Red Hat pricing and updates question

[leaded]

Hey everyone. I have a question about how RHEL works.

I'm referencing http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compare/server/

The Basic Edition of RHEL ES is $349 and contains

• 30 Days Installation and Basic Configuration Phone Support, 1 business day response
• 1 year Installation and Basic Configuration Web Support, 2 business days response
• 1 year Red Hat Network

I'm fine with the limited phone and web support. It, along with the $799 package, only includes 1 year of RHN. Does that mean that after 1 year I no longer receive updates? What exactly does the RHN do? If RHN is only Web-based updating, that's okay, because I'm fine with just running "yum -y update" or similar every now and then, or even as a cron job.

We're buying three development servers and this is the first time management has ok'ed the use of something other than Solaris. I tried to recommend CentOS but they don't really get it. Red Hat means something to them, but I don't think we should waste money on a bunch of support that we never use (I swear we purchase support for every product around here and NEVER use it).

Thanks!

[RupertPupkin]

RHEL uses a subscription model. So yes, your access to updates expires after a year, unless you renew your subscription. RHN is the prefered way to get the updates, but regardless of how you get the updates, you can only get them if your RHEL subscription is paid up.

[leaded]

Really? So if I got the $2499 RHEL AS Premium I would only get 1 year of updates? That's ridiculous!

Assuming my superiors still wanted to go with RHEL, would we have to renew our RHN subscription once a year?

[RupertPupkin]

Yes, that's what it means.

[leaded]

Guess I should try and push CentOS again...

[Jman]

Red Hat does have sales representatives...

Without the Red Hat brand it's going to be tricky to persuade that yes this is Red Hat minus the support part.