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
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