[CentOS-devel] Cent OS 5.5 Clustering and Support

Mon Apr 4 17:10:00 UTC 2011
Brian Mathis <brian.mathis+centos at betteradmin.com>

On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 12:31 PM, Charlie Brady
<charlieb-centos-devel at budge.apana.org.au> wrote:
> On Fri, 1 Apr 2011, Kumar, Ranjan wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> We are a Channel product team within LSI and we are trying to add Cent
>> OS 5.5 to our compatibility Matrix. We found out that LSI currently has
>> a relationship with CentOS for another project on the Internal Storage
>> division but not with the OS Certification team. We require some
>> information on CentOS which will help us plan the deliverables. And
>> considering the timelines we need to deliver at it will be great if
>> someone from CentOS can help us out in this regard. If anybody else also
>> can answer these in the mailing list, we would be grateful. The
>> questions that we have are as follows:-
>>
>> 1)      Cluster Support :
>> *         Does CentOS 5.5 provides native cluster support ?
>
> It's obvious that your research hasn't told you anything about what CentOS
> is. Via google, and via the website http://www.centos.org/, you can learn
> that CentOS 5.5 is technically the same as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5.
> It is the same source code, but compiled by different people, except where
> branding changes are required, where the source code will be changed to
> change branding information only.
>
> CentOS 5.5 has the same native cluster support as Red Hat Enterprise Linux
> 5.5 does.
>
>> *         Is there any cluster suite available for CentOS 5.5 ?
>
> Yes, the Red Hat Cluster Suite is included with CentOS 5.5.
>
>> *         Can we use the cluster suite in CentOS 4 for 5.5.
>
> No.
>
>> 2)      Does CentOS have any self Certification tool which allows
>>    OEMs/Vendors to qualify the OS and post it in their compatibility
>>    matrix?
>
> Not as far as I know, but you should do your own research on this, rather
> than ask us to do it for you.
>
>> One we start our qualification, we might need some help in resolving
>> issues/defects on CentOS. Can we open a channel or Point of contact who
>> will be able to help us out with such issues.
>
> CentOS support and engineering channels are described on the CentOS
> website. But in general CentOS does does not make any technical change in
> the kernel or clustering software - it is bug for bug compatible with the
> software produced by Red Hat.
>
>> I would also request to forward this email to the right forum if the
>> mailing list we are sending to is not the appropriate one.
>
> No mailing list will do this for you. You need to do your own homework.
>
>> Thanks and Regards.
>> Kumar Ranjan
>> LSI Technologies.


This response is completely unacceptable.  It takes no additional, and
actually less, effort to say:

    Thanks for your interest but you will have better luck dealing with
    Redhat directly.  This project repackages their software, so if you
    work with them, any issues you help fix will automatically be
    applied to CentOS.  2 birds with 1 stone, eh?  Pretty nice!

If you can't figure out how to say something in a constructive way,
don't say it.  Allow others who can, handle it.

// Brian Mathis