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I have a question about Red Hat Linux Enterprise. My experience is
almost exclusively in Windows and I know almost nothing about Linux.
Here is my situation at work: we have a web server running Apache with
a MySQL database, but the site we have is running Windows 2000 Server
on an old HP box. My boss is going to get a new machine, but she
wants Linux put on it as the OS instead of Windows. The site gets
about 2.6 million hits a month and the server has 2 gig of
downloadable files on it. Here are my questions:

1. I'm trying to decide between putting Red Hat Enterprise Linux or
Red Hat Advanced Platform. Which software do you think would be best
for the type of website we have? There is no backup server or any
clustering or anything like that.

2. I know most versions of Linux are free, but you have to pay for
some. When I went to the Red Hat site, it showed difference
subscription prices, which are support for the software, so does that
price include the software itself (which I assume they'll send to you
with documentation) and the support or what?

3. What kind of machine should we get to run the versions of Linux
above (processor speed, RAM, etc.)?

Thanks. Sorry if these are basic questions, but I'm new to Linux. If
you need anything clarified, just ask. Thanks.

On 7 Sep, 01:22, invict0...@gmail.com wrote:
> I have a question about Red Hat Linux Enterprise. My experience is
> almost exclusively in Windows and I know almost nothing about Linux.
> Here is my situation at work: we have a web server running Apache with
> a MySQL database, but the site we have is running Windows 2000 Server
> on an old HP box. My boss is going to get a new machine, but she
> wants Linux put on it as the OS instead of Windows. The site gets
> about 2.6 million hits a month and the server has 2 gig of
> downloadable files on it. Here are my questions:
>
> 1. I'm trying to decide between putting Red Hat Enterprise Linux or
> Red Hat Advanced Platform. Which software do you think would be best
> for the type of website we have? There is no backup server or any
> clustering or anything like that.

It's irrelevant as faar as basic system capability is concerned. It's
when you need industrial scale server support, and kernel
modifications done by RedHat, and clustering features, that you need
Advanced Platform.

> 2. I know most versions of Linux are free, but you have to pay for
> some. When I went to the Red Hat site, it showed difference
> subscription prices, which are support for the software, so does that
> price include the software itself (which I assume they'll send to you
> with documentation) and the support or what?

Yes, you've got it. If you'd like to *test* with RHEL, you can
download and install CentOS. You don't get the support, or tools like
RedHat Network to manage the systems.

> 3. What kind of machine should we get to run the versions of Linux
> above (processor speed, RAM, etc.)?
>
> Thanks. Sorry if these are basic questions, but I'm new to Linux. If
> you need anything clarified, just ask. Thanks.

Call Dell or HP, or go look at www.pcsforeveryone.com to get a good
estimate of server capabilities and prices. Seriously, your needs seem
quite modest. You can probably grab a slightly out of date desktop and
set up a test installation on it.

Nico wrote:
> On 7 Sep, 01:22, invict0...@gmail.com wrote:
>> I have a question about Red Hat Linux Enterprise. My experience is
>> almost exclusively in Windows and I know almost nothing about Linux.
>> Here is my situation at work: we have a web server running Apache with
>> a MySQL database, but the site we have is running Windows 2000 Server
>> on an old HP box. My boss is going to get a new machine, but she
>> wants Linux put on it as the OS instead of Windows. The site gets
>> about 2.6 million hits a month and the server has 2 gig of
>> downloadable files on it. Here are my questions:
>>
>> 1. I'm trying to decide between putting Red Hat Enterprise Linux or
>> Red Hat Advanced Platform. Which software do you think would be best
>> for the type of website we have? There is no backup server or any
>> clustering or anything like that.
>
> It's irrelevant as faar as basic system capability is concerned. It's
> when you need industrial scale server support, and kernel
> modifications done by RedHat, and clustering features, that you need
> Advanced Platform.
>
You can get the same high levels of support for either. But the regular RHEL
release lets you get the lowest level of support for less money. That is not
available for the Advanced Server product.

I think they all get the same 2 kernels: the one for up to 4 GBytes of RAM,
and the one for more that uses the PAE extensions. I use the latter since I
have 8 GBytes RAM. The current one I have is 2.6.18-8.1.8.el5PAE. I have the
basic (cheapest) subscription that gives me automatic updates and
virtualization support (that I do not use). The difference is that if you
motherboard has more than two processor sockets, the regular RHEL does not
support it. It does not matter if you plug in hyperthreaded or multi-core
processors in those sockets (if the MB will take them, that is).

You should be able to see the differences here:

http://www.redhat.com/rhel/purchasing_guide.html
http://www.redhat.com/rhel/server/compare/

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