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Like WS, ES offers only standard support. Basic editions, those with only update support and no technical support, start at $349, and standard editions start at $799. If roughly $800 per copy sounds expensive, remember that it includes one year of unlimited technical support for Red Hat.
AS is Red Hat's premier edition of RHEL and boasts compatibility with a wide range of hardware architectures. This version of RHEL can run on typical Linux hardware, like x86, Intel Itanium and AMD 64, as well as atypical hardware, such as IBM pSeries, iSeries, zSeries and s/390 processor architectures. AS is supported on machines with very large processor and memory configurations--up to 16 processors and 64 GB of memory in x86 architectures (other architectures vary). RHEL AS is expensive compared with WS and ES, but it's the only version that offers 24/7, one-hour-response technical support--a must for mission-critical application servers.
Taking into account the less-expensive x86-based hardware and RHEL AS costs, AS is more affordable than Sun Microsystems Solaris or IBM AIX running on SPARC or pSeries servers. RHEL AS for x86 processors starts at $1,499 with standard support and increases to $2,499 for premier-level access. RHEL AS on zSeries and s/390 architectures starts at a hefty $15,000, which does not include premium support--tack on $3,000 for that!
We found the default package selection appropriate for each version, and the Red Hat installer let us customize the installation from the default selections. RHEL also lets administrators custom-compile applications on the operating system; this worked flawlessly on all three varieties when we compiled the latest version of the Apache Web server. Although custom applications are not supported by Red Hat per se, use of such applications does not invalidate the company's support offerings.
So you've decided to take the plunge and purchase a data center full of RHEL servers. But how do you manage them most efficiently? With the included RHN services, of course. RHN is a complete systems-management tool built on a simple Web-based interface and comes in three flavors: hosted, proxy server and satellite server. You can increase the functionality of the service by adding modules such as update, monitoring, management and, by the time you read this, provisioning.
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