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!

[TheOtherChimeraTwin (697085)]

Debian [debian.org] works well and the price is right! Wonderful install procedure too.

Re:Debian!

[jonman_d (465049)]

I think the whole point is support. With redhat, you're really paying for support - that's the whole point of paying.

With Debian, you don't get any support (IRC and google don't count when you've got to have a problem solved for your business in seconds. In these situations, "dial a tech-support number" == "support").

Re:Debian!

[John Hasler (414242)]

You can buy support for Debian.

Re:Debian!

[antarctican (301636)]

You can buy support for Debian, yes. But when the packages will be updated... that's another question.

Now don't get me wrong, I like Debian, I use it on my personal servers. However I recall then whe last sendmail exploit came out it took a few days for the patch to be released. I tried to inquire when it would be coming out and was rudely told, "We don't comment on such things."

apt-get is a wonderful tool. But until patches are brought out in a more timely fashion I can't in good concience recommend it to any of my clients.

The other issue I've found, but I'll admit haven't put a lot of time into finding the solution for, is having a local mirror. When I build a server, if that server were to die, I want to be able to create the exact same version again of all packages. I have run into the situation with Debian of a package being upgraded and breaking things. Though as I said, this is something which is probably solved by now since I haven't looked into this issue in about 2 years.

Once these issues are resolved, go Debian go! I know we're facing the Redhat issue at the end of the year... upgrade all out RH7.3 machines to 9 by the end of the year... or risk not having security patches. I feel bad for the admin of the local 96 node beowulf. I'm glad I put RH9 on my new cluster....

There, my rant for the day. :)

Re:Debian!

[subreality (157447)]

Hello, enterprise Debian user here. :-)

We manage consistant, reproducable server installs by NOT using the Debian installer. We install it once, and then make tarballs of the install, which we untar to install the server. We have it all scripted, so we can boot a machine off of a CD, run a script, answer 5 questions and have a server ready to go in about 10 minutes, and have the applications working (also script-installed) in another 10 minutes. We maintain our own OS release numbers (versions of our base tarball), and our own .deb packages of our applications.

For mirroring: We use debmirror. (It's a Debian package, of course.)

When upgrades fail: Go into aptitude, find the package that the upgrade broke, scroll down to the bottom, and highlight the old version, hit + to install it. It'll gracefully downgrade for your convenience. It's a hell of a lot easier than downgrading on, say, Solaris.

--Keepiru
--slashsuckATvegaDOTfurDOTcom

Re:Debian!

[LinuxHam (52232)]

Hey, have you ever tried System Installation Suite [sf.net]? IBM really pushes it for clusters and large installations.

Re:Debian!

[barawn (25691)]

Yah, it took about 15 minutes of poking around apt-get's man page to find how to upgrade only the security packages by default (you CAN do this - apt-get update; apt-get upgrade;apt-get update with the options to select a different APT config for the first two, and create one that only has the security servers) - but it wasn't that hard, and now we've got automated security updating. Works for me!

I can not STAND people that say "Oh, well, it won't run on anything but Red Hat". Give me a break. The operating system is called Linux, not Red Hat (OK, maybe GNU/Linux). Linux defines the API and the application interfaces (ditto GNUification), and quite simply, everything that runs on Red Hat will run on Debian.

Period. Wackos who tell you "oh, maybe it's a problem with Debian" simply don't understand the way computers work. That's why I can't stand that Oracle won't support anything except Red Hat. That's silly. More than silly. They wrote a program, that works under Linux, not under Red Hat. If it's kernel version dependent, state the kernel versions it was tested under - or better yet, give the source tree! (wow!) If it's library dependent, give the library versions. If it's library dependent, static link the damned thing. There is nothing that runs under Red Hat that can't run under Debian.

You know what someone really needs to do? Write a bunch of scripts that let one distribution 'play' as another one, so you can just reboot and launch as a Red Hat clone, Debian clone, etc. (if you don't need a new kernel version, you don't need to reboot). It can't be that hard. That way when someone asks you what type of Linux you're using, you can say "What type would you like it to be, so I can then prove to you that you're being an arrogant prick and it really IS your problem?"

"distro-mode redhat". That'd be cool.

Re:Debian!

[mkldev (219128)]

I guarantee I can make any RedHat application run unmodifed in any other Linux distro with a handful of caveats:

1. Both the host distro and the binary must be of the same architecture and must both be of the same binary format (e.g. two ELF-x86 distributions).
2. The binary may not use any system calls outside those required for the single UNIX spec. (This rules out things like ipchains/ipfilter/ipfw/ipfoo and various other kernel-version-dependent tools). This rule could probably be relaxed a lot before anything would break, but YMMV.
3. The kernel must be patched to fix any known bugs in SUS-compliant syscalls.

With the note that there may be other important directories needed in step 4, the basic procedure should go something like this:

Step 1: Install the distro.
Step 2: Install RedHat onto another machine and configure ssh and networking between the two machines.
Step 3: On the non-RedHat machine: mkdir /rhbox ; cd /rhbox
Step 4: ssh [e-mail] "tar -czf - /usr /lib /bin /sbin /etc /var" | tar -xzf -
Step 5: alias appname chroot /rhbox appname

Different operating system, my ass.

Re:Debian!

[jelle (14827)]

Well, the $350k/year he is talkin about can hire quite some 24/7 on-site support. For Debian too. Just put some good people on the payroll.

Re:Debian!

[AntiOrganic (650691)]

$350k/year won't really get you very far at all for a well-staffed IT department. You're going to end up paying out the nose for any systems administrator who specifically addresses critical problems, as opposed to the more mundane IT staff who may deploy patches, ensure systems are running properly and not experiencing memory leaks, random errors, etc. Assume that you're paying $70,000 for a Linux sysadmin who's experienced enough to handle all the problems that none of the other guys can manage on their own (which is the entire point of the pay support in the first place). You can hire five of these people. Splitting them into 24/7 support (3 shifts, plus weekends), you essentially have one person at any given time managing 500 servers ($350,000 divided by $700, the cost of a Red Hat Enterprise ES license).

Outsourcing is really a much better option than hiring these people.

Re:Debian!

[Yort (555166)]

With redhat, you're really paying for support - that's the whole point of paying.

Actually, no. That *used* to be the case, but if that was the only thing, it wouldn't be that expensive.

What you're paying for is certification. Wanna run Oracle? Well, if you want to get Oracle's "unbreakable" support, you have to run it on a certified OS. Getting that certification costs $$$, and lots of 'em.

It's the same with a number of other production applications - if you want support from the vendor, you have to run an OS that they support. If you've got your own home-grown kernel and you start having problems, how are they to know that some crap you put in there isn't hosing things up? And it's certainly not feasible for them to support ever kernel-(user) release out there - so they pick the biggest fish (RedHat).

For your servers that don't run production systems, just use the regular Red Hat and buy support (if not from Red Hat, then somewhere else - the beauty of open source). Or run Debian/SuSe/Mandrake/whatever. Doesn't really matter, so long as your *production* machines are certified.

Re:Debian!

[queenb**ch (446380)]

For your Oracle instances, I HIGHLY recommend their Advanced Server. I've seen it in action and it is impressive. I would consider it to be worth the cost.

For everything else, CHANGE distributions. SUSE, Debian, Mandrake, ASP, Rawhide, pick one. Or ditch linux all together and use FreeBSD. If you guys are used to Solaris, FreeBSD will be a very simple transition. The other BSD's are good too, but Free is closer to Solaris, IMHO. I've found that my experience with Solaris has translated to it quite nicely. In addition, the documentation is fabulous.

HTH,

Queen B
Jimi

Re:Debian!

[bolthole (122186)]

If you guys are used to Solaris[sparc?], FreeBSD will be a very simple transition.

Orr.. Geee.. run Solaris (x86)

Re:Debian!

[grolschie (610666)]

Ok, who rated parent is "funny"? Debian is the only real option IMO for using Linux in the enterprise. This is because of it's testing, stablity and the sheer number of platforms it runs on. Plus, you never have to worry about "purchasing" newer versions. Red Hat is often released very quickly when the software which is is made up of, is often not thoroughly tested. Yes it's the bleeding edge, exactly, it can indeed leave you bleeding.

Re:Debian!

[subreality (157447)]

That got moderated funny?

I work in a mid-size enterprise, and we're using Debian with great success, for most of our unix needs.

The right distribution is highly dependant on what your specific needs are, though. Here are some things to consider:

1) Debian doesn't provide direct commercial support. Tech support is available from third parties, but by the time you get a support contract that will equal the quality of support you get from Red Hat, it'll probably cost as much as Red Hat (or Solaris, or Windows, or anything for that matter). Saving money is a priority for us, so we simply self-support. We maintain our own baseline install, and take care of certifying our own apps against Debian as needed. It's worked very well for us, but if you need CYA, Debian may not be a good choice.

2) Debian's release cycle is too fast. Yes, I know you hear it from people on /. all the time that Debian is so out of date and how terrible it is that they only get one release out the door per year, if that. However, in the enterprise, upgrading everything once per year is painful. In an enterprise, you can't just change your apt sources and upgrade in place. We get a window - say, one hour - to perform an upgrade. That means that I have to have a machine built and ready to go, other than syncing the data across during my window, and get it back up, and have a way to fail back (still in that window!) if something goes wrong. This means I have to rebuild every Debian box in the company once a year. (Because we standardize our base install, and have scripted all of our application installs, building new machines is extremely fast for us, to the tune of 20 minutes or so, but it's still a lot of work to re-QA our applications once a year.) For this reason, we only use Debian where version upgrades go pretty easily - BIND, Apache, Postfix, FTP servers, etc, where the Debian-supplied versions consistantly work right out of the box. We use Red Hat Enterprise for complicated commercial software (Oracle), where the long support cycle means we only have to go through the fun of upgrades once every several years.

3) Oracle doesn't support Debian. Sure, it installs, sure, it runs fine, but that doesn't mean it's officially supported. This means that when you call their tech support, they will laugh at you the moment they think it's an OS problem. And, despite being head over heels in love with Debian, I think Oracle made the right choice - Enterprise customers who are going to install an application that needs to be in use for several years need to evaluate several other factors than just how easy an OS is to install and even how good the quality of the software is on the OS. I firmly believe that Debian builds a better mouse trap, but for Oracle, I want an OS that has official commercial support and a long life cycle - Red hat Enterprise.

Despite all this, don't think I'm trying to say that Debian is a bad choice. As I said at the beginning, we use it extensively for many functions throughout our enterprise, with tremendous success. Regardless, you need to evaluate your needs against ANY distribution, to see if it's a good match.

--Keepiru
--slashsuckATvegaDOTfurDOTcom

I'm Running Windows XP

[raehl (609729)]

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.)

Re:I'm Running Windows XP

[Foofoobar (318279)]

Yeah Microsoft sure is great for playing games isn't it. Yep, it sure is great for playing games.

Re:I'm Running Windows XP

[Mostly a lurker (634878)]

I've never had to learn how to edit a configuration file

I agree. Having all the configuration information, for all applications, bundled up with lots of other stuff in that registry makes editing so much simpler snd safer.

Enterprise != Free

[by Anonymous Coward]

Usually, enterprises aren't interested in free or next to it. They want stable and supported for a stable price.

Re:Enterprise != Free (but you can negotiate)

[DaveAtFraud (460127)]

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?

Re:Enterprise != Free

[molarmass192 (608071)]

Ummm, IBM supports [ibm.com] Linux on its top of the line zSeries [ibm.com] mainframes which pretty much define enterprise class.

Suse ?

[charnov (183495)]

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.

Re:Suse ?

[by Anonymous Coward]

We have been using RH 7.3 for some time now in our cluster configuration.
Now we wanted to upgrade for various reasons and we really dont want to have to do the upgrade manually each time so we looked at RH. Damn its expencive. It's way to expencive when you have to pay a license pr. server, so we switched to SuSE Enterprise server (Oracle Certisfied)
Now we do automatic upgrade/patch of all servers using only one License. Also everything seems to be running much more stable. We have a FC connection to an external diskarray RH crashed several times using this array, also the webserver made some strange hicups from time to time (Also with RH9), but after changing to SuSE we're moved away from these problems.
Also.. when talking about support. RH is difficult since they only reply to web support, slow and it's very very hard to describe the problems for them. SuSE on the other hand replies to mails, are fast and very helpful and service minded.

Re:Suse ?

[FatherOfONe (515801)]

I first want to say that I think Redhat is insane with their new pricing. I understand that they want to make money, but they need to make some serious changes to their current model.

Next, what you said about email support only isn't true for the Enterprise version. You get to call them, and their support is good.

I am in the exact same boat as the guy who posted this, and considered SuSE and RedHat. Here is how it broke down for me. I also need to run Oracle...

RedHat
$350 / server without phone support or upgrade protection, but you get up2date for a year, and some basic (email) install support. In my opinion it makes no sense to buy this version, given that 3.x of their product will be out this year, and that version will offer things like LVM install built in (and a lot of other things), and you would be forced to buy that version for $350.

$800 / server with "Normal business hours support" and upgrade protection for one year. This version is limited to 2 processors and 4 GIG of memory.
RedHat had more expensive options but these two covered my company needs.

SuSE
$700 / server per processor. Support included. Also Opteron support.

With both products the cost seems to be for support and you will need to pay them EVERY year some amount of money. I would put that amount down, but my belief is that it will change given market demand. Also it must be noted that neither one allows you to load a copy of it on a "test" or "development" box! You must plunk down the $350-$800 again!

What I wish RedHat would do is allow you to download the Enterprise edition and install it on as many machines as you want for a nominal price. Say like $300 / processor. (NOTE don't limit processors/RAM ect) but pay for Up2date and then offer a support packs. Specifically they need to offer like 10 calls to them for $5,000. Novell and Microsoft currently offer agreements like this and it works well. They could then offer a pack of 50 for a discount and so on...

When I approched RedHat about this they seem to believe that their competition is Sun and even with this pricing they are still cheaper than Sun, so it makes sense to them. I don't agree with this! They may take away 10% of Suns business, but they WERE taking away more than 1% of Microsofts business, and the fact is that 1% of Microsoft's share is a heck of a lot more than 10% of Suns.

Now one last point in favor of RedHat. Oracle DB Standard Edition charges $15k/cpu + support + maintanence. That comes to around $22k/processor then you have to pay support + maintanence EVERY year. That comes to around $5k EVERY year to Oracle. If your company can handle that, then throwing RedHat a bone every year shouldn't be too bad. It just seems extra bad because it use to be near free.

Also, DB2, Websphere and other IBM apps have the same requirements as Oracle in regards to Linux distros, so it appears that the "big business" has kinda dictated what RedHat and SuSE will do.

What do you need it to do?

[TechnoPope (516563)]

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?

What are your goals?

[dewpac (31645)]

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).

Recommendation

[ajs318 (655362)]

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.

Redhat too expensive?

[CoolVibe (11466)]

Switch to BSD! I hear FreeBSD is nice. Also in the enterprise. And a license that does not make $neckties nervous.

What is the software worth to you?

[Above (100351)]

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.

I suggest...

[sterno (16320)]

If you are sick of RedHat's extortive licensing fees that you instead switch to Windows XP... :)

I still like RedHat... so here's what I do.

[thule (9041)]

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.

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 /etc/sysconfig, /etc/profile.d, etc... very modular.

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!

Re:I still like RedHat... so here's what I do.

[GigsVT (208848)]

I agree, I think Red Hat is really leaving small/medium businesses out in the cold with their new policies.

One example, I set up a server/firewall for a small business as a contract job on the side. It runs all their stuff, web, email, etc. They really don't have a need for more than one server.

Last year when I set it up, I told them it would be good for at least three years. I don't like it that Red Hat made a liar out of me.

At my real job, we have more than a dozen Red Hat servers, and I'm stuck in the same dilemma. We can't afford to destabilize servers by putting essentially beta software on them, that the 12 month EOL requires. I used to let RH releases age about 3 or 4 months to get the major bugs out before I even considered using them in production.

So now I'm faced with either spending tons more time patching the servers by hand (even though we pay for RHN), or spending tons more money, buying RHEL which would cost at least 10 times more than the ~$1000 a year we spend on RHN now.

I really hope something gives on this situation. Red Hat better think twice before they alienate small to medium businesses. I don't need support. I do need updates. I do need more than 12 months before EOL.

What do you want?

[ceswiedler (165311)]

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.

Independent Linux providers may be of service

[morpheus98 (680698)]

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 [pantek.com]

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.

We left RedHat...

[Oestergaard (3005)]

...for Debian.

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:

• It's a pain to install (no software RAID support, default kernel is 2.2, yadda yadda)
  
• All packages are *old* - it's hopeless for a desktop
  
• Fewer commercial packages available (suckage when you need them)
  

Yet, we chose Debian because it rocks (and RH sucks) in these areas:

• Updates. Usually there are no updates to the stable distribution except for security fixes. This is *very* good when you actually have to maintain your systems.
  
• Updates. "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade", and voila you have a list of security updates available - and you're about to install them. No subscriptions, no fees, no wondering where to get them from. It just works.
  
• Simpler package dependencies - it is actually possible to configure a web server without installing GNOME (ok, this particular setup is *probably* still possible in RedHat) - in general you will find that for dedicated servers, you end up with a 100-200 Meg system where the RH system it is replacing was well over a gig.
  
• Clear roadmap. Who knows where RedHat is going? Debian is going nowhere, or at least they are moving very slowly - this is actually a very *good* thing in this respect.
  

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.

Debian is an obvious choice

[Eloquence (144160)]

Debian stable or testing are reasonably up-to-date, regularly updated by volunteers all around the world, and entirely free. Not only is updating to new versions a lot easier than with most other solutions, Debian packages also come with nice configuration scripts which make your work a lot easier. For servers, I really see no good reason to use a large, commercial distribution like Red Hat. For clients, Debian is a bit too outdated (unless you install lots of backports or use unstable, the latter not being an option for companies).

Support, you say? Debian has a nice directory of qualified Debian consultants [debian.org], and in general, it makes sense to have a few Linux experts inhouse to deal with emergencies.

How much support do you need?

[macemoneta (154740)]

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.

Call sales

[briaman (564586)]

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.

Red Hat Sales is the worst I've ever dealt with!!!

[tstoneman (589372)]

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.

Do you really need support?

[bigjnsa500 (575392)]

I get more *support* from Google than any distributor can provide. In other section of my University, they call support for the stupidiest things like compiling problems, tape problems, its ridculous!! Why get support when it will be Apu on the other line?

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.

Is Redhat is missing their target market??

[ewwhite (533880)]

I work for a software company whose product is bundled with Redhat Linux and HP Proliant servers. The recent Redhat changes are bad news for our product. For the past few years, we've sold the HP/Compaq servers with appropriate versions of Redhat (7.x, 8) and our proprietary software on top. Redhat 7.3 and 8.0 have proven to be the best match for our software/hardware solution. The hardcore Compaq/HP server hardware support (for ML370's and ML570's) is there. The OS is stable. We use up2date to keep on top of security patches (openssh, etc.). It was nice because we could give the customer a real Redhat box with media and manuals (not that they used it... but it's nice to have the packaging).

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?

I don't understand the problem.

[tshak (173364)]

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.

Dragged kicking & screaming

[mentaiko (692343)]

There are circumstances in which you can be perfectly happy with the free version of Red Hat, but you you are forced for other reasons to purchase a commercial support contract. It happened to me. Imagine a shop where with more than enough in-house expertise to support the free version of Red Hat and deal with its frequent release cycle, and had the full buy-in of management on this arrangement.

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.

Maybe this is the place

[HangingChad (677530)]

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.

Re:Cost explanation

[treat (84622)]

Buy one support licence and use it on all your machines, its GPL you don't need hundreds of copies of RH Advanced Server.

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.

My recommendation...

[WIAKywbfatw (307557)]

Never take recommendations from anyone who spells the word with two c's and just one m.

Laugh stupid, it's a joke.

Cha-ching!

[Chagatai (524580)]

At my company we had been using IBM's advanced AIX support for our 60+ RS/6000 and pSeries server environment. The cost? Roughly $10K per month. We were typically calling them once or twice a month and there would be two or three instances during the year when we would ask questions to which they had no answer. Needless to say, we are no longer using them. I mean, would you spend $120K/year for someone to sit on your staff doing nothing aside from answering two questions a month, even if he couldn't answer the questions? Be real.

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.

Re:Do you really need RH Enterprise Server

[pavera (320634)]

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.

Re:You dont have to buy it

[Micah (278)]

> 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.

Is there anything to stop you copying RHEL?

[Plug (14127)]

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 [redhat.com] 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: [linuxmafia.com] 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.