Slashdot Mirror
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.
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).
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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
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