HP Offers SUSE License That Spans Multiple ProLiants

Published: February 14, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you are thinking about installing Linux on your servers, Hewlett-Packard has just made it easier to choose and deploy Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on the ProLiant line of tower, rack, and blade servers.

Under a deal that HP just worked out with Novell, the company is now offering a complete value-pack license that allows a company to buy licenses to SLES 9 for any collection of eight HP ProLiant physical or virtual machines. The license allows SLES 9 to be deployed on machines with one, two, or four sockets machines, using either single-core or dual-core Intel or AMD processors. The license is fluid in that you can deploy it on one machine and, if you change your mind, you can move it to another box. And if you are using virtualization software, you might even do such a move in real time. The licenses that HP is selling are based on a physical server--either a tower machine, a rack machine, or a single physical blade--and you can virtualize these machines as much as you want. The license costs $5,700 per year, and includes the SLES 9 licenses, installation support, online patch support through Novell's Yast online service, and 24x7 software support for the Linux stack (up to 25 incidents for the year). HP provides all of the support (aside from the patching), and Novell backs HP up for any Level 3 issues its tech support team can't handle. This is a very reasonably priced and intelligent bundle. You can get another set of services that cost more called Proactive Essentials, which includes a formal account support plan, system health checks, and advanced notification of upcoming support issues such as patches.

You don't have to buy a new server to get this licensing, but that is clearly what HP would like you to do. If you have eight ProLiant servers lying around and you want to put SUSE Linux on them, HP is cool with that, according to Jeffrey Wade, worldwide marketing manager for HP's open source and Linux organization. HP is not going to extend the deal to non-HP servers, and it is not available--at least not yet--on its Integrity line of Itanium servers.

The HP-Novell deal bears some resemblance to a BladeSystem bundle that HP announced at LinuxWorld last summer, but the Novell deal is a lot broader and more interesting. Red Hat had been participating in HP's BladeSystem solution builder program, which helps vendors cook up best practices for deploying their solutions on HP's blade iron, for some time. As a result of that collaboration, Red Hat tweaked its Red Hat Network support infrastructure and service with a BladeSystem toolkit (Release 1.0) to help customers deploy the solution. This toolkit became available in September 2005. HP and Red Hat also ginned up BladeSystem-level pricing for the solution, including virtualized blades.