IBM Refuses To Certify Oracle Linux

Andrew writes "IBM has thrown a spanner in the Oracle Linux works by refusing to certify that IBM's software portfolio will run and be supported on Oracle Unbreakable Linux. If IBM applications turn out to be incompatible with Oracle Linux, then it will be up to Oracle to resolve any issues. This conservative stance of IBM's is unlikely to help Oracle sell Linux subscriptions to businesses that use any of IBM's large software portfolio."

Comments

Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that Oracle has added "Unbreakable" in front of the word "Linux"... Linux is finally going to become insecure :(

Note to Linux developers: remember to add all your SVN commits as cron jobs, and forward date them all 2 years, or 3 years if they're critical security patches.

Re:Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that advertisers for software are lots dumber than advertisers for cars. Can't Oracle afford a decent slogan, one that folks won't laugh at? One that isn't so obviously bogus? I mean, Oracle is trying to sell to IT people, not Microsofties. IT folks know damned good and well that no software is unbreakable. Microsoft could get away with it, considering its user base, but not Oracle.

Now, the car companies know how to lie - just tell the truth. For instance:

Chevy - like a rock. (Damned thing won't start and the transmission is locked up again... damn!)

Ford - Quality is job one. (They have no quality and their work is cut out for them)

Pontiac - We Build Excitement! (The handling is crap and the brakes are worse)

Oracle - Faster than a speeding bullet (well, electricity does travel at the speed of light)

CentOS too

[jabuzz]

They don't certify CentOS works either, but I can tell you for sure that Tivoli Storage Manager Extended edition works just fine on CentOS 4.4

If Oracle Linux is from the same mold as CentOS then it is a fear factor rather than anything serious. Personally if I where Oracle I would hire as many of the CentOS developers as possible and get them to do a spin of CentOS as Oracle Linux.

Re:CentOS too

[rubycodez]

but big enterprise doesn't think that way, they want certified compatibility and adherence to the letter of support contracts. Good luck calling EMC or Hitachi and saying your CentOS has problems accessing your 20TB disk array with a given HBA and switch. You'd void your warranty right then and there. As an aside, CentOS lags RedHat in patches, and also has to rewrite parts of the redhat admin system, it isn't 100% the same.

Re:CentOS too

[pirhana]

You have perfectly summed up it !! I had a DB cluster setup on HP DL-385 and had to migrate to RHEL just to get support for Hardware issues from HP. They blindly refuse to support telling that "we don't support anything other than RHEL". The fact is that vendors are looking for an excuse to say no to support and RHEL/CentOS is enough for them

Re:CentOS too

[rubycodez]

worth mentioning that HP does support RedHat, SuSE and Debian.

Re:CentOS too

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense, but as a hardware vendor I'd do this too. Because otherwise, where do you stop? "Yeah, we're running on this custom-compiled Gentoo with a few third party extensions. We're seeing some errors in our custom logs that look like our proprietary apps can't connect to your hardware. Send an engineer."

As a vendor, I will tell you "OK, we've checked out and certified that we work with these distros. Anything else, it will probably work but you're on your own if it doesn't." Seems reasonable to me.

Now, if you're concerned that vendors will use this to shut out "free" distros from being supported, maybe that's a case worth making. But some of this is market demand--if HP kept getting the question about "hey, will you support this on CentOS?" from hardware customers, and were losing customers by saying no, you can be they'd look into CentOS support. They are not vested in propping up RedHat's licensing business.

IMO, the main issue that big companies have and will continue to have with Linux is distro fragmentation. It's just not feasible anymore to test your applicaiton/server/hardware with every conceivable distro that's out there. So you pick some, and those are the ones your customers tell you they're running.

Put another way, *I* could come out with a RHEL clone distro tomorrow. Are you telling me it would be reasonable for me to expect HP to support it?

Re:CentOS too

[Undertaker43017]

"Good luck calling EMC or Hitachi and saying your CentOS has problems accessing your 20TB disk array with a given HBA and switch."

I do this all the time, I run CentOS in development and most of the test environment. When I see a problem on CentOS, I verify that the problem exists on one of my RHEL test boxes, and call them up. When they fix the problem on RHEL, it is either automatically fixed on CentOS, or I replicate whatever they did on RHEL on CentOS and the problem is fixed. You just have to learn how to play their game, if they say they only support "expensive X", then have as few of "expensive X" around to satisfy that requirement.

"it isn't 100% the same"

It's enough the same that I have never run into anything that broke on one that didn't break exactly the same way on the other. CentOS is so good that I have started to move some of my production systems to it, but I will always keep a fair number of RHEL boxes around, since third parties need someone to point a finger at when they determine that it isn't their stuff.

Re:CentOS too

[hackstraw]

They blindly refuse to support telling that "we don't support anything other than RHEL".

In my experience, "support" is pretty much a misnomer.

What happens basically 100% of the time is that they blame anything and everything besides their product. The only way around this is if you buy all of your stuff from one company and have one support contract for all of that stuff.

Example, I had a certified and partnered RAID array, HBA card, OS, and system hardware that were all OK with each other. When I had a problem, every one of the hardware people said, "If the lights are on, then it works according to me, having it work with your environment is your problem". At home, I have a piece of hardware where the driver breaks _EVERY TIME_ I do an OS update, so they taught me not to do OS updates. They do update their driver within a period of time, but if I call them or if I go to their website, they never say "This driver does not work after upgrading to OS x.y". I've gotten hot and bothered about it, but I've just given up. One time, they came out with an update within a few days of me calling and asking about it, yet the asshat on the phone could not say "We are working on it, its a known issue".

It kills me the amount of money that "support" costs, and management and all of that love support for some reason, but I've found more real support from online forums, mailinglists, and newsgroups for free software than I have for any paid for support for "real" products.

Oh, while I'm on a rant here. What about the support answer to the request of: "I need your product to support feature X". And the answer is, pay us more money for the latest version of our product, drop all of your production work you are doing, have a downtime, and then _if_ it works, and _if_ its bugfree and works 100% as advertised, then you will now have feature X. I'm sorry that is not support, that is buying a new product, which could very well be from another vendor.

Support is mostly an illusion.

Re:CentOS too

[LinuxDon]

The "problem" with free distro mainly is that they're a moving target.
If you look at Novell SLES 9 and RHEL 4 you will see that they're still running on (a heavily patched up) 2.6.7 and 2.6.9 version of the kernel.
Free distro's usually update their packages very frequently which is a good thing, except in an enterprise environment. Also, 2 years later there will be absolutely no support for anymore for those verions. SLES and RHEL versions on the other hand are supported for at least 5 years.

The point is that they only patch (security) bugs and nothing else, so the entire system is essentially frozen for years, hardly any new features are added.
Also, there is absolutely no point in checking out Oracle's Linux until they've been around for a couple of years and have a proven track record. Who says they won't change their mind in 2 year about the entire thing and all effort will be lost.

Also, while CentOS practically is basically just RHEL, it can certainly cause support issues. I've installed arcserve backup on CentOS and it didn't recognize the distro because of the name change and I had to manually alter the install script. I can very well imagine a lot of companies don't want to gamble on this possibility.

No wories

[Anne Thwacks]

If you are not allergic to IBM, and need a powerful database, you would probably rather run db2 than Oracle anyway, especially if you are using other large IBM packages.

IMNSHO, db2 pisses on Oracle from a great height.

Re:No wories

[djbckr]

A terrible post that got modded "Informative" with NO BASIS FOR THE CLAIM!!! Sheesh! Tell me exactly *why* DB2 is better.

Re:No wories

[DrJokepu]

Because it has approximately the same features and performance, a more human-friendly UI, no WTFs like VARCHAR3 and empty string IS NULL (if you don't believe it, just try it: oracle actually treats empty char fields as NULL), and it is slightly cheaper?

Probably not really a refusal ...

[quiberon2]

It's probably more a case of 'IBM has contracts in place with RedHat and Novell, and testing efforts in place, so that if a client buys (for example) IBM Websphere with an expectation of running on Linux, then IBM will warrant timely resolution of any defects that may threaten to get in the way of the IBM customer's use of the IBM product'.

I'm fairly sure that if someone offers enough money, they could have that assurance on Oracle, Ubuntu, or anyone else's Linux too.

Re:Probably not really a refusal ...

[oyenstikker]

Probably not. IBM's products don't really work on Linux, they work on one particular outdated version of RHEL and one version of Suse. I recently spoke to tech support about IBM Workspace Managed Client failing to install on Debian, and was told over and over that the only reason it gave me a particular error was because I needed to install a particular outdated version of Mozilla in a particular directory, and make a particular file with a line pointing to it. Over and over I tried this, and it did not work. They seem to have no idea how their installer works, much less care to do anything about it.

Re:A definite shame

[msobkow]

I don't recall any of Rick Stallman's lectures being about charity.

Oracle is trying to shift the blame from their software stack to IBM's before they've even deployed a box. In other words, if you have a problem and are running IBM software, Oracle wants IBM to foot the bill of researching the bug or issue.

Who is Oracle to dictate that problems are automatically some other vendor's fault instead of their own?

TFA is a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

This is hardly unusual. Companies spend a lot of money to certify software distros, and put their own maintenance dollars on the line when they certify them.

A third party saying "use our stuff--it's just the same as theirs" isn't necessarily credible. Maybe they're a clone, or maybe they're a clone today and might not be tomorrow. Or maybe they'd only clone part of the distro, leaving out critical parts. Or maybe they'll add custom stuff to the distro. IBM isn't under any obligation to believe Oracle's marketing materials and automatically certify based on taking Oracle's word that "it's the same and always will be."

There are DOZENS of RHEL clones out there (CentOS is the most popular, but hardly the only one). I don't think IBM considers any of them "certified."

Actual quote from TFA: "We are going to wait and see if there is traction in the marketplace," McMahon said. "If clients want it (Oracle), then we will support it."

This is a non-issue, and someone's using the "IBM vs. Oracle!" angle to generate traffic and controversy by stirring people up. Looks like they succeeded.

I Hate Linux Distro Certification

[segedunum]

I just hate the whole concept of Linux distribution certification, because it tells me that there's something wrong with running software on it. I doubt whether a huge amount of older software is certified to run on Windows 2003 either, but you can bet your life that many organisations are running that software on Windows 2003. Organisations generally just try it out on a newer version of an OS, and if it works OK in a trial period (even if they have to tweak things to get it to work) they go with it, and they don't fly into a massive panic. I've done this many times, including an older piece of, now totally unsupported, software written for NT 4 in C to communicate with a mainframe that needed to run on 2003.

If Oracle can say "Yes, this will run" to their customers, and their customers try it out and it does actually run, then no one will care.

In terms of backwards compatibility, and getting the software you want to work, Windows is still way ahead of Linux, and this whole concept of distributors and software vendors protecting themselves (and engineering some lock-in, incidentally) by certifying, or certifying for, certain distributions just isn't helping Linux or open source software get more widely used.

Luniz

[Dogtanian]

Linuzzz. Weren't they the rappers that had a hit with "I got 5 on it" in the mid-nineties? ;-P

Who modded this insightful?

[SmallFurryCreature]

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/windows/

Tada! DB2, IBM's database product, certified for Windows.

If you can read you will also note that they list the versions of 2003 that are certified.

So your entire argument is null and void. Specific windows distro/version's get certified or not to work with software by the companies supporting said software. You will not that windows XP for instance is NOT certified to work with DB2.

Doesn't mean you cannot run DB2 on Windows XP (or other versions) just that if you do, you are on your own. Exactly the same as with linux distro's or even IBM's un-certified AIX versions.

Certification is nothing more the saying, we tested our product with that product and if there are problems we will help you (for an ungodly amount of money) and if you choose to run our product on another product we won't help you, unless you pay an even large sum of money.

Re:The Problem Is There's 500 Linux Distributions

[NDPTAL85]

"We live in different worlds. Right now I see laptops running WinXP and Win2k. Vista might as well not exist. We are members of the Microsoft Developer's Network Academic Alliance, so we can download free-as-in-beer copies of WinXP and Vista. I've only ever seen one copy of Vista running on campus."

Of course we live in different worlds. You live in the academic world and I live in the real one. :)

Eliminating distro. cert. is wishful thinking

[sirwired]

I just hate the whole concept of Linux distribution certification, because it tells me that there's something wrong with running software on it.

For most IT dept.-written apps that rely on super-common well-known library functions, no, the distribution doesn't make much of a difference. But once you start doing lower-level stuff (like the sort of stuff every software application IBM sells does), things start to not work right.

This is a big problem with Linux, and no amount of wishful thinking will make the problem go away. Apps not working on all distributions is exactly the sort of problem that the Linux Standards Base (went nowhere) and United Linux (supported by Caldera/SCO) were supposed to prevent.

Organisations generally just try it out on a newer version of an OS, and if it works OK in a trial period (even if they have to tweak things to get it to work) they go with it, and they don't fly into a massive panic.

Maybe some IT shop that doesn't care about their software actually working can do that, but actual software companies that make their living selling software MUST perform testing.

Yes, there are many organizations that do that, but those are either small and/or low-quality IT shops and/or non-critical apps.

I have several healthcare industry customers that are running OS software that is coming up on three years of ageing out of OS vendor support because their app vendor STILL hasn't certified a more recent O/S version. For them, and most customers, the app vendor support is far more important than OS vendor support, because they know that most day-to-day bugs are in their apps, not their OS. Personally, I know that I crash Mozilla (and other apps) a heck of a lot more than I have ever crashed Windows.

If Oracle can say "Yes, this will run" to their customers, and their customers try it out and it does actually run, then no one will care.

Those customers will care very much when they try and call IBM to receive assistance under their support contract for their expensive and complex application and IBM says "Sorry Mr. Customer, you are running in an extremely unsupported and untested environment." Usually this will be accompanied by some limited best-effort support to make sure that it is not an obvious bug in the product.

Now if enough customers ask for it (and are willing to pay), I am sure that IBM will be more than happy to certify their apps on Oracle Linux. Yes, Oracle is a competitor, but so is M$, and plenty of IBM software runs on Windows. But IBM is not going to go out and certify Oracle Linux just because Oracle is whining about it. I am equally sure that if IBM rolled out their own distro tomorrow, Oracle would not be falling over themselves to certify their apps for it either.

This whole concept of distributors and software vendors protecting themselves (and engineering some lock-in, incidentally) by certifying, or certifying for, certain distributions just isn't helping Linux or open source software get more widely used.

The fact of the matter is that there ARE differences between distributions, and those differences have been known to break a lot of applications. Because of this, there is no way for a software vendor to get around distribution certification. If you certified your mega-dollar application to run on any Linux distro, what do you do the first time some clown calls up with some home-grown hybrid of five different distros and wonders why it doesn't work?

Software companies are in the business of making money, not "helping Linux or open source software get more widely used." If Linux distro writers want to make the burden of application certification easier, then the onus is on the Linux folks to get their act together and make Linux distros more homogenous. Don't blame the software vendors for this sorry state of affairs.

SirWired

Re:This isn't just sabre rattling

[postbigbang]

With all due respect, those that believe Gartner are doomed. Let's take a look, however, at the revenue models. The basic DB doesn't make that much revenue, although it's nice. What makes revenue are all of the integration services and respective apps and app-building chores. That's why Oracle and IBM both went on an acquisition bender-- to bolster those revenues.

When you zoom in on the DB and core-related components, Oracle likely trounces DB2 by a 2- or 3-1 margin depending on whose numbers you believe. Internationally, I'd say that it's more like 3-1. But then, few studies have been done that show how under-used those DB engines are, or if they're a means to an end, like supply-chain infrastructure that uses a DB underneath, but where the big money has been spent in the client-side (fat client) apps. Retail is another good place to look to gauge who's ahead. IBM did wonderfully there for decades, but has seen lots of migration away to other platforms by really big clientele. On the low-medium end, when AS-400's ruled the day, IBM did very nicely with cute little bundled expensive boxes, then Oracle (and others) started eating their lunch during the growth years of the late 90's. It's still a trend, offset by growing FOSS solutions (especially in retail and medical 'retail').

I wish I could believe Garnter's numbers and forecasts. If they were true, then we'd all be using OS/2.

To whom is Oracle selling?!?

[mengel]

Oracle isn't selling to IT people; they're selling to IT peoples' managers.