On Dec 12, 2010, at 11:45 AM, Zdenek <zdenek.w at o2.pl> wrote: > Hello all. > > Does anybody have experience with pushing CentOS in enterprise? I do, but I have it easy because I am the IT management. > I have the following situation. I tried to promote CentOS to local bank. They have now a couple of Gentoo-based systems and I tried to explain them that CentOS is much better option for enterprises. > > IT department is interested in stability of the system, so they are ready to give CentOS a try. But the problem came from management and information security division. They are OK with the roll-your-own style of Gentoo? Especially with it's cutting edge versions, bugs, security holes and the only way to overcome them is to upgrade to an even newer version that may break compatibility, introduce new bugs, zero-day vulnerabilities, the list goes on and on. Gentoo is a great distro for learning Linux, in a computer lab, or for a home hobbyist, but not quite enterprise stable. > That guys look much affected by FUD created by M$. They tell the story like "you can not rely on this open source, it is built by just few community geeks, you never know what will happen if the developer will be hit by bus tomorrow" and so on. They especially refer to the last year FUD story published at ZDNet (http://goo.gl/y0LBi). So, IT guys are allowed to use open source only if they can prove that it has stable community and transparent development and build process they can reproduce on their own if necessary. CentOS is a recompile of RHEL with the intellectual property stripped, so you can drop-in replace it with RHEL. > I guess, I'm not the first who encounter this issue. Could you share your experience how to deal with it? Are there any public resources that can be used as proofs of CentOS stability? You can mix up RHEL and CentOS in the same environment. Use RHEL on key mission critical systems and CentOS on one-off systems to reduce license costs, but maintain 100% compatibility between the two. It really is the perfect combination for my environment and I run the IT operations for a financial group which includes a commercial bank. -Ross