plan a successful enterprise linux migration

1© 2017 Rogue Wave Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

How to migrate from Red Hat to CentOS

successfully

Episode 1:

Plan a successful Linux

migration

Justin Reock

Julie Zattolo


Presenters

Julie Zattolo

Enterprise account executive

[email protected]

Justin Reock

Senior director, support & professional services

Twitter: @jreock

mailto:[email protected]

https://twitter.com/jreock


Agenda

• A migration success story

• Your migration path

• Eliminating migration risks

• Overall cost savings

• Q & A


A migration success story


Large enterprise customer

Why choose to migrate?

• #1 driver: Cost of licensing & support

• Proof point: OSes are kernel-by-kernel equivalent - the insides of the system

are completely the same except re-branded as CentOS

• Method: Compare costs of individual components in the

environment


Method example

Comparing component costs

Item Red Hat SKU

($)

CentOS equivalent CentOS SKU

($)

Delta

OS license – server $TBD CentOS $0 TBD

OS license – virtual $TBD CentOS $0 TBD

High Availability Add-on $TBD Linux-HA $0 TBD

Load Balancer Add-on $TBD Linux-HA $0 TBD

Resilient Storage Add-on $TBD GFS + LVM $0 TBD

Satellite Capsule Server $TBD Katello $0 TBD

Directory server $TBD OpenLDAP $0 TBD

Certificate system $TBD pki-* packages $0 TBD

etc.


Migration examples

Typical clients we see

• Most recently: An enterprise customer in retail, with 1000s of brick

& mortar locations

• Also pharmaceutical, financial services

• Common reasons:

• Exponentiating cost of licenses

• Avoiding vendor lock-in with RHEL


Your migration path


Where is the biggest risk?

Operating system

Applications

YourApp1 YourApp2

All marks are the property of their respective owners


Identify what to migrate: Business

Categorize Linux & app deployments

• Importance to the business

• High security, QoS,

performance requirements

• Hard-to-find expertise

• Certification requirements

Identify what to migrate: Business

Large OSS

deployment

Reporting & metrics

Key internal expertise

Critical apps

Key infrastructure

Potential for large

revenue loss

Publicly-hosted SaaS

Prototyping & testing

Isolated systems

Unchanging configs

Not significant

Need for

fast response

Need for supportApp evolution over time


Identify where to start: Technical

YourApp1

Minimize risk and time

Low risk …

Low time to migrate

YourAppN

High risk

High time to migrate

Migration timeline

• Migrate apps in parallel where possible

• Limit risk by focusing on migrating the OS only

• Consider OS consolidation at the same time


Quadrants in action

Large enterprise customer

YourApp1 YourApp2

TBD TBD

TBD TBD

TBD TBD

TBD TBDRisk

Time to migrate

Risk

Time to migrate


What if it doesn’t go smoothly?

Common issues

1. Doesn’t fit within the original release calendar

2. Perceived risk doesn’t match actual risk

3. Application inventory is wrong

• Differences in versioning

4. Other unexpected delays


Plan your migration

For both OS and applications:

1. Install

Considerations: Physical/virtual hardware allocation & costs when non-live; people-time (IT/DevOps)

2. Configure

Considerations: People-time (IT/DevOps/Dev) - dev involvement comes with opportunity cost

3. Stage

Considerations: Physical/virtual hardware allocation & costs when non-live; people-time (IT/DevOps)

4. Test

Considerations: Test data & workloads to reproduce production-like environment

5. Final decision

Considerations: Who/when to make a go or no-go decision


Your migration roadmap

1. Inventory your apps2. Prioritize apps

YourApp1

Low risk

Low time to migrate

YourAppN

High risk

High time to migrate

…

3. Group similar & schedule migration timeline

1 4 5 7 … N

YourApp1 YourApp2

4. Execute migration

Install

Configure

Stage

Test

Final decision

Large OSS deployment

Reporting & metrics

Key internal expertise

Critical apps

Key infrastructure

Potential for large revenue

loss

Publicly-hosted SaaS

Prototyping & testing

Isolated systems

Unchanging configs

Not significant

Need for

fast response

Need for support


Eliminating migration risks


People

Differences which make no difference• Spacewalk vs. Red Hat Satellite

• Linux-HA vs. RHCS

• oVirt vs. Red Hat VM

• Docker/Kubernetes vs. Red Hat OpenShift


You don't have to change a thing!

• Love RHEL? Great! You'll love CentOS too.

• Functionally, these operating systems are equivalent, as we've

discussed

• Now you'll have the freedom to deploy in whatever way best suits

you, at whatever scale you need, without limitations

• There may be political motivations as well

• Think: Do the politics outweigh the cost savings?

Need to convince a passionate RHEL

user?


Meeting production SLAs

Only migrate the OS!

• Identify risks accurately

• Follow the roadmap

• Stage and test before production push

Where possible, follow a live migration plan


Overall cost savings


Costs of using RHEL

• Dynamic pricing

• The more you use, the more it costs

• Same level of support for all instances

• Need for negotiation

• Contract lock-in


Savings potential

Licensing Support+

$1.75M $2.97M

Based on sample scenario: 1,000 servers*

$0+

+

* Based on RHEL Virtual Datacenters with Smart Management, Premium Support

= Annual total

$4.72M=

Over 50% savings


• Only pay for support on the machines that need support

• Only pay for the level of support you need on each machine

• Pay fairly in dynamic environments

– Elastic

– VM

– Container

Deployment flexibility delivers costs savings

With CentOS…


Use commercial support

• Direct access to Tier 3/4 enterprise architects – no escalation path necessary

• Expertise across all critical packages

Support services

• Guaranteed SLAs

• CentOS patches & hotfixes available immediately

Migration services• Help assess, plan, and execute

• Experience across different stacks, environments, and scales

• Support Red Hat and CentOS simultaneously during migration


See migration in action

Live RHEL 7.4 to CentOS 7.4 migration – with no downtime!

• Developers / IT admins: See steps on live console for a popular stack

• Architects / Leads: Learn business impacts and solutions along the way

Attend our next webinar on Nov. 15th:

Walk through an enterprise Linux migration


Q&A


See migration in action

Live RHEL 7.4 to CentOS 7.4 migration – with no downtime!

• Developers / IT admins: See steps on live console for a popular stack

• Architects / Leads: Learn business impacts and solutions along the way

Attend our next webinar on Nov. 15th:

Walk through an enterprise Linux migration