Redhat Enterprise WS, ES & AS

[christoph at linuxsoup.com]

"Johannes B. Ullrich" wrote:
 
> I am using RedHat AS 2.1 and recently installed ES V.3.
> AS includes a lot of the failover stuff from the Linux HA
> project. Also, the AS kernel includes patches for NUMA
> and such.
>

AS 2.1 for intel 32bit includes the 'enterprise' kernel to support
memory up to 64GB (PAE).  I don't think WS and ES do.  ES and AS are
very similar, BUT ... once you install ES, you cannot upgrade to
AS without re-installing (unless you hack some upgrade method
together yourself).  Thus, if you go with ES, you better be
sure you'll never exceed 2 CPUs and 4 GB of memory.

The RH EL 3.0 offering is much more interesting.  I believe
WS supports up to 8 GB w/ 2 cpus which is a more realistic
workstation IMHO.

This main reason you'd pick Enterprise Linux from RedHat is
support.  Up2date is a piece of that, but mainly it's also the
dialup telephone tech help.  Another reason is 3rd party 
tools.  Most "enterprise" products are certified for
RH-EL/AS (Legato, Veritas, Oracle, blah, blah, blah).  That's
a feature IMHO.  Also, the slowed release cycle.  RH is
indicating a 3-5 year lifecycle for each release which are
12-18 months apart.  This also is a feature IMHO.  

Last, RH EL/AS 2.1 is based on the 2.4.9 kernel with patches which
means newer hardware is tough.  Things like hyperthreading and
many newer SCSI chipsets are not natively supported. Again,
EL 3.0 is much more interesting with current cpu support (p4/ht, opteron)
and also includes the Linux LVM.

There's my 2 cents...

> I had not too much time to play with ES V.3. But it looks
> like it includes similar features, but is probably missing
> the HA software.
> 
> Overall: Feature wise, ES or AS is not all that exciting.=20
> Nothing you can't do on your own. The main reason to get
> AS or ES is the ability to use RHN/up2date to keep your
> systems patched. So depending on your skill, doing a solid
> initial build and tools like 'autorpm' may give you the=20
> same functionality.
> 
> 
>