[SOLVED] Re: CentOS Official Support

[langs]

I find your recent thread stating centos is not nor will be supported comical given I had a 3 way voice conference with Zimbra execs in September that said the opposite when I was renewing our NE contract.

I have used centos 4.5 with zimbra for 2 years odd now with no problems, only issues I've had have been zimbra ones. I was told at the presales stage that centos tickets would be supported and had this reconfirmed in september and have this in writing.

That said I have had no problem moving from 4.5.x to 5.0.0 on centos 4.5 64bit using the RHEL4 64bit packages and I doubt I will move to another platform in the future. Certainly not going to deploy ubuntu thats for sure, maybe migrate to solaris when / if it gets supported.

Have these issues you have reported been with centos 5?

[gmsmith]

Perhaps there was a misunderstanding in your conference calls. CentOS has never been officially supported by Zimbra. The documentation has always been very clear about which version of RHEL were supported. The forums have always provided a method of unofficial support for Cent (which I have always appreciated myself). I would suggest having a conversation with your sales rep regarding your particular situation.

[jholder]

CentOS is not a supported platform. We've said this all along. Does support continue to help users? Sure they do. We don't want to leave our users in the dark. Would we help you? Yes.

However, all of that aside, we don't test on it. You want a stable and supported system? Go with a supported platform. I'm not sure who the execs were, but if you pm me their names, I'll be happy to speak with them about any special circumstances you have.

Given that we don't support CentOS 5, we have no duty to report any issue our users find.

[langs]

It's a bit hard to misunderstand when I got it in writing also.. apart from that I don't know why Zimbra would want to support Ubuntu over Centos in the first place, even Ubuntu tell you if you want to run a stand alone server you are better off with Centos.

A few times now I've seen Zimbra employee's make bald statements on these forums and every time I've questioned it or tasked my sales rep about it they have come back and told me they are honoring what they have said to me in the past.

I have shot off another email again, maybe this is an issue with Centos 5 more then anything, my conversations have always been about 4.5.

[jholder]

Originally Posted by langs

maybe this is an issue with Centos 5 more then anything, my conversations have always been about 4.5.

As strange as this may sound, I tend to think that as well. We've repoed this on CentOS 4.6+

We just want what's best for you, that's all.

[brwatters]

Strange ... we run Zimbra v5.0GA on CentOS 4.6 without issue .. It rocks and is 100% stable ..

BRW

[Rich Graves]

Bad mojo... y'all could have spun the same message in a less inflammatory way, like "Users have discovered a serious perl library compatibility problem between RHEL and CentOS, violating the implicit expectation that they are equivalent platfomrs. Please note that the RHEL builds of Zimbra are only built, tested, certified, and supported on RHEL. If you are running CentOS, please file a bug report and follow up in this thread. Zimbra can't file that bug report against CentOS because we're not hte ones using or supporting it." Gets you off the hook and makes it clear where the responsibility lies.

So, have any Zimbra users filed the needed bug report against CentOS?

This is a mere technical problem that could be fixed. If CentOS isn't going to fix it, then flame (or, better, join!!!!) their community, not Zimbra.

[jholder]

I can see that.

The fact is, for some reason no matter how much we say it, it doesn't seem to sink in. We try hard to ensure Zimbra works, and we try to guide our community.

If users really want to run it, more power to ya! Heck, if I want to install a webserver quickly, I install CentOS and run yum install php; and it takes care of it.

I don't want you to think this is a witch hunt against Cent or users running Cent.

Now, to be fair, Zimbra has it's own fair share of bugs. We understand these things well

My points are as follows:
1) If you use CentOS and are a NE customer, we won't leave you in the dark.
2) The claim of 100% compatibility isn't always true. That's why they have their own bug system: My View - CentOS Bug Tracker
3) Strongly worded, yes. But the motive is this: We want you to stay happy. You won't be happy if your system goes down.

If there is any offense, please except my sincerest apologies, that was not the motivation.

A few of you have been around a while. You know that I would not have posted that note had we not had good reason. The reason? Upgrades are failing. Systems are down. We don't want that.

100% compatibility just isn't 100% true.

All the best, John

[jholder]

Correction: They don't claim 100% compatibility. That's their goal.

"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)."
www.centos.org - centos.org content

[rwc101010]

An enhancement request for Official CentOS Support has been filed in Bugzilla - Bug 23487.

Those interested in Official CentOS Support should go vote for it to show their interest.

Rather than the continued back and forth, how about we figure out how to make this right for everyone?

Cheers!

Robert