[WBEL-devel] Long- Thoughts on WB maintenance

[Charles Lacour]

On Thursday 27 November 2003 21:58, William Hooper wrote:
> Charles Lacour  said:
> > $350 per box is very workable for 30-40 servers for the entire company.
> > $350
> > per box (per year!) for 2000 desktops is WAY too expensive.
>
> Nothing personal, but I get tired of seeing this over and over.
>
> a) You don't need a "server" os for 2000 desktops, so make that $180

Ok, fair enough. That IS the minimum for a server, which I had been talking 
about earlier and I just continued using the same version in the desktop 
example.

While I wouldn't consider the $180 version acceptable for my HOME desktop, 
I'll grant you it's acceptable for a business environment.

The point is still the same -- anything times 2000 machines is expensive (and 
in my opinion $180 is STILL too expensive), and Red Hat doesn't give you any 
other choice. 

I could make a fairly good argument for not needing to (ever) update those 
desktop stations, because they don't provide any services. I'd probably 
prefer to have some way to update them, as a precaution, but spending $180 
per seat, per year is way too much.

> b) You can't make me believe that you wouldn't get a substantial discount
> on 2000 desktops + 40 servers (can you say RHN Proxy?  How about RHN
> Satellite?)

Yes we would. (We're going to be getting something of discount on 10-12 
servers that we're getting in the near future.)

For that many, it might even be a pretty substantial discount, say $100 per 
seat for the desktops, and $250 for the servers (with similar discounts for 
anything that's above ES basic).

It's still pretty damn pricey, and the problem is, it happens every year. You 
can't decide "No, I don't need support on these anymore." Unlike the older 
version (and unlike what RH told me as recently as six months ago) you can't 
use it unless you pay them for it.

The RHN Proxy/Satellite is very useful for cutting down your bandwidth 
requirements, but you still have to pay full price (whatever that price may 
end up) for each and every seat behind it.

If you could pay $2500 for Proxy (which I think is what it goes for) and then 
put an unlimited number of servers/desktops behind it, I'd jump on it in a 
heartbeat. If I could pay _$25,000_ for a single license, I'd be seriously 
interested.

To the best of my knowledge, though, that's not what either Proxy or Satellite 
do. They allow you more flexibility in how your machines use RHN, but they 
don't allow you to use a license for more than one machine. (Well, not 
legally, at least.) (If you know different, please send me links to the info 
-- I'd definitely be interested.)