Re: Oracle Enterprise Linux and Linux Standard Base (LSB)

From: Tim Hall <tim_at_oracle-base.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 15:47:50 +0100
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=j4bXH3_6F7H2PxxJ7wPJaxRXKyRyFWkMiP_hk_at_mail.gmail.com>



Hi.

Oracle fully support and certifiy against both the new Oracle kernel and the RHEL kernel, so there is no pressing need to switch.

Should you switch? As Jared said previously, there aren't any public benchmarks to prove the suggested performance improvements, but Oracle are moving over to it themselves, including in their appliances, so it's a safe bet that it will end up being more thoroughly tested with Oracle products than the RHEL kernel in the near future. If you choose not to switch, many of the performance benefits will end up in the RHEL6 kernel, when it's finally released, and the remaining ones will leak into the kernel tree eventually. All the changes are open source, so there is no mystery. Linus can put them into Linux as soon as he likes.

Cost? OEL is free provided you don't mind waiting for a respin to get updates. You want updates as they happen you pay $107.10/server. If you want OS support, then of course you have to pay more.

The issue is, your Oracle database and middleware are fully supported on OEL even if you download and use it for free, without updates and OS support. I always use OEL in preference to RHEL myself.

Support? I've openly criticised Oracle Support in the past, but I can honestly say I have never experienced anything so bad as the so called support provided by Red Hat (nothing to do with Oracle). I would go as far as to say from *my experience* RH support is worth absolutely nothing. With that in mind, I would be happier using OEL + updates that using fully supported RHEL. Just my opinion. You are free to have a different one. :)

Cheers

Tim...

On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 5:03 PM, Ray Stell <stellr_at_cns.vt.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 06:18:01PM -0700, Jared Still wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 2:12 PM, Tim Hall <tim_at_oracle-base.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Frtis:
> > >
> > > I agree entirely. If some of the press actually took stock of the
> volume of
> > > code Oracle has released into the Linux kernel perhaps they would stop
> > > bitching for a few seconds to say thanks.
> >
> >
> > If the press wants to see some kind of documentation of what was done,
> > and some type of benchmark showing the improvements, I would have
> > to agree with them.
>
> I'm concerned about the future of RHEL support. I lived through the
> ups and downs or solaris "support." It was painful. They claimed to
> support it and it was was not pretty. I dumped solaris years ago
> because of this. I've been wondering since Larry began rattling the linux
> sabber if I would be forced into the Oracle OS offerings for santiy sake.
> I'll go if I have to even though the cost will be painful, but I just want
> to know if I have to and not have to find out the hard way. Is this
> concern baseless in your opinion?
>

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
Received on Fri Oct 01 2010 - 09:47:50 CDT

Original text of this message