On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 3:55 PM Gena Makhomed <gmm at csdoc.com> wrote: > > On 28.01.2021 14:54, Neal Gompa wrote: > > > On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 6:22 AM Gena Makhomed <gmm at csdoc.com> wrote: > > >> What is about running in the one bare metal RHEL server virtual machines > >> with different subscription owners? For example, run in production on > >> one bare metal server 16 VMs with subscription owner Alice, and 16 VMs > >> with subscription owner Bob, and 16 VMs with subscription owner Carl, > >> and so on. Are such configurations legal and allowed or not? I didn't > >> find any limitations on the blog article, but for sure and for future I > >> need a clean and unambiguous answer from Red Hat. > >> > >> If such configurations are allowed - this is a legal workaround for a > >> limit of 16 no-cont RHEL instances. For example, a small company, with > >> 50 employees can absolutely legally have free and no-cost 800 RHEL > >> servers in self-support mode. Company with 100 employees can have 1600 > >> free no-cost RHEL servers in self-support mode and so on. > >> > >> If such configurations are forbidden (on what basis?) - I have no choice > >> but to migrate from free CentOS and no-cost RHEL to Oracle Linux or Alma > >> Linux or Rocky Linux. > >> > >> And in the future if my company grows and I will need to buy commercial > >> support - I will be forced by Red Hat's decision to buy subscriptions > >> for Oracle Linux from the Oracle Corporation? > >> > >> Is this the real goal of the no-cost RHEL 16 instance limit - force > >> CentOS users migrate to Oracle Linux? > > > Brian Exelbierd explained this whole thing quite well on the Ask Noah > > Show[1]. The answer to this is that what you're saying is perfectly > > allowed. The bet here is that this is sufficiently costly, risky, and > > a hassle (who wants to manage 100+ Red Hat accounts? I know I wouldn't!) > > that the company in question would decide to purchase RHEL > > subscriptions from Red Hat, especially after experiencing the value > > that Red Hat provides (Red Hat Insights, live kernel patching, etc.). > > But did you know the minimal price of one RHEL Server subscription? > > ~ 350 USD/year. > > So, subscription for 100 servers/VMs will be cost 35_000 USD/year. > > Every year. For 10 years price of 100 subscriptions is 350_000 USD. > > You don't need 100 Red Hat accounts, for 100 server subscriptions. > > For 112 RHEL Server subscriptions you need only 7 Red Hat accounts. > > 16 * 7 == 112. > > Managing 7 Red Hat accounts really is sufficiently costly, risky, > and a hassle? I don't see any problems with such work for 7 accounts. > > For 1600 servers minimal commercial price is 560_000 USD/year. > and price is 5_600_000 USD for 10 year subscription. For 1600 servers. > > Managing 100 Red Hat accounts really is sufficiently costly, risky, > and a hassle? This work cost more then 5_600_000 USD for 10 years? > It can be quite a hassle, especially if they have to be keyed to individual accounts and automation and such can only provision from one set of credentials at a time. At larger scale setups, it becomes quite messy and involved to actually maintain that. >From experience, I can already say it's a pain to manage *one* Red Hat account, much less 7 or 100. It's not just the money, it's the labor and the opportunity costs. > I don’t understand one thing, if it is so easy to get workaround > these restrictions of 16 no-cost RHEL instances and at the same time > bypassing these restrictions is completely legal - why were these > restrictions introduced at all? > > So that CentOS users should think about whether they should > switch to no-cost RHEL, or maybe they should think about switching > to completely free variant of Enterprise Linux from Oracle, which > does not have such restrictions on the number of no-cost instances > and don't need any subscriptions for seamless work at all? > > As previously CentOS Linux users live (mostly) without commercial > subscription and support from RHEL, the same in the future, > they can live with no-cost Oracle Linux (mostly) without > commercial subscription. > > If user of mass installation of Oracle Linux in future need commercial > support - he/she will buy commercial support from Oracle Corporation, > not from Red Hat/IBM. It's obvious, isn't it? Money will go to Oracle. > > This is some kind of strange situation when the Enterprise Linux > was created by Red Hat staff and Fedora community, but the Oracle > Corporation will make additional money on it, because this is where > a large number of CentOS users can/will go in current situation. > > > What I would have liked to see is the addition of some generic > > low-cost subscription options that would be sufficiently below the > > floor to fit with even low-margin businesses so that as a business > > grows from 16, to 50, to 100, to 1000, and so on, the company would > > continue to use RHEL and continue to support the awesome work Red Hat > > does. Right now, the current pricing is so unbelievably expensive that > > I would instead just convert the boxes from RHEL to CentOS Stream > > after a certain threshold. > > CentOS Stream is just a beta-version for next minor RHEL release. > > CentOS Stream is not ready for production, see for example, > bugreport https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1913806 > - this bug is present in CentOS Stream 8, but absent in CentOS 8.3. > Meh. Legacy CentOS Linux gets serious bugs all the time too. I had dozens of AMD servers that wouldn't boot because of a critical bug introduced in CentOS 7.3. There was a whole cycle where I had to hold back kernels because they couldn't release a fix until CentOS 7.4 arrived. At least with CentOS Stream, when the fix is made, I'll get it right away. That's better than before. > > I firmly believe that low-cost self-support options would be a good > > value for Red Hat to offer to the market, especially for a lot of > > those startups that eventually grow past the 16 server limit. I hope > > that's on the docket based on the comment at the top of the RHEL blog > > post that this is the first of many new programs. > > I hope so too, because if they do nothing, then many CentOS users will > simply leave for Oracle Linux. I just don't see any other way out now. > I'm optimistic. I know the folks at Red Hat are doing their best, and I have faith in them. -- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!