I wonder if someone could help me understand the support contract and availability of for Linux on the Z platform. I have recently taken charge of the Development and Production deployment initiatives for our organization and the first thing on my plate is to address the expiration of our current support contract with IBM.
The previous project manager, of the POC, explained to me that support Z/Linux was organized as follows: 1. Defect support, problem support was acquired from IBM at a cost. This is specifically Linux defect / problem support. (there is of course separate support for VM itself). 2. Update, patch, maintenance support was purchased from SuSE or Red Hat separately. If this is the case it sounds like I am paying too much. For Intel I pay a vendor for hardware support and I pay a Linux vendor for Linux support that includes Updates and maintenance. Why do I pay, say SuSE, for a license to run Linux/390, pay them again for Maintenance, and then pay IBM for Linux defect support. I wonder what others are doing for support and if our POC project manager understood the support contracts and arrangements. I will be calling vendors as well regarding this issue. Thank you! Eric Sammons
