[Bioclusters] Re: how are the Redhat product changes affecting existing and future plans?

[J.W. Bizzaro]

(Added Biodevelopers to the thread.)

There's a discussion about this on Slashdot, including mention of the 
Fedora project:

   http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/03/1749259

Cheers.
Jeff

Chris Dagdigian wrote:
> 
> Another item that has been on my mind recently...
> 
> What are people doing about RedHat deciding to kill off their consumer 
> product line? Are people going to pay the freight for Redhat Enterprise 
> Linux or are people just going to use Suse/Debian/Gentoo etc.
> 
> My needs are pretty simple but I'm having a hard time placing myself 
> into Redhat's current product plans.
> 
> I need:
> 
> 1. A stable OS with a product lifetime of at least 1 year (ideally 2+)
> 2. Product errata, updates and security patches for full lifespan
> 3. No OS or product phone/email support or SLA
> 
> The RHL transition to Fedora Linux is fine but it sounds as if the OS is 
> going to change very fast (major updates 2-3 times per year). On the 
> plus side it is still free and the leaders seem committed to fast errata 
> and security updates. Still I can't see using this on a production 
> cluster due to the pace of change and the chance that I'd be left 
> without updates if I froze on a particular Fedora release.
> 
> I can justify (maybe) the cost for the $125 product (Redhat WS) that 
> they are pitching towards compute clusters. The update services and 
> 5-year product lifespan is worth paying for. The big question for me is 
> what do I have to pay _after_ the initial $125 purchase. I can't seem to 
> find any info on the Redhat website telling me how much I'll have to pay 
>  for updates after my intial 1-year RedHat Network service runs out.
> 
> This also leaves the question of what RHEL flavor to run on cluster head 
> nodes, fileservers and database machines. $349 for RH ES could be 
> justified for a critical node but damn what if I want to run that stuff 
> on Opteron or Itanium or a node with 4CPUs? The cost for RH AS (starting 
> at $1400) is not justifiable to me. Putting a 'cheap' RHEL flavor on a 
> head node and manually compiling/updating/supporting additional network 
> services built by hand from source or .srpms may be more of an 
> operational headache than the cost savings justify.
> 
> I'm torn right now between diving back into Gentoo/Debian or possibly 
> jumping on the Suse bandwagon given their existing support for Opteron 
> etc. Novell just bought Suse today so who knows what that is going to do.
> 
> I'd be interested in knowing how current RHL users are planning the 
> transition and how future cluster buyers are changing their plans. 
> Personally I think I'm going to need to stay on top of RHEL for project 
> that demand it while also maintaining some sort of deep familiarity with 
> one or more alternatives.
> 
> -Chris
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
J.W. Bizzaro                                jeff@bioinformatics.org
President, Bioinformatics.Org       http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff
"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we
should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention
of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
                    -- Benjamin Franklin
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