On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 10:39, Derek Neighbors wrote: > I am in process of buying a server right now. Being a huge Debian fan. > Let me try to explain..... Currently what that $1,000 buys me that is > TANGIBLE (not ideological)... ---- Weren't Mr. Gaily and Susan debating the tangibles vs. intangibles in 'The Miracle on 34th St?' - anyway, just to throw a bit of dust on the 'tangibles'... ---- > 1. Operating System Installed on Hardware direct from vendor. I can get > Dell or HP servers with Red Hat/SuSE delivered to my door. I can not do > that with Debian. So if I have to pay someone $40/hr to setup the machine > once it gets here that might take 3 hours so maybe $120. ---- as of 6 months ago (my last purchase of RHEL-AS & Dell PowerEdge Servers), they charged for pre-install, above and beyond the cost of the software/hardware. I opted to install myself. They threw in the RHEL-AS-2.1 packages in the box. They also included their 'Dell Open Management' software which evidently simply writes a kickstart file to install RHEL-AS-2.1 (they likely have updated it by now). I had no desire to use AS-2.1 as 3.0 had just started shipping. I downloaded the iso's from RH and installed (RHEL is free upgrades anyway). Their kick start would never have worked for 3.0 and it is simple enough to install myself anyway. ---- > 2. Third Party Software Vendor Support. For example I need to have a back > up solution. We have Commvault (iirc) and it has a Linux client. > However, they don't have a Debian client. If I wanted desktops I might > need win4lin or Ximian Exchange Connector both of which were NOT available > for Debian (though now the Exchange Connector changed license it will be > packaged). I can't put a tangible dollar amount on this. However in the > case of backup. If i can't use the existing system. I have to buy a tape > drive and tapes instead of using existing structure. This might come to > $400 or $500 for my instance. ---- this is an interesting topic since on this same network, we were using CA ArcServe so we purchased Linux package and Linux and Windows agents. ArcServe 9 for Linux supports RHEL-2.1 but not RHEL-3.0 and so I had to either purchase support from CA or slug through it myself (which is what I did). It's entirely possible Commvault will not support latest versions of 'Enterprise' versions of either SuSE or RH. --- > 3. Direct Vendor support. With SuSE and Red Hat there are companies that > I can buy support from directly. Also, because HP/Dell ship systems I can > get hardware support when running these operating systems. Debian has > great COMMUNITY support (likely better than most commercial support), but > it doesn't have a company that stands behind it. Hardware vendors wont > support their hardware when Debian is running on it. This one I can not > tie any dollar value to, but it makes "selling" the concept of Debian MUCH > more difficult. ---- I have resorted to community support because unless you purchase 'priority' support, things are not real time. Hard to beat support from the software developers i.e. openldap-software@openldap.org - certainly 48 hour turnaround on question to RH vs. virtually real time on openldap mail list. ---- > So if I take the things that are real costs Im at about $630 that > SuSE/RedHat save me. Then there are the support intangibles. ---- I would love to know what the support intangibles are. ---- > At this point I haven't decided which course I am going to take. I > believe that SuSE on HP comes out to about $300 instead of $1,000. So I > am considering it. :( I hate to admit that, but I have to have certain > needs met. ---- I could help with RH - haven't fooled with SuSE in a long time. Craig --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss