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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!
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 $100, (and I'm betting it will be way over) consider getting on-demand support from independent consultants, instead of using a pre-paid contract. Some consultants will even let you buy reasonable (e.g., 10 hour) blocks of support time, which you can use in small (5-15 minute) increments. You have MANY support options. Explore them to see which will save you the most.
Use any savings for training. As your in-house expertise increases, your support costs will decrease. The nice thing about Linux is you only have to pay for the support you need. Too many companies forget that.
Learn to use Google effectively too; 99.9% of all Linux questions I get in a year have already been answered, and are just a quick inquiry away.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
But this puts you in violation of your support license, resulting in its termination and therefore not being supported if they catch you.
However, this will result in the same level of support as if you still had a support license.
Never take recommendations from anyone who spells the word with two c's and just one m.
Laugh stupid, it's a joke.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Have you considered calling / writing to Red Hat's sales section with your concerns? You may be able to negotiate a more acceptable price. Especially where there's such a significant sum involved.
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Abort / Retry / Ignore ?
The new "low cost" server option at my company is RHAS on a dual Xeon box connected to a huge EMC disk for network storage. F*$%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 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.
You are high, or highly misinformed.
RedHat continues to develop a public release
the beta for the next release (redhat 10) is available right now for public consumption. The simply aren't providing shrink wrap at compusa anymore, I think what the original story is referring to is the fact that each public release is only supported for 1 year, which is unacceptable in a corporate environment, to have to upgrade the OS of production boxes every year is not acceptable, and therefore requires that people move to ES, because it has 5 years of support.
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.
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
> Of course, the nice gui installer is not free
Sure it is. It's called Anaconda, and everything you need to make your own customized version is included in the anaconda package in Red Hat, licensed under the GPL.
You're probably thinking of SuSE's installer.
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
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.
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
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.