CentOS - Nov 2007 - reasons for using CentOS in business environments

My apologies if this question has been previously answered, but could
anyone here provide me with resources that I might use to help build a
case for exclusively using CentOS in an enterprise environment?
(Approximately 200 servers)

Long story short, I've used a little of everything out there
(Gentoo/Debian/*BSD/Slackware) and have a fairly good overall strategy
of how they all work (all of them have lived on my laptop at one time
or another over the last 10 years or so), but I'm now looking for
solid business reasons that I can present to the CxO types of a
company to show them that CentOS is probably where they'd like to
look.

Reasons thus far I've come up with include:

--free *and* "fully" (at least, in my experience) compatible with RHEL
--fairly stable (I don't have problems unless I start mixing repos)
--yum packages (almost as cool as Debian! Ok, I'm biased...or maybe I
don't know how to properly use yum?)

Any other suggestions / tips I might add to my list would be greatly
appreciated!

Rogelio wrote:
> My apologies if this question has been previously answered, but could
> anyone here provide me with resources that I might use to help build a
> case for exclusively using CentOS in an enterprise environment?
> (Approximately 200 servers)
> 
> Long story short, I've used a little of everything out there
> (Gentoo/Debian/*BSD/Slackware) and have a fairly good overall strategy
> of how they all work (all of them have lived on my laptop at one time
> or another over the last 10 years or so), but I'm now looking for
> solid business reasons that I can present to the CxO types of a
> company to show them that CentOS is probably where they'd like to
> look.
> 
> Reasons thus far I've come up with include:
> 
> --free *and* "fully" (at least, in my experience) compatible with
RHEL
> --fairly stable (I don't have problems unless I start mixing repos)
> --yum packages (almost as cool as Debian! Ok, I'm biased...or maybe I
> don't know how to properly use yum?)
(nah. yum needs some more catching up. in any case, a working software 
management system.)

If this is a Linux shop, the answer would be what everybody is most 
comfortable with. That fact that you can now make your own 
repository/repositories has made the score more even against Debian, deb 
and apt. Any distro without tools for managing packages on multiple 
servers from a local repository should be dropped. You can therefore 
paint Centos in this light as one that meets such needs.

Rogelio wrote:
> My apologies if this question has been previously answered, but could
> anyone here provide me with resources that I might use to help build a
> case for exclusively using CentOS in an enterprise environment?
> (Approximately 200 servers)
>
> Long story short, I've used a little of everything out there
> (Gentoo/Debian/*BSD/Slackware) and have a fairly good overall strategy
> of how they all work (all of them have lived on my laptop at one time
> or another over the last 10 years or so), but I'm now looking for
> solid business reasons that I can present to the CxO types of a
> company to show them that CentOS is probably where they'd like to
> look.
>
> Reasons thus far I've come up with include:
>
> --free *and* "fully" (at least, in my experience) compatible with
RHEL
> --fairly stable (I don't have problems unless I start mixing repos)
> --yum packages (almost as cool as Debian! Ok, I'm biased...or maybe I
> don't know how to properly use yum?)
>
> Any other suggestions / tips I might add to my list would be greatly
> appreciated!
>
>   
Free is not a "good reason" (I think); the main problem is RHEL is too
expensive; so there is the
Centos project.
If you can buy some RHEL : do it, because you will help a good company
and indirectly Centos (because, after all,
who do the tests? who create patchs?? mainly RH :)

my 0.02?

Wednesday 28 November 2007 06:31:02 Rogelio napisa?(a):
> My apologies if this question has been previously answered, but could
> anyone here provide me with resources that I might use to help build a
> case for exclusively using CentOS in an enterprise environment?
> (Approximately 200 servers)
This question was probably anwered several times, but the truth is, that every 
case is different. Ok, maybe not so different.
> --free *and* "fully" (at least, in my experience) compatible with
RHEL
Free it's not something you should mention to management (well, certainly
not
the main tjhing, it does not build trust. Things are not better just because 
they are free)
RHEL compatibility sounds good, but then you'd have to answer another 
question: why RHEL ;)
> --fairly stable (I don't have problems unless I start mixing repos)
Truth.
> --yum packages (almost as cool as Debian! Ok, I'm biased...or maybe I
> don't know how to properly use yum?)
That's very technical, avoid it unless you know what you're doing ;)
Besides,
rpms and yum sux ;)
> Any other suggestions / tips I might add to my list would be greatly
> appreciated!
- Well tested software (pacjages),
- Huge user-base (implicates above)
- Good hardware support, especially when we are talking about enterprise stuff 
(SAN, tape libraries, etc.)
- Supported by main hardware vendors (although indirectly)
- Long support
- Very good documentation
- Certification paths available (indirectly). 

My 2 cents

Regards,
-- 
Tomasz Napierala
System Administrator
QXL Poland - Allegro.pl Team
http://www.allegro.pl/

On Nov 28, 2007 12:31 AM, Rogelio <scubacuda at gmail.com>
wrote:
> My apologies if this question has been previously answered, but could
> anyone here provide me with resources that I might use to help build a
> case for exclusively using CentOS in an enterprise environment?
> (Approximately 200 servers)
>
> Long story short, I've used a little of everything out there
> (Gentoo/Debian/*BSD/Slackware) and have a fairly good overall strategy
> of how they all work (all of them have lived on my laptop at one time
> or another over the last 10 years or so), but I'm now looking for
> solid business reasons that I can present to the CxO types of a
> company to show them that CentOS is probably where they'd like to
> look.
>
> Reasons thus far I've come up with include:
>
> --free *and* "fully" (at least, in my experience) compatible with
RHEL
> --fairly stable (I don't have problems unless I start mixing repos)
> --yum packages (almost as cool as Debian! Ok, I'm biased...or maybe I
> don't know how to properly use yum?)
>
> Any other suggestions / tips I might add to my list would be greatly
> appreciated!

You won't get sued by the BSA, Microsoft, Adobe or any of the other
software giants.

-- 
-matt

Rogelio wrote:
> My apologies if this question has been previously answered, but could
> anyone here provide me with resources that I might use to help build a
> case for exclusively using CentOS in an enterprise environment?
> (Approximately 200 servers)
[...]
> Reasons thus far I've come up with include:
> 
> --free *and* "fully" (at least, in my experience) compatible with
RHEL
> --fairly stable (I don't have problems unless I start mixing repos)
> --yum packages (almost as cool as Debian! Ok, I'm biased...or maybe I
> don't know how to properly use yum?)
I've done an introductory presentation of CentOS at Fosdem last year
(and at some other places), in which I covered some of the reasoning why
you should use CentOS/RHEL.

<http://wiki.centos.org/Events/Fosdem2007?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=fosdem2007.tar.gz>

Maybe that helps a bit.

Cheers,

Ralph
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