Prediction: RHEL dies in the next 5-10 years anyway while everyone moves to free options. Considering the amount of containerization being run on production systems, whatever VM is running docker or k8s doesn’t need to really be managed to the same level that VM/bare metal webservers required in the past.
Sure, some big orgs will still foot the license fees, but considering CentOS/RHEL was the standard previously, I don’t really see a benefit for corps to pay those fees any longer. Most will probably move to some random free stable distro for their VMs, and run any production resources via lightweight containers based on something like Alpine.
I think you’re underestimating the value organizations and enterprises put on having high quality support available at a moments notice. Particularly first party support.
For now. Like I said, the amount of work being done on the host level is going to decrease as organizations move away from traditional monoliths and into purpose built microservices.
Yes, some companies will still run their environments like it’s 2014 in 2025, but that percentage is going to decrease considerably when the productivity, cost, and maintainability gains of orchestration tools like kubernetes are realized.
I went from being a traditional bare metal sysadmin surrounded by a team of 30+ to a cloud admin that could do the work of 25 datacenter techs to a DevOps Engineer who can do what would have taken dozens of sysadmins to do 10 years ago.
Businesses can tolerate their tech debt for awhile, but eventually economics takes over and those businesses either adapt or fail.
I just don’t see something like RHEL existing in its current form without being the de facto enterprise standard, and moves like this make companies more likely to look for alternatives.
I know the vendors I work closely with are all moving away from that model.
I completely agree, but I don’t agree that RHEL can’t pivot to this new model. And their first mover advantage as the “enterprise operating system” won’t go away.
I guess your point is that their mismanagement of this situation is evidence of their eventual downfall, but I just don’t know if I buy that
I think their position in the market allows them to make these types of bad decisions without much fallout. If anything this just buys them more time
We migrated from 6->7 in just under a year (university). Under a month could be seen also as risky, but great that some have the liberty of speedy migration paths.
I fear you’ve misunderstood, the org has been migrating for the last 4 years, my point is the migration from 6-7 is still ongoing when both 8 and 9 have been released. A 5-10 year exit from rhel is super optimistic for some orgs.
Prediction: RHEL dies in the next 5-10 years anyway while everyone moves to free options. Considering the amount of containerization being run on production systems, whatever VM is running docker or k8s doesn’t need to really be managed to the same level that VM/bare metal webservers required in the past.
Sure, some big orgs will still foot the license fees, but considering CentOS/RHEL was the standard previously, I don’t really see a benefit for corps to pay those fees any longer. Most will probably move to some random free stable distro for their VMs, and run any production resources via lightweight containers based on something like Alpine.
I think you’re underestimating the value organizations and enterprises put on having high quality support available at a moments notice. Particularly first party support.
For now. Like I said, the amount of work being done on the host level is going to decrease as organizations move away from traditional monoliths and into purpose built microservices.
Yes, some companies will still run their environments like it’s 2014 in 2025, but that percentage is going to decrease considerably when the productivity, cost, and maintainability gains of orchestration tools like kubernetes are realized.
I went from being a traditional bare metal sysadmin surrounded by a team of 30+ to a cloud admin that could do the work of 25 datacenter techs to a DevOps Engineer who can do what would have taken dozens of sysadmins to do 10 years ago.
Businesses can tolerate their tech debt for awhile, but eventually economics takes over and those businesses either adapt or fail.
I just don’t see something like RHEL existing in its current form without being the de facto enterprise standard, and moves like this make companies more likely to look for alternatives.
I know the vendors I work closely with are all moving away from that model.
I completely agree, but I don’t agree that RHEL can’t pivot to this new model. And their first mover advantage as the “enterprise operating system” won’t go away.
I guess your point is that their mismanagement of this situation is evidence of their eventual downfall, but I just don’t know if I buy that
I think their position in the market allows them to make these types of bad decisions without much fallout. If anything this just buys them more time
To me it feels like a candle flickering before it goes out.
If they weren’t bleeding revenue, they wouldn’t be shaking up the status quo in such an obvious, unpopular way.
I’m happy to be wrong, but I just don’t think they have staying power.
Not to mention how long it takes a big org to migrate, even between versions of rhel. I’ve seen 6 -> 7 migrations happen inside the last month.
We migrated from 6->7 in just under a year (university). Under a month could be seen also as risky, but great that some have the liberty of speedy migration paths.
I fear you’ve misunderstood, the org has been migrating for the last 4 years, my point is the migration from 6-7 is still ongoing when both 8 and 9 have been released. A 5-10 year exit from rhel is super optimistic for some orgs.
Agreed. It’s all about support. Anything less will more than likely not be entertained.
It seems the HPC space is moving this direction. Lots of labs are looking to transition away from RHEL.