CentOS is doing well in the webhosting business for the same reason "the upstream provider" is doing well in the enterprise data center. Webhosting companies have recognized the low TCO CentOS brings to the table, as well as it's binary compatibility with RHEL and the benefits that come with. Having an enterprise Linux distro as your hosting platform gives you confidence and piece of mind with regards to security and errata fixes for the better part of a decade. I no longer have to reinstall Fedora every 6 months to keep my servers (and clients) secure. An Enterprise distro also brings stability and ease of maintenance to the table.
The popularity of RHEL in the corporate world makes CentOS a no-brainer in the dedicated server market, which tends to be more price-conscious and volatile. This market also tends to cater to the advanced linux user, whether that be a linux professional or serious hobbyist.
With the advent of CentOS 5.x, a VPS can benefit from all the points I've already made, again making CentOS a perfect candidate in the VPS market with no [or little] customization.
Webhosting companies are businesses. TCO is a prime concern and consideration which makes enterprise distributions attractive. A proven *free* enterprise distro is obviously a perfect fit.
Regards, Kenneth Price
Hi, CentOS seems to be doing really well in the hosting business these days, and even for people who would normally have used Windows or OSX on the hosting previously, are now looking at using CentOS. And I thought it would be nice to have a section on the wiki about exactly why that is. Not having any direct connection with the hosting business I was wondering if people here could help me out a bit and let me know why they think CentOS is good / bad as a platform in this market segment. I suppose that would include dedicated hosting, VPS hosting, Shared / Virtual hosting, and even high performance grid hosting that a few people seem to be offering these days. Once we have some material here in this thread, everything will go online at the wiki ( with due credit to all contributors ). -- Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/ : 2522219@icq
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