[NTLUG:Discuss] OT: RedHat support [was Redhat Offerings -- the Red Hat bashing tour isback!]

[Lance Simmons]

* Cameron, Thomas <Thomas.Cameron at bankofamerica.com> [040512 01:57]:
> > Lance Simmons
> > 
> > I've gotten used to the debian-user mailing list and debian irc
> > channels, both of which I think are impressive sources of support.
> > But one of the main appeals of RedHat to the corporate world, so one
> > keeps hearing, is support.  Just what kind of support are we talking
> > about?
> 
> We (Bank of America) have a pretty impressive support mechanism with
> Red Hat - we have a nice web-based issue tracker that apparently
> raises all kinds of alarms if we enter a severity 1 issue and a
> technical account manager who is awesome at getting us answers.  I
> don't pretend that we're typical - we're not.  We've spent a pretty
> penny to get that support.  

Thanks for the answer.  I didn't make clear enough in my post that I was
asking about RH support for the corporate world (which I'm not part of),
so thanks for addressing that.

I know it's apples and oranges, but could you compare (1) the web-based
issue tracker that BoA pays for and (2) community-based support such as
the debian-user list, IRC, and BTS?  My experience has been that when I
have a _question_, the debian mailing list or IRC gets it answered in a
matter of minutes or hours, though sometimes a day or two.  If I'm
having a _problem_, the debian BTS usually contains information to work
around it, and if I need to file a new bug report, I (usually) get a
timely response from the developer, though the issue does not always get
resolved immediately.  (Most often it gets solved pretty quickly, but
sometimes not; it depends on the individual developer and the nature of
the project the bug is in.)

Does the support RH offers high-end corporate customers go beyond that
to include Red Hat scrambling programmers to fix specific bugs that
might not otherwise get fixed?  Or would you say the RH corporate
support is more like a shiny, user-friendly version of what debian users
get from a mailing list, IRC and BTS?  I can understand why a
corporation would want to have the nice front-end instead of the looser,
community-based support, but I'm interested in whether, for high-end
clients, RH support goes beyond that.

-- 
Lance Simmons