Oracle's Take On Red Hat Linux

darthcamaro writes "For nearly three years, Oracle has had its own version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, claiming the two versions are essentially the same thing. But are they really? As it turns out, there are a few things on which Oracle and Red Hat do not see eye-to-eye, including file systems and virtualization. The article quotes Wim Coekaerts, Oracle's director of Linux engineering, saying, 'A lot of people think Oracle is doing Enterprise Linux as just basically a rip off of Red Hat but that's not what this is about. ... This is about a support program, and wanting to offer quality Linux OS support to customers that need it. The Linux distribution part is there just to make sure people can get a freely available Linux operating system that is fully supported.'"

Comments

Total Flamebait

[phantomfive]

This is great. When the only thing differentiating Redhat from Oracle is service, Redhat will win because they are the ones actually creating the product. If there is any single company that I'd like to see pushed into the ground by open source, it is Oracle. Whereas Microsoft is kind of a bumbling giant that can't quite get things right but gets by on chair throwing, Oracle is downright evil. They will actively destroy another company if it makes them a cent.

On the other hand, Oracle is much less likely to go under because they produce other things of value that the open source community will have difficulty replacing (because we don't do much business software).

Re:Total Flamebait

[aralin]

This has nothing to do with who makes the product. It is entirely a support issue. Lets say you have a problem with your Oracle solution on Solaris or RedHat Linux. Oracle will look at the problem and determine it is an OS problem and so you go to Sun or RedHat and they say this is after all not an OS problem, but a virtualization problem so you go to third provider, who will find out that finally fixes the problem two day and several millions in lost profit later.

If you can have one provider who will offer support for the entire stack, OS, virtualization, database or middleware engine, you have a huge win on your hands. Premium contracts can have time limits which now don't cover just one layer, but the entire stack. The same company will resolve the problem no matter where it lies and they are responsible by the service contract to resolve the problem. Where the problem actually lies is an internal issue you don't need to care about.

When you add to it that business talks are done with single company, which results in time savings and you usually save by bundling the service contracts into one package as well. this is almost a no brainer that customer actually demand this.

Add to it that RedHat is not binary free product, that you actually have to pay for the binary distribution of enterprise version, and that Oracle will basically save you additional money by compiling RedHat linux from sources for you.

Redhat has a huge edge for servers not using Oracle database or middleware, but for servers actually running Oracle products, it is no brainer to go with a full stack support contract.

Re:Total Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also a very smart business move by Oracle. Pushing free operating systems running on commodity hardware allows Oracle to reduce the price of an Oracle based solution without reducing Oracle's revenue. That's business savvy.

Re:Total Flamebait

[MoreDruid]

Yes you get support from 1 vendor, however I recently had to deal with that vendor. There was already a support case, all kinds of log files uploaded for them to analyse and after 1,5 week they hadn't found the issue yet. What was the problem? at 4:20 every night 1 of the servers in a cluster of 4 went down. The issue was that updatedb was configured to run on OCFS filesystems, and updatedb is triggered by cron.daily. They had about 5 different engineers looking at our case. No solution, until someone from my company decided to dig a little further into the updatedb config. It seems that you shouldn't run updatedb on OCFS filesystems (we have another customer who has been doing that for more than half a year with way more nodes concurrently connected, but hey). Note: this happened after issuing a Oracle CRS (cluster software) update, the config had been running fine for more than a year. And Oracle support just kept on looking to the Oracle part, ignoring the OS stack. From Oracle Applications support I was told to "just update glibc from 3.2 to 4.x because there's a bug that's fixed in 3.6". Right. Break compatibility with all your major tooling and applications so you can run an Oracle App because they've been too lazy to test in an "old" environment (RHEL 4 U4).

In short: I'd rather deal with 2 or 3 independent vendors who know their shit (and know it well), than with 1 vendor who would - even when told differently - kept looking from the wrong POV.

ORACLE

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison...

Re:ORACLE

[robmv]

Or reading it backwards "EL CARO", translated from spanish "The Expensive"

Is anyone actually using Oracle Linux?

[lacourem]

Serious question. My employer has recently stated that they would prefer us to use Oracle Linux for future installations instead of Red Hat. Just looking for some insight from someone else who has taken the plunge.

Re:Is anyone actually using Oracle Linux?

[mrphoton]

I would not take the plunge. Just grep the kernel source, how many times does the word oracle come up compared to redhat? Redhat and the people they employ have been responsible for a tone of linux development - it is their core business. Oracle have comparatively done bugger all. Redhat employ _real_ kernel developers. Do oracle? So when your server crashes in the middle of the night, who do you think will be able to produce a kernel patch to fix the problem, the people who employ kernel developers and have done so for years. Or.... a company that three years ago decided to rip off somebody elses distro... I would not touch oracle with a barge pole. (disclaimer: but all that is only opinion)

Re:Um,

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, so basically it is a rip off of Red Hat just with Red Hat stripped out and Oracle's own filesystem added to the kernel

No no no no no.

The default filesystem shipped with RHEL and OUL is ext3. The clustered file-system shipped with RHEL is GFS, and with OUL it is OCFS2. OCFS2 is not compiled in-kernel within Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and must be mod-probed in as a separate - unsupported by Red Hat - module.

> with a different VM.

Again, wrong. RHEL 5 ships with Xen, and will support Xen until at least 2014. OUL also ships with Xen. Please remember, KVM has not shipped in *any* RHEL release (major or minor) yet. Only Red Hat internally knows the release agenda.

> Thats it. Still maintains binary compatibility, > etc.

Oracle's binary compatibility claims are a myth.

Some reasons for the Oracle case

[DiegoBravo]

I support a software product in a telco, and had talks with its IT managers about the Oracle Linux issue. They have lots of Red Hats but see the Oracle offering interesting (and are implementing it) because:

1) Linux (RedHat or others) are really stable systems (compared with other Unixes they had or have), so the support provider switch is not seen as a dramatic issue
2) They can save some cents without (apparently) giving anything. The RedHat support is little money for that kind of company, but a saving always looks good for the directors
3) They avoid one provider's negotiation as a whole (which is a big win: less paper, less meetings, less vendor talk, less decision process, etc.)
4) They mostly ignore the distributed filesystem issues, and for virtualization just apply the leader (VmWare), so the Xen/KVM/Xen-Oracle discussion is not too relevant
5) BTW, for some diverse reasons, their software providers seem to dislike CentOS (maybe the RedHat's negative marketing made its effect, who knows)

ooh the controversy

[mutantSushi]

I'm not THE most knowledgeable on the minutae of these, but all the bad blood about Red Hat/ Oracle seems silly: The whole point of "Free Software"/Linux is that any company does not "own" code or software (well, they still do, but give up any claim to interfere with others' use of it). Commercial Linux companies obviously need to make their money thru support services. So Oracle thinks they can compete against Red Hat in this area. Obviously, Red Hat as the signifigant maintainer/updater MAY have an advantage. All the end-users get to decide it themselves, and since the code-base is so close, it's relatively easy to switch back and forth. What is the problem when "Free Software" is working exactly how it's supposed to? So what if Oracle eats Red Hat's business for lunch without contributing back? Linux will still be improved by those who want to improve it. All that such a scenario would mean is that (if it occurs) the model of maintenance/support service subsidizing development may not work for all cases. If that's true, then so what?

Re:Um,

[Ant P.]

This is basically like someone trying to justify that Linux Mint is some grand new distribution when it is nothing more then Ubuntu with a few extra tweaks and drivers added.

Which, in itself, is a lot like someone trying to imply that Ubuntu is a distribution when it's nothing more than a snapshot of Debian sid with a few extra tweaks and drivers added.

Oracle understands business

[girlintraining]

Before everyone goes all stupid crazy about Oracle versus Red Hat Steel Cage Match, I'd just like to point out that Oracle has been around since 1977. Redhat: 1995. Redhat brought in $400 million in revenue in 2007. Oracle? $22.43 billion. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Oracle is a freight train, and Redhat is a skinny guy who jogs a couple times a week in the business world.

If I go to senior management and say I'd like to use Redhat Linux, they'll go "What's that?" If I say I want to run Oracle Linux, they'll ask "How much will that save us?" There is no question of Oracle's reliability, or market performance. None. Oracle doesn't need to prove itself. So if you're a fan of getting Linux into the business, you should be saying "hip-hip hoooray" to this; You've got a free pass now at the executive board meetings to install Linux now somewhere. Or... or you can bitch about how it's the wrong flavor of linux and tear into Oracle for ruining the good name of Linux, how Orthodox Linux users are into shaming other users, and Oracle is more like New Evangelical Linux -- half the guilt, twice the usability, etc., etc.

Your call.

They don't know what they are selling

[bol]

The greatest challenge that Red Hat (and Oracle) now face is to determine what they're actually selling and make a clear case for the added value that they provide.

I've run a few large Linux shops, recently including one requiring over 300 RHEL licenses and I can tell you that without a doubt that both Red Hat and Oracle sales people have zero idea what they are selling, what the differences may be and what added value they provide.

Red Hat copyrighted materials are the Red Hat trademark, logo, etc and the key difference between all of the RHEL derivates is simply the absence of that name and logo. Each distribution can pick and chose what patches and changes they want to merge in but everything is open source. It's how CentOS, Oracle, etc can make a competing "product." It's a bundle of freely available code and not much more. Where products differentiate is their delivery mechanisms and support of said code.

Things get complicated when you start asking Oracle and Red Hat what you're actually buying and what that support entails you to. I can tell you from first hand experience that I have never had a single issue get resolved via Red Hat's support organization - including clear bugs with tickets that still exist (primarily memory management code with kswapd.) Maybe they're only setup to help people get printers working with cups? And the same goes with Oracle Support.

By Oracle's move of choosing what code to merge and adopt they are misleading customers by openly calling it and comparing it to RHEL - which is exactly how it's sold and pitched to customers.

Oracle even offers a utility to run on your RHEL installation to re-brand it to Oracle Enterprise Linux. It replaces a bunch of packages and removes the Red Hat name, points it at the Oracle yum sources and calls it a day.

If Oracle wants to create a world class Linux they need to provide the tools, support and honesty to make it a successful competitor rather than relying on their name (which does not hold much clout, despite what their marketing guru's may think.) Combine that with resolution of real problems and not just entry-level technical support and you'll have a winner.

Come to think of it, that applies to Red hat as well.

Re:cant we already get free and support with cento

[baileydau]

i've never bothered to look at oracle linux, because i can get 'free' redhat through centos, and when i want paid support, i can get it directly through redhat.

without some other differentiation, what is oracle providing that isnt there from the others?

so yes, it is just a rip off of red hat.

You would ONLY use Oracle Linux to run your Oracle products on. You wouldn't use it for your file and print, or web server. They wouldn't want you to anyway.

It's largely a marketing thing. If you run your Oracle products on Oracle Linux, Oracle will support the entire software stack. That can be important to a lot of enterprise customers, no turf wars about who's fault it isn't.

As a bonus, the Oracle Linux support contract is (and should be) significantly cheaper than Red Hat (or Novell - the other supported Linux vendor). This is because they really only support those functions that are required to run the Oracle products. They aren't interested in supporting your file and print server etc. Whereas Red Hat and Novell have to support everything.

Can you imagine what Oracle would say if you had an issue that was borderline Oracle / OS and you were running CentOS? Even though CentOS is a re-badged Red Hat, it isn't Red Hat, and it isn't on Oracle's supported OS list.

The sensible thing to do would be to run Oracle Linux for your Oracle products and Red Hat (or CentOS if you didn't want support) for everything else. As they are all virtually the same, it's a lot easier for your administrators.