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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?"
Usually, enterprises aren't interested in free or next to it. They want stable and supported for a stable price.
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.
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
I think the whole point is support. With redhat, you're really paying for support - that's the whole point of paying.
With Debian, you don't get any support (IRC and google don't count when you've got to have a problem solved for your business in seconds. In these situations, "dial a tech-support number" == "support").
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
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!
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
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)
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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.
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.
Would that be 'msblaster' windows server 2003?
IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95
Have you considered calling / writing to Red Hat's sales section with your concerns? You may be able to negotiate a more acceptable price. Especially where there's such a significant sum involved.
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Abort / Retry / Ignore ?
And enterprise? unless you need to run certified applications (i.e. Oracle) in all and each one of them, an enterprise version is not needed. You can also use some of the UnitedLinux distributions if you want to run a version with certification for applications.
But my best bet is that you need a few for special applications, and the others could be "plain" linux distributions. So you must choose between an unified distribution for all for a common maintenance/patching/etc with high costs, or do something that may need a bit more of work, but a lot less of money.
The new "low cost" server option at my company is RHAS on a dual Xeon box connected to a huge EMC disk for network storage. F*$%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'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
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.
Well, the $350k/year he is talkin about can hire quite some 24/7 on-site support. For Debian too. Just put some good people on the payroll.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Orr.. Geee.. run Solaris (x86)
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
That got moderated funny?
/. all the time that Debian is so out of date and how terrible it is that they only get one release out the door per year, if that. However, in the enterprise, upgrading everything once per year is painful. In an enterprise, you can't just change your apt sources and upgrade in place. We get a window - say, one hour - to perform an upgrade. That means that I have to have a machine built and ready to go, other than syncing the data across during my window, and get it back up, and have a way to fail back (still in that window!) if something goes wrong. This means I have to rebuild every Debian box in the company once a year. (Because we standardize our base install, and have scripted all of our application installs, building new machines is extremely fast for us, to the tune of 20 minutes or so, but it's still a lot of work to re-QA our applications once a year.) For this reason, we only use Debian where version upgrades go pretty easily - BIND, Apache, Postfix, FTP servers, etc, where the Debian-supplied versions consistantly work right out of the box. We use Red Hat Enterprise for complicated commercial software (Oracle), where the long support cycle means we only have to go through the fun of upgrades once every several years.
I work in a mid-size enterprise, and we're using Debian with great success, for most of our unix needs.
The right distribution is highly dependant on what your specific needs are, though. Here are some things to consider:
1) Debian doesn't provide direct commercial support. Tech support is available from third parties, but by the time you get a support contract that will equal the quality of support you get from Red Hat, it'll probably cost as much as Red Hat (or Solaris, or Windows, or anything for that matter). Saving money is a priority for us, so we simply self-support. We maintain our own baseline install, and take care of certifying our own apps against Debian as needed. It's worked very well for us, but if you need CYA, Debian may not be a good choice.
2) Debian's release cycle is too fast. Yes, I know you hear it from people on
3) Oracle doesn't support Debian. Sure, it installs, sure, it runs fine, but that doesn't mean it's officially supported. This means that when you call their tech support, they will laugh at you the moment they think it's an OS problem. And, despite being head over heels in love with Debian, I think Oracle made the right choice - Enterprise customers who are going to install an application that needs to be in use for several years need to evaluate several other factors than just how easy an OS is to install and even how good the quality of the software is on the OS. I firmly believe that Debian builds a better mouse trap, but for Oracle, I want an OS that has official commercial support and a long life cycle - Red hat Enterprise.
Despite all this, don't think I'm trying to say that Debian is a bad choice. As I said at the beginning, we use it extensively for many functions throughout our enterprise, with tremendous success. Regardless, you need to evaluate your needs against ANY distribution, to see if it's a good match.
--Keepiru
--slashsuckATvegaDOTfurDOTcom
One of the nice things regarding Debian is that basically all it is is a set of installed packages - no extra magic, basically. Creating a local mirror is as easy as creating a local APT source and storing all the packages there, and then instead of running apt-get update on the machines, run apt-get update on the mirror PC, which updates all of them. If the mirror PC works fine, then copy all the packages to the local APT source, and boom, you're fine. The details here are sketchy, yah, but it's an easy problem.
Regarding the security patches, I honestly don't know what problem you have with them: maybe Debian has really improved security support since then, but if you check Debian's page, you'll see that security.debian.org's response time is just as fast as any of the other major distros. There are several bugs for which Debian had a package that fixed the problem first (the SSH bug that required privsep comes to mind).
And honestly, I have NO idea what problem you had where a package broke something badly, unless you were running unstable. In my experience, Debian's packages are FAR less likely to break a system than some random less-0.4.3-mdk3-only-work-on-a-sunday.rpm. The few problems I've had were dumb problems that were immediately obvious (and in fact were stupid user errors, as I forced an upgrade of a package without forcing the upgrade of its neighbors).
I've never been happier since I converted my lab's PCs to all Debian. Yah, it's small, but I have to handle something like 7-10 PCs, and having them all in almost exactly the same state (which is far harder to do in Red Hat than in Debian) is SO nice.
I mean, the main reason Debian stable is farther behind than everyone else is because they take their time. When they mean stable, they really really mean stable - not just stable as in 'won't crash', but stable as in 'will do what it says it does'.
$350k/year won't really get you very far at all for a well-staffed IT department. You're going to end up paying out the nose for any systems administrator who specifically addresses critical problems, as opposed to the more mundane IT staff who may deploy patches, ensure systems are running properly and not experiencing memory leaks, random errors, etc. Assume that you're paying $70,000 for a Linux sysadmin who's experienced enough to handle all the problems that none of the other guys can manage on their own (which is the entire point of the pay support in the first place). You can hire five of these people. Splitting them into 24/7 support (3 shifts, plus weekends), you essentially have one person at any given time managing 500 servers ($350,000 divided by $700, the cost of a Red Hat Enterprise ES license).
Outsourcing is really a much better option than hiring these people.
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.
Please read the redhat AS license. This is where the costs come from.
If they would simply put the offensive language in the SUPPORT CONTRACT where it belongs and not in the OS license where even the leaders of Open Source and linux find it offensive.
Basically, they have added things that make it look like a microsoft product license..
Please read it, it's online for a free read. It will upset and enrage you.
and It's the reason I have migrated my company away from redhat on it's servers to Mandrake.
I'm all for paying for support, I have subscribed to redhat support in the past, hell I owned stock!
But redhat is pissing on those of us that made them what they are today with their insulting license.... and that is something that doesnt sit well with me.
Offering support is one thing. Forcing me to buy it is another.
Unless someone else can tell me how to get my hands on Redhat AS without paying for the support, it's not a viable option for any enterprise that has skilled staff.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I am a big Debian fan, and agree with your summary of the relevant issues.
/var partition. Without backups of any form, I had the packaging system functional within an hour. Debian's "survivability" combined with the incremental nature of upgrades means that the installer is rarely used, especially by those most familiar with the distribution.
For those unfamiliar with Debian, the parent poster is (presumably) referring to Debian's "stable" distribution, which is as close to "guaranteed to work, even after upgrades" as you're likely to get anywhere, Linux or otherwise.
Debian does really suffer from an archaic installer. I'm not referring to "lack of GUI" here -- I actually prefer a text-based installer -- but the installer's lack of ReiserFS or 2.4 support is irritating. My working theory regarding the lack of attention to the installer is the fact that most Debian developers rarely use it -- apt-get (and dpkg behind it) is all that you need to keep Debian running. I've used the same Debian installation for years with a minimum of cruft, whereas (as I understand it) keeping Redhat up to date requires using the installer when upgrades are released.
A Debian-based router I administer even survived my accidental deletion of the entire
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
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.
Faster? It is often easier/quicker to just use Google to search for the answer.
1) You don't need wait while being tossed between technicians.
2) You don't have to wait for a callback.
3) You already know the details of your problem. You know what you tried. You don't need to try and communicate these to person on the other end.
What types of problems have you come across that have been handled better by tech support people?
Some have mentioned needing to wait for an updated package to be released by your distro. Just grabbed the latest source/patch and compile it yourself. Can't get too much quicker than that.;)
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
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
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 have GOT to be kidding... I didn't see a smiley either. You do realize that Solaris x86 has no internal support, right??? Hell, you are lucky if you get it to run on modern hardware do to lack of drivers.
Had a nasty NFS bug with it. Had an open ticket for a YEAR and no fix. Upgraded to linux and the problem was solved (and performance was better too.)
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
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!
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
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'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.
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.
Sure, you can spend either $350k on employees to work your system or tech support.
Capitalized versus personnel expenses are completely different. The thing is not just 2x the employees salary, it also requires space and management. If you have support, you have guaranteed support that you don't have from employees. There are a lot of differences between contracting out support and providing it internally.
Somewhere, someone is getting paid to answer your questions.
And it makes money because it's not just your questions answered. It's yours and several other companies.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Actually, no. That *used* to be the case, but if that was the only thing, it wouldn't be that expensive.
What you're paying for is certification. Wanna run Oracle? Well, if you want to get Oracle's "unbreakable" support, you have to run it on a certified OS. Getting that certification costs $$$, and lots of 'em.
It's the same with a number of other production applications - if you want support from the vendor, you have to run an OS that they support. If you've got your own home-grown kernel and you start having problems, how are they to know that some crap you put in there isn't hosing things up? And it's certainly not feasible for them to support ever kernel-(user) release out there - so they pick the biggest fish (RedHat).
For your servers that don't run production systems, just use the regular Red Hat and buy support (if not from Red Hat, then somewhere else - the beauty of open source). Or run Debian/SuSe/Mandrake/whatever. Doesn't really matter, so long as your *production* machines are certified.
Maybe it's because IBM built itself up to a $80B company in large part due to their mainframe pricing policies?
:-)
To be devil's (or Red Hat's) advocate here:
1) How many machines are we talking about? For 350k you can get:
140 AS premium servers, 24x7 support, including HA clustering
233 AS standard servers, 12x5 support, again, includes support for HA clusters
500 ES standard, 12x5 support
1002 ES basic servers 12x5 minimal support
This being said, if you made your quote for a straight 140 servers with AS premium, and that includes all your test/development workstations, you're overpricing yourself. I highly doubt you need that kind of support on your development sandbox.
All of these include support, RHN, and a stable platform you won't have to upgrade for 5 years. Most companies like yours, who have on-site linux support, probably only need ES basic for the majority of their servers as a CYA type of support. Part of what you'd be paying as part of that 350 is the 81.6$ 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.
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.
I have to disagree with your math. The $350k is not the budget for the whole department, just for the expertise to replace RH support. You don't need your final guru in shifts - let him work in the day and wake him with a pager if an emergency occurs. The kind of problem you need him for usually isn't a middle-of-the night emergency anyway. It's more like "application foo keeps segfaulting, we tried recompiling, tried the latest version, Google is no help and nobody else has this problem." It probably takes the sysadmin staff a couple of days just to refine the problem to guru level.
yeah the problem is debian doesnt offer you the level of support you get with AS and debian is not certified for oracle, db2 etc ....
and to qoute redhat.com : "Also, Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS is certified by DISA (US Defense Information Systems Agency) as COE (Common Operating Environment) Compliant. It is the only Linux distribution to have received this certification."
im not a large fan of redhat because they seem to be going to microsoft route with pricing (i even recomended SuSe earlier) but redhat AS has alot of stuff that debian doesn't. this is a enterprise decision and has such rh AS, ES, and SuSe ES are the only real choices.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
If you don't think you're paying Red Hat for anything, imagine what would happen if somehow Red Hat and associated services vanished tomorrow.
How many of your support team are reading CERT vendor advisories (you do pay to get that service, right?) and developing patches for the OS before the problems become public knowledge? How many of your systems are set aside for regression testing of these patches, a few dozen right ? How many Alan Cox level Linux hackers do you employ to backport important fixes & improvements onto your Linux kernels ?
If you _really_ don't need Red Hat then you probably don't need any distributor at all because your in house expertise is enough to maintain a Linux distribution. I must wonder though whether your company wouldn't be better off out-sourcing its support...
Otherwise the real question is: Since you must know Red Hat's support operation costs a lot of money, what's the problem with paying for it? Sure, it would be nice if they gave it away for free, but practically speaking that ain't going to happen.
There's a bit of difference between "Oracle will run on any Linux" and "Oracle is supported on any Linux".
Supported usually implies testing, education of support people, installers for the distribution, keeping track of distribution specific problems, etc. All of that costs money, so there has to be a credible buisness case for each extra supported distribution.
While I may wish Oracle would support more distributions than they do, I cant really fault them for not being willing to do so. It's not like Oracle is the only database there is.
I set up a server/firewall... Red Hat made a liar out of me.
First off, that's the reason the number one most important rule even in a small business is that the *firewall* is not the *server*. I really hate the fact that a certain company in Redmond likes to advertise that their small business offering can perform this dual role adequately. I usually put Gibraltar, which is a Debian-based run-from-cd firewall distro, on whatever spare computer is lying around that can handle it.
The firewall can (and should) be updated frequently; an internal server should not. I just use RH 7.3 on internal servers that don't provide outside access and reside on fairly small, trusted networks. I'm guessing that you run some sort of web hosting provider, though, from the fact that you say it's a 'small business' yet have more than 12 RH servers.
If that's the case, well, I don't know what to tell you. I think RH should have a webserver edition. The WS version of RH Enterprise says it comes with Apache, so maybe that's what it's targeted for. It can be had for as little as $180.
I can certainly say I feel for people who in this sort of situation. I started concentrating on deploying nothing but Debian a little over a year ago. It's by no means a difficult leap to go from RH to Debian, but, depending on the amount of help and support for commercial apps you require, sticking with RH might be worthwhile.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
As much as I (and I suspect much of the /. crowd as well) might like it, Oracle isn't going anywhere, just like Microsoft, BEA, or SAP. In fact, their indorsement of Linux clusters as preferable to Sun "big iron" for running major enterprise databases is a big feather in the cap of the whole open source community, and should be treated as such.
Personally, I think that Linux has an amazing future ahead of it in the server and workstation markets, and that companies like Oracle and IBM that have massive enterprise credibility will help to realize that potential.
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.
There is a very simple that Oracle (and the likes) only support RedHat. And that's because every linux distribution is different. Different libraries, different tools. And sometimes something that worked with gcc 2.95 won't with 3.3.
It's completely reasonble for Oracle to only provide tech support for one distribution. It allows their technicians to quickly diagnose the problem instead of trying to figure what's on the system.
Software written for one distro should normally run on others, but no one is obligated to do so. And they aren't wackos if they chose not to.
Hello, FreeBSD people.
About 4 of you have written the same thing, with the general gist of 'switch to FreeBSD.'
Sure, you say that's not what you're saying, but you are.
Anyway, here's the thing. Logic seems to be lacking in your argument.
Upgrading to Redhat 9 would cost nothing.
Switching to Debian would cost nothing.
There is no physical box surrounding that Redhat ISO. It also doesn't cost $350,000 to download and install Redhat 9 on all your systems.
FreeBSD is therefore, _NOT_ less expensive than a comparable solution, i.e, upgrading Redhat, or switching distributions.
The poster, by specifically mentioning he wants the Enterprise Server edition of Redhat, wants support from Redhat. Otherwise, why would he pay?
Also, FreeBSD cannot replace Linux in many situations. It's not a drop-in replacement.
I have yet to see concrete evidence that suggests that FreeBSD is somehow 'better' than Linux. There are never any facts backing such statements up. And I don't think Linux is 'better' than FreeBSD either.
How about this, let's make a deal: you use what you want, and I'll use what I want.
And when you start waving your 400 day FreeBSD uptime at me, I'll do the same with my Linux uptime. OK?
I don't know how these 'switch to FreeBSD' posts are marked as 'Interesting.'
Any system administrator worth their salt would compare all available options and choose the solution that's right for them. You FreeBSD peddlers are under the mistaken belief that people using Linux have never looked at or played with FreeBSD.
With posts like these, I'm beginning to think it's the other way around: you havn't touch a Linux box in 5 years, or you've never done an emperical study when evaluating the two operating systems for your particular needs.
In short: meh.