Paid Red Hat Linux (KVM Virtualization)

[Mark Walter Smith]

Hey guys, I was wondering, if anyone of you have shifted using Paid Red Hat Linux with CentOS, and what are your experiences of moving from Paid Linux to Unpaid Linux CenOS. When do you suggest a person use Paid Linux and when to use Unpaid Linux?

[Matti_Kurkela]

In my opinion, use RHEL instead of CentOS if:

1.) It makes sense to you (i.e. you find the RedHat support worth the price to you)

or

2.) A commercially-supported OS platform is a requirement to get a full support agreement for a big commercial application software package you're running.

The OS is there to enable the applications to run. Therefore, if a very expensive special application requires a particular Linux distribution and/or hardware platform to be supported, then that's what you'll use if you want the application to be supported.

(In these cases, the cost of the application support agreement may sometimes be more than the cost of hardware + OS licensing put together!)

or

3.) Your client makes it a contractual requirement to use a commercially-supported OS versions, for whatever reasons.

MK