Re: [ProgSoc] The joys of commercial support

[Telford <telford@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au>]

On Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 04:58:38PM +1100, jedd wrote:
>  Greetings,
> 
>  Has anyone here had any experience with commercial linux
>  support, preferably domestically?

Well www.linuxhelp.com.au are selling it, and I've done a
bit of support for them, plus I'm selling myself as a contractor
so I'm willing to do support as part of that.

>  Better yet - has anyone had any commercial linux support
>  for non-RedHat, specifically Debian, systems?

Ummm, well so many businesses are running RedHat that the
general idea in linux support is that ``supporting linux''
usually comes down to ``support RedHat linux''. For the most
part, people who run Debian are the sort of people who also
do their own support.

This is not a hard-and-fast rule, there are exceptions.

>  I've heard
>  tell such things exist -- but they're not run by PHB-style
>  Americans, so perhaps they lack the requisite credibility.

credibility --> eye of the beholder

>  Does the support extend beyond phone/email - and into the
>  realm of writing patches, liasing with upstream authors, etc?
>  Is it limited to the distribution fabric only?  F.e. - a bug with
>  libc isn't going to be fixed by RH, presumably, but instead
>  fobbed off to the owners of libc.  Perhaps libc's a bad
>  example, but you get my question.

In a word, yes, in another word $$$.
I don't know anyone who will give you an unconditional promise
``your server will always work perfectly'' so if it comes down
to libc bugs and patches being needed, someone has to spend the
time doing it and whoever wants it will probably be the one who
pays. Liasing with upstream authors is pretty easy, I find most
of my emails get answered. Offering upstream payment is likely
to get even more emails answered.

>  What arguments do *you* provide to get around people
>  making fundamentally technical decisions that affect you,
>  that are based upon a complete lack of technical expertise.

Now we have the real problem... aside from social engineering,
skillful backstabbing at the right moment and general presence
of personality there isn't much in the way of a technical 
soultion for this particular problem. Idiots have a way of floating
to the top in corporate computing departments. That has been true
since computers were invented. Everything you see in Dilbert
is true.

>  <aside>
>  I'm [once again] in the middle of a pointless bunfight -- with
>  me on one side pushing Debian, and contractors and vendors
>  on the other side pushing RedHat.

The difference is not enough to make the issue worth fighting.
Spend your fighting effort for killing off NT servers -- the Linux
community are slowly but surely smoothing out their differences
all by themselves (shit, people who cooperate, unheard of).

>  The usual FUD pops up
>  every few minutes, with comments regarding commercial support
>  (or lack thereof).

It isn't totally FUD, it is easier to find people with RedHat
experience than Debian. Naturally, if you find someone really good they
will work equally well on both systems...

>  I can understand it coming from people who
>  think commercial support exists (from people like Sun, Oracle,
>  etc) .. but from it's worriesome that it also comes from people
>  who were in the same meetings I've been in over the past
>  few months as Oracle 7.1.6 / OAS / Solaris 7 / JDK/ Telstra 
>  issues remained steadfastly unsolvable, despite paid-up
>  commercial support, for several months.

If you are saying that having good people on staff is better than
having good people on the other end of a support contract then
I would have to agree, no matter what the system.

If you are saying that throwing a bit of money at a problem
does not always guarantee a fix, then I also agree with that one.

As for the relative merits of where you throw the money and
how to make the best situation out of what you have, I'd suggest
going for RedHat boxes in a commercial environment even though
I personally prefer the Debian system. The only exception would
be if you are doing something weird with your boxes which is where
the ``standardness'' of RedHat won't help you anyhow and the
flexiblity of Debian will be a benefit.

If you are doing run-of-the-mill stuff then use the run-of-the-mill
system (which is RedHat).

By the way, backspace is ^H, ref ASCII standard.

-- 
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