TAG | Which enterprise Linux to choose? |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Wednesday, 04 February 2009 | |
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Page 2 of 3 Novell is a big player, and in fact own the UNIX trademark – but that’s really a different matter, Linux is not UNIX. Still, at least you know Novell aren’t going to try and sue anyone for alleged IP infringement.Featured Whitepaper
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Novell sell SUSE Linux Enterprise which they claim runs from the desktop to the data centre. Novell put forward arguments that SUSE is the most interoperable platform, that it works with Microsoft Windows, SAP and IBM systems. While other Linux distributions from different vendors are undoubtedly able to also mix with hardware and software and networks from those providers, Novell pin their competitive advantage not on purely software matters but to an extensive network the company has with hardware and software partners including that trinity of Microsoft, SAP and IBM. Novell continue to emphasise their partnerships when it comes to the matter of support. Here, Novell claim a wide range of consulting and partner organisations who will all work together to ensure SUSE deployments run securely without disruption. A SUSE certification program is available, which means application developers can have their software certified as running correctly and reliably on the SUSE platform. While SUSE is fundamentally Linux, and Linux software runs on any Linux, this certification can give peace of mind to some that mission critical applications have been tested on the very same platform and have been proven to work. SUSE is a tremendous example of just what enterprise Linux is all about. It’s not just the software – heck, you can get the operating system for free. It’s the company behind it that you’re paying for, and their strength and expertise and relationships and credentials. Here Novell illustrate perfectly just why a business, having opted for Linux, would do well to consider an enterprise Linux release. You will never be in the unenviable position of facing a technical glitch with only yourself to fix it. Red Hat Red Hat have been around for years. They’re well known, they’re popular and they’ve been active in contributing back to the Linux community with significant time and money spent on enhancing the Linux kernel and other products. Red Hat are the only Linux house to offer a high-grade certification to individuals – the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE), in a comical spin on Microsoft’s former Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) cert. This program is well regarded as a tough one that genuinely proves technical expertise. Red Hat, the company, have a free distribution available called Fedora (which I use myself) and a paid enterprise-grade product called Red Hat Enterprise Linux, otherwise known as RHEL or simply Red Hat. In the latter case discussions about “Red Hat” may or may not include Fedora depending on whether it is the company or the product under consideration. Like Novell, Red Hat put forward the strengths of their enterprise platform as certified hardware and certified applications; you can buy specific hardware and specific software knowing it has been thoroughly tested and proven to perform in a robust manner. Unlike Novell, Red Hat don’t claim a worldwide partnership that provide support but instead have their own massive round-the-clock collection of in-house technician and engineers (presumably all RHCE’s.) Red Hat also emphasise the wide range of deployment options that Red Hat has been tested with, which include the typical operating system on server, but also virtualised, cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) models. Read on for CentOS, Ubuntu and Oracle! |
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