The Inquirer, RedHat and BrandZ

I assume, you can see in every advantage a disadvantage, when you want and when you don´t think about it in a greater context:The Inquirer reports about BrandZ.

On the downside Solaris users will need to install the version of Linux that they want to use with BrandZ and get extra support licenses in order to get compatibility with products like Red Hat Enterprise Linux. In other words pay for two licences.

Okay, this statement is correct but: With Solaris Zones you have the unique capability to virtualize your linux installation. So you pay for Solaris Support (the is no spoon … sorry .. no Solaris licences anymore ) and you have to pay for Red Hat Support in the case you want an enterprise linux only one time on a bigger system (and not one license for you mailserver, your webserver, your application server).
So at the end you save several licenses for Redhat. To be honest, i´m not absolutly sure, that there is no sentence in the legal fineprint that enforces a licence of every zone. But I´m pretty sure there is no such sentence, as Zones works completly different as for example VMware, you run one kernel on your system. And to be exact, you don´t run a Linux kernel on your system. You disembowl it and use only the RedHat Operating Environment.
At the end Zones and BrandZ will reduce the amount of RedHat licenses in an additional way: “Heck … i don´t need BrandZ for my webserver, mailserver and application. I use Solaris directly. Okay, i need Redhat for ApplicationA. Okay!!” Three licences saved …
Okay, from the monetary point of view the Inquirer is correct: It would be not really sensible, to substitute a single server with RedHat with a single server with Solaris and RedHat. From the technical standpoint even this would be good choice: By constructing such an system you get DTrace for Linux and you will get ZFS for Linux. Both features would be worth the cost for the additional Solaris Support alone.