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Dell Calls For Red Hat To Lower Prices
VaultX points to an article on CNET (linked below), writing "According to Dell, Red Hat needs to lower pricing. 'We believe Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, for the small and medium-sized business market, was out of the price range of these customers.' With Dell's strong presence in the Linux server market, Red Hat may want to listen."
Yeah, the college I worked at balked at the prices too, until I told them about the $50 .edu price (workstation is $25) ... Couldn't find anything on their website, but a email to the sales department took care of it.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Isn't RedHat Server cheaper than Windows 2003 Server? And RHS is supposed to compete with Win2k3.
RedHat ES -- $349.99
RedHat WS -- $179.99
Win2k3 -- At least $400 from what I can pick up.
BTW, if Dell doesn't like RedHat, why don't they use something else? People vote with their dollars.
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
It's not that easy. Linux distributions vary. A lot of applications that people are buying for these servers are certified torun on RHEL and sometimes Suse's enterprise linux. Things like oracle may not run on debian.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
Couldn't/Shouldn't you look in to RTFA or something?
"And Dell has the marketing muscle to make its opinions clear. Indeed, Red Hat's pricing was instrumental in Dell's decision to sign its October pact to sell Novell's SuSE Linux. "
Advanced users are users too!
CentOS is basically just totally free and open version of RedHat Enterprise Linux, and it's really nice. Although there's no one to call if someone goes wrong, it basically offers everything feature-wise that RedHat does. check it out here.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Seriously, Linux is GPLed free software!
Paying 3 digit sums per license for free software boggles the mind. I know, I know, you get support. Well, most of us don't need no freakin support contract. Google is our tech support specialist.
Le français vous intéresse?
Someone better tell IBM that then:
Deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux on xSeries is now even easier. I November 2003, IBM introduced bundles of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with xSeries servers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 2.1, Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES 2.1, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 2.1 may be ordered when purchasing BladeCenter and xSeries servers. Offers are available with a "No Support option", which will allow the customer to purchase support from IBM Global Services. Also available are offers with 1 year of Red Hat support. Every copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes a one year subscription to Red Hat Network. Now, customers can buy either Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES or WS 2.1 pre-loaded on x205, x225, x305, x335, and x345 servers in the US. For all other models, Red Hat Enterprise 2.1 Linux will be included with the server and installation will be performed by the customer. In 2Q04, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 will be available via similar offers.
Free Mac Mini
The price is too high, that is why some of us have been using White Box Linux for some time. It's 100% binarily compatible with RH, and it works.
From the above linked website "This product is derived from the Free/Open Source Software made available by Red Hat, Inc but IS NOT produced, maintained or supported by Red Hat. Specifically, this product is forked from the source code for Red Hat's _Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3_ product under the terms and conditions of it's EULA."
So far - and 10's of servers later - no complaints, works like a charm. Since it works so well. Why pay? For their support? Lets be honest, we generally find the bugs before RH does, and our staff can handle anything - including figuring out the undocumented changes that RH makes to their own products (example: static routes anyone?).
cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
XP Home only allows 10 concurrent connections, not counting all the other bad stuff related to running MS as a server.
If they made a movie of your life, would anybody buy a ticket?
Just looked it up on their site at It's $174/Yr for support of SEL 9 for a single CPU server and $260/Yr for a dual CPU server. Cheaper than minimum $350/Yr for RHEL and alot cheaper than the $900/Yr Novell wants you to pay for support.
BTW We just got a 2850 (to run netware) and it's pretty sweet ... only down side is when you first power it up it sounds like a 747 taxing for takeoff. After server management board boots it throttles the fans to something reazonable ... power cycling the server is not something I plan on doing more than once a year so I can deal with that.
Whatever. Buying a Dell server with Linux was easy for me. I can even transfer the Redhat Network license/updates and the server's warranty online to a customer. And I did NOT buy Windows.
This guy is way out there
Think about it. You're forking out N thousand dollars for Oracle; you do that instead of installing PostgreSQL or (heaven forbid) MySQL because of the support Oracle can give you if things go wrong. The first thing you do is look at the configurations Oracle will support. Unless you were just playing around -- in which case, you're unlikely to be using Oracle because of the cost! -- you're not going to be running their software on a setup that they won't support.
After all, if things go A over T, you want to go to Oracle and say "Help!" If they look at your system and find that you're running Debian, they'll say, "Sorry, no can do; you have to be running Red Hat or SuSE for us to help you."
Prime case in point: where I work is busy rolling out Tivoli Storage Manager for a backup system, to replace Legato Networker (swapping one set of problems for another, but anyway.) I'm playing around with it to find out what it can and can't do; I'm comfortable doing that on my Debian desktop box. But when it comes to deploying it in production, it'll be on Redhat (well, Solaris for the main servers; Redhat for some peripheral jobs -- long story), simply because we know that IBM can support us in that situation, whereas they won't on Debian. Yes, they will if we pay them enough money, but we can't afford that. :)
I've had the experience of being on the outside... if anything Dell should be forwarding some of the $$$ that we paid them to RH.
In comparison to Compaq/HP or even white-box vendors Dell comes in at 1 out of 10. I've had service delayed by 3 weeks on multiple occasions due to poor logistics and have frequently had to mentally wrestle the support staff over the phone to deal with problems. Hardly a desirable quality when you're looking for uptime.
I've never heard of Dell in a positive manner. Ever.
UBU
As has been pointed out, the fee RedHat charge is for their services. If you can forgo the services and the brand there are freely (beer/speech) available alternatives.
Whitebox Enterprise Linux 3 has taken the RedHat Enterprise Linux 3 source RPMs, removed trademarks and RedHat artwork and produced their own binary distro of those source RPMs. The resulting server is RHEL3 RPM compatible (which is useful if you are using 3rd party repositories.
WhiteBox Linux release erratta fixes following on from any that RH release. So the distro is kept up to date (using up2date or yum, or if you're like me, apt)
There are other projects with RHEL3 based distros as well.
Don't you just love the GPL?
--
WBEL3 Based Linux VPSs
The prices are a little bit on the high side, but you are buying support not the software for the most part and they are certainly not higher that Windows Server 2003 which they are setup to compete with.
Windows Server 2003 prices are here.
The RedHat recommended version for a small business webserver is here.
Microsoft policy is that business products will be supported for a minimum of five years (10 for hotfix security support) after they are released.
Windows Server 2003 Web Edition is $399. Per year that's $79.80 for 5 years or $39.90 for 10 years.
RHES for x86 is $349 per year for updates, installation help, and support with a 2 day response time. Over 5 years you're paying $1745 total. Over 10 it's $3490. These figures also assume that RedHat does not raise the prices higher in the future and does not change the contract.
Dell Just Started Selling Linux! And they still won't do a workstation!!!
Rackspace has installed more RH boxes than Dell!!!
That describes my situation six months ago exactly. Then I had a problem with up2date.
So I called RedHat for the first time in the decade I've been using it. I found out:
I challenged them that there was no indication on their website that RedHat Linux upgrades were unsupported (they always were in the past so it's not unreasonable to assume they still would be) and they conceded the point and offered to get a notice up within a week, but weren't any more helpful.
So, what kind of support are you getting for that money? It's alot like Microsoft support. Completely useless so a waste of money by definition.
It's too bad - I was 3 licenses into a 30+ server effort over multiple clients, and that's as far as I got. There's a huge base of installed RedHat Linux users they're completely ignoring. I want to help pay Alan Cox's salary, but they don't make it feasible for me.
Instead of throwing good money after bad, I ditched it and put Fedora Core 2 on. Yeah, I'm out $300 but yum will set you free. Plus firewire works perfectly in the current kernel releases.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
RHEL: Annual subscription, unlimited clients
Win2k3: Outright license purchase, CAL cost per-client.
You can't effectively compare the prices of the two without a context, such as the lifetime of the server and the number of clients that are expected to be connected to it.
On Novell's SuSE Enterprise 9 page they say that it will only cost you $35 for a single-CPU copy of SuSE Enterprise 9. Wow, nice deal, eh?
Then they give you a link for complete pricing. After you start to claw your eyes out, you'll find you're in a twisty maze of horrid excel files (no, really, worse than your average excel file by a LOT). Finally you get to pricing. Support is listed in the file, on line 3488 (I can't make up stuff this silly, really), you will find the entry for "SUSE LINUX Server Support per Server". It's not clear which price is the one you pay, but it lists $900 and $1010.
So, you can get a shrink-wrapped box of free software for $35... and support is $900.
They do offer a "small business support" package for $3,800 and a 5-incidents pack for $1,900 as well (which might be more cost-effective).
For little companies that just want to buy a shrink-wrap box, and are never going to call for support SuSE is fine. For the enterprise, Red Hat is price and service competitive in the extreme.
Which would be ironic, since IBM also pushes SuSE harder than Redhat. Though both companies will sell you either OS, apparently.
Why? If there's one company capable of managing stupid-customer expectations it's Dell.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
If you call Microsoft with a problem you'd better have a credit card ready.
And the same applies to RedHat. The price quoted is only includes "One Year Installation and Basic Configuration Web Support"
I don't know which page you were looking at, but Microsoft says that the cheapest W2K3 SBS is $599 (not counting upgrades). And that's only for 5 named users! Add 20 users ($776) and you come to a hefty sum of $1375! And that's the SBS Standard edition (without the SQL, ISA and FP server). Additional restrictions also apply.
So, $500 is really a bit of an understatement. (To be fair, I haven't checked what you get with RH for $350 or $800).
boky
Due to corporate policies, we are generally a Windows shop as far as the global infrastructure is concerned. If I want to setup a mail server with Windows, I am looking at purchasing Windows 2003 Enterprise version, Exchange 2003 Enterprise Version, Client access licenses for the servers, and possibly Terminal Server licenses as well. Figure the server hardware will cost around $10,000, and to get fully decked out with an Enterprise Level OS and Email system from MS will cost me around $5000. That is 50% the cost of the hardware. This doesn't even begin to address support costs.
I have switched from Dell in the server room to HP, so I am not sure what the Dell server prices are like in terms of dollars, but I do know they tend to be cheaper (at least in Asia). I recently compared a similar hardware Dell quote and an HP quote for a Korean associate and the Dell quote was 40% cheaper. So, if we say a Dell server is around $6000 and the enterprise level OS that runs on it is $359, we see that the software is priced at roughly 6% of the hardware. Even the $799 version is only 13% of the hardware price, and this is assuming the hardware is 40% cheaper than the Microsoft comparison.
Not exactly over priced in my opinion in. In fact 2 support calls to Microsoft cost this much. Once we get into the higher level offerings from Redhat then the ratio changes a little, but the point to remember here is that this includes support!
RHEL AS Server is $2499/year and includes Web and phone based comprehensive support 24 x 7 1 hour response Unlimited incidents 1 year Red Hat Network
1 hour response time costs! You have to have higher prices to even begin to offer this. For environments where you do not need 1 hour response (the best Dell offers is 4 hours -- in Japan ;) ) time from your vendor, you do not need to pay for it. With the Microsoft offering, I am paying large sums of money without any support included.
I personally run Debian at home for my mail/web server (and Gentoo when I feel like getting frustrated) but if we were ever to switch to Linux in the server room, one of the biggest deciding factors would be the quality and availability of support. Red Hat's target is certainly not the geek home user who balks at a $359 price tag and doesn't require support. It is the Corporate Enterprise market where when the server is down and the company's business is impacted people are glad to have paid for support. In that market, their prices are excellent in my opinion. If they were charging peanuts, they would not be taken seriously by the people making the business decisions for a company. Businessmen tend to understand that you can't get something for nothing, especially service.
Price point implies more than just a dollar amount. It's the overall value of the purchase.
... since they started offering SuSE about 1 month ago.
...
But of course, if you had RTFA, you would have known that
I own a small business, and RedHat's price increase has certainly reduced our volume with Dell. The Dell servers with RedHat preinstalled used to make a very nice package for us. At one time these were the only servers we bought-- I was very happy to pay the small premium over commodity servers to receive very nice boxes with RedHat preinstalled that were only a few hours away from being ready to go into the data center.
We have not purchased a single new Dell server since the RedHat price increase. Now that we manually install Debian on new machines, buying a Dell machine with no operating system preinstalled makes it much closer to the commodity rack mounted servers, just more expensive. The fancy Dell BIOS that we all adore, with the on board remote control computer (DRAC and ERA) is too difficult to get working from within Debian, and the amazing support contracts Dell's servers come with are almost useless if we are using an unsupported operating system.
With Linux, you have a choice
With Linux, yes. But with Dell, not necessarily.
Everytime you order a new Dell system it will be a question if it will run Linux.
Dell supports Red Hat Linux. That will work.
But we use SuSE, and nasty things happen.
For example, we have ordered a number of SC400 servers and were very happy. Then, it was replaced by the SC420. So we ordered one of these, without OS. Red Hat is supported on it.
But SuSE 9.2 does not recognize the SCSI controller. Why? because Dell got a modified 39320 SCSI controller from Adaptec that can only work in the "HOSTRAID" mode (Adaptecs swindle to make you think you buy a RAID controller while it actually is just a SCSI controller with a driver).
The problem is that Linux does not support the HOSTRAID mode, and Adaptec only provides a (binary) driver for the OS versions it likes. SuSE 9.2 is not amongst these.
So the machine is sitting at the YaST installation screen, waiting for a solution. I know I can solve it but it takes hours of extra time for what should have been a smooth install.
This is not the first time this has happened to us. Dell just buys what is cheapest for them at that moment (the SC400 had a MPT SCSI controller), and lets the customer sort out the problems.
And add in the cost of Microsoft Office, and an anti-virus package, and an unlimited print server and email server. It adds up pretty fast when you compare the complete price of the package.
Almost got it. CALs, these days, are per-client, not per-connection. So your first scenario, 100 clients, 1 server, 100 CALs is right, but your second scenario is 100 clients, 10 servers, 100 CALs because Windows decided to move that way.
Why they even charge for CALs when you typically run Windows Clients when connecting to a Windows Server is beyond me. I think it's f'ing dumb. I guess it's just one more way to fsck us as a customer.
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor - Albert Einstein
Yes i realize this. I wasn't serious either. That's why I decided to reply with another infamous /. cliché. So my conclusion is that YOU are the "boob" here. (Whatever that may mean.) Fortunatly my post got modded funny so i know others did get the joke :P
I'm trying to improve my English. Please correct me on any spelling/grammar errors in this post.
If Dell isn't happy with RedHat's value, they're welcome to support Gentoo and Debian instead.
My bet is that RedHat does provide decent value for the dollar, so Dell'll stick with them.
How much are you betting? If you RTFA you will see the Dell just signed an agreement with Novell for SuSE Linux. So, yeah they ARE supporting someone else. So where can i collect my winnings?
Ummm...go to their website and download it for free. Yes, you can. It isn't openly publicized, but you can get the source packages (without support, which means no RedHat Network) of the advanced server distribution from their download servers. Here is a mirror. Now, you can quibble about them only distributing source packages, but a) it is already more than is required by the GPL (they don't have to host the packages) and b) there is already a free cutting-edge distribution that fills in the place of the old retail version (Fedora). The only reason to go after AS is if you need the support package, otherwise the only differences are in package versions (AS software is mostly out of date, which is what you want if you are running a server).
I am sorry did you say java and compile to native.... That is NOT a JVM.
Yeah, and I also said GIJ, which is NOT native-compilation but a JVM.
There are several other VM's out there, Kaffe, JamVM and SableVM, which all use the GNU Classpath library and thus also benefit indirectly from Red Hat's work.
What about Blackdown? It's not open source. Period. It's under Sun's license.
Look at the abomination they did to get Eclipse to run.
Yeah, sure. I've seen it. Have you?
Note particularily the line: No Eclipse changes are needed.
how about IBM's JVM for linux
They have several. What about IBM JVM? It's not open source either. They do have one though which is, JikesVM. And It has GNU Classpath as its library. IBM hasn't contributed any code at all towards the runtime.
(And the class library is the major issue with Java, not the VM. VM's are small by comparison)
Redhat all but hates Java.
Yeah, which is why they hosted an open-source Java summit as recently as two weeks ago.
The only thing they want with Java is the ability for it to be compiled to "their" OS.
Which doesn't quite explain why they're contributing by writing cross-platform Java library code, does it?
I agree that RedHat does do some development, but are you seriously saying that they do anywhere near what Sun or Microsoft do?
No. Nobody said that. You were the one saying Red Hat doesn't contribute to open source software. Now you've suddenly changed this to doing as much development as Sun or Microsoft??!
I do say this: They contribute a hell of a lot more code to the community than either Sun or Microsft does, despite having far smaller resources.
Yes. Red Hat charges a lot of money for support. So does Microsoft for their Enterprise solutions. You are making the stupid mistake of comparing consumer products with enterprise products. These are completely different things. Rest assured that Windows with enterprise support isn't cheap either. Nor is AIX, or Solaris or anything else.
I suggest you stop commenting on stuff which you obviously don't know much about.