Oracle's Take On Red Hat Linux 165
darthcamaro writes "For nearly three years, Oracle has had its own version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, claiming the two versions are essentially the same thing. But are they really? As it turns out, there are a few things on which Oracle and Red Hat do not see eye-to-eye, including file systems and virtualization. The article quotes Wim Coekaerts, Oracle's director of Linux engineering, saying, 'A lot of people think Oracle is doing Enterprise Linux as just basically a rip off of Red Hat but that's not what this is about. ... This is about a support program, and wanting to offer quality Linux OS support to customers that need it. The Linux distribution part is there just to make sure people can get a freely available Linux operating system that is fully supported.'"
Total Flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, Oracle is much less likely to go under because they produce other things of value that the open source community will have difficulty replacing (because we don't do much business software).
cant we already get free and support with centos? (Score:4, Insightful)
i've never bothered to look at oracle linux, because i can get 'free' redhat through centos, and when i want paid support, i can get it directly through redhat.
without some other differentiation, what is oracle providing that isnt there from the others?
so yes, it is just a rip off of red hat.
Um, (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Um, (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Total Flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with who makes the product. It is entirely a support issue. Lets say you have a problem with your Oracle solution on Solaris or RedHat Linux. Oracle will look at the problem and determine it is an OS problem and so you go to Sun or RedHat and they say this is after all not an OS problem, but a virtualization problem so you go to third provider, who will find out that finally fixes the problem two day and several millions in lost profit later.
If you can have one provider who will offer support for the entire stack, OS, virtualization, database or middleware engine, you have a huge win on your hands. Premium contracts can have time limits which now don't cover just one layer, but the entire stack. The same company will resolve the problem no matter where it lies and they are responsible by the service contract to resolve the problem. Where the problem actually lies is an internal issue you don't need to care about.
When you add to it that business talks are done with single company, which results in time savings and you usually save by bundling the service contracts into one package as well. this is almost a no brainer that customer actually demand this.
Add to it that RedHat is not binary free product, that you actually have to pay for the binary distribution of enterprise version, and that Oracle will basically save you additional money by compiling RedHat linux from sources for you.
Redhat has a huge edge for servers not using Oracle database or middleware, but for servers actually running Oracle products, it is no brainer to go with a full stack support contract.
Re:Is anyone actually using Oracle Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oracle understands business (Score:4, Insightful)
Before everyone goes all stupid crazy about Oracle versus Red Hat Steel Cage Match, I'd just like to point out that Oracle has been around since 1977. Redhat: 1995. Redhat brought in $400 million in revenue in 2007. Oracle? $22.43 billion. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Oracle is a freight train, and Redhat is a skinny guy who jogs a couple times a week in the business world.
If I go to senior management and say I'd like to use Redhat Linux, they'll go "What's that?" If I say I want to run Oracle Linux, they'll ask "How much will that save us?" There is no question of Oracle's reliability, or market performance. None. Oracle doesn't need to prove itself. So if you're a fan of getting Linux into the business, you should be saying "hip-hip hoooray" to this; You've got a free pass now at the executive board meetings to install Linux now somewhere. Or... or you can bitch about how it's the wrong flavor of linux and tear into Oracle for ruining the good name of Linux, how Orthodox Linux users are into shaming other users, and Oracle is more like New Evangelical Linux -- half the guilt, twice the usability, etc., etc.
Your call.
One stop shopping (Score:3, Insightful)
If you run an Oracle shop with DB support, Oracle's Linux support is a deal that's hard to beat. It's comparatively cheap and coverage is 24/7 across all time zones until a problem is fixed no matter if it's database or OS related. Try that with other Linux support vendors. If it ends up being a DB issue, they'll point you to Oracle and tell you to have a nice day. Then you can start the trouble ticket process all over again and hope Oracle doesn't say it's an OS issue. Anyone up for finger pointing when your mission critical system is down?
Re:Total Flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also a very smart business move by Oracle. Pushing free operating systems running on commodity hardware allows Oracle to reduce the price of an Oracle based solution without reducing Oracle's revenue. That's business savvy.
They don't know what they are selling (Score:5, Insightful)
The greatest challenge that Red Hat (and Oracle) now face is to determine what they're actually selling and make a clear case for the added value that they provide.
I've run a few large Linux shops, recently including one requiring over 300 RHEL licenses and I can tell you that without a doubt that both Red Hat and Oracle sales people have zero idea what they are selling, what the differences may be and what added value they provide.
Red Hat copyrighted materials are the Red Hat trademark, logo, etc and the key difference between all of the RHEL derivates is simply the absence of that name and logo. Each distribution can pick and chose what patches and changes they want to merge in but everything is open source. It's how CentOS, Oracle, etc can make a competing "product." It's a bundle of freely available code and not much more. Where products differentiate is their delivery mechanisms and support of said code.
Things get complicated when you start asking Oracle and Red Hat what you're actually buying and what that support entails you to. I can tell you from first hand experience that I have never had a single issue get resolved via Red Hat's support organization - including clear bugs with tickets that still exist (primarily memory management code with kswapd.) Maybe they're only setup to help people get printers working with cups? And the same goes with Oracle Support.
By Oracle's move of choosing what code to merge and adopt they are misleading customers by openly calling it and comparing it to RHEL - which is exactly how it's sold and pitched to customers.
Oracle even offers a utility to run on your RHEL installation to re-brand it to Oracle Enterprise Linux. It replaces a bunch of packages and removes the Red Hat name, points it at the Oracle yum sources and calls it a day.
If Oracle wants to create a world class Linux they need to provide the tools, support and honesty to make it a successful competitor rather than relying on their name (which does not hold much clout, despite what their marketing guru's may think.) Combine that with resolution of real problems and not just entry-level technical support and you'll have a winner.
Come to think of it, that applies to Red hat as well.
Re:Total Flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)
Oracle's kernel developers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Redhat employ _real_ kernel developers. Do oracle?
I would just throw something out there, but, Oracle pretty much is its own operating system in its own right. And, as such, it actually has to do concurrency, availability, all that ACID stuff that frankly "_real_ kernel developers" do not even bother with.
Yes, Oracle is a shitty company the U/I to this database is just terrible and always will be: but everyone knows that. We all have our Horracle stories. But, if you want to put a billion records into a database, and sleep at night, there's only one game in town, and that's Oracle. They've been doing MVCC now for almost 10 years, high availability, ROLAP stuff... been there, they did it.
Point is, if anyone knows anything about reliability, its going to be Oracle, more than it is Red Hat.
Re:They don't know what they are selling (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're misreading what Oracle is trying to do. Oracle is not particularly interested in creating the best Linux distribution out there. Oracle is interested in creating the best *end to end Enterprise solution* out there. Most of their acquisitions over the past several years have been toward that goal. Oracle wants to be the single source for every part of the software stack in Enterprise computing.
Right now, Oracle can offer a total end to end solution with one support contract for OS, DB, Middleware, and front end apps. No one else right now can do that, and that's a huge deal for the executives of the large companies that tend to run Oracle software. Oracle is not trying to compete with RedHat, Oracle is trying to compete with ERP providers like SAP. RedHat is just providing them with free OS development.
Re:cant we already get free and support with cento (Score:2, Insightful)
The sensible thing to do would be to run Oracle Linux for your Oracle products and Red Hat (or CentOS if you didn't want support) for everything else. As they are all virtually the same, it's a lot easier for your administrators.
IMHO, the really sensible thing to do is not run oracle products at all. even the bea purchase and rebadging of the weblogic/aqualogic app server doesnt change that.
Re:Oracle's kernel developers? (Score:4, Insightful)
But, if you want to put a billion records into a database, and sleep at night, there's only one game in town, and that's Oracle
The largest database I maintain for a site I coded has 15 billion records atm and it's doing fine in MySQL, with a relatively busy daily peak time with well over 100 users, all on shared hosting.
/., etc, etc all using free databases for big work too, so I think your attitude is a bit dated.
In fact the only problem I've had with database growth was when an auto incrementing ID went over ~2 billion in MySQL, which put it over PHP's 2^32-1 integer limit.
And yup this all has to do locking and transactions, not just MyISAM with basic queries.
My personal experience counts for nothing of course but Google,
Re:cant we already get free and support with cento (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. If you can't afford support you don't need and you can't afford the time Fedora takes, CentOS is great.
Ordering red hat licenses is one way to make sure the OS is still there for you next year. If you're using it in business and making much profit (or just saving money) by using their data products, you should be recognizing that you need to give them (or canonical or one of the others) money because you need them to be there next year.
Same with feeding bugs back by using Fedora. If you rely on the OS as a tool in your job, you want to help keep the project alive and healthy.
So, actually, even if you are using CentOS, your self-interest will induce you to support the community in whatever ways you can afford to, maybe even just by helping others start using open source.
(And while it would actually make sense for Oracle to have their own distribution based on Red Hat, it does not make sense for them to be effectively dissing Red Hat. Unless, I suppose, their share-holders and/or primary customers expect Ellison to put on the dog.)
A couple of reasons we will not migrate *ever* (Score:3, Insightful)
1. If you have a mixed server park (that is: host different applications too, other than Oracle's), migrating is *not* feasible. I'm not going to support yet another OS, just because it is *possibly* a tiny bit more convenient once it is set up. Because before it's set up, I'll need to have deployment mechanisms for another OS, management tools for another OS etc. Not worth it. ;-)
2. To extend my first point: Oracle's support might be a bit cheaper for the OS, my time is a lot more expensive than a thousand bucks worth of support on a years basis. That matters when having to support more OS'es.
3. Red Hat fixes the bugs, and then releases the src.rpm. Oracle has to Q&A that, port it, upload and release it. Updates for Oracle Linux will be (a lot) later than Red Hat's. See how much time it is costing CentOS to release 5u3. No offence, but for production systems, I want to have potential fixes *now* if the situation we're in is hurting us.
4. I'm just about to get RHCA certified. Can I get that level of Linux certification from Oracle? Don't start saying the OS'es are compatible, because they are not, see point 5 and 6.
5. The only thing Oracle can do on the long term, if fork RHEL. The amount of support, the changes they make and the fact they want to support until the end of time in the own way, might not be called a fork, but it will be just that in the end. So much for compatibility.
6. They ported yast. Need I say more?
7. Not really a business reason but check this out. Oracle announced Oracle Linux just a couple of months after RH scooped JBoss from underneath Larry's nose. One of the previous posts is right: Oracle is not trying to compete with RH. It's trying to get revenge.
It sure could have been a smart move. (Score:4, Insightful)
Conceptually, it is a good idea to have their own distribution.
Conceptually, Red Hat would be a good choice of a distribution to fork.
Conceptually, it's a good idea.
But, practically speaking, they're screwing it all up.
No, it is not good business to take without giving.
No, it doesn't reduce the price of Oracle's server stack significantly to cut Red Hat out.
Not significantly, not with what they lose by cutting Red Hat out.
No, it isn't business savvy. It's cutting off their nose to spite their face. And it's totally misunderstanding the meaning of free as in freedom, not as in beer.
In essence, it's trying to give their customers free beer and put it on Red Hat's tab.
Now, maybe they hope to absorb enough of Red Hat's business to induce Red Hat to sell the company. But that kind of predatory business always comes back around to bite you in the end, and it eventually destroys your own business.
Maybe they are actually feeding some of the revenue back to Red Hat. If that's the case, I'll take back part of this rant. But they still have said a lot of things publicly that sound more like a spoiled rich kid celebrating that he gets to legally take the poor kid's candy. And the AC who said it was business savvy seems to be doing the same thing.
Cluster filesystem clusterf*ck (Score:3, Insightful)
Clustered filesystems are, as a breed, ridiculously over complicated. perhaps king of the hill is OCFS. To get it working right, your entire cluster has to to perform a series of steps IN SYNCH. EG: your entire cluster must all be done with step 1 before they all do step 2, etc. Just too complex, and no way to be redundant without blowing loads of cash on highly complex hardware....
Sorry... NO!
If you want simple, redundant storage, you really have to do it in the application layer. Doing it at the OS level requires too much abstraction to do well while maintaining decent performance. The closest I've seen to a decent clustered filesystem from an administrative standpoint is Gluster F/S...