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[TPerry]

Please enlighten us and tell us why.

From my understanding their architecture layout did not lend itself to the ease of automated upgrades. You trying to tell me that all of a sudden that (with 5.5 or 6 wasn't it) it suddenly became a "Good Thing"?
They believed that a clean start forces you to refactor and pay attention to configs along the way also - which sometimes is needed, and other times is not. We ARE in a modern age of automation. Hell, even the IBM AS/400 didn't require a fresh install of it's OS.

 

[Floren]

From my understanding their architecture layout did not lend itself to the ease of automated upgrades. You trying to tell me that all of a sudden that (with 5.5 or 6 wasn't it) it suddenly became a "Good Thing"?

I have no idea from where are you coming out with this theory, certainly not from Red Hat, which never claimed this. Let me help you a bit:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
Red Hat currently supports only upgrades from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 for specific/targeted use cases only.

Red Hat is not the only company who follows the same wise policy, others like VMware, SUSE, etc. do the same. Instead of venting your "rage" (this is meant in a respectful way, but honestly your posts are furious) for an OS which does not provides upgrades, tell us why do you think these companies do not offer upgrades to major releases. This is basic sysadmin knowledge, like really basic.

We ARE in a modern age of automation.

Exactly. From your previous posts, it shows to me that you did not worked with advanced tools like Satellite/Foreman, RHEV/oVirt, OpenStack, FreeIPA, etc. which allows you to redeploy hundreds of physical servers and VM's in minutes, without the need of upgrades to a major release. It is actually a lot faster to deploy a fresh image and re-apply a set of template based settings, than to actually perform an upgrade.

 

[TPerry]

Table turning time.. why do others DO offer upgrades to major OS versions?
It can be done. The fact that it isn't done is a decision that they make. And don't even get me going on VMWare. ESXi left a bad enough taste in my mouth that the 2 locations I help with won't touch it again (it wasn't just a problem for me but others also). To resolve the issue they wanted the locations to spend a "small" amount of change for the "latest greatest" version, schedule their downtime so that the new could be freshly installed or for them to buy a new server to install it on so that they had no downtime.

If you notice... the "versions" you mention are all "commercial" related... hmmm... wonder if that may have anything to do with it in reality. They can make all the excuses they want.

You like RedHat/CentOS, others like Ubuntu/Debian. Both are reliable. Both do what they need to do.
I'm sorry that it got your panties in a wad that upgrading PHP was a crap shoot on a couple of default installs of CentOS that I have observed first hand. I want (and have) an OS that works without me jumping through hoops.
The ONLY reason I would be tempted to go to a CentOS system is if I needed a panel.

Oh, the link (in fact any of the access.redhat.com ones I have tried lately) just time out. Guess they have the system down for a major OS upgrade?
A simple screen capture of the link you provided.
(Probably a routing issue with the ISP but this is the only one I have had problems with today).

 

[TPerry]

Exactly. From your previous posts, it shows to me that you did not worked with advanced tools like Satellite/Foreman, RHEV/oVirt, OpenStack, FreeIPA, etc. which allows you to redeploy hundreds of physical servers and VM's in minutes, without the need of upgrades to a major release. It is actually a lot faster to deploy a fresh image and re-apply a set of template based settings, than to actually perform an upgrade.

Not everybody needs/has hundreds of servers...
Are you trying to tell me that this will work for multiple individuals who have their own VPS set up with a multitude of providers (none using the same configs)? I get back to the point that it's a "commercialization" issue.
I think you know as well as I do that a VPS for me isn't going to be the same VPS for you, nor for Joe Blow or Jane Doe. And THAT is what we are talking about. Upgrading these by burning out an entirely new OS is ridiculous (hell, I'll go a step farther - it's downright stupid) no matter how you look at it. How many of us host our forums (which is what we are dealing with here) in an environment that you are trying to draw into the discussion. Enterprise has different needs and abilities (and the associated additional costs for training, software, etc).

 

[Floren]

Table turning time.. why do others DO offer upgrades to major OS versions? It can be done.

I'm not disagreeing with you, yes an upgrade CAN be done also with RHEL, in ANY version. But why would you do such a stupid thing? Let me give you a simple basic standard reason which every sysadmin should know about it and right there should stop thinking of upgrades: With every single single major release, every Linux OS introduces a new filesystem. You are telling us that you will rather use an old filesysten with a NEW revamped OS? I don't know if Debian ever heard of XFS, which is thousands times better compared to EXT4. Even if your Debian OS has the "advanced" technology to modify the disks geometry and other zillion things that could go wrong, you are ARE playing with fire risking all this (instead of using the proper way and perform a backup of your data, then import it into new OS). I also want to see how Debian will upgrade OpenOffice to LibreOffice, is is technically impossible.

Not everybody needs/has hundreds of servers.

But everyone wants a reliable setup and you are dreaming if you think you will achieve this by performing a major release OS upgrade. The fact you are persisting in your theories forces me to abandon the discussion.

 

[TPerry]

But everyone wants a reliable setup and you are dreaming if you think you will achieve this by performing a major release OS upgrade. The fact you are persisting in your theories forces me to abandon the discussion.

Agreed if you are going to change the file system a clean install is valid.
And funnily for the last 3 years utilizing the same philosophy I've never had an issue. Of course,we didn't deal with hundreds and thousands of servers (except for the Windows ones - and they allowed version upgrades).