Netw 240 Week 6

Linux Vendors

DeVry University

During my research of Linux vendors, I have narrowed my options to three distinct vendors. I have found Red Hat, Novell, and Ubuntu were three of the best companies worldwide. Each vendor has their advantages and disadvantages. I will address the positive and negative points of each vendor. The main differences between the three vendors that I will discuss are cost, training & support, performance & reliability, and lastly availability.

The first thing I will discuss is cost. Cost is always an important issue that must be addressed for a business. A product that does not have an equal or gain return when compared to its cost would be considered a poor financial decision. Prices for each vendor vary with each vendor offering a variety of options for customers. I have found that one of the three companies would offer a particular service that the other three would not offer. I have found that the vendor Red Hat had two options for purchase. According to (Purchasing red hat,), the price given for one year is $3,249 per socket pair and for a three year contract it is $9,260 per socket pair. Both options have unlimited guest. Now looking at Novell on their prices, (Open enterprise server,) states that Novell Cluster Services 1.7/1.8 for Netware 6.5 and Open Enterprise Server Cluster Server License is $12,000. Ubuntu is the last of the vendors that I have price checked and according to (Server management,), Ubuntu charges $1,200 per server per year. Each company provides us with costs that might seem a little excessive for our company. The services they provided will be worth the money we spend or invest in this purchase.

Training and support is one of the most important factors when considering our purchase from one of the vendors. I think the questions like what kind of training will my employees receive and what kind of support can we expect with our purchase. We could have the best system in the world, but it would do...