On Wednesday, February 6, 2002, at 10:53 AM, Scott Goodwin wrote: > Not true, Pete. Go look at Dell. I had not looked at Dell before. You're right, they offer two annual support options for RH Linux, although I can't find details of these offerings on their website. The only thing I can find on the website is that, at the Premiere Enterprise Support Platinum level, you can purchase unlimited resolutions; the other Enterprise support offerings only offer a specific number of resolutions, with the option to purchase more.
>> and the support is software-only. > That's no surprise. Absolutely -- no surprise at all. The original question was whether Sun/Solaris or Intel/Linux was better for an enterprise; I was pointing out that Sun offers more comprehensive service than one can get for Linux. You've pointed out that Dell seems to offer a program with features to match Sun's. Now I've got to point out the price -- if you go to the Dell store and try to buy a PowerEdge 350 (the cheapest server of theirs I could find), and add on a Silver service agreement plus a 5x12 annual RH Linux support agreement, you've just added $1939 to your purchase of an $895 server. If you go to Sun and buy a Netra X1 (the cheapest server of theirs I could find) and upgrade to a Silver service agreement (which includes unlimited telephone support) you add $400 to your purchase of a $995 server. I have a pretty good idea what kind of support I'll get from Sun's "field circus", but the Dell RH Linux support is a question mark for me. I think there's still a case to be made that Sun's service for their servers is a better package than what you can get for Intel/Linux. Now, there's a separate question of whether it's better to have vendor support, or to be "self-insured" -- you have the source to Linux, and you can get spares inexpensively; I think it's a judgment the business owner has to make as to whether they want to outsource support (in which case, based on what I've seen, I'd be hard-pressed to make a case for an Intel/Linux solution), or whether they want to maintain support resources internally (in which case -- Sun having withdrawn the Solaris source access program -- it's much harder to make the case for Sun). I'm really not trying to say that one is good and one is bad; I'm just trying to point out that service and support should be a consideration for making this decision, rather than basing it solely on hardware performance and reliability (which are also important factors).
