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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.2
Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers responsive customer service, valued for its knowledgeable team, quick escalation, and extensive support resources.
Sentiment score
7.2
VMware vSphere support is generally positive, despite occasional delays, with valuable online resources aiding self-resolution effectively.
They promptly addressed my concerns regarding permission issues when I contacted them.
Their documentation is clear and built into the GUI, so you can easily access information if you're curious about a topic.
They respond immediately based on the SLA level.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
5.3
Red Hat Enterprise Linux requires improvements in documentation, support, pricing, UI, compatibility, updates, and integration for better user experience.
Sentiment score
4.9
vSphere users want better pricing, management, non-Windows support, improved performance, integration, simpler licensing, and HTML5 interface over Flash.
The solution operates on a subscription-based model, which may not provide immediate return on investment for small to medium-sized organizations.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux could make the interface more colorful and improve the user experience.
Improvement is needed for supporting Kubernetes clusters because it is less supported by Red Hat according to my experience.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable and adaptable, supporting efficient workload scaling across various environments, ensuring seamless IT operations.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware vSphere offers scalable infrastructure management with seamless expansion, though costs and licensing may pose challenges for organizations.
I would rate the scalability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux as nine out of ten, indicating it scales well with our needs.
 

Setup Cost

Sentiment score
6.3
Red Hat Enterprise Linux's pricing is justified by its support, stability, flexible subscriptions, and appeal for reliability-focused businesses.
Sentiment score
5.9
VMware vSphere's pricing is complex and can be costly, but users appreciate its functionality, stability, and support despite alternatives.
It may be considered expensive compared to other solutions like CentOS or Ubuntu, which offer some of the same features without additional costs.
Its pricing has room for improvement because it's more expensive in the local market due to purchasing power parity in India.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is highly stable and reliable, performing well for business-critical applications with minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
8.0
VMware vSphere is highly reliable and adaptable, with minimal issues mainly from hardware or third-party integrations.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers great stability and performance compared to other operating systems.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
8.3
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is praised for robust performance, security, scalability, seamless integration, and comprehensive enterprise-level support.
Sentiment score
8.0
VMware vSphere offers high availability, centralized management, efficient resource utilization, and supports various operating systems for flexibility and scalability.
It also has strong security features, is OIS and FIPS certified, and has built-in Linux security configurations.
It also has the 'top' command that gives you all the processes running and their utilization of resources like CPU, RAM, etc.
The most valuable feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is its comprehensive ecosystem.
 

Categories and Ranking

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
259
Ranking in other categories
Operating Systems (OS) for Business (1st)
VMware vSphere
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
449
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and VMware vSphere aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is designed for Operating Systems (OS) for Business and holds a mindshare of 11.9%, down 12.1% compared to last year.
VMware vSphere, on the other hand, focuses on Server Virtualization Software, holds 19.8% mindshare, up 18.6% since last year.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Saravvana Kumar. - PeerSpot reviewer
Highly stable, good knowledge base, and reasonable price
Its installation on a RAID or cluster system is something difficult. There are specific teams working on that. The GRUB configuration is also a little different from the other Linux distributions. In terms of additional features, as technology keeps evolving, the product will also have to evolve. For example, Microsoft Windows has come a long way. In Windows 11, there are so many features that are fundamentally the same as the oldest version, but there are other aspects or processes that have improved. macOS has also evolved over time. Similarly, in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux that I used in 2003 and the one that I am using now, some things are the same and some things have changed. Red Hat can continue to engage clients, understand the use cases, and update them.
Vikas Dhumale - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good performance and is useful for banking systems
Speaking about the application deployment process, I work at the L1 level in my company. In my company, the L3 is a different department that manages the application deployment process, and most of them go for tools apart from the ones under VMware to manage the VMs. I am only creating new VMs and assigning RAM space, and if something comes up, then I create new RHEL-based systems. When it comes to the application deployment process, my company manually deploys the applications. For automation purposes, our company uses Jenkins to collect the logs and provide a GUI with the help of a username and password to the end user, after which they can collect the logs from Jenkins. I work at an L1 level in my company. The integrations and infrastructure-related areas of the product are managed by another team in my company. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. Nowadays, people don't prefer to go for cloud-based solutions. Most of the companies prefer VMware as they want some level of security in the environment. VMware allows users to have in-house products. Most companies or banks are not moving over to cloud-based tools. VMware is used in banking systems. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
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Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
29%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which would you choose - RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or CentOS?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is fantastic. It is an inexpensive solution that has excellent security, performance, and stability, and also lots of features. I specifically like that the solution has fe...
What do you like most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
It is open source. We can customize it as per our requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive, but I'm not paying anything because it's the company's money. However, it's priced comparably to other enterprise Linux solutions. It costs a lot because you ...
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
 

Also Known As

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL
No data available
 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Travel Channel, Mohawk Industries, Hilti, Molecular Health, Exolgan, Hotelplan Group, Emory University, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, HCA Healthcare, Paychex, UPS, Intermountain Healthcare, Brinker International, TransUnion, Union Bank, CA Technologies
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Canonical, Oracle and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.