Choosing the right Red Hat Enterprise Linux solution
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available in a variety of configurations to fit your application, architecture and support needs. Picking the appropriate version for your needs involves answering a few key questions:
- Are you looking for a single user desktop solution, a mid-range, or a mission-critical server application?
There's a version for just about any application.
- Which services level do you require?
Red Hat offers a range of service level agreements for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
- What are your hardware architectures and memory requirements?
Supported environments range from small Intel x86 and compatibles through the largest IBM mainframe.
Armed with responses to these questions, the following chart helps narrow your selections to the right version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for your environment.
| I am using Linux, Unix or Windows for: |
• Large databases
• Enterprise applications
• 24x7 mission critical environments |
• Edge of network applications
• Small office or departmental servers |
• Technical Workstation applications
• Desktop Productivity
• High Performance Computing (multinode clusters) applications |
| Recommended product: |
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS |
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES |
Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS |
 |
Common Usages |
Databases, ERP, CRM, Applications |
Small-medium web, file and print configurations |
CAD/CAM, Rendering, Trading, Manufacturing, S/W development, Mail, Document processing, Browsing, Instant messaging, Beowulf; Oscar; MPI |
| Includes desktop applications |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Supported by leading ISV applications |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Includes Apache, Samba, NFS |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Includes: amanda-server, arptables_jf, bind, caching-nameserver, dhcp, freeradius, inews, inn, krb5-server, netdump-server, openldap-servers, pxe, quagga, radvd, rarpd, redhat-config-bind, redhat-config-netboot, tftp-server, tux, vsftpd, ypserv |
Yes |
Yes |
No 1 |
 |
Available in Premium Edition
• Web and phone based comprehensive support
• 24 x 7
• 1 hour response
• Unlimited incidents
• 1 year Red Hat Network 3
|
Yes |
No |
No |
Available in Standard Edition
• Web and phone based comprehensive support
• 5 x 12 2
• 4 hour response
• Unlimited incidents
• 1 year Red Hat Network 3
|
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Available in Basic Edition
• 1 year Red Hat Network 3 |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
 |
Supports x86 compatible systems
|
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Supports Itanium & AMD64 systems
|
Yes |
No |
Yes |
| Supports IBM z, i, p and S/390 series systems |
Yes |
No |
No |
| Supports systems with >2 CPUs 4 |
Yes |
No |
No |
| Supports >8GB memory (x86) |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux products are based on the same core kernel, libraries and utilities, and also share the same major package sets. However, because Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS is not designed for use in server environments, there are some differences between family members in terms of their server package sets.
2 USA: Mon-Fri, 9am-9pm, Rest of World: Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm. For detailed information on included support and service levels, see http://www.redhat.com/support/techsupport/production/RHEL_main.html
3 Red Hat Network Update Module, a service that provides access to an intuitive graphical interface for managing system updates and errata, priority errata email notifications, dependency checking, and optional auto-update.
4 A CPU chip containing multiple hyper-threaded processing elements is counted as a single CPU.
