Why Choose Rocky Linux from CIQ?

Linux has won! It has become the foundation of modern IT infrastructure, and powers everything from cloud environments to mission-critical applications. Its open source nature offers immense flexibility and freedom; however, for organizations that require increased reliability, hardened security, and expert support, they need a commercial vendor to help meet these requirements.

It's about having more than just an amazing, community-driven operating system. You need trusted delivery and commercial backing to ensure seamless and reliable operations.

Rocky Linux from CIQ (RLC) delivers just that.

The Challenges of Managing Linux Environments

While community-driven Linux distributions offer innovation and flexibility, managing them in demanding enterprise environments can present significant challenges. You need to minimize downtime for critical systems, address evolving cybersecurity threats, manage complex installs and updates at scale, ensure hardware and software compatibility, and eliminate risk with ongoing support and indemnification. Each of these is a complex task and requires significant investment of time and resources to address them.

The Top Ten Advantages of Rocky Linux from CIQ

Rocky Linux from CIQ delivers a powerful combination of open source benefits and commercial enterprise-level assurance. And since everyone loves a good top ten list, we’ve pulled together ten reasons why RLC is a great choice for Enterprise Linux for every organization.

1. Stable, Community-Driven Enterprise Linux

   CIQ is the founding services and support sponsor of the open source Rocky Linux project and over the past four years, we’ve seen it become the trusted open source option for businesses seeking a rock-solid, Enterprise Linux distribution. RLC delivers open source Rocky Linux with thorough hardware and software compatibility.

2. Validated and Available Artifacts

   With RLC, CIQ validates all installers, community packages, binaries, metadata, and errata, and delivers all of these artifacts from dedicated CIQ repositories in US-based datacenters that are mirrored across time zones and cloud regions. This ensures you reliably get the items you expect.

3. Update Guarantees

   RLC delivers validated security updates with a commercially backed SLO (within ~30 days of release). We carefully evaluate every update for applicability and help you decide whether or not to apply it. This ensures that even if the upstream community is delayed or if they decide not to fix a critical security issue, CIQ will make sure you are compliant and up to date.

4. Reasonable Cost and No Audits

   Rocky Linux from CIQ offers a simple, low-cost site license so you are free to use RLC on as many nodes as you like or mirror our repositories internally to all of the systems in your organization. You can use a consistent Enterprise Linux distribution in ALL your environments and know that we’ve got your back in production.

5. Ease of Access with CIQ Portal

   With RLC, you also get access to CIQ Portal, which gives you access to all of your images and your access tokens in a single place. It is also a central control center for your account, where you can manage licenses and account details. This greatly simplifies the management and maintenance of your deployment and frees up IT resources.

6. Availability in the Cloud

   RLC is available on AWS, Azure, and GCP, so you can use it in your cloud environment and on-prem or anywhere you need.

7. World-Class Support

   With RLC, you get access to the CIQ expert support team, which gives you personalized support and deep technical expertise in Enterprise Linux. We provide rapid response and resolution for critical issues, minimizing downtime and maximizing system availability. RLC provides basic support for fixes, and we also offer advanced support offerings with increased SLAs and deeper troubleshooting for more mission-critical applications.

8. Long-Term Reliability and Predictability

   Leveraging the stability of its upstream source and backed by CIQ's commitment, Rocky Linux from CIQ provides a dependable platform with predictable long-term support (LTS) options for given point releases so you can keep your environments compliant while minimizing overhead and risk from major updates to your software stack.

9. Minimize Your Risk Exposure with Indemnification

   Rocky Linux from CIQ comes with protection and indemnification guarantees that mitigate your risk and liability in the case of legal issues with the open source software. In the case of an incident, CIQ is accountable and delivers the coverage to keep your legal and compliance teams satisfied.

10. Optimized for Your Application Requirements

    We are also busy working on optimizations of RLC. With each of these, you’ll get all of the above and then we optimize the OS for a particular purpose. For instance, last month we released RLC-Hardened, which is RLC but with optimizations for deeper security requirements. You can expect more of these from us soon as we look to optimize your environments for discrete application requirements.

RLC: Open Source Freedom with Enterprise Assurance

Organizations benefit from the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of open source while gaining the confidence of commercial-grade support and services from CIQ. Rocky Linux backed by CIQ presents a compelling choice. It offers the best of both worlds: the power and flexibility of open source combined with the reliability and expertise of a dedicated commercial entity.