The primary reason companies are moving from RHEL to CentOS is price. Red Hat licensing costs are huge. CentOS licenses are free.
Calculate Your Cost-Savings: From RHEL Licenses to CentOS Licenses
Enterprises switching from RHEL licenses to CentOS licenses typically save 50% or more in overall licensing and support costs. Determine how much you can save with this calculator.
Your Estimated Savings With CentOS and OpenLogic:
$ ➔ Up to
*Calculator pricing is based on Red Hat’s store, as of Q3 2019.
How Much Does Red Hat Licensing Cost?
Red Hat licensing costs a lot for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). For example, a typical midsize business with 1,000 servers and standard support, Red Hat licensing costs $800,000. CentOS licenses, however, cost $0.
RHEL licensing fees for add up for each product, such as the RHEL server, virtual machine, high-availability add-on, load balancer add-on, and so on.
Sometimes, the savings of switching from RHEL licenses to CentOS licenses are even greater. Take, for instance, a large enterprise mobile communications company that recently moved to CentOS. Taking into account everything from RHEL licenses to subscription support and maintenance, it saved about $20 million. That’s substantial enough to get the attention of even global company CFOs.
That level of cost savings isn’t typical. Most companies don’t have rollouts quite that large, but it is common to see savings of roughly 50%, primarily from eliminating license fees.
Is CentOS Free For Commercial Use?
CentOS licenses are always free for commercial use.
Many enterprises start by investigating how CentOS works for them on the edge with non-production or non-mission-critical servers and data centers. This helps prove that CentOS and RHEL are functionally identical.
And it leads to another area of cost savings: training. If your administrators are already comfortable with Linux, specifically RHEL, your staff won’t need CentOS training.
Why Are CentOS Licenses Backed by OpenLogic Support a Better Value?
Migrating to CentOS licenses and engaging OpenLogic for support saves money because:
- CentOS is a free, community-supported technology, so you pay $0 for software licenses.
- OpenLogic enhanced support for CentOS costs less than Red Hat support — and it provides the same level of mission-critical services.
- You get a dynamically scaling model based on actual usage.
- You do not pay for worst-case fees.
RHEL License Costs Aren't the Only Reason to Switch
Another reason companies make the switch is to be free from a closed ecosystem. Now, when you think “closed” software ecosystem, you’re probably thinking Apple or Microsoft. RHEL has its own way of keeping you penned in.
For instance, a large retail enterprise with a geographically distributed brick-and-mortar network wanted to do more than cut costs. It also wanted to free itself from the RHEL ecosystem so it could more easily scale. The company needed the flexibility of being able to choose both the software it needed and how it was deployed to match its use cases. For example, when it came to tools for management and DevOps, the retailer wanted to make its own choices. By migrating to CentOS, it achieved that level of scalability and flexibility.
Other businesses migrate away from Red Hat because they aren’t happy with the level of support. They want quicker access to experts, including system architects.
These are all reasons why companies wanting to migrate to CentOS are turning to OpenLogic CentOS support.
Ready to Save Money?
Move From RHEL to CentOS With Support
It's time to move from RHEL to CentOS. And OpenLogic experts make it easy.
Utilizing CentOS with OpenLogic eliminates license costs and vendor lock-in by adopting a truly open model. OpenLogic offers end-to-end open source services, including migration, support, and innovation.
With OpenLogic's CentOS enterprise Linux support, you'll get:
- 50% cost-savings.
- Long-term support, including for CentOS 6 EOL.
- Backporting.
- Guaranteed SLAs.
- Architectural minimization.
- Multi-platform support.
- CentOS distributions.
- Expert guidance.
Find out how our experts can help you make the move and save big. Get in touch today.