Bugzilla – Bug 23487
Official Support for ZCS Network Edition on CentOS
Last modified: 2013-05-15 10:13:20 CDT
With the lively discussions surrounding Zimbra's recent reiteration that CentOS is not an official, supported platform, it's time for Zimbra's customers to request such support. The annual costs associated with the purchase and maintenance of SUSE ES and RHEL are prohibitive for some companies, forcing some Zimbra customers to seek out alternatives to keep their own operational costs under control while enjoying the Zimbra product. Most current alternatives to the costly Enterprise packages lead your customers to CentOS. The use of CentOS is growing among the Zimbra customer base; nothing illustrates this more than a quick scroll through customer postings on the Zimbra support forums. It's time that this group of customers be allowed to have the security of an officially supported and tested platform. Requested platforms for support would include: - CentOS 4.x (32 and 64 bit) - CentOS 5.x (32 and 64 bit) If others want to register their support for CentOS being an officially supported platform, be sure to vote for this enhancement request.
Network AND Opensource Editions :)
In the spirit of open architecture, please reconsider (quickly) your policy, and do offer official support for CentOS. Zimbra's current position is prejudicial to our company. We do not want to be forced to seek a Zimbra alternative. Thanks in advance for understanding and best wishes for 2008. Paul David Bodin, Carlsen & Co.
As a Zimbra partner/reseller, I also want CentOS support.
As a Zimbra reseller, I second the need for CentOS support.
Just to add another comment - we have 5 CentOS 4.x machines running Zimbra NE here. When I bought my NE license, I was told CentOS was to become a supported platform, as I wasn't (and am not) in a position to change the OS on five (live) servers.
Small non-for-profit and think CentOS should be supported. I currently run Zimbra NE on OSX box but miss the Virtualization option for DR so I am considering migration to Linux for our Zimbra installation. I like many of the options made available but would also like to have CentOS as option as well. New to CentOS, but thought it was a binary clone of RHEL. From their site "(CentOS 2, 3, 4 and 5 are built from publicly available open source SRPMS provided by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policies and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork)." So, if true it is basically clone without artwork and branding would it really be that hard to support? Until Red Hat comes up with a licensing cost structure for the little guys CentOS may be our only choice.
Zimbra CentOS support is also important to the public EDUs of the world. RHEL would like to charge us $60/server/year WITHOUT support. I view it as a moral imperative that I don't waste this state's taxpayer dollars to line corporate pockets for no services of value in return when there is a binary-compatible option available at no cost via CentOS. On the other hand, I have no problem using our -limited- (have I emphasized LIMITED? :-) funding to buy software when it provides value to us. So, I'd like to keep renewing my Zimbra NE license, but not if it means I'm going to have to start paying for RHEL. Please reconsider your position on CentOS. Thank you.
(In reply to comment #16) > Zimbra CentOS support is also important to the public EDUs of the world. RHEL > would like to charge us $60/server/year WITHOUT support. I view it as a moral > imperative that I don't waste this state's taxpayer dollars to line corporate > pockets for no services of value in return when there is a binary-compatible > option available at no cost via CentOS. > > On the other hand, I have no problem using our -limited- (have I emphasized > LIMITED? :-) funding to buy software when it provides value to us. So, I'd like > to keep renewing my Zimbra NE license, but not if it means I'm going to have to > start paying for RHEL. > > Please reconsider your position on CentOS. Thank you. Wow. I'm not following that argument at all. I'm an EDU customer. I happily pay $60/yr for my RHEL license compared to what a regular commercial RHEL license costs. Compare that to the cost for ZCS and an SSL certificate, $60/yr doesn't even register as a cost. Now that being said, I also run CentOS on some other commercial installations of Zimbra and actually prefer it to RHEL (yum mainly), and have voted for this bug because official CentOS support would be great, but for an EDU customer and $60/year, you might as well be fully supported right now (by Zimbra). Also, with RHEL, you do get the security updates about a day before CentOS does because they have to recompile/package them for CentOS mirrors, so there is some value there. Not trying to hijack this bug... Just wanted to add my perspective. John
Your points are valid from a financial impact point of view. I probably wasn't as clear as I needed to be, but as I hinted at in the previous post, it's more about the "moral imperative" of not paying something for nothing when I can pay nothing for nothing where taxpayer dollars are involved, whether that's $60 or $6000. (Although if it turns into 10 or 20 servers @ $60/year, hey, that's a server memory upgrade or a new desktop for someone. Every bit does count, why waste it?) Redhat charges academic entities a fee yet provides no support. I'm basically giving Redhat $60 to get the same product -and- the same (absence of) service that I get with CentOS for $0. So while the $ numbers might be small, it's more than the money. From a more practical point of view, our department has 200+ CentOS installs in it right now. We have local mirrors and yum repositories for CentOS. Our PXE based installs of CentOS are well-tested and integrated into our management procedures. It's just a heck of a lot easier not to introduce more variables to the environment. We are comfortable with what we have, and since it's binary-compatible with RHEL, it should not be a problem for Zimbra to support it. So my vote is a small bit about money, a slightly larger bit about Doing The Right Thing, and a significant bit about wanting to stick with a product we are comfortable with and which adds trivial extra burden on Zimbra to support. To throw a bit of fuel on this fire, others out there (*cough*Scalix v11.4) plan to officially support CentOS. (That was somewhat unfair, but I couldn't resist :-) I'm not a Scalix flight risk, but it still makes a point.
Please don't hijack this bug. Please take non-technical discussion to the forums, or we'll make this bug private.
As a point of reference, we've been running Zimbra on CentOS since July 2006. The only CentOS specific bug in that time that I've run across was a typo in Zimbra's get_plat_flag.sh script (bug 19293). In that time we've run everything from 4.0.0 to 5.0.4 (at least in testing) on installations ranging from single servers to dozens of machines.
I would like to see CentOS support as well.
I concur: Network Edition as well, please. My sales rep has told me that you'll support it informally (best effort), but that's a bit too informal for me... :-)
Yes please! :)
Running centos5 with all versions (pro, network, and open). Would like to see this officially supported.
Official support for CentOS would be great! We are a partner and really would prefer to stick with CentOS vs RHEL.
This is pretty much a given, considering the differences are little more than copyrighted artwork. I wouldn't doubt that you sales rep said it's unofficially supported, but when we've called in the first thing we heard was "That's not a supported operating system". Getting support after that was hit and miss and the forums have become our primary source for support for our Network Edition system.
I would also like to see CentOS supported for the Network Edition, I've been running it on CentOS 4 since version 4 of Zimbra, first in Open Source version and then upgraded it to the Network version... I didn't even realise that it wasn't supported fully (if at all.) I'm now on 4.5.11 and have stopped a proposed upgrade to 5.0.11 due to not having supported if the upgrade to 5.0.11 was to go wrong. It would be a real benefit to small organisations if CentOS could be supported.
since some of the first zcs 6.0 are on centos http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=224243&package_id=307312 does this mean zcs 6.0 will support centos?
Those builds do not come from Zimbra.
It's pretty sad that the second highest rated bug (by vote count) can't get prioritized in the work queue 14 MONTHS after I filed it - but the free community build can pump out nightly releases of the beta for CentOS.... While I'm happy that Zimbra is finally making headway on the backlog of long outstanding bugs, I'm disappointed that this bug has been in the top 10 since shortly after it was filed, and it has seen NO official action or update. Zimbra owes it's paying customers an official update on the status of this bug.
Robert it is my belief from the numerous and rigorous conversations I've had with Zimbra both on and off the forums is that Zimbra have no intention of ever doing anything with this bug. They on one hand say they listen to their paying customers and will follow our wishes, yet on the other when it comes this bug flat our refuse to entertain it. Till I here John say something different I'll continue to believe this to be the case. Zimbra's policy regarding platforms is as follows: "We only support platforms that have a support system in place for issues. For example, what happens if there's a bug in the kernel? Who will we call? Well, RedHat.... We reguarly fix bugs for centos specifically(we don't often mention it), but there is no organization behind centos for us to contact for their bugs." "We've made our position on this very clear: We have no plans to support CentOS. Nothing against the OS, but we support RHEL, just like every other software vendor. No one builds for CentOS, they build for RHEL. CentOS builds RHEL. RHEL is the standard, not CentOS. Without RHEL, CentOS doesn't exist."
"We only support platforms that have a support system in place for issues..." this is usually the case put when moving/keeping an MS system!
"We only support platforms that have a support system in place for issues. For example, what happens if there's a bug in the kernel? Who will we call?" They could always try the bug tracking system. But maybe that's too obvious an answer. :) I'm curious what CentOS bugs they've fixed specifically. In two and a half years and hundreds of installs the only one I've seen was a typo in an install script.
Can anyone cite sources for these quotes?
The quotes came from John Holder.
"CentOS builds RHEL." Shouldn't this be "CentOS builds FROM RHEL."?
Agreed! (In reply to comment #31) > It's pretty sad that the second highest rated bug (by vote count) can't get > prioritized in the work queue 14 MONTHS after I filed it - but the free > community build can pump out nightly releases of the beta for CentOS.... > > While I'm happy that Zimbra is finally making headway on the backlog of long > outstanding bugs, I'm disappointed that this bug has been in the top 10 since > shortly after it was filed, and it has seen NO official action or update. > > Zimbra owes it's paying customers an official update on the status of this bug. >
With the VMware buyout of Zimbra, I wonder whether the Zimbra policy on CentOS support will change. In VMware's official documentation for ESX server it tells how to use their product with CentOS 4 and 5: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/GuestOS_guide.pdf That document is dated November 2009, so it's recent too. So they have no problem with supporting CentOS on their highly expensive, mission critical commercial products. Come on Zimbra, it's time to get with the program.
OK Zimbra, I think 2+ years is a fair amount of time to make up your mind. Either start supporting CentOS like every other linux software vendor I've come across. Or don't and close this bug as WONTFIX to clear the space in the top 15. Keeping this as ASSIGNED without some actual progress is pointless. There is no technical development that could possibly influence this decision.
Agreed. VMware supports CentOS with their products, why doesn't Zimbra?
*** Bug 7137 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This is definitely needed. 90% of our servers are CentOS and I would prefer to continue to use it for zimbra.
Wondering if there is any interest in supporting Scientific Linux which uses the RHEL source? This is an interesting discussion on the matter. Seems that it could be a good well maintained OS for our needs without having to go to the RHEL route if you don't need their tech support. http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/coffee-lounge/176381-scientific-linux-6-vs-rhel-6-vs-centos.html
So, if true it is basically clone without artwork and branding would it really be that hard to support? Until Red Hat comes up with a licensing cost structure for the little guys CentOS may be our only choice. Thanks Byregards Cyber World Uk ltd http://www.cyberworldltd.co.uk/screen-protectors.htm http://www.cyberworldltd.co.uk/car-holders-and-cradles.htm http://www.cyberworldltd.co.uk/cables-and-connectors.htm
CentOS its the way to go!
I would like CentOS support and would like to have Debian support as well (shouldn't be too difficult to support given the parallels with Ubuntu?)
Agree 100%
All our server are running on CentOS
All of our Zimbra deployments have always been on CentOS. I would also be willing to bet that this has made up the lion's share of the Zimbra deployments especially prior to Ubuntu support being added. All of our Network clients have current support contracts and I have yet to have someone deny me support because we are using CentOS. While I understand the need to not have to support every OS under the sun. VMware should realize that migrating Zimbra from one platform to another is not a trivial task and create scripts and/or tools to ease this burden before deciding not to support or end support for OS's or platforms. Such as enforcement of non-support of CentOS, ending support for 32bit OS's, and ending support for RHEL 5x. We started deploying Zimbra years ago on 32bit CentOS 4 & 5 as is it was the only free OS option for Zimbra at the time. Back then Zimbra support said that CentOS was fine to use and that there would be no issues with receiving support on paid support contracts since CentOS was 100% binary compatible with RHEL. So we fast forward to this year and we see more harsh language in the license terms and all 32bit support dropped along with RHEL5, SLES10, Ubuntu8, but no easy method of migrating. Sure CentOS should be supported, but in lieu of this at least provide a migration tool so we can migrate to "supported" platforms as support gets ended.
Change 455217 by quanah@qmain on 2013/03/19 13:20:30 bug: 23487 Pretend CentOS is RHEL. http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=23487 Affected files ... ... //depot/zimbra/main/ZimbraBuild/rpmconf/Build/get_plat_tag.sh#59 edit
Change 455218 by quanah@qint on 2013/03/19 13:22:52 Integrated the following from //depot/zimbra/main/...: Change 455217 by quanah@qmain on 2013/03/19 13:20:30 bug: 23487 Pretend CentOS is RHEL. http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=23487 Affected files ... ... //depot/zimbra/IRONMAIDEN/ZimbraBuild/rpmconf/Build/get_plat_tag.sh#2 integrate
Clarification, please, Quanah: Does CLOSED FIXED on this bug mean that the formal Zimbra Support machinery has been instructed to accept installs on CentOS as equivalent to RHEL for purposes of official support reponses? (Also: YAY! THANKS!! :-)
Supported beginning with 8.0.4 release.
In 8.0.4 Release Notes.