Ubuntu and the state of enterprise Linux
March 27, 2008
Ubuntu has evolved over the last years, and has become quite popular on the desktop. Ubuntu is also working on its position in the enterprise. I, however, am a bit apprehensive to adopt Ubuntu for the server, and have a tough time recommending my clients to use Ubuntu vs. Red Hat (CentOS) or SuSE. I currently prefer CentOS for the free distribution, and RHEL where required (like SAP implementations).
To start, I run a managed server company. We provide remote / onsite Linux support and implementations for small to enterprise customers. We have recently been approached by Ubuntu to join their partnership program. Being affiliated with Ubuntu is a good thing in my opinion, as it allows us to have a more diversified portfolio of services to offer. But for us to recommend a shop use Ubuntu vs. Red Hat seems like a risk today, and in some cases is not even an option (SAP implementations).
We must think of our customer first, and what is in the best interest of the business when architecting and implementing the technology infrastructure. So, is Ubuntu a safe bet for our customers? And, is it the right distribution? Why?
I know these questions must be scenario dependent, but Red Hat is a one size fits all for everyone of our customers as of today (Note, we are not providing desktop support to any of our customers as of now). Some of our customers are Novell shops, so they like to leverage the existing relationship, and deploy SuSE rather than Red Hat.
I am not trying to start a flame war here, but rather am looking for insightful reasons to start recommending Ubuntu vs. others or rather should we be implementing Ubuntu over other distributions for our customers because it actually is a better distribution.
What about support? Can anyone provide me with some reference to compare the support structure and abilities of the various distributions? A comparison (or customer satisfaction survey) between Red Hat/Ubuntu/Novell would be beneficial. I have had great luck with Red Hat support, and a few mishaps with Novell (lack of communication), but overall when I have an issue both are on top of things, and Novell has even sent developers on site for debugging (kernel bug). Can we expect the same from Ubuntu?
I do see Ubuntu as an innovator, and having another company knocking on the doors of Red Hat and Novell will only benefit the Linux community.
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4 Responses to “Ubuntu and the state of enterprise Linux”
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You only have to look at the support life-cycle of each distribution to see how it’s suited for an enterprise environment. I have servers that are coming up to 3 years old and still going strong, and probably will for another two years at least - Dell will actively support any server up to 5 years old.
Depending on your need, the last thing you want to do is to have to upgrade the whole distribution between major revisions just to make sure they’re getting the latest support and up-to-date security patches, and I don’t think 3 years is that long to support (we’re running CentOS 4 on most of our’s which will be supported until 2010).
That’s one of the reasons why I disagree with Fedora as a server platform, as unless you upgrade between each release in turn you’ll be out in the cold after 18 months. Ubuntu doesn’t seam to be that much different - only around 18 months at a time.
RHEL is 5 years and that for me pretty much sells the ethos of the distribution and it’s suitability to enterprise applications.
I agree, Fedora is not suited for a server. The one thing that has me considering Ubuntu as an option, is the Long Term Support (LTS) that they have with the server edition.
From http://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS:
“With the Long Term Support (LTS) version you get three years support on the desktop, and five years on the server. There is no extra fee for the LTS version, we make our very best work available to everyone on the same free terms. Upgrades to new versions of Ubuntu are and always will be free of charge.”
And with paid support as an option, http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid it seems that we can start to classify Ubuntu server with Red Hat Entprise and SuSE Enterprise.
Although, I haven’t yet been sold on this, but just looking for other’s opinions.
Thanks, category locality, has added in elite.
i don’t know what is linux and fedro and susi and ubuntu could u say difference…