Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

unclug - [unclug] RHN proxy

unclug AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: UNC Linux Users Group

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Andy Ingham <ingham AT email.unc.edu>
  • To: unclug AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [unclug] RHN proxy
  • Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 16:39:25 -0500

I'm very excited that this discussion is happening, but a little dismayed about a couple of things.
A point that seems to missed is that the $5,000 is an *annual* expense. Sure, we can take up a collection, pool our money and pay the bill this year. Then we have to do it again next year? And the year after that? And ibiblio has graciously offered to host the system, but does that mean that they have to find the money to buy and replace the hardware?

There seems to be little doubt that there are enough RH installations on campus to justify a base level recurring annual expense ($5K plus hardware costs periodically) so that each license for individual systems is a fraction of what it would be without that initial annual expense. Fred indicated that "there are nearly 500 machines that initially could be installed with Red Hat." That, to me, means that we probably *already* spend more across the University for departments to individually license and maintain RH machines than we would with the RHN proxy setup.
My sense is that a centrally supported (and funded!) RHN also increases the likelihood that machines will be kept "up2date" (since it costs departments less to do so), which improves the security of the campus network.

My 2 cents.

Andy

Andy Ingham
Systems Librarian
University Libraries
UNC-Chapel Hill
919-962-1288
andy_ingham AT unc.edu







Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page