My organization recently deployed about 60 servers running Oracle Linux. I have worn a few different hats (SW Engineer, Systems Administration, Help Desk) over about 12 years of computing experience, and I have only ever had to use tech support for an Linux OS related problem once, and it was related to converting Red Hat classic subscriptions to the new subscription manager. I have developed software using C, C++, and Python. I have also resolved problems with open source software by downloading the source, fixing bugs, recompiling, and finally submitting the fix upstream.
Other than having someone to yell at, is there any benefit to paying for support? Would be better to just set aside some cash to pay a consultant if there is something I can't figure out myself?
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Thursday June 04 2015, @04:52AM
He is performing a risk assessment. He's finding out about the Oracle culture and comparing it to his needs / the company's need. It isn't a matter of confidence of abilities.
And I can't say that I was impressed with Oracle help. The couple of times we needed them, they were underwelming. It took them 4 months to fix a bug so Oracle could vacuum up a standard XML files... a bug that was going to cost us millions of dollars a day. I found a work around by modifying the original XML files and averted disaster. Our DBAs and managers were not happy with Oracle. After all, we were paying them a lot of money for support. In my opinion, we should have just spent the support money (six almost seven figures) to hire several developers and just use PostgreSQL. But I wasn't in charge.