaves, which is much slower.My mom sells RH to her clients and RH has confirmed that all they (her clients) need to do is buy one copy and then install it on all of their machines. If that doesn't cover support, then it's less expensive to just buy one copy of RH Enterprise Linux and several RH Network licenses.
Well, with another bad day doing RH updates and screaming at slow patches on Debian I had to ask myself "Is this all worth it?" Slowly I opened a package that has been on my desk over 3 months now, it contained W2K3 Server.
I know most people on this forum may disagree, but I am afraid the position of best server OS has now been filled by it. I have now migrated everything and have never been happier. I remember the days when I believed the constant anti-MS bull from Linux zealots, never again! It's like listening to WWII propoganda, once you no longer believe you see how silly it all was. I will keep watching for the best server OS, but right now despite protestations from the Linux community I have to say it is MS W2K3 Server. Until RH, Debian, Mandrake, Lycoris etc etc become more like OpenBSD in their attitude to distribution then I have to avoid them. MS you are wicked and sinful, but your new server OS rocks but watch out for OpenBSD!
We are looking at Linux at the Co. I work for with over 60K users.
My issue with RH is there per-seat license for "EVERYTHING".
They have a per-seat cost for support of the os then there is a cost to have an internal Eratta server and a per-seat cost for each machine that you want to get updates from the Eratta server...
We had RH and SuSE flyout to out World HeadQuarters and give us their presentation of who they are and what they have to offer
The biggest issue I have with RH is they are not completely Open-Source... By this I mean that we asked them "What if we choose RH and pay for everything we need for say 5 years, then we decide we don't like RH supporting us and we want to pay someone else or do it ourselves, What can we no longer use that RH makes?
They didn' tlike this question at all
Their answer was that we could not use Eratta for our updates. We would have to remove and destroy the code for eratta.
We asked SuSE the sam question and their answer was "You lose nothing. You can use 'EVERY' piece of software that SuSE makes and distributes on their Distro ... Forever no matter who supports you."
So for me and the company I work for, I don't want to get stuck with a particular vendor cause they say I can't use a "VERY IMPORTANT" part of the updating of systems especially supporting over 60K desktops.
It seems RH is trying to get some sort of "Lock-In" with their products instead of trying to win loarg companies with their "excelent" support.
I thought Linux was about "No Lock-in" and otal freedom?
JasonWe use RedHat Enterprise Linux ES or AS for machines that "need it" or for customers who request it. Machines that "need it" are typically those running ColdFusion and/or Oracle. We try to use FreeBSD for all other machines.
:)
As for RH's pricing, you can get an ES license for $350. That gets you access to RHN and a year of patches. The $700 (or whatever) option just gives you more phone support, the media, and some manuals. It wouldn't be very cost effective to purchase tons of those.
Patches come out super-fast for their Enterprise line of OS's, which is a real plus. Also, RHN makes patch management really easy if you register all your systems under the same RHN account (which we do). So, at a glance, you can see what machines need patches and which ones they need.
Another thing you get with their Enterprise stuff is a longer life-cycle. They are going to stop rolling out patches for the regular OS's after 1 year. Enterprise OS's get 5 years, but you have to renew your subscription to RHN yearly.
- G!mpy
unless you're the uber-man at configuring Oracle, it's a nightmare. And I would even go as far to say that Oracle is not a necessity.
Granted, Postgres is lacking in failover and cluster support and Mysql might not be 'enterprise' ready, but my experience over the past decade of using Oracle, MSSQL, DB2, Postgres, and MySQL, is I prefer the two latter dbms.
You could have people froth at the mouth all night on this one and I'm sure there's reasons for each. But, like any big, propreitary package, you get what u pay for and if that's small compared to the money you bring in, then I guess you're cool.
I just have a bad taste in my mouth from the last company I worked with. They completely tied their business to Oracle and PL/SQL and instead of going with a lot of small servers to distribute load, they went with the big monolith.
Meh..
Take a look at apt-mirror. It acts very much like it's built into apt, even with a file called /etc/apt/mirror.list (as opposed to /etc/apt/sources.list) that uses basically the same file format.
It was a much more satisfying experience than the last time I used debmirror (about 1 yr ago).
FreeBSD is free, and , in my personal oppinion, quite as good as Linux with none of the comercialization (No, I am NOT trying to start a flamewar). Most Linux Programms will also run on FreeBSD Including Apache and Oracle as long as you install Linux Binary Emulation. For a production enviroment, you should use FreeBSD 4.8 ~STABLE, is is very stable.
There's my two cents.
Andrew
Thats why i suggested you pay for support still ( at a much reduced price the the RH cost )
"They" can worry about watching for bug patches, creating the binary packages and keeping your system up to date for you, in a timely manner...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
that's what I'm sayin. I've been reading post after crappy post about this and that and to actually read one of the few that takes a sound approach is refreshing.
A few companies back we had email that ran on Redhat 5 that just worked. Day in and day out. Then, some smarty IS peeps come in with their MSCE's and the like and we turned in to every other shop that crashed weekly. F-ing pathetic. I got 'the look' for asking a few times why we just can't get email reliably anymore. All the same while, my email,web, etc.., servers at home ran without a hitch.
Yah, people need to kinda wake up and think about running their application and not paying for some company's 'support'. In my experience, you do exactly what the poster said which is hire a few kick ass sysadmins that know their shit. The reason there are still so many CodeRed and like worms are because companies treat this stuff like it's a toaster - just plug it in and it will go. But that's just plain irresponsible because IT security is a complex beast and nothing will change that in the foreseeable future. You could pay 2 sysadmins 100k a year and they would be your humble network guards that would have no problem patching systems when they need patching and helping to develop IT policies that work and aren't decided by waving the magic hands. Esp. in light of that 150k you'll be saving.
You just have to have top people with the vision to hire the right minds and then to let them do the work the right way. Unfortunately, as the poster mentioned, in the corporate world this is tough to come by. It's possible tho.
As far as the original question goes, I would not run AS or Oracle. I'm sure that kills a lot of people but there has to be a 100% perfect argument for throwing away all that cash and if it can't be found, then that action plan should probably not be followed.
For $350k you could hire some linux specialists to create and support something tailored exactly to your needs. Or pick any half decent distro and have them support it in house.
You're going to need skilled sysadmins even if you pay $350,000 for RHEL. Red Hat doesn't sell a turn-key, sysadmin-in-the-box solution like, say, Sun or EMC. (E.g., support tech. shows up at your door and tells you one of your hard drives is about to fail.) If they did, it would probably cost even more for the submitter's scenario. They're moving in that direction with products like Enterprise Network.
Well i have to agree with some other posts and ask why do you need support. Last time i check thats what the it department i there for. If you have systemadmins then there should be no need for support. SO when it comes to cutting costs for support mabet you shuld think on training ur employees properly. Or you could always hire a high school Linix geek like me :). Seriously though what is the point in having a it department if you can depend on them to fix a propblem by themselves. So again i say either hire some new techs or maybe invest in some real linux train for your current ones.
As for choosing a distro. Now this is the tuff part. MAny have suggest different distros but there are always reaasons why one or another oracle unsupported distro might not work. Thats where your new system admin training comes in. You need a distro well then make one yourself. Time for that good old LFS(linux from scratch) system with that old gcc and gblibc just for you. You could easily build in say apt or prm support if you really dont want to have to upgrade by hand. Then just take one server out since they are identical and have ur it department build all of the packages there then distrubt them across the network.Now you have a nice free distro taliored to your mneeds and some newly trained employes.Now what more could you ask for(maybe if oracle was free lol).Well i feel better now i finaly said something.
Plz try not to flame me...........
Before everybody charges off an suggests their favourite non-commercial distro, please note he expects to need Oracle support("Also, we don't have Oracle on any of these systems, but we will need it in the future"). And yes I know that al sorts of 3rd parties will do this is on non RH/Suse distros, but the point is that Larry Ellison's guys won't. So please address his problem constructively (eg. How to get RH to charge less, or Oracle to be less support restrictive).
I wish I had an easy answer to this but I can say that this is one of the culture clashes that occur between the OpenS and big-time commercial software companies who want a very tightly controlled and limited environment (HD and software) to support massively complex solutions.
Due to the change in Red Hat's release policy, we either have to move to Enterprise, or change distributions.
Ok, so upgradeability seems to be the submitter's main concern with Red Hat, but there's another solution: you can get apt for Red Hat here (more information here), and the repositories are kept by groups of volunteers -- just like Debian. Now the so-called end-of-life for Red Hat, well, isn't.
The default repository at ayo.freshrpms.net is just peachy, has all RH updates so far and a few extras. I created another source to include the mozilla RPMs from mozilla.org and that works fine too. The sky is the limit.
I wouldn't deal with you either. Just by your comments I can tell you will be a problem customer. I can guarantee that you left a voicemail with about as much professionalism as your posted comment. Even if you said the right words it was probably in your tone. Maybe it wasn't intentional, but the effect is the same. Being nasty will not get you ahead in the professional world. As you can already see people will ignore you. Lighten up! Smile when you talk on the phone. Even better, read(listen on tape) "How to win friends and influence people" and practice it. You need to do something my friend to turn this around.
Linuxthreads will still be present and will work just the same for old binaries or for new binaries compiled against it.
Read this guy's page for his take on the registry (about halfway down or so):
.INI file, and they all do it! Amazing. This despite that there is no clear benefit to users. Everytime I brought this up with people I thought were independent thinkers, they would say something, like, "well, uh, it's the standard" or "everyone else is doing it" and "at least it's better than config files all over the place"....
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/registry.html
I was always amazed by what lemmings people can be in this industry. MS comes out and says: app developers should put their setting in the registry instead of an
Baaaaa. Moooooo.
Why would this make the GPL people mad? The GPL is about Free Speech, not Free Beer. Try calling debian's tech support line before you start complaining about this.
I am CTO and cofounder of the corporate intelligence / demographic analysis service company Hardpoint Intelligence. I have always made very careful to make sure that our technology was portable across Slackware Linux, RedHat Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris, for the sake of operational flexibility (which has worked in our favor a couple of times when, eg, we needed to purchase additional capacity from Verio, who runs RedHat on their servers). Our software is developed using our own Perl DBI wrapper library, so that it is (mostly) database-agnostic.
In the beginning, we used a mix of Slackware Linux and FreeBSD platforms, with MySQL. As I mentioned, when we had to buy more capacity, our services also ran on RedHat occasionally. My experiences with the latter solidified my dislike of RedHat's distribution -- it is buggy and insecure relative to Slackware and FreeBSD. But I held my nose and used it anyway, because it was necessary.
We converted the FreeBSD servers to Slackware in the wake of FreeBSD's 4.x woes, and I've been pretty happy with it. We are currently running Slackware 8.1 with a few security patches on all of our servers. But if we needed to, we could switch to something else relatively painlessly. We are also still running on MySQL, though I occasionally fire up our software on my workstation (also running Slackware) and put it through stress-tests using PostgreSQL, just to see if any portability issues have cropped up, or if PostgreSQL offers any significant performance improvements. It's been over a year since there were any portability issues, and MySQL (which imo is easier to administrate than PostgreSQL) is quite sufficient for our needs (our bottleneck isn't in the database access).
For the future, I am tentatively planning on continuing to use Slackware and MySQL, though I am a little uncomfortable with the direction Slackware is going. It is still fairly minimalist, secure, and robust relative to other distributions, but it seems to be catching a case of "featuritis", getting more bloated with every release. Mr. Volkerding is also issuing major releases faster than I can assess them for suitability for production roles; Slackware 9.0 came out just as I'd completed the transition from 7.1 to 8.1 (8.0 was very problem-prone), and I'll probably be patching 8.1 as needed for at least a year before even considering switching again. I wish he'd issue more minor releases consisting only of bugfixes and security fixes before leaping ahead, but I guess he's just doing what most of his userbase wants. When I have time, I want to try out GenToo. I have also considered forking my own distribution off of Slackware, but unless I can clone myself a couple of times I haven't time for it.
When FreeBSD has released another couple of 5.x minor versions I'll be giving it another look, too. The reliability gap between Linux and FreeBSD has closed a lot, but FreeBSD was much more capable of running the hardware closer to its maximum theoretical capacity without misbehaving. It will be interesting to see if they can get back on the horse.
Since our technology is based on Perl DBI, we could use Oracle or DB2 if we needed to; we just don't need to (yet). But a little more effort now for a little future flexibility is a good thing. Sometimes I wonder if portability is ultimately worth the extra hassle, but hey, if running a company's IT department were easy it wouldn't be called "work", now would it? :-)
-- TTK Ciar
yes, but you probably have to have a wizard to copy a file
We do not allow our 3rd party applications to define the distribution we deploy enterprise wide. Instead, we select the best distribution we can, and use it. In this case we have chosen Gentoo GNU/Linux, updated from a frozen snapshot mirror the state of which we control (this keeps the ever advancing Gentoo target still for our purposes, with resyncs on our own schedule, and insures that a machine built 3 weeks later is identical to those built before. This IMHO is a necessary strategy in dealing with any rapidly moving target, such as Debian unstable, Mandrake Cooker, etc.)
HOWEVER, for systems which require it (e.g. Sybase, Oracle, etc.) we install the recommended distribution and version on that system, and that system alone. We run Red Hat where we have third party, proprietary software that requires it (all two machines), and the distribution of our choice everywhere else.
This maximizes our control over our selection based upon our own needs, while pragmatically deploying what the vendors expect where necessary. We have found that the (very slightly) heterogeneous nature of our Linux install is vastly outweighed by the advantages of chosing the distribution best suited for our needs for the bulk of our deployment, and relegating Red Hat to those few systems which require it.
Throw in the SCO tax and you are really going to have to call uncle Jed for a loan. (At this rate we will be stuck with HP(s)UX for years to come...)
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Do you have hardware support from IBM or HP? Or are you considering getting support for Oracle or SAP? If so, switch to SuSE, pay the lower maintenance fee (patches and updates), and get support for SuSE from one of these primary vendors. I like the single point of contact for support.
Their strategy with regards to code updates really backfires on them. Their strategy seems to be that sticking to old-as-dirt versions and applying the promiment bug-fixes means the software is more reliable, because they skip the new features. Of course the result is a system that I've seen kill over much more frequently than any other setup. I managed to patch sg.c to get rid of one problem (the fix was folded into the mainstream kernel in September of 2001) that crashed systems under load in only a couple of days.
RH is really going down a foolish path with their pricing. Moving the 'end-user' version to a non-corporate project may seem like a good idea (offloading a lot of development and distribution costs), but it does seem like the move is alienating a lot of suit-types..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
No, they cannot force you to pay them for support if you install GPL software which is what Red Hat is selling.
You are mis-reading the Red Hat license.
Yea but who needs 10,000 packaages? Really all distros comes with the few hundred packages you need for just about anything. For those extra nice additions you can go to places like freshrpms etc. The one big difference is apt for rpm is so new. Give it some time. Apt4rpm isn't the "red Herring" your describing.
Your right when you say Red Hat may never reach the same number of packages that Debain has, but at the same time I honestly don't think that's an important goal. In this day and age having 400 text editors isn't a positive. Plus there's the fact that Debian's huge package archive slows down Debian development. There is a price to pay for carrying along all the baggage. Plus like you mentioned out-of-box Red Hat is indeed light-ahead.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
My understanding is the redhat OS support is built into the maintenance you pay to Oracle. However, it is limited issues directly related to running Oracle software.
see metalink article 228070.1
here is the text:
Oracle and Red Hat Linux Advanced Server
Oracle is working closely with Red Hat Linux to ensure that joint customers using Red Hat Linux Advanced Server and Oracle receive an enhanced support service. Oracle now provides the option of direct support of the operating system. If a customer calls us with a problem on Red Hat Linux Advanced Server, and the problem is related to the Linux kernel, Oracle will endeavour to assist the customer in overcoming the issue, even to the extent if necessary of producing Linux Operating System fixes.
Note that only certain releases of Red Hat Linux are covered by this policy. The Enterprise versions of Red Hat Linux are typically covered, for example Red Hat Linux Advanced Server, as opposed to the personal use version of Red Hat Linux. For a list of supported versions of Red Hat please see the certification matrix on Metalink.
There are some caveats to this. Oracle can only provide external Red Hat Linux Advance Server Operating System support where the issue is directly related to the successful running of Oracle software running on Red Hat Linux Advanced Server.
Kernel Modifications
One of the differences with Linux over other operating systems is the ability for the customer to customise the operating system kernel. From a technical support perspective Oracle cannot support any customer environment where the Red Hat Advanced Server kernel has been modified.
Modification of kernel parameters is supported but the following cannot be suppoted
recompiling the kernel, with or without source modifications
loading of binary modules within a kernel
loading of any unsupported kernel modules
loading of any closed source drivers
All closed source driver vendors should check in their code with Red Hat with a view to making the driver part of the standard Red Hat Advanced Server release
Oracle cannot process Service Requests if the customer cannot, or will not, reproduce the issue on a clean OS kernel, however, we will support Red Hat provided Advanced Server Kernel Errata.
Hardware Support
In certain circumstances a Linux environment may employ 3rd party software to control certain hardware devices. Some 3rd party products, including file systems and volume managers, sit between Oracle and the hardware, and as such can have an effect on the environment. Oracle can only provide support for Linux environments where Red Hat has certified all relevant hardware drivers. Note that Red Hat maintains a list of supported hardware, known as the Hardware Compatibility List, on their web site.
Oracle cannot process Service Requests if the related problem is due to non-supported hardware. In these cases the customer will need to contact the 3rd party vendor for support.
Related Documents
> Red Hat AS 2.1: How to verify you have a supoprted Kernel
@
@ >
@ Title: quick reference guide for Support Engineers to use for supporting Red Hat Advanced Server
@
@ N.B:
running an OS that does not fit the above needs, we DO support the Oracle products itself, we will just defer OS related issues.
@
Firebird is car developed by Pontiac.
Meh.
I'm sure I'm missing something obvious, but why can't you just download Redhat and install it for free--is it that Oracle only supports the Enterprise version, or is it that the Enterprise version contains something you need?
you are an idiot
Kevin's Red Hat Uber Distribution is a pretty good choice. The provide a monthly subscription of the latest Red Hat updates, and do a pretty good job. And I'm sure that for a reasonable fee you could hire them as supporting consultants...esp. if you were using their distribution.
Check out www.tummy.com
P.S.: I am not affiliated with them in any way, but even at merely the normal subscription prices I've found them to be good and quite supportive.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I agree with the gist of your statement with one minor correction. You CAN rely on a mailing list. You CAN'T blame them or start chewing their ass when your frustrated like contracted support.
Yes what you learn in college is already starting to gather dust the day you walk in the door.
Yes it would take an idiot to truely be set back 4yrs, because anyone but an idiot will be keeping up with technology on top of college. What I'm saying is that if you didn't touch a pc or anything electronic aside from your schoolwork. If the only input you recieved during that time was what your taught in the classrooms. You'd walk out 4yrs behind.
M$ could do this because their product sucks so bad and has so many profitable bugs. A linux box that runs year after year without being touched does not provide much opportunity to make money.
Got Code?
- The tech support Red Hat is able to give. At least when things fscked up, the IT staff is able to point their fingers at Red Hat. Imagine if you install Debian or Slackware and you arent able to solve a problem that crops up. Imagine the steam coming out from your boss's ears.
- Most business people tend to to associate Linux with Red Hat, whether we like it or not.
But, unfortunately for techies, Red Hat's way of package installation isnt that great a deal if you wanna use bleeding-edge stuff (most of the time, the only thing bleeding is you what with all the dependency problems). I would highly recommend using Gentoo as your desktop/laptop's OS as every package is actually compiled (optimisation to the max for those who cares) and you still get something like apt-get (they call it emerge instead). Pretty slick.Carpe Diem: Seize The Day!
Yea. Try explaining to the brass that it's going to cost you $350,000 and it's free software.
The software is still free. If you choose to hire Red Hat to support your network, you pay them.
It's that simple.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
in an enterprise setting you CAN NOT rely on a mailling list, im sorry that shit will get your ass fired quickly.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
I'm not talking about what will get you fired or not, I'm not talking about upper management. I'm talking if you did do it, and didn't get canned, are you as likely to get your problem fixed and find the expertise you need from the mailing list as the support line. I'd go farther and say your MORE likely to get fixed with the mailing list.
But I don't *want* to switch distros. The new redhat model is a bit ridiculous.
I've always approved of RH's model in the past and felt like they were getting the short end of the stick by having to pay for bandwidth on downloads, so I went out and offered support by actually buying the box sets once in a while.
But with all the mirrors available I've started grabbing iso's from mirrors instead. Effectively what was free in the previous version is now $1200 or more per machine.
Sorry, but I just can't justify that. It may be unpleasant, but Linux still has to compete on price, not just features. This pricing is much closer (and in many cases more than) windows pricing, and honestly I can get an HPUX license for about the same price. HPUX is a better OS - no question. And it includes the much more robust veritas LVM or vxvm. Why would I go with Linux when I can get one of the most robust unix OSes out there for the same price?
I understand RH needs revenue - and I would happily give it to them when they provide a service I need.
Suggestions for RH:
- Offer a per-incident support cost, and charge more for systems that are non-standard (ie running OS rpms that aren't from redhat).
- Charge based around bandwidth usage for priority access to updates. For example, allow up2date access only from licensed systems and encourage enterprises to use the RHN satelite server set-up, where you only have to provide an update to the customer RHN server once and it provides the update directly to the customer's other servers.
> You don't learn in the classroom
Depends what you put into it, and of course on what kind of learning
we're talking about. Obviously, college won't teach you as much
about the business world as the equivalent amount of time spent
_in_ the business world, but the purpose of a classical education
is not job training, at least not directly. (It does help, but
that's not the primary immediate goal.)
College is (or was, at one time) designed to teach you how to think,
teach you how to study, and expose you to a broad variety of topics.
Will all of that help you in your first month on the job? A little.
(You also learn other things that will help you more...) But the
key thing you take away from college is the ability to learn more
efficiently, so that the time you spend on the job (or anywhere
else) subsequently will teach you more than it otherwise would
have. Have I learned more technology in three years working in
IT than I did in four years minoring in computer science? Yes,
of course. Would I have learned as much, even assuming I had
landed my current job, if I hadn't had the college background?
I rather doubt it.
Of course, just as with anything, you to a large extent get out
of college what you put into it, so this works better for some
folks than for others.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
actually your not. not when your dealing with enterprise level support. do you have any experience dealing with enterprise support ? i have had the experience, and depending on the company and what level of support you talking to the wait time is next to nothing (less than 5 min). i would challenge you to find a mailling list that would responde 95% of the time within 5 min, and solve 98% of your problems without needing to contact the ISV.
those are the response levels for Sun's platinum contracts for Linux. i know i support them.
im not talking about calling tech support where you get joe blow on the phone who goes over some lame script. im talking enterprise level support with which you have named contact points, you have their cell #. they are availible 24/7/365. mailing lists dont have that.
you also seem to be missing the point, when your dealing with enterprise level decisions your dealing with upper management. no matter what.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
Without a doubt true... but do you need 4yrs to learn good study habits? Or to learn the art of cramming? Or would a 2hr session followed by a brief course in insert random subject so long as they can present lots of material) teach you just as well or near enough so that the 4yrs is still unjustified?
Let's face it, college is just one last foray before going into the real world.
I've reached a conclusion, we have to agree to disagree. However your last point really seals the deal, becaue your right. Your always dealing with upper management ;)
agree to disagree it is then. no hard feelings eh ? lmfao ......
you wouldnt by any chance work for an outsourcing company would you ?
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
Try SuSE. It's the next best thing to RedHat and they have better tech support. Also, YaST is pretty cool. A friend of mine does upgrades from cron every week.
Well, stop worrying about your Linux licenses and start worrying about your Oracle licenses. Oracle will end up costing you much, much more than Redhat will.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Could be a good thing. Maybe since all these virus problems with MS, they're FAR overworked lately. They'll need to hire more, but if that's true, then it's a great sign for linux
Berto
An IT guy who has admitted mistake! I like you, you are a rare breed. If I had a sister, I'd definitely let you bang her. Keep up the good work!
Berto
I would question why you need to move to Oracle. Oracle is advantageous only if you want a high concurrency database ( and disaster recovery up to the point of failure or a point in time prior to failure), or if you want to write PLSQL backend stuff. The other reason to select Oracle is the ability to tune your I/O down to micro levels. Most institutions use Oracle because its known & trusted, for this you pay a massive & exhorbident premium)
For most lesser applications simple RDMBS like MySQL with innoDB tables can work brilliantly.
Debian is the GNU linux but unfortunately does not work easily with all network & video drivers. I would recommend looking at debian on your hardware, and if it works ( as it should) donating some money to the developers, instead of pouring money into Red Hats coffers. However if you need constant tech support, stay with redhat, they need the money in order to suppoer their product
By your logic, if I build my own distribution of Linux, I can put whatever restrictions I want on it.
Which violates the license that the software was released to me under.
I have offered a different interpretation. That Red Hat is licensing support and that if you want support on those systems, you have to pay Red Hat.
The GPL does not allow anyone to place further restrictions on code released under the GPL, even if that company collects the code (aggregation) and compiles it (binaries) and puts its own trademark on the box.
It is prudent for you to avoid that battle because you would spend money finding that you are wrong. You can install GPL code on as many machines as you want without paying Red Hat any money.
But you will not get any support from Red Hat until you pay for it.
I'd be surprised if, on Redhat Retirement Date, there wasn't a mailing list and archive that sprung up with all the 6.2 and 7.3 users co-operatively releasing security updates for packages and what not.
:-)
Even then, I think Redhat 9 has reached maturity, and should be considered in the next upgrade cycle. I've been waiting on it to mature for a while now
Try getting support for Oracle and other commercial application on anything else than Red Hat and call me back once you found the solution. In a nutshell, I stand good chances of reaching retirement ages before you find anything. Such is life. Disclaimer: I am a Debian zealot, but I have also faced the realities of corporate life.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Red Hat 9 has what? 9 months before its EOL?
I don't know about RH9.... Maybe it's just the screen savers, but I installed it at work the other day, up2dated it, then left it over the weekend. When I came back, X was totally locked up, to the point where I couldn't get the console back even by sshing in and killing stuff.
Turning off the screen savers seemed to have helped, but it still looks bad when a screen saver can make a reboot necessary to get local access back.
This same hardware was running previous versions of red hat.
We're starting to test our PHP code on 9, it seems to be OK on the PHP+apache server front for now, but we haven't tested it under any load yet. I'm afraid that all the experimental kernel patches that RH includes for better desktop performance might be a problem, but time will tell.
Yeah, I know I can recompile the kernel, but everytime I have to compile something, it negates paying for RHN a little bit, since I have to keep up with patches myself then.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I'm running SuSE 8.2, from the free FTP download, and it is doing everything for me I need, including running a bunch of stuff that is supposed to be RedHat-only. Formal support? I don't need no steenking "formal support". I do all my own support and when I need help, there is tons of it available in multitudes of web forums, mailing lists and also in usenet. Oh yeah, this is not a trivial installation either. I'm running SuSE 8.2 on ten servers (out of a total of 30 servers, some Windows, some commercial unix) for an organization with 1200 employees. I just wish I could cpmpletely rid my network of Windows servers, but we just have too many Windows-specific apps still running on them.
I can get the source code for the code in RHEL that is covered under the GPL and compile it and give it away to anyone I want. Red Hat cannot stop me from doing that. I can install it on as many machines as I want. Red Hat cannot stop me.
And if I want to give away those security patches to everyone, Red Hat cannot stop me.
You really need to read the GPL.
All Red Hat can do is to not support any machines that I have not paid them to support.
I have the exact same problem with the screensavers.
:-)
:-)
I'm pretty sure its my ATI Rage 128 Pro, or the drivers for it.
I turned them off, and my uptime is like 50 days in X right now. So apart from that, it's OK.
Anyway, you might want to have a look at Trustix Secure Linux at http://www.trustix.org/
It's not a desktop distro, so it doesn't have X, etc included, but it's a damn good server distro.
I'll be moving all my Red Hat servers (5.0 -> 9) to TSL2.0 very soon; that's around 100 servers.
I've just finished fixing root-on-raid, aic79xx (Adaptec U320 stuff) and a whole bunch of other stuff for TSL2.0. Also, we switched over our website from Redhat9+PHP+Apache2 to TSL+PHP+Apache2, and it seems a little more stable to me. I was worried about that stuff too.
Check it out. It's a 300MB ISO, updates are rsync-able, and you can create your own ISOs easy. It comes with a free apt-like updater called 'swup' which does all sorts of cool shit, and you can run your own swup repositories (all you need is an ftp server/http server, etc), add your own RPMs easily, and so forth.
Disclaimer: I recently joined the TSL development team. And I also think it's an awesome distro
What do you know, this box has that video card.
:) Thanks.
Guess that narrows it down.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
This is not a flame. It's an honest attempt to help
Using VI(m-enhanced) is really easy. Install it, read a short demo. Then you'll wonder how you ever used pico.
--
--- Just say no to negativity.
Thanks I will. Pico does rock for doing a quick config without X though. You got to admit it is fast!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!