| CentOS gains enterprise support |
Dec. 01, 2009
 Open source software service provider OpenLogic says it is now offering support for CentOS Linux, a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The CentOS product offering is the first of several low-cost support packages OpenLogic will offer for community distributions of Linux, says the company.
OpenLogic provides enterprise support solutions for hundreds of certified open source packages. Customers can search through its free OpenLogic Exchange (OLEX) website to locate, research, and download software, says the company. OpenLogic services are said to include indemnification, updates, technical support, open source governance, and automated integration and deployment of open source components.
The company is pricing the CentOS support based on the number of servers and the desired SLA (service level agreement). Prices start at $500 per server for small deployments, and extend up to $15,000 per year for an unlimited number of servers, says OpenLogic.
All CentOS support contracts include indemnification, virtual machine support, and support for an unlimited number of support incidents. Also included is support for an unlimited number of sockets or CPUs, says OpenLogic.
Support is provided via internal support experts, backed by open source developers in the OpenLogic Expert Community and companies in the OpenLogic Expert Partner program. Two new Expert Partners are said to be assisting with the CentOS support: Credativ and Pantek.
OpenLogic will expand its support to other community Linux distributions in 2010, says the company.
About CentOS
CentOS is a popular and mature open source community clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). In October, CentOS released CentOS 5.4, which reflected changes made to RHEL 5.4. CentOS 5.4 upgraded 266 packages, added 27, and implemented preview versions of the ext4 file-system and KVM hypervisor, among other enhancements.
This summer, the CentOS project settled a rift that culminated when team members threatened founder Lance Davis with a project fork unless he became more active in the project and accounted for fund contributions. Shortly thereafter, the project announced that the majority of issues had been resolved, and a working agreement was reached with deadlines for remaining issues.
Stated Steve Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic, "Our enterprise customers want high-quality support for open source at a reasonable price. We have been successfully providing one-stop support on more than 500 open source products. Adding support for CentOS and other community distributions of Linux is a natural extension of our business."
Stated Joe Conway, president of Credativ, "Like OpenLogic, we see growing interest in our professional services from organizations using community Linux editions instead of the more expensive enterprise editions."
Stated Barry Zack, owner and president of Pantek, "We use CentOS Linux to run our production hosting and internal development environments. Through Pantek's support of the cAos Foundation, we support the community of open source developers, contributors and users working together to provide community assembled operating systems (CAOS) including CentOS Linux."
Availability
Support plans for CentOS are available now, with yearly prices ranging from $500 per server to $15,000 for unlimited servers, says OpenLogic. More information may be found at an OpenLogic blog on the offering here.
-- Eric Brown
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