Whats the difference between a "kernel upgrade" and upgrading RHEL to the latest version? About how much should something like this cost?

a kernel upgrade is free as to where version upgrades cost money for licensing if you purchase it on your own. there are usually many changes from version upgrades. as long as you do patchs on RHEL3 that is sufficient. when you want to upgrade to a RHEL 4, i would just get a new box and migrate the data or do an in box migration by moving the current drive to slave - that all depends on what control panel the server is running on. www.eth0.us is a great site that can give you guides to updating your kernel.

Thanks, Gary

if your up2date is registered you should be able to type "up2date kernel"

With a regular non-EV1 RHEL subscription, as long as you keep paying their annual fee you'll get all major updates (i.e. from 3 to 4, 4 to 5 and everything in between) as part of that subscription.

No idea how EV1 deals with that, but I would suspect they would want to test all major new versions first before supporting them and then you'd probably have to get your server re-image/re-installed rather than trying to a straight forward upgrade.

M.

ahh... so, if I ask for an upgrade, it has to be EV1 approved?

I'm working on an article for a magazine on the life of a beginner server admin, dealing with various server management contractors, etc. this should be interesting.

I don't know if "ev1 approved" is really the best wording but yes in a sense that is what needs to happen. Before a major release (like rhel 3 to rhel4) is used at ev1 they do extensive testing with it. The minor releases (rhel 3.4 to 3.5 for instance) are updated within a few days of redhat releasing them.

The way that ev1 does the licensing is you are entitled to a redhat enterprise license, regardless of the version. I believe if you purchased it directly from RH you would have to pick one version and perhaps pay for an upgrade.

Ev1 hosts their own up2date mirror server so they have a lot more options when it comes to what versions and updates are available. If they do not update the mirror server - you do not have access to it. So in a sense yes everything must be approved by them first, though it is automatic most times.

Does that make sense?

*edit* and oh yeah a kernel upgrade, though it can be considered a major upgrade, is really only 1 package that is part of the entire operating system. The only thing really special about it is that you need to reboot the box for it to be applied.