RLC Pro videos

Have you heard about Rocky Linux from CIQ (RLC)?

CIQ CEO Gregory Kurtzer joins host Rose Stein to introduce Rocky Linux from CIQ (RLC), an offering built for organizations that love Rocky Linux but struggle to get it approved for production. Kurtzer explains that large companies routinely need exceptions to run community open source in production, and that CIOs, CISOs and legal teams want a company standing behind the operating system with contracts, guarantees and someone to hold accountable.

The conversation lays out what RLC includes: indemnification, an SLO on security updates, validated mirrors of the Rocky Linux repositories with tier-one access, and an additional CIQ-signed repository for any security fixes CIQ has to deliver itself. Kurtzer stresses that the operating system is unchanged, so engineers keep running exactly what they run today, and that the organization-wide license is deliberately inexpensive because CIQ is taking on legal and compliance obligations rather than re-engineering the OS. Ticket-based support is not part of the base offer, though it is available separately.

The session is aimed at IT leaders and administrators already on Rocky Linux, or migrating from CentOS, who need a compliance story that satisfies procurement and security teams. It closes with a teaser of more engineering-focused offerings and CIQ's plans for SC in Atlanta.

Key takeaways

  • Large organizations often need recurring exceptions to run community Rocky Linux in production, and RLC is designed to remove that friction.
  • RLC includes indemnification, an SLO on security updates, and validated tier-one access to mirrored Rocky Linux repositories.
  • Packages remain signed by Rocky Linux; CIQ adds a separate signed repository only for security updates it must deliver itself.
  • The operating system is unchanged, so engineering teams keep running exactly what they run today with contractual guarantees added.
  • The organization-wide license is priced low because CIQ is taking on legal and compliance obligations, not re-engineering the OS.
  • Ticket-based support is not bundled with RLC, though CIQ will provide support separately for organizations that want it.

Questions this video answers

What is Rocky Linux from CIQ (RLC) and how is it different from community Rocky Linux?

RLC is the same Rocky Linux the community runs today, with CIQ standing behind it contractually. It adds indemnification, an SLO on security updates, validated repository mirrors and the legal guarantees CIOs and CISOs require. CIQ does not modify or re-engineer the operating system itself.

Does Rocky Linux from CIQ include technical support?

Not in the base offer. Kurtzer explains the goal is to keep the price very low by focusing on compliance, indemnification and security update guarantees. Organizations that want ticket-based support can still get it from CIQ separately.

Why do enterprises need a company behind Rocky Linux for compliance?

Many large companies cannot put software grabbed from the internet into production without a vendor accountable by contract. Their compliance rules require guarantees, an insurance policy and a company to hold responsible if something goes wrong, which the open source community alone cannot provide.

About this video

Join Gregory Kurtzer and Rose Stein on Thursday, October 10th, at 11:00 a.m. PT to learn how RLC enables customers to deploy Rocky Linux confidently into production environments.

Technical features of RLC include: Rocky Linux/RHEL 1:1 Compatibility CVE Remediation Package Supply Chain Validation SLO on Security Updates Repository Access Migration Script

This video is part of the RLC Pro playlist. Browse every CIQ video by product and topic.

Transcript

and we are here welcome everybody thanks for joining us um we in the studio today with a very special guest I know who is this man who is this man this is our CEO at ciq Greg czer thanks for being here with us it's a pleasure pleasure pleasure so if you guys are wherever you're watching make sure that you give a like And subscribe and if you have any comments or questions as we are getting me talking about something a little bit new today make sure you leave them in the comments below and we'll get back to you very soon so Mr curzer tell us

what is new at ciq so one of the things that we've heard a lot of feedback from from our customer base is they love Rocky Linux big surprise Rocky Linux is filling a huge gap for a tremendous number of people out there uh but it also being an open source project with huge amount of support from the from the open source community and from various organizations but it also doesn't come with guarantees doesn't come with the stuff that uh corporations cios cesos Etc really require uh for for their compliance needs and and other facets so again one of the things that we've been hearing is

we love Rocky Linux and we're having a hard time running it in order to achieve our compliance needs so one of the things that we're going to be doing is we're going to be standing behind CI standing behind Rocky Linux and making sure that everything that an organ organization needs from a compliance perspective and a legal perspective is there and it's taken care of well that's really great okay so the basic gist is for the customers that I speak to is that they don't necessarily need support and most everyone most everyone right is running Rocky Linux or at least anyone who was running sentos before

is probably running Rocky now and if you're not it's a good time to migrate because as we know Centos is no longer um so if they're running that in their uh development environments anything that's in production they have to have some kind of backing they have to have some company that is responsible they can say yes we're not just running open source in production and so that's where ciq uh comes in and Rocky Linux from ciq gives people this confidence that there is a company that's behind it yeah exactly you know many of the largest you know companies out there let's say for 1,000 and

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up but by no means is it limited to that uh they have this these compliance requirements and and regulations that uh they they can't just go and grab anything that you know they want off the internet as an open source project and go put this into their production stack now of course Rocky Linux is is is a very widely supported operating system with a lot of people behind it but their compliance needs is still a factor and they need to manage this appropriately so what what ciq is doing is is helping with that and giving them the opportunity to run what they know and love

today and uh give them that ability to have that compliance behind it yeah and another thing that I think and I mean obviously it's kind of implied and everything that you're saying right now but one of the biggest benefits of that is that you don't have to have something different because even sentos was a little different than re of times and so with this it's you could have rocky Linux cross the board in everywhere there's no difference you don't have to do anything different for it to be production ready it is production ready but you can run it everywhere and be supported yeah exactly uh

as a matter of fact some of the areas where sentos was different from from real and different from other commercial uh uh entities and solutions is the fact that well with sentos you didn't have to deal with the licensing you didn't have to deal with entitlements you didn't have to deal with uh Services necessary to Ure compliance with the the Linux vendor and so in this case again you're just running Rocky Linux and what we're providing is the the legal contracts necessary to provide the guarantees to provide SLO on security updates indemnification just to make sure that again if anything happens you're covered and we

ciq is standing behind that Rocky Linux Community yeah yeah that's awesome so just to be clear because I know we're probably going to get this question as well there's not support in the created ticket with ciq kind of support in this offer correct yeah so it is exactly what you're getting from the community today there's virtually no difference uh we we do add because we do SLO on security updates so just in case for any reason if a security update needs to be handled by ciq we will do it again to provide that level of guarantee but uh so we will ride an additional repository

to that but all the packages are still signed by Rocky we are mirroring the those repositories in such a way that you will have as a customer you will have tier one access to uh those those repos and we will be validating those repos and ensuring that everything is exactly what you expect uh but again for the most part this is exactly what you're running today with Rocky uh again the when we ask our customers like what problems can we help you solve the problems that we're hearing are things like we we we are running Rocky Linux but we currently are having problems because we

have to get exceptions for Rocky Linux to be able to run Rocky Linux in production and every single year or at periodic intervals this these exceptions are getting questioned Etc so they said we really want to continue using Rocky Linux but but we want to make sure that we have the necessary compliance the necessary uh validation and guarantees and uh insurance policy and throat to grab or throat to hold or choke whatever that is to ensure to ensure that they have what they need to manage their compliance so what if there is um some kind of a you know compliance or security standard that we

don't that we haven't really looked into or don't really know but they are requiring it could they ask ciq then to go get that security absolutely absolutely now well depending on what it is we May charge you extra for it but but yeah absolutely and again that's what we're here to do so the service that we're providing is very low-level uh uh barrier to entry very easy for every organization and just to speak bluntly it's because it's very inexpensive uh because we're not doing much to be clear we're taking on the legal uh requirements and the compliance requirements but we're not actually changing the operating

system we're not actually uh making or engineering this we're providing it we're providing the guarantees but there's really there's not much that there's not much more to that to it than that so from our perspective uh it is a organization-wide license very low cost of entry and the goal here is really just uh we're not doing much so let let's keep the price low let's give organizations exactly what they need to be successful and uh and make it easy for them yeah and then continue on on working on various security uh certifications yeah because they're they're quite fank there are a lot of them yeah

right so and it's funny being an engineer like that's my background is engineering like like the idea of releasing a product that is not really a product is is is actually kind of funny to me but at the same token this is what people are asking for yeah so you know it's something we can easily provide yeah and so why not do it and to your point earlier just to go back on this it doesn't come with anything different than what you're currently doing today from an engineering perspective it's exactly what you're doing today from an engineering perspective but now it also comes with the

guarantees that your legals and your CIO and your ciso and and and whatnot will appreciate yeah and then again I just really the value of being able to have all of your machines on the same operating system so all the testing that you're doing yeah works in production seamlessly y that is a that's a big win for a lot of companies as well and quite frankly a lot of them already have a lot of their own very dedicated brilliant Engineers they don't necessarily need engineering work on what's Happening and like to create Customs you know sorts of things um but they do need that that

that support company backing up behind so yep cool yep and we will do support if somebody really wants sure but but it doesn't come with it and again the point of it is to keep the price super super low to make this that this is just something that you can just get uh uh very simply through procurement uh and then the engineers and the engineering teams the professional it uh teams have what they need to to to provide to the ceso that hey we got we got this everything's good yeah easy breezy just how we like it okay amazing is there anything else about Rocky

Linux from ciq that you want everyone to know and understand just to reiterate this is Rocky ly it's exactly what everybody has been using it's exactly what people have been leveraging already uh the only thing is is when you get Rocky Linux from ciq it comes with indemnification it comes with guarantees on security updates it comes with everything again from a compliance perspective that you need in order to uh to support the organization in a way that provides trust provides the the necessary I keep saying it but compliance yeah yeah exactly because it's kind of hard to go to an open source community and get

upset with anyone for not doing things fast enough right and I want to reiterate hey come to us and I want to reiterate it's not that Rocky has never done it like Rocky has been fantastic in terms of getting updates yes out there this is about a a corporation needs guarantees they need a contract they need to say if something doesn't happen they can legally go after so we're like volunteering like we'll be that organization to stand behind Rocky Linux and give you what you need for success we're not going to charge a lot cuz we're not doing a lot to be blunt but we

will give you that compliance we will give you everything you need to be successful there and your engineers will have everything they need to continue doing exactly what they have been doing right so you know exactly who to call I mean that is important who you going to call Don't make me say it Ghostbusters okay had to say it all right you guys well thank you so much thank you Greg for being here U webinar with us yeah it's exciting to talk about Rocky Linux from ciq so if you want more details about that you can visit us at our website or just email info@ cq.

super easy it goes right to us and we'll be able to chat with you about exactly what it is on offer and how we can get your organization set up so you have the same infrastructure across all the machines that you want to with an indentification what was the other word secur compliance H these are great words yeah amazing all right well thank you very much again if you guys have questions drop them in the in the line in the comment box and we will see you next can I plug something first of course okay there's more coming oh okay I feel like we need

like a yeah there's more but there but wait there's more if you act now there's more okay that's awesome okay tell us are you going to do like that's it just there's that's it there's more coming there's much more coming which will actually be more on the the engineering side so I'm super excited about that as well but we're going to be adding a ton more value to the engineers and organizations and again a lot of what we've been doing is built is is driven by customers so customers uh uh the community is telling us what we need to do to solve their problems and

so we've been very actively working on the back end making all this happen and and and driving a lot of this so expect to see more soon uh and Halloween is always fun so it might be sometime around Halloween just saying O spooky mysterious I like it okay well that's awesome thank you guys so much for being here um and we're all over the place as well I think we got SC coming up conf yes yeah right exactly I know I think last week I forgot to mention it so I was like oh I have to remember to mention it um so we're going to

be at Booth 4131 I believe in Atlanta Georgia and that is the week before Thanksgiving which SC always is which kind of makes travel a little bit Wilds but it's okay we're going to be there and it's going to be amazing so we have a lot of things that are are we're going to be talking about at SC Not only Ascender or automation platform but also fuzzball yep so it's going to be very exciting so come see us there okay have a great day we'll see you next time bye bye everybody

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