Support differencesThe argument could be made that these organizations don’t necessarily have to upgrade to the current release as soon as it comes out. However, for companies that depend on Linux to run their operations, operating system support is a critical component in their infrastructure. Red Hat Network (RHN) errata support for Red Hat Linux 9—the last of the non-Fedora Core based distributions—will be ending April 30, 2004. Red Hat provides maintenance for non-enterprise platforms for only 12 months. The RHEL platforms, on the other hand, come standard with one year of support, and customers can continue to obtain support for five years. Product updates are provided a few times a year for the RHEL series.
Sure, if a company decided to standardize on Red Hat Linux 9, support could be obtained from other sources, but the cost to maintain the servers would jump accordingly. In the long run, TCO costs can be stabilized through the use of a platform that can be reasonably supported for a longer period of time.
Enterprise support options
RHEL products can be supported through one of three support programs which Red Hat names Basic, Standard, and Premium. Basic support is the lowest level of support, and while it doesn’t actually provide actual support for problems, it does provide access to the Red Hat Network. Standard support offers live supports from 9AM to 9PM Monday through Friday with four hours response, while Premium support extends these hours to 24 x 7 with a guaranteed one-hour response. See Table B.
Table B
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Improvements
RHEL 3 sports a number of improvements over older versions. First, RHEL is available immediately on seven architectures (AS) meaning it will work on just about anything you want to throw it on. Second, while RHEL 2.1 could handle up to 8 processors and 24 GB of RAM, RHEL supports up to 32 processors and a dizzying 64 GB of memory, meaning it is suitable for even the most intensive purposes. Furthermore, RHEL 3 supports serial ATA devices (SATA), which were not supported in RHEL 2.1.
RHEL 3 also boasts other enhancements which bestow better scalability, performance, and manageability upon the product line. For example, native POSIX threading provides improved performance for multithreaded applications such as Oracle and Java. RHEL 3 also sports a new storage manager which precludes the need to purchase an expensive LVM product.
The RHEL 3 product line provides a company with the ability to deploy a desktop-to-data center solution based on a common platform.
Pricing
If you’re a hobbyist or Slackware veteran, it might appall you that Red Hat is charging for Linux, especially when the latest Debian distribution can be downloaded for free and easily installed. However, consider the enterprise environment where consistency and supportability are key factors in a software solution. A few years ago, some companies wouldn’t consider Linux because there was no one to which a finger could be pointed if there was a problem. Red Hat has handily erased this mantra with the release of RHEL.
Pricing depends upon the support option you select and the platform you desire. See Table C. Of course, contact Red Hat for more accurate pricing information. Bear in mind that these prices are an annual subscription fee.
Table C
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Summary
As I indicated earlier, RHEL 3 is not for everyone. If you’re a hobbyist or a very small company that doesn’t want to have to pay an annual software subscription fee, RHEL isn’t for you. Take a look at Fedora instead. If, however, you want to deploy Linux applications on a robust, stable, well-supported platform at a reasonable price, RHEL 3 just might fit the bill.
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