Red Hat Tests Enterprise Linux ES Pricing With 25 Percent Discount

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat only four weeks ago announced the Enterprise Linux ES variant of the open source Linux 2.4 operating system for entry servers, and it is already rejiggering the prices in a special promotion that cuts the price of the product by 25 percent.

Red Hat's Enterprise Linux ES is a stripped down version of the company's Enterprise Linux AS (formerly known as Advanced Server), which started shipping a year ago. At the end of March, Red Hat rolled out different price points for Linux AS and debuted the Linux ES version, which only supports uniprocessor and two-way servers using 32-bit Pentium and up to 4 GB of main memory. The Linux ES version includes network infrastructure applications as well as the core Linux operating system, but it does not scale to eight-way servers and it does not support two-node server clustering for high availability like Linux AS does.

One of the complaints about Linux AS was that at a support contract cost of $2,499 per year, it was too pricey to be a volume product. So Red Hat debuted a tiered edition scheme and tiered pricing to match on the Linux AS kernel, which is based on Red Hat's Linux 7.3 code with some modifications for SMP scalability and improvements in I/O aimed at servers. The Basic Edition of Linux ES costs $349, and it includes 90 days of installation and technical support for the Linux operating system. The Standard Edition of Linux ES has one year of Red Hat Network support with 12-hour, five-day support and four-hour response time on support calls, and its price was set at $799. With the 25 percent discount, which Red Hat says will be available for a limited time, the price for Linux ES Standard Edition has been cut to $599.

Pricing for the Standard Edition of Linux AS costs the same at $1,499, and it includes the same 12-hour, five-day support and four-hour response time on support calls. Pricing on the Premium Edition of Linux AS is also unchanged at $2,499; this edition has one-hour Red Hat Network tech support response on a 24/7 basis. Red Hat also says that it is out of stock on the Standard Editions of Linux AS. No word on when it will have more shrink-wrapped packages ready.

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