CentOS - May 2013 - Trying to justify CentOS vs. RHEL

Hi all,

I'm in the process of moving all of my RHEL systems over to CentOS but the
argument that fires back at me is for critical vulnerabilities for items
such as zero-day exploits and such.
>From what I've been reading, RHEL releases critical patches much quicker
than CentOS which makes sense since CentOS is simply a copy and when
changes occur they propagate down to the RHEL clones.  My question is what
kind of time frame are we looking at when a vulnerability (critical or
high) is announced and a patch has been released for RHEL does it get
implemented into CentOS?

Thanks!
Chris

On Tuesday 07 May 2013, "Bidwell, Christopher" <cbidwell at
usgs.gov>
wrote:
> My question is what kind of time frame are we looking at when a 
> vulnerability (critical or high) is announced and a patch has been 
> released for RHEL does it get implemented into CentOS?
From the FAQ, http://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/General:
> 2. How long after Red Hat publishes a fix does it take for CentOS to
> publish a fix?
>
> Our goal is to have individual RPM packages available on the mirrors
> within 72 hours of their release, and normally they are available
> within 24 hours. Occasionally packages are delayed for various
> reasons. On rare occasions packages may be built and pushed to the
> mirrors but not available via yum. (This is because yum-arch has not
> been run on the master mirror. This may happen when issues with
> upstream packages are discovered shortly after their release, and if
> releasing the package would break it's functionality.)
-- 
Yves Bellefeuille <yan at storm.ca>
Mekaro en Otavo, Kanado, 18-20 majo 2013: http://mekaro.ca/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bidwell, Christopher
> Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2013 17:12
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm in the process of moving all of my RHEL systems over to 
Why all? Lets keep that question in the back of our minds.
> CentOS but the argument that fires back at me is for critical 
> vulnerabilities for items such as zero-day exploits and such.
> >From what I've been reading, RHEL releases critical patches much 
> >quicker
If zero day patches are important to maintain your accredidation on your systems
then you need to have a support plan. That plan can either be a commercial
services provider, vendor support contract (RHEL), or an in house team to
support the system.

Using a service provider other than RedHat is kind of silly since purchasing
from RedHat support CentOS.

Staying with RHEL is a non-change.

Having an in house support team will be much more expensive as you will have to
have staff for each of the packages on the system.
> than CentOS which makes sense since CentOS is simply a copy 
> and when changes occur they propagate down to the RHEL 
> clones.  My question is what kind of time frame are we 
> looking at when a vulnerability (critical or
> high) is announced and a patch has been released for RHEL 
> does it get implemented into CentOS?
It has always been fast enough for us, but if it were not, we would help by
providing patches to the SRPM to CentoOS development team.

For offical specifics, contact me off list.

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