Which enterprise Linux to choose?

David M Williams
Wednesday, 04 February 2009 04:54

IT Industry - Market

Debate abounds between Linux lovers which distribution to choose on the desktop. But what about the server? Yes, all versions of Linux are equally capable of serving your mail and web site, but just what is it in those so-called "enterprise" editions that make them, well, enterprise-y?

I’m glad you asked. It’s a topic that can suffer an ill-fate.
Some in free software circles question the merits of a “paid” Linux variant when the majority, the give-away unrestricted Linux releases, contain so much already.

Or, a business might not grasp why an enterprise Linux would benefit them if it turns out to require lots of cryptic keyboard hammering with the only available assistance being “the community” as found in forums online around the world.

However, enterprise Linux do have a raison d’être and they do cost money. Both go hand in hand. The added value is worth paying for, as corporate techs will understand.

Reasons business should evaluate Linux for a server platform include freedom from vendor lock-in. Linux is controlled by no one person or corporation. It can’t die because its source code is freely available for use by anyone.

Even if you used (say) Ubuntu Linux at home and Canonical decided to shut their doors forever. You would not be at risk: because the operating system has been made available for the scrutiny, typing up or general inspection of others. I think I can say with 100% confidence that someone would pick up the project and bring Ubuntu back to life.

Linux is a terrific example of open source in practice because of this. In fact, Linux has been chosen as the platform upon which VMWare’s ESX server is built, as well as products by Cisco.
Nevertheless, business users need more than just a bare metal operating system. Here’s where the money comes into it, and how a company like Red Hat – who give away all their source code – manage to be profitable.

The reason a business should pay for an enterprise Linux has to include as one of its chief reasons that vendor support is available. You will not be left alone. You won’t have to deal with hundreds of Google results that are simply others asking the same questions with no result, nor the possible flame-fests containing in mailing lists and Usenet groups.

There are other reasons. Enterprise Linux distributions will come with, sometimes proprietary, packages that support high availability and redundancy, like clustering, greater RAID capabilities, stronger alerting and management and other items.

So, let’s take a closer look at the leading contenders: Novell SUSE, Red Hat, CentOS, Ubuntu Server and Oracle’s unbreakable Linux!