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?"

Comments

Enterprise != Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually, enterprises aren't interested in free or next to it. They want stable and supported for a stable price.

What do you need it to do?

[TechnoPope]

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?

What do you want?

[ceswiedler]

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.

How much support do you need?

[macemoneta]

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.

Call sales

[briaman]

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.

Cha-ching!

[Chagatai]

At my company we had been using IBM's advanced AIX support for our 60+ RS/6000 and pSeries server environment. The cost? Roughly $10K per month. We were typically calling them once or twice a month and there would be two or three instances during the year when we would ask questions to which they had no answer. Needless to say, we are no longer using them. I mean, would you spend $120K/year for someone to sit on your staff doing nothing aside from answering two questions a month, even if he couldn't answer the questions? Be real.

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.

Re:Debian!

[subreality]

That got moderated funny?

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 /. 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.

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

Maybe this is the place

[HangingChad]

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.