Trying RHEL with High Availability
 

Hi,

Have a few questions about RHEL.

1. I'm able to download an evaluation copy of RHEL7 at the Red Hat website. It says there that it's a 30 day evaluation. What happens after 30 days? Will I just not get support from Red Hat but still be able to use the OS, or will the OS be unusable after that?
2. Is there a link to to get RHEL6 instead, and what's the behavior after the evaluation period as well?
3. I would like to experiment with the HA option via RHEL clustering, either on 2 separate machines, or 2 separate VMs. Must I purchase the HA option or is there a similar evaluation?

Thanks!

In your case, don't bother with RHEL 7, install CentOS 7 (http://centos.org/download).
CentOS 7 is 100% compatible with RHEL 7 and doesn't need any license.

1. after 30 days, you lose access to RHN (Red Hat Network). Technically, the OS will still be usable, but it will be highly inconvenient and basically impossible to update. On the other hand, you could remove all RHN components and switch over to, say, CentOS repositories and run it that way, with no phone/online/whatever support.

2. As far as I know, yes, you can download 6/6.x eval from the same location as you download rhel7. I purchased RHEL7 so I'm not 100% sure, but when I purchased the subscription there were a bunch of downloads of nearly all the old and current ISOs.

3. The HA components are on a separate ISO, as far as I can tell it is downloadable along with all the other ISOs.


Out of curiosity, what is the advantage of evaluating RHEL when you can just try out CentOS, and then buy into a subscription when you are ready for full support?

The final solution will be RHEL, but I just want to make sure that during my testing stage, I'm working on an identical system so that there are no gotchas should I move from say, CentOS to RHEL in the end.

With that said, I'm open to using CentOS during this stage. Does CentOS have an HA add on identical to RHEL?

I don't know for sure, but my impression was that CentOS was everything that RHEL is.

Over all, I think the eval should work for you. Once I signed in to purchase the subscription, all ISO's were available to download, so I believe you should be able to get all the components you need for your trial period.

Use the RHEL eval. Centos doesn't have any of the licensed proprietary componenents of Red Hat.

Explanation: http://boardstretcher.github.io/blog...-alternatives/

Shucks. So I guess there's no Centos HA add on?

Does the RHEL HA add on have an eval version?

I believe so, but if you're seriously going to purchase, contact Red Hat sales, and I'm almost positive they can get you what you need.

Thanks!

Licenses? In Red Hat exists the subscription model.
Propietary software?? Do you really know what is RHEL?

Since RHEL 6, CENTOS (and Oracle too with Oracle Linux) only have access to the source that Red Hat gives them (with a delay). So there no way say "CentOS 7 = RHEL 7" because Red Hat frees their sources with delay, when that happen, CentOS take the sources, changes the logo and another stuff and gives you CentOS 7.

The trial 30 days give you access to RHN, after that, you can't enter and don't recive any support. Even you can't update your RHEL system.

You can get (and try to evaluate) any version of RHEL if the trial is available, go to access.redhat.com.

The HA in RHEL is an Add-on and is separate from RHEL (it has a different SKU)

The subscription gives you:

1 - Access to any documentation of any Red Hat product.
2 - Access to RHN and manage all cycle of life of your Red Hat product.
3 - Have support from Red Hat (premium 7x24 or standard 5x8)
4 - Have patches, bug fixes and updates from your Red Hat product.
5 - Upgrade or downgrade when you want your product without extra charge.
6 - Move your subscription to any machine that you want.

See how Red Hat disagrees with you:

http://community.redhat.com/centos-faq/

Also, CentOS, Oracle and all that is based off of RHEL-AS. And only those sources.

So,. you cannot for example get CentOS with "Red Hat Storage Server" or "Red Hat MRG" because they do not provide sources for them -- because they are improperly licensed, patented, proprietary, etc...

Where is a patent or "license" of a Red Hat product??
For every product that Red Hat has, there exists the "free" version:
Fedora upstream of RHEL
Spacewalk upstream of Red Hat Satellite
Ovirt upstream of RHEV
And so on...
The thing that Red Hat does is take the community project > change it > test it> certificate it with many hardware vendors and then liberate a stable version of the product for enterprise.
Obviously, they liberate their sources, but the compatibility of their products with another SO, it is another history.