I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
Tech Support.
(No servers, just PC's)
Any thoughts/suggestions/etc.?
-Richard Vaughn
Printable View
I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
Tech Support.
(No servers, just PC's)
Any thoughts/suggestions/etc.?
-Richard Vaughn
Richard Vaughn wrote:
[color=blue]
> I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
> Tech Support.
> (No servers, just PC's)
>
> Any thoughts/suggestions/etc.?
>
> -Richard Vaughn[/color]
Personally, I can't say if it's worth it to you, but I've not installed
Fedora on any systems I control for a very long time and instead chose
CentOS. Anyway, that seems like a lot of PCs to have installed an OS
that you have the same issues with across them. I'd recommend
installing it on one, getting it to work how you need and then setting
up another. Once you get it down without issues, install it on the
rest.
--
Tim Greer, CEO/Founder/CTO, BurlyHost.com, Inc.
Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Dedicated & Semi-Dedicated servers
and Custom Hosting. 24/7 support, 30 day guarantee, secure servers.
Industry's most experienced staff! -- Web Hosting With Muscle!
On 2008-10-06, Richard Vaughn <rvaughn9@gmail.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
> Tech Support.
> (No servers, just PC's)
>
> Any thoughts/suggestions/etc.?[/color]
What is the reason for buying tech support?
Is what you run, really Fedora Core or just Fedora? What version?
The beauty of Linux is that you can do systems administration of very
large numbers of PCs with scripts, so that you do not have to walk
from PC to PC doing the same thing over and over.
--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
[url]http://improve-usenet.org/[/url]
Ignoramus8122 <ignoramus8122@NOSPAM.8122.invalid> writes:
[color=blue]
> Is what you run, really Fedora Core or just Fedora? What version?[/color]
And Fedora is not the easiest distro to use......
On 2008-10-06, Maxwell Lol <nospam@com.invalid> wrote:[color=blue]
> Ignoramus8122 <ignoramus8122@NOSPAM.8122.invalid> writes:
>[color=green]
>> Is what you run, really Fedora Core or just Fedora? What version?[/color]
>
> And Fedora is not the easiest distro to use......[/color]
I used redhat/fedora for years. I switched to Ubuntu, for servers and
desktops, and I want to say that Ubuntu is a lot better managed.
I manage numerous servers with total ease, with scripts that do my
work.
--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
[url]http://improve-usenet.org/[/url]
On Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:32:39 -0700, Richard Vaughn wrote:
[color=blue]
> I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
> Tech Support.
> (No servers, just PC's)
>
> Any thoughts/suggestions/etc.?
>
> -Richard Vaughn[/color]
Fedora is the wrong distro for that many PCs, you should be using
CentOS5. Fedora changes much to rapidly and has much to short a support
cycle for a system with that many PCs. If you use CentOS you won't have
to do 80 installs a year like you do with Fedora, you'll be able to
install it once on each system and then keep it for the life of the
machine. You will also have to do .1% as many updates. CentOS has a few
megabytes of updates a month, Fedora has hundreds of megabytes a week.
Finally a CentOS update won't break anything, you can't say that about
Fedora. For example a couple of months ago an update to X broke tcsh
which made Fedora useless of about a week until there was a fix. If you
switch to CentOS you won't need support, on the other hand supporting
Fedora for 80 systems would be a full time job.
General Schvantzkopf schreef:[color=blue]
> On Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:32:39 -0700, Richard Vaughn wrote:
>[color=green]
>> I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
>> Tech Support.
>> (No servers, just PC's)
>>
>> Any thoughts/suggestions/etc.?
>>
>> -Richard Vaughn[/color]
>
> Fedora is the wrong distro for that many PCs, you should be using
> CentOS5. Fedora changes much to rapidly and has much to short a support
> cycle for a system with that many PCs. If you use CentOS you won't have
> to do 80 installs a year like you do with Fedora, you'll be able to
> install it once on each system and then keep it for the life of the
> machine. You will also have to do .1% as many updates. CentOS has a few
> megabytes of updates a month, Fedora has hundreds of megabytes a week.
> Finally a CentOS update won't break anything, you can't say that about
> Fedora. For example a couple of months ago an update to X broke tcsh
> which made Fedora useless of about a week until there was a fix. If you
> switch to CentOS you won't need support, on the other hand supporting
> Fedora for 80 systems would be a full time job.[/color]
Richard,
One could also use one of the RedHat Desktop variants, support included
for one year. Subscriptions are based on per PC or per 50 PC's.
Kind regards,
Jan Gerrit
Richard Vaughn wrote:[color=blue]
> I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
> Tech Support.
> (No servers, just PC's)[/color]
[color=blue]
> Any thoughts/suggestions/etc.?[/color]
What questions do you want answered? What do you expect tech support to do
for you? They might be willing to price digging into 80 comps but I doubt that
comes with the basic contract.
--
I have a Covenant with God, exposing Abraham's most successful scan.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 4064
[url]http://www.giwersworld.org/disinfo/occupied-2.phtml[/url] a6
On 6 Oct, 08:16, Matt Giwer <jul...@tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> Richard Vaughn wrote:[color=green]
> > I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
> > Tech Support.
> > (No servers, just PC's)
> > Any thoughts/suggestions/etc.?[/color]
>
> What questions do you want answered? What do you expect tech support to do
> for you? They might be willing to price digging into 80 comps but I doubt that
> comes with the basic contract.
>[/color]
Why buy support from RedHat?
The original question is very badly framed - as Matt points out, what
are you expecting in terms of support?
For an installation on this scale, a lot of your needs may be met by a
local IT consultancy firm whom will also be able to provide things
which you won't get from RedHat (like onsite technical support when
you're on holiday, Business Continuity planing etc).
C.
Richard Vaughn <rvaug...@gmail.com> wrote:[color=blue]
>
> I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
> Tech Support.
> (No servers, just PC's)
>
> Any thoughts/suggestions/etc.?[/color]
Running Red Hat just the $100 per year per server would add
up quickly with that number. You'll clearly want to support a
few and do something else with most.
Back years ago I had a similar flock of SGI Irix boxes. What I
did was build a cloning process. I defined a few master
configurations then built clones from the masters. In my case
they were basic Unigraphics CAD stations (about a hundred),
larger NASTRAN simulation stations (about a dozen), larger
Unigraphics stations for the assembly work (about a dozen)
and a small number of unique hosts like file server,
NIS/DNS/rdist/rsync/etc hosts, DNS deligated cache only
server. I had masters for the 3 types that had lots of repeats
and cloned from them.
If I were to do the same now with Linux boxes I'd purchase
support for each of the clone masters and use kiskstart to
clone them, plus purchase support for each of the unique ones.
The more turn-key your boxes the fewer you need to purchase
support for. Turn key end user systems rule in large environments.
Richard Vaughn wrote:[color=blue]
> I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
> Tech Support.
> (No servers, just PC's)
>
> Any thoughts/suggestions/etc.?[/color]
Support can mean many things.
Fedora is a non-business oriented solution. So, if
you are really basing your business on Fedora, I would
probably switch to something like RHEL or SLES. You
may prefer RHEL because it will be a bit more Fedora like.
BUT... if these are desktops, you can be assured that
on modern (born yesterday) desktops/laptops, that you're
best bet is to run a "community" (non-business) distribution
like Fedora.
So... if support means patches.... then go RHEL or SLES
on the servers side. If you have a lot of desktops and
STILL want stability and patches... there's pretty much
only one choice, SLED.
If you need that up-to-date very latest and greatest because
you use a lot of very, very new hardware, you're forced
to use a community distribution (well... pretty much anyhow).
You could make a good case that for >80% of the "new" issues
that SLED could be sufficiently tweaked, but eventually you
stumble into "unsupported" land if you go that route anyway.
If support means somebody to come and troubleshoot your
issues (like a functional Linux Geek Squad), then you're
best bet is probably hiring short term consultants or
perhaps contractors (for a longer running support need).
If this IS truly your business, AND you already have
a Systems Administrator, then you could invest in
training to make the individual handle Linux issues
as well. IMHO, having somebody there reliably is the
best option. So hire or train would be my preferred
solution for regular ongoing support of a business.
So... what does support really mean to you? That is
the ultimate question...
On Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:24:08 -0500, Chris Cox wrote:
[color=blue]
> Richard Vaughn wrote:[color=green]
>> I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
>> Tech Support.
>> (No servers, just PC's)
>>
>> Any thoughts/suggestions/etc.?[/color]
>
> Support can mean many things.
>
> Fedora is a non-business oriented solution. So, if you are really
> basing your business on Fedora, I would probably switch to something
> like RHEL or SLES. You may prefer RHEL because it will be a bit more
> Fedora like.
>
> BUT... if these are desktops, you can be assured that on modern (born
> yesterday) desktops/laptops, that you're best bet is to run a
> "community" (non-business) distribution like Fedora.
>
> So... if support means patches.... then go RHEL or SLES on the servers
> side. If you have a lot of desktops and STILL want stability and
> patches... there's pretty much only one choice, SLED.
>
> If you need that up-to-date very latest and greatest because you use a
> lot of very, very new hardware, you're forced to use a community
> distribution (well... pretty much anyhow). You could make a good case
> that for >80% of the "new" issues that SLED could be sufficiently
> tweaked, but eventually you stumble into "unsupported" land if you go
> that route anyway.
>
> If support means somebody to come and troubleshoot your issues (like a
> functional Linux Geek Squad), then you're best bet is probably hiring
> short term consultants or perhaps contractors (for a longer running
> support need).
>
> If this IS truly your business, AND you already have a Systems
> Administrator, then you could invest in training to make the individual
> handle Linux issues as well. IMHO, having somebody there reliably is
> the best option. So hire or train would be my preferred solution for
> regular ongoing support of a business.
>
> So... what does support really mean to you? That is the ultimate
> question...[/color]
Using a distro like Fedora on a large number of business machines is
simply not a viable solution, it's just to unstable and it requires way
to many updates. The workaround for CentOS on desktop hardware is to
install your own kernel, that's what I do. You take a standard kernel
from kernel.org and use the Fedora .config file for that generation of
kernel. You use a script to build and install the kernel so it's easy to
do. Here is my script,
#!/bin/csh -f
echo make -j 2 all
time make -j 2 all >& kernel.log
make modules_install
make install
This is more work then you would like but until Redhat starts to provide
modern kernels there isn't a better alternative for RHEL/CentOS. Ubuntu
LTS might be a solution also. The problem with Ubuntu LTS is that it
isn't stable on day one like RHEL is. However if you wait for an LTS
release to be 6 months old before you deploy it then it should be stable
by then.
Richard Vaughn wrote:
[color=blue]
> I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
> Tech Support.[/color]
Fedora is probably the wrong distro to use in this circumstance. You should
consider SLES (probably the /only/ distro with truly professional, paid-for
support) or Ubuntu (Canonical will provide paid-for support for their LTS
releases). Fedora is really meant to be a "test bed" for Red Hat, and
tends to include "bleeding-edge" applications - these are unlikely to be
stable enough for production use.
C.
General Schvantzkopf wrote:[color=blue]
> On Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:24:08 -0500, Chris Cox wrote:
>[color=green]
>> Richard Vaughn wrote:[color=darkred]
>>> I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
>>> Tech Support.
>>> (No servers, just PC's)
>>>
>>> Any thoughts/suggestions/etc.?[/color]
>> Support can mean many things.
>>
>> Fedora is a non-business oriented solution. So, if you are really
>> basing your business on Fedora, I would probably switch to something
>> like RHEL or SLES. You may prefer RHEL because it will be a bit more
>> Fedora like.[/color][/color]
Hmmph. It's integration with commercial products like Oracle that are hard
with Fedora. But for desktop, and laptop support, Fedora leads by at at least
a year in hardware drivers and system components such as OpenSSH, PHP, Gnome,
KDE, HTTPD, etc.
Running Fedora on random desktops is, in fact, easier than RHEL or CentOS due
to the driver updates and user-desired components, such as OpenOffice, wifi
drivers, USB external device drivers, etc.
[color=blue][color=green]
>> BUT... if these are desktops, you can be assured that on modern (born
>> yesterday) desktops/laptops, that you're best bet is to run a
>> "community" (non-business) distribution like Fedora.
>>
>> So... if support means patches.... then go RHEL or SLES on the servers
>> side. If you have a lot of desktops and STILL want stability and
>> patches... there's pretty much only one choice, SLED.
>>
>> If you need that up-to-date very latest and greatest because you use a
>> lot of very, very new hardware, you're forced to use a community
>> distribution (well... pretty much anyhow). You could make a good case
>> that for >80% of the "new" issues that SLED could be sufficiently
>> tweaked, but eventually you stumble into "unsupported" land if you go
>> that route anyway.
>>
>> If support means somebody to come and troubleshoot your issues (like a
>> functional Linux Geek Squad), then you're best bet is probably hiring
>> short term consultants or perhaps contractors (for a longer running
>> support need).
>>
>> If this IS truly your business, AND you already have a Systems
>> Administrator, then you could invest in training to make the individual
>> handle Linux issues as well. IMHO, having somebody there reliably is
>> the best option. So hire or train would be my preferred solution for
>> regular ongoing support of a business.
>>
>> So... what does support really mean to you? That is the ultimate
>> question...[/color]
>
> Using a distro like Fedora on a large number of business machines is
> simply not a viable solution, it's just to unstable and it requires way
> to many updates. The workaround for CentOS on desktop hardware is to
> install your own kernel, that's what I do. You take a standard kernel
> from kernel.org and use the Fedora .config file for that generation of
> kernel. You use a script to build and install the kernel so it's easy to
> do. Here is my script,[/color]
Updates are no biggie: mirror them to a local repository, and update from
there. Voila, your bandwidth costs drop and performance of updates improves
massively.
[color=blue]
>
> #!/bin/csh -f
> echo make -j 2 all
> time make -j 2 all >& kernel.log
> make modules_install
> make install[/color]
What in the? Don't use '-j 2' unless you have multiple CPU's, or multiple cores.
Building a kernel from SRPM is pretty straightforward, even with a new kernel
you can usually build a kernel SRPM in order to get package management.
Throwing out package management is *DEADLY* in almost every OS.
[color=blue]
>
> This is more work then you would like but until Redhat starts to provide
> modern kernels there isn't a better alternative for RHEL/CentOS. Ubuntu
> LTS might be a solution also. The problem with Ubuntu LTS is that it
> isn't stable on day one like RHEL is. However if you wait for an LTS
> release to be 6 months old before you deploy it then it should be stable
> by then.[/color]
That, I can believe.
General Schvantzkopf wrote:[color=blue]
> On Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:32:39 -0700, Richard Vaughn wrote:
>[color=green]
>> I have about 80 PC's running Fedora Core and am considering purchasing
>> Tech Support.
>> (No servers, just PC's)
>>
>> Any thoughts/suggestions/etc.?
>>
>> -Richard Vaughn[/color]
>
> Fedora is the wrong distro for that many PCs, you should be using
> CentOS5. Fedora changes much to rapidly and has much to short a support
> cycle for a system with that many PCs. If you use CentOS you won't have
> to do 80 installs a year like you do with Fedora, you'll be able to
> install it once on each system and then keep it for the life of the
> machine. You will also have to do .1% as many updates. CentOS has a few
> megabytes of updates a month, Fedora has hundreds of megabytes a week.
> Finally a CentOS update won't break anything, you can't say that about
> Fedora. For example a couple of months ago an update to X broke tcsh
> which made Fedora useless of about a week until there was a fix. If you
> switch to CentOS you won't need support, on the other hand supporting
> Fedora for 80 systems would be a full time job.[/color]
CentOS, and RHEL 5, in my observation, always lag Fedora by at least 12 months
in major system components. This makes using a new tool (such as Nagios,
Subversion, OpenSSH 5, or components that rely on PHP 5) quite awkward, and
leads to dependency hell.