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splice, then, my item #3 is your ideal choice. Putting it on the Red Hat network will ensure that you basically have to do nothing to get and install the patches.
If you buy a Penguin Computing system through the link on the home page, the Cellar gets a cut. And then you don't even have to install... just run that Red Hat network and get all the patches. Penguin hardware is very well thought-out... aside from disk drives I had one box live in a rack-mount for five years, dishin' out bits...
At that point, you ask management: is this system running a mission-critical application? If so, it should be supported correctly, because even a seasoned professional can come up against a problem s/he has never seen and cannot solve completely without support.
A Red Hat standard service contract should do nicely. This allows you some leeway, because you can ask them about urgent problems that crop up, or things that you can't work out on your own from the web or from books or us. You can even ask for advice before buying things or implementing new approaches. Or even before running specific commands. (From my time on the other ends of those support lines, I think they would LOVE answering those kinds of questions.)
If your folks can't afford a service contract, or put service contracts on their hardware but not their software, then they will not complain when something causes that system to suddenly need a complete, time-consuming reinstall and reload. That's what they get if they want you to admin a box and they just give you a few books.
Besides, it's cheaper than buying the classes... which is yer other option.
(I would commute by air to mpls if the pay was good enough)
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