Would Ubuntu LTS or RHEL be better for an enterprise environment?
 

Hi there! I've been wondering for a while, which would be better in an enterprise environment? Ubuntu LTS with paid support or RHEL?

RHEL is pretty much the de-facto enterprise distro for most companies, and supported for 10 years, however Ubuntu LTS with paid support from Canonical would be easier for the IT department to manage than RHEL, and it also has newer stuff than RHEL. In additon, although it's not as long as a support window as RHEL, five years is a pretty good support window. Upgrades would be handled via rollout image for both distros.

Can I ask why?

Incidentally, for RHEL5 or 6, you get can get up to 13 years support https://access.redhat.com/site/suppo...pdates/errata/

I don't think so. Any larger IT department usually has at least one guy with RHCE certificate that knows how to work with RHEL systems. How many admins are out there with a similar Ubuntu certificate (if something like that even exists).

Besides from that, I wouldn't even consider Ubuntu for enterprise use, any distribution that is released buggy (even the LTS versions) because of its extremely short development cycle and admittedly uses its users as beta testers after release is IMHO simply not fit for the enterprise. This may be an extreme view, but that is as I see it.

Certificates- there used to be an Ubuntu cert that one would be eligible to be examined on only after getting LPIC-1. But that cert is gone now, assuming because of very weak interest. But seriously, do you think enterprise relies on certs when choosing OS for their big iron?!
Cannonical has much better documentation, superior to one Red Hat offers. Though development cycle is short, changes introduced are much more predictable than one RH does with its iterations. And as for using end- users as beta testers, Red Hat isn't much better in that retrospect- Fedora anybody?
If I was the enterprise and had to choose between these two, I'd choose Ubuntu with tech support from Canonical. If I was to choose from a wider range, I'd grab Solaris. Superior to any Linux.

Thats not true. RedHat has some massive documantation going on. I read up on a lot of stuff about linux with redhat documentation. Especially when it comes to clustering. Also check out their documentation about cgroups. Its a wonderfull article and even showing up 4th on a google search.

As I worked with both systems though only CentOS at the job I must say that RedHat is by far more stable then ubuntu will ever be. Its just the nature of its origin. If you want me to choose between the two I would take RedHat. Also this is sad cause I'd rather use CentOS or Debian :p

RHEL is bit outdated but its stable like bridge. Red Hat has alot more experience in enterprise than canonical, so i would say Red Hat.

Because APT is easier to manage than YUM, mainly.

Between the options you provided, i lean towards rhel as well, the ubuntu team are trying too many funny things for me to trust critical systems to their products. However if you are after ubuntu, even though support is not so plentiful and most likely the reason you didn't add it, i would prefer debian over ubuntu.

Debian won't help to satisfy SLA requirements but in my opinion superior to ubuntu. After all, it is debian that initially provided the framework for ubuntu to become so popular. Honestly still not sure what all the ubuntu hype is about. But maybe that is just me.

I also do second the rhel documents being great. The are not hold your hand sort of manuals but they do cover a great amount of information and what is great, they actually give good admin tips etc that can be used on other systems too.

The biggest reason for me leaning more towards Ubuntu than RHEL is because of the paid support available, which Debian does not have, and it's inherently easier to manage than RHEL because of using APT, which is an easier to manage packaging system than YUM. If you wanna add a third-party repo in Ubuntu, if it's a DEB, just pull up a terminal, type the following in, and copy-paste the repo into the APT sources list.

Then type this in to enable the third-party DEB repo.

If it's a PPA, type the following syntax in.

AFAIK, you gotta go through a whole big process to add third-party repos in YUM.

I wish you'd told me that earlier; never realized how hard it was to d/load this http://mirror.overthewire.com.au/pub...l-release.html and
on all my systems....
;) :)

citation needed ....


Re post #4
citation needed
RHEL != Fedora .....

Yeah, and if you hang out on Ubuntu Forums, you'll see 1 in every 10 support requests is along the lines of "help! I broke my sources.list, and now I can't install or update anything, and my machine is in an unstable/unusable state!"

But if "users can easily add unsupported 3rd party software repositories" is your litmus test for an Enterprise OS, have fun. :)

And that's with paid support too? Because AFAIK, if you're paying for professional support, you're guaranteed to get help if something screws up, while if you rely on community support, it's harder to get help.

And of course third-party repos most likely won't be required, but if there is ever a required third-party repo, it would be easier and quicker for the admins to add it in Ubuntu than in Redhat.

And my litmus test for an enterprise OS is how easy is it for the admins to manage, how new is the software, is it reasonably stable, does it offer a paid professional support option, and how long is the support window for security updates. And how often do security updates come in, and how long does it take for a release to get stale.

Ubuntu is aimed at being easy to use if you're an office worker and easy to manage if you're an admin, has paid support available, has newer software than RHEL, kernel 3.8.x for 12.04 LTS vs. kernel 2.6.x for RHEL6, has a five year support window, which is a pretty good support window, AFAIK security updates come in more often for LTS, it's a reasonablY stable distro, especially if you stick to the stock repos, which in the enterprise world, all you'd most likely need would be the stock repos, unless there's something that requires a third-party repo or a custom repo, and since computers running LTS would be reimaged with a new release every three years or every five years instead of every ten years like with RHEL, it wouldn't get stale as quickly.

Well, it really depends on what you are after. As i mentioned before, i tend to prefer debian over ubuntu. My office does run centos though.

If you prefer something newer, by all means, use ubuntu if that is what you guys like. But in my experience ubuntu is like windows. Looks nice and flashy and over time it just becomes horrible and slow.

Honestly, you don't need bleeding edge for everything. In my English school, where you are the only it guy and have to do other things in order to get money from customers, bleeding edge is bad news. Something always breaks ad in the case of ubuntu, if it breaks things go horribly wrong.

Debian and centos have provided us with extreme stability and predictibility. Those are the 2 things most important to us because during the day there is barely time for log monitoring on our 8 servers.

Other things have to be done to get the money, so our first choice is centos if all else fails debian. Between those two systems we have never had anything we cannot do and best of all, no ubuntu quirks. You neverknow with the ubuntu guys how they plan on making your admin job interesting at short notice.

Further more dear op. You mention more security updates with ubuntu. Is that not a no brainer? Seeing they use newer versions, is it not to be expected there would be more bugs than in some other older software. Is the updates we are talking about something that is security related, with all those updates, do you compare cvs bulletins? Just saying more updates means nothing. Updates can be pushed to fix a typo as well.

I believe over all, your poll should have been more related to the best default selection in the repo pool. I am confident that 99% of fellow users would have supported your opinion without second thought. But comparing ease of use. Rhel is pretty easy in many respects since the configs are fairly well organized and i know that if it is system related i can almost be guaranteed to find it in a specific folder. Not that ubuntu is different in that respect, but if one admin get use to a certain way, things may appear easier for them on a similar system than someone that is used to a different system and layout. But those are things that a few notes and manuals can easily fix up. For example, i still have a book from Jang for the rhce on my desk. Sometimes just a quick look in there or the redhat deployment or storage manuals really go a long way. Eeryone cannot always remember everything.

Oh I get it, this is one of those polls where the OP already knows the answer. ;)

No, they don't rely on them, but they prefer to use them.
I doubt that, but since I am not a paying RHEL user I can't say if its true.
Who cares how predictable the changes are if they are not working correctly because releasing on a specific date is more important than fixing bugs?
Red Hat clearly separates between Fedora and RHEL. Other than Canonical, Red Hat would never release a RHEL version and at the same point recommends not to upgrade to this version yet because they think the OS is not stable enough. For Canonical releasing at a specific date is much more important than releasing a stable OS, which in my eyes automatically disqualifies it for the enterprise. Even Fedora delays a release if there are bugs that are considered to be showstoppers.