“From a strictly technical standpoint, Red Hat ES isn’t particularly noteworthy: It’s a collection of software compiled and packaged up, given a few management tools of varying quality, and pushed out the door. We did not notice any functionality unique to this Linux distribution, and there are certainly others out there that could fill the role of “departmental server” with equal facility for a lower price.” Read the review at ITManagement.
Will Red Hat Take Linux to Enterprise Heights?
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Nothing noteworthy? Except perhaps the fact that RedHat ported a good chunk of the major things from 2.6 to their 2.4 kernel, and they have tons of enhacments to their kernel to greatly increase performance for databases like Oracle and IBM’s DB/2.
Additionally, they’re the only vendor to be 100% LSB 1.3 Certified on every Linux platform. (S/390, zSeries, x86, x86-64, Sparc, etc.)
Hell we use ES for our Oracle databases and it’s really rock stable. We use other “normal” linuxes too but they can’t get on the same level as ES (i know itś not free). Why does reviewer thinks because there are all basic software packages in it, itś not noteworthy? For example the kernel is really made for stability.
imho, this reviewer is clueless and does no shit about good software …
The reason to shell out for Red Hat’s enteprise products is simply that they have excellent QA, long release cycles, vendor support and good support. This reviewer seemed to understand that to some degree at least. Most reviewers seem to write reviews of these products in the context of the hobbyist home user which is similar to critizing a forklift for not offering the same features as a Porche Boxter.
You beat me to it.
from a technical standpoint there is A LOT of things in there other distro’s don’t have backported. I didn’t mind that sentance till the end of the article where he rates it as the only bad thing.
That being said, Red Hats GUI tools are left wanting. Using text files is much better cause you can make comments and notes but thats not for everyone.
As for if its ready for the enterprise. Since Google has 5,000 RH boxes powering thier major load needs, I dont see why mycompany.com would be disappointed with it as an enterprise product.
It is utterly incredulous to review RHEL in this context.
Sure there are free distros out there that can manage the same job, but major corporations are not looking to employ legions of admin staff to keep the machines up to date.
RHEL gives corporations huge backing in QA, stable releases, support etc.
I am rolling out several dozen RHEL servers at a client at the moment. The client investigated several different versions of Linux. RHEL came out as the winner by a country mile. Not even a shadow of a doubt in it.
Shame that the majority of reviewers write tabloid articles. Are they just trying to stir up some controversy and make a name for themselves? And what point does it make linking to the article? Does it make your own site more creditworthy? Or does it take you down to tabloid levels as well?
I was just curious, I could probably look this up on the red hat web site,
but I wanted a technical viewpoint instead of marketing speak and there’s
no better place than osnews for that
. You said
that google had 5000 RH boxen supporting their site. What type of
clustering is built into this Enterprise version if any? Does RH create
their own clustering kernel code or do they rely on openmosix type
3rd party vendors, or do they have more of an mpi model like beowulf?
I’m curious about linux clustering, because, working with openVMS,
clustering is about the best way to keep downtime to a minimum,
and believe me, downtime is not an option for a lot of these companies.
I found it quite amusing that this review banged on and on about the GUI config tools when I’m sure most “enterprise servers” would be in a machine room [and probably rack-mounted] and either headless or with a console in text mode. That alone makes me suspicious of this review – why on earth would you run an X Windows desktop on a live production server? It’s just a waste of resources. Yes, you might use ssh X forwarding to display some utilities back to a remote X desktop (with possible speed penalties that entails), but the server itself would almost certainly not be running X (every Red Hat Linux server, test or live, I’ve set up has always run in text mode only).
“I found it quite amusing that this review banged on and on about the GUI config tools when I’m sure most “enterprise servers” would be in a machine room [and probably rack-mounted] and either headless or with a console in text mode.”
You apparently have never worked in an IT department.
Not all servers in the enterprise (as in “enterprise servers”) are mission critical (i.e for payments, web, etc).
“Sure there are free distros out there that can manage the same job, but major corporations are not looking to employ legions of admin staff to keep the machines up to date.”
I think it’s the other way around. Only larger corporations are going to have their own in-house IT support staff.
SuSE 9 also has many features from the 2.6 backported in 2.4, has better graphical tools, and is cheaper.
If a company is comparing Enterprise Editions, there going to go with Suse Enterprise 8, not workstation 9. Well see what Novell will do with the support side of it.
Steve: Google rolled their own “cluster” solution.. Not computational-intensive what they’re doing, just throughput of database queries… So OpenMosix and similar would not be sensible for them. Here’s a good technical description of their system: http://www.computer.org/micro/mi2003/m2022.pdf
The Managment module is mentioned, but if one is interested in RedHat ES, go ahead and check out the more advanced Provisioning Module. It is pretty nice:
http://www.redhat.com/software/rhn/provisioning/
redhat’s provisioning module takes computer management to the next level. Probably as good is not better than Ximian’s red carpet stuff. And it is only available from Redhat IIRC. At least they seem to be the only ones with it.
now that the 2.6 kernel is out it makes about as much sense to have a hacked up 2.4 kernel based distro as it does to have a 2.2 kernel based distro.
But the reviewer, to find nothing noteworthy, must have never use a Sun system. RedHat takes about 1/4 the time for any sys admin to setup when compared with almost any other *nix, except OSX. And that will affect your bottom line / TCO.
*penguin clap for the reviewer*
@stunji:
SuSE 9 also has many features from the 2.6 backported in 2.4, has better graphical tools, and is cheaper.
Um, *no* it is not. If you buy a comparably featured enterprise version of SUSE compared to RedHat’s enterprise version, RedHat is still chepaer by $50 at least. In fact, right now RedHat is offering further discounts until the end of February that make them almost $100 some USD cheaper.
Believe me, I work for a small business and we would have seriously considered SUSE if they were really cheaper. But they’re not.
“now that the 2.6 kernel is out it makes about as much sense to have a hacked up 2.4 kernel based distro as it does to have a 2.2 kernel based distro.”
not necessarily. one thing much lacking in 2.6 is a good hyperthreading-aware scheduler. redhat purportedly has this already in the 2.4 kernel it ships with RHEL-ES. makes it considerable compared to forcing an old distribution to run on 2.6.
question though, i’m not sure abt the license, but can i theoretically get the SRPM of the redhat kernel, compile it and deploy it in another “redhat-like” distro, like fedora, or old RH9 for example? i think technically i can, but is it legal?
@vince:
question though, i’m not sure abt the license, but can i theoretically get the SRPM of the redhat kernel, compile it and deploy it in another “redhat-like” distro, like fedora, or old RH9 for example? i think technically i can, but is it legal?
You sure can:
http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/3/en/os/i386/SRPM…
“they’re the only vendor to be 100% LSB 1.3 Certified on every Linux platform.”
Not quite. ArchLSB specifications, test suites, and certification programs are only available for a small subset of the hardware platforms that Linux runs on (http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/oldspecs.shtml). [Despite the “oldspecs” in the URL, 1.3 *is* in fact the current specification.]
“(S/390, zSeries, x86, x86-64, Sparc, etc.)”
I guess you’re drawing from this RedHat press release (http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/2003/press_lsb.html) :
—
Supported architectures include x86-compatible, Itanium, IBM iSeries, IBM S/390, and IBM zSeries platforms. In addition, Red Hat is the first operating system provider to be LSB certified on the IBM’s zSeries, iSeries, and pSeries and S390 platforms.
—
That’s certainly a goodly number of architectures, but for the record, neither Sparc nor x86-64 are among them.
As an aside, I’m not sure why they use the word “include”, since I’m fairly sure they’d’ve explicitly mentioned every single architecture they possibly could, for maximum possible bragging value. 😀
Let me rephrase, they’re the only vendor to be 100% certified on every Linux platform that *CAN* be certified. Ahem. Nitpicker 8)
I am sick and tired of people who shouldn’t be looking at enterprise distro’slooking at RH-ES and saying that it is too expensive compared to the RHL prices. When will people get a clue?
When you pay redhat money for RH-ES you are paying for a level of stability, and responsability of patching, that is currently unmatched in the linux world.
RH ave been releasing patches for security holes the fastest. They have the most involvement with kernel development (this could change now with ximian-novell-suse). Thier distro is rock solid.
How good is thier support though?
@anonymous
How good is thier support though?
I don’t know, our business has never had to call support, RHEL has pretty much always just worked…so I suppose that’s the best answer 8)
Well.. I’ve used redhat 8-9, fedora, and the various versions before… The only thing I don’t like are these several points.
1. It’s the only distro I know that has a tendancy to “fall apart” after a while.. What I mean is modules may not load etc… It just becomes unstable.. Dunno why but it does..
2. Too much bloat and excess services loaded by default.. By the time I get through editing all the configs in the /etc directory I’ve wasted a whole workday and the thing still takes 5 mins or more to load!
3. RPM, it’s a two-edged sword.. It’s great because of dependency checking.. But if you’re a noob and you don’t know cli because your spoiled on gnome or kde then if a package searches for an older dep, and you have a newer version then unless you know the –nodeps and –force option then you could be pulling your hair out uneccessarily..
Good things about RedHat…
The gui, rpm, andaconda, and kickstart. Plus some of the graphical admin tools are great for those just starting out…
Me, personaly, I like slack! ;-P Haven’t looked back since.. BTW special thanks for OSnews on the school lab article.. Using slack right now to run an 8 user thin client network on slack for a real estate office.. Couldn’t have done it without you guys!
AnImAl
I don’t know about packages refusing later versions of dependencies. Its a packager issue. Usually you specify a dependencies to be a certain version or newer.
Excessive services, well, you can turn them of very easily. There is a config app to do that. Hint…The runlevel editor. Its called services in the menu.
I have not had it falling apart. If it starts acting funny, its usually because I have doen something like compile my own kernel. other than that, no problems.
1. It’s the only distro I know that has a tendancy to “fall apart” after a while.. What I mean is modules may not load etc… It just becomes unstable.. Dunno why but it does..
Say What?
2. Too much bloat and excess services loaded by default.. By the time I get through editing all the configs in the /etc directory I’ve wasted a whole workday and the thing still takes 5 mins or more to load!
What are you doing in /etc/? Try this next time:
/sbin/chkconfig portmap off && service portmap stop
rinse and repeat apparently I just saved you a whole workday =)
3. RPM, it’s a two-edged sword.. It’s great because of dependency checking.. But if you’re a noob and you don’t know cli because your spoiled on gnome or kde then if a package searches for an older dep, and you have a newer version then unless you know the –nodeps and –force option then you could be pulling your hair out uneccessarily..
Oh, now I see why you had #1. ‘noobs’ should not be running RHEL on production servers anyway. everyone should know what rpm -Uvh, rpm -e do, newbies shouldn’t use the –nodeps and –force switches, thats how people break thier systems and blame RPM when its because they’re introducing 3rd party apps that are built stupidly, yum/apt-get do this nearly perfectly because the people building the packages know how to name them.
This article is about enterprise, not ex windows users. People paying that kinda money are serious about linux.
Common you are talking about redhats cheap/free services, you have never tried thier ES product did you?
Fall apart? Not with this one. (Never happened to me in any of my rh distros though)
RPM dependencies? Maybe as a home user you might notice problems with dependencies. Whethere they are justified or not is irrelevant. if you are an enterprise ten you dont deal with these things. You install what you get with the distro, and then you update with up2date. No sane administrator will start installing misc rpms all over the place and then try to support them etc…
Slackware is very nice but you cant even compare the level of support, and stability of that with ES. If you want, try one of the ES compiled distros (dont remember the name) and see for yourself.
Also, does Oracle products run on slackware? Mayabe, maybe not. It is certified to run on RH-ES
Yeah… I knew I’d be flammed! ;-P But everyone has to start from somewhere.. But actually If oracle only supports RH then it’s not a “true” linux product… Therefore that would kinda nullify the lsb cert wouldn’t it? If you notice in my previous post I listed both good and bad points.. Which was a big IMHO.. What I’ve learned in general is that whatever works is whatever works… Since slack works on a minimum of a 386/16 with 32 megs of ram for a workstation, to me that matters… RedHat is nice if you have the iron to back it up and the money for tech support… For a lot of small buissiness owners, other distros and communities do exist.. Hey, I cut my teeth on RH.. But I really wanted to LEARN linux from the ground up and slack provides that experience for ME! Now if you like graphical candy and bloat.. Cool! More power to ya! Now let me repeat myself… Redhat ain’t bad.. Just not for me, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! ;-P
@AniMal
But actually If oracle only supports RH then it’s not a “true” linux product…
Oracle is certified for RedHat and SUSE from what I remember, and they only certify those two because only RedHat and SUSE have the kernel changes and LSB certifications necessary to keep Oracle from getting a headache.
I’m now using RedHat WS, it ROCKS far better than RedHat 9. I ran Moho and render a huge scene with x2 faster than previous version. It’s DAMM good and very stable for demanding user. Standing on my view, an pro OS is the one with efficient, stable, secure softwares or packages, the bad OS is the one that does not know which softwares is good to put in so they put everything in and create a chunk OS. I RECOMMEND art users use new RedHat WS. Fedora CORE is very good too but it’s too unstable and a bit buggy.
RedHat’s licensing terms at an academic level are just stunningly good. $2500 is chump change for giving everyone a free copy of RHAW for personal use, and $25-$50 per computer annually is beyond excellent – it’s cheaper than RH9 was. I think there was a whole ten minutes of debate on whether we should take plan A or plan B (as per on their website). No discussion at all about whether it was good idea or not, because it was damned obvious that it was.
Novell, OTOH, couldn’t even give us academic pricing when they visited, because they hadn’t made any. I don’t care if you think SuSE’s the greatest thing since sliced bread – Novell did not inspire confidence in us during discussion, and were, frankly, evasive in their answers. They left that meeting with empty hands, and they’re going to have to work hard to regain our confidence.
In other words, there’s a lot more to picking a Linux distro than price and whatever you like best. Vendor support and confidence in that vendor are HUGE factors. Red Hat had believable, honest answers that made us feel comfortable, and terms that were fantastic. Likewise, it felt like Novell didn’t have a long-term plan, and they didn’t even have pricing terms to offer. Can you understand why, perhaps, the faculty here is so enthusiastic about Red Hat?
-Erwos
I’m sure Red Hat was the right choice, but to be fair, Novell just got into the game. If you asked them about NetWare, then they could have answered any question you asked. Once they assimilate SuSE and Ximian, I’m sure they’ll have more to speak about next time.