[rhelv6-list] Redhat 6 New Pricing Scheme = crap

[Don Hoover]

Has everyone seen the totally new pricing scheme for RHEL6?

Gone are the days of simply having two versions of RHEL server.

Now Redhat has decided they want to create a complicated pricing scheme where everything is a different tier and everything is an addon.


Examples:

    * Pricing is now per-socket-pair, where on the RHEL5-based model, Advanced Platform was for any server with more sockets.

    * Advanced Platform (at $1500, or $2500 with premium support) previously came with Cluster and GFS, now Cluster is addtional and GFS is also additional.

    * Standard previously allowed 4 guests (plus hypervisor), whereas it now only allows one guest at the same pricing, support for 4 guests costs about 80% more.

    * Advanced Platform (at $1500, or $2500 with premium support) previously allowed unlimited guests, now it costs $3249 per socket-pair with 


This is TOTALLY CRAZY...for example:

A virtualisation cluster, using 8-socket dual-core servers.

On RHEL 5-era pricing, this was costing $1500 per server per year. 

With the new pricing, it would cost ($1999(unlimited guests)+$399(cluster)+$799(GFS))*4 processor pairs 
= $12788 per server per year, **********an 850% increase**********



What is Redhat marketing smoking?

Not to mention that frankly, I don't want to have to implement all the changes to my inventory system to keep track of all this crap to make sure I am paying for everything we are using.  Do you ever think of that?


Sorry...but even here at a fortune 50, $12k vs CENTOS will be an easy sell.