[CentOS] reasons for using CentOS in business environments

[Barry Brimer]

On Wed, 28 Nov 2007, js wrote:

> Rogelio wrote:
>> My apologies if this question has been previously answered, but could
>> anyone here provide me with resources that I might use to help build a
>> case for exclusively using CentOS in an enterprise environment?
>> (Approximately 200 servers)
>>
>> Long story short, I've used a little of everything out there
>> (Gentoo/Debian/*BSD/Slackware) and have a fairly good overall strategy
>> of how they all work (all of them have lived on my laptop at one time
>> or another over the last 10 years or so), but I'm now looking for
>> solid business reasons that I can present to the CxO types of a
>> company to show them that CentOS is probably where they'd like to
>> look.
>>
>> Reasons thus far I've come up with include:
>>
>> --free *and* "fully" (at least, in my experience) compatible with RHEL
>> --fairly stable (I don't have problems unless I start mixing repos)
>> --yum packages (almost as cool as Debian! Ok, I'm biased...or maybe I
>> don't know how to properly use yum?)
>>
>> Any other suggestions / tips I might add to my list would be greatly
>> appreciated!

I have a simple rule that determines is I use RHEL or CentOS in my work 
environment.  Does the software running on this machine require RHEL in 
order to have vendor support.  An extension of that rule is whether nor 
not Red Hat would support the specific use of this server in my 
environment.

As an example, I have a server that is used to accept HTTPS PUTs.  I am 
using a module called mod_put.  This is the machine's only goal in life. 
If I were to call Red Hat for support, the first thing they would ask is 
if I have any 3rd party modules.  Since I do, they would ask me to remove 
it in order to continue troubleshooting.  Removing or disabling this 
functionality would lose its intended functionality.  Therefore this 
machine runs CentOS.

Hope this helps.
Barry