Hello all. Does anybody have experience with pushing CentOS in enterprise? I have the following situation. I tried to promote CentOS to local bank. They have now a couple of Gentoo-based systems and I tried to explain them that CentOS is much better option for enterprises. IT department is interested in stability of the system, so they are ready to give CentOS a try. But the problem came from management and information security division. That guys look much affected by FUD created by M$. They tell the story like "you can not rely on this open source, it is built by just few community geeks, you never know what will happen if the developer will be hit by bus tomorrow" and so on. They especially refer to the last year FUD story published at ZDNet (http://goo.gl/y0LBi). So, IT guys are allowed to use open source only if they can prove that it has stable community and transparent development and build process they can reproduce on their own if necessary. I guess, I'm not the first who encounter this issue. Could you share your experience how to deal with it? Are there any public resources that can be used as proofs of CentOS stability? -- Zdenek
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Zdenek said the following on 12/12/10 17:45:> Are there any public resources that can be used as proofs of CentOS stability?Are there about Windows stability? Ciao, luigi - -- / +--[Luigi Rosa]-- \ To iterate is human, to recourse, divine. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk0E/UgACgkQ3kWu7Tfl6ZRAdACgp0cnVU1Ol8+MREo54MlLvwAr Gy4An3acMKXL98gl6zsabRjRLT/U0xny =zcQA -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Zdenek <zdenek.w at o2.pl> wrote:> Does anybody have experience with pushing CentOS in enterprise? > > I have the following situation. I tried to promote CentOS to local bank. They have now a couple of Gentoo-based systems and I tried to explain them that CentOS is much better option for enterprises. > > IT department is interested in stability of the system, so they are ready to give CentOS a try. But the problem came from management and information security division.Do they know about the Gentoo systems?> That guys look much affected by FUD created by M$. They tell the story like "you can not rely on this open source, it is built by just few community geeks, you never know what will happen if the developer will be hit by bus tomorrow" and so on. They especially refer to the last year FUD story published at ZDNet (http://goo.gl/y0LBi). So, IT guys are allowed to use open source only if they can prove that it has stable community and transparent development and build process they can reproduce on their own if necessary. > > I guess, I'm not the first who encounter this issue. Could you share your experience how to deal with it? Are there any public resources that can be used as proofs of CentOS stability?Start with Red Hat as the source of the stability and long term support. And in fact, RH may be more acceptable in this scenario if they are willing to pay to have support from a big company. Functionally it shouldn't make any difference since it is the same code either way. I don't think there is any 'proof' that Centos will continue to be stable in the future, but you can look at their excellent history of getting updates out immediately after the RH release. You shouldn't have any problem mixing RH/Centos systems if you have some systems where the paid support is critical and some that you can support yourself. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
At Sun, 12 Dec 2010 17:45:23 +0100 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:> > Hello all. > > Does anybody have experience with pushing CentOS in enterprise? > > I have the following situation. I tried to promote CentOS to local bank. They have now a couple of Gentoo-based systems and I tried to explain them that CentOS is much better option for enterprises. > > IT department is interested in stability of the system, so they are ready to give CentOS a try. But the problem came from management and information security division. > > That guys look much affected by FUD created by M$. They tell the story like "you can not rely on this open source, it is built by just few community geeks, you never know what will happen if the developer will be hit by bus tomorrow" and so on. They especially refer to the last year FUD story published at ZDNet (http://goo.gl/y0LBi). So, IT guys are allowed to use open source only if they can prove that it has stable community and transparent development and build process they can reproduce on their own if necessary. > > I guess, I'm not the first who encounter this issue. Could you share your experience how to deal with it? Are there any public resources that can be used as proofs of CentOS stability? >Have you pointed the bank people at Red Hat itself. Red Hat is NOT a 'few community geeks' -- they are a thriving business. Also, you probably can mention that IBM support Linux. IBM is most certainly NOT a 'few community geeks'...> > -- > > Zdenek > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > >-- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 / heller at deepsoft.com Deepwoods Software -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ () ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments
2010/12/12 Zdenek <zdenek.w at o2.pl>:> Hello all. > > Does anybody have experience with pushing CentOS in enterprise?Yes and no. Maybe you should select RHEL for enterprises? -- Eero
> I have the following situation. I tried to promote CentOS to local bank. They have now a couple of Gentoo-based systems and I tried to explain them that CentOS is much better option for enterprises.We deployed a CentOS based virtualized appliance for a (non-critical) application developed by us in a bank which had similar policies. Actually they even had an explicit official policy against any open-source software. We finally convinced them with the following arguments: - we could support RHEL if they would prefer to have a big company behind the OS and they could always decide to switch to it - we said that we were ready to deploy it on Solaris, but they should pay us more for that and take responsibility for any issue> I guess, I'm not the first who encounter this issue. Could you share your experience how to deal with it? Are there any public resources that can be used as proofs of CentOS stability?Out of common sense, and as others have suggested, I would tell them: - if you are willing to pay and want to be safe, take RHEL (Red Hat is about to reach $1 billion revenues http://bit.ly/eb4igX) - if not, what makes you think that Gentoo is more viable? CentOS definitely addresses a need in the market, and even if the project should collapse (God forbids...), so many people needs it that an equivalent would probably pops up quickly, based on the amazing work which as already been done and is available. The following chart shows for example that CentOS is very popular for web servers: http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_details/os-linux
On Dec 12, 2010, at 11:45 AM, Zdenek <zdenek.w at o2.pl> wrote:> Hello all. > > Does anybody have experience with pushing CentOS in enterprise?I do, but I have it easy because I am the IT management.> I have the following situation. I tried to promote CentOS to local bank. They have now a couple of Gentoo-based systems and I tried to explain them that CentOS is much better option for enterprises. > > IT department is interested in stability of the system, so they are ready to give CentOS a try. But the problem came from management and information security division.They are OK with the roll-your-own style of Gentoo? Especially with it's cutting edge versions, bugs, security holes and the only way to overcome them is to upgrade to an even newer version that may break compatibility, introduce new bugs, zero-day vulnerabilities, the list goes on and on. Gentoo is a great distro for learning Linux, in a computer lab, or for a home hobbyist, but not quite enterprise stable.> That guys look much affected by FUD created by M$. They tell the story like "you can not rely on this open source, it is built by just few community geeks, you never know what will happen if the developer will be hit by bus tomorrow" and so on. They especially refer to the last year FUD story published at ZDNet (http://goo.gl/y0LBi). So, IT guys are allowed to use open source only if they can prove that it has stable community and transparent development and build process they can reproduce on their own if necessary.CentOS is a recompile of RHEL with the intellectual property stripped, so you can drop-in replace it with RHEL.> I guess, I'm not the first who encounter this issue. Could you share your experience how to deal with it? Are there any public resources that can be used as proofs of CentOS stability?You can mix up RHEL and CentOS in the same environment. Use RHEL on key mission critical systems and CentOS on one-off systems to reduce license costs, but maintain 100% compatibility between the two. It really is the perfect combination for my environment and I run the IT operations for a financial group which includes a commercial bank. -Ross
On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Zdenek <zdenek.w at o2.pl> wrote:> Hello all. > > Does anybody have experience with pushing CentOS in enterprise? > > I have the following situation. I tried to promote CentOS to local bank. They have now a couple of Gentoo-based systems and I tried to explain them that CentOS is much better option for enterprises. > > IT department is interested in stability of the system, so they are ready to give CentOS a try. But the problem came from management and information security division. > > That guys look much affected by FUD created by M$. They tell the story like "you can not rely on this open source, it is built by just few community geeks, you never know what will happen if the developer will be hit by bus tomorrow" and so on. They especially refer to the last year FUD story published at ZDNet (http://goo.gl/y0LBi). So, IT guys are allowed to use open source only if they can prove that it has stable community and transparent development and build process they can reproduce on their own if necessary. > > I guess, I'm not the first who encounter this issue. Could you share your experience how to deal with it? Are there any public resources that can be used as proofs of CentOS stability? > > -- > ZdenekThis sounds a lot more like a religious war from the people who think that using Gentoo is the "right" way to do things because it's pure from source, etc... The fact that they already have Gentoo means they are not opposed to Open Source per se, just that they seem to look at Redhat as the "MS of the Linux world", and have some kind of prejudice against that. The only way to combat this view is to highlight all the problems of maintaining things from source code, and to show the benefits of a standard platform. Be prepared for a high amount of dismissiveness, attitude, and flat out accusations that "maintaining from source isn't that hard and if you can't do it you're obviously not qualified for the job". This is a sure sign of an amateur sysadmin or someone who thinks a sysadmin is just a person too dumb to be a programmer. As for the standard platform thing, just look at what all major vendors support for Linux, and you can bet that Redhat is #1 on the list. As for concerns about the community going away, it's quite easy to point out that all commercial software also has this risk, and that risk could actually be higher since they have to maintain profits. And since when can you build any commercial software from source if the company goes out of business?
On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Zdenek <zdenek.w at o2.pl> wrote:> Hello all. > > Does anybody have experience with pushing CentOS in enterprise? >What does 'enterprise' mean to you? -Kristopher Kane -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20101213/f2e78be5/attachment-0002.html>
On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 12:55:12PM -0500, Kristopher Kane wrote:> On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Zdenek <zdenek.w at o2.pl> wrote: > > > Hello all. > > > > Does anybody have experience with pushing CentOS in enterprise? > > > > What does 'enterprise' mean to you?Space. The final frontier...
On Monday, December 13, 2010 01:03:03 pm m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:> >> What does 'enterprise' mean to you? > > > > Space. The final frontier... > > Hey, that's the question, when you're trying to get new, bigger disks!What we need is a working warp drive. These magnetic impulse drives are still too sublight.... That or a ThinkGeeks enterprise pizza cutter.