Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We're using it to support security applications. We also use it for various infrastructure aspects, such as hosting Satellite or Ansible Automation or Confluence. We have a mix of different apps running on it.

Our improvement as an organization, from using RHEL, has been the ability to take the stance of an infrastructure-as-code approach. We've seen that with automation of server deployment, getting them spun up a lot faster. Traditionally, the environment was using Satellite and Kickstart. Regardless of whether we were bare metal or virtual, it could take a couple of hours to Kickstart a server. Moving to infrastructure-as-code and deploying a server takes about 10 minutes until it's ready to use. It's a lot faster.

In addition to Satellite, we're using Ansible Tower. Those are the only ones we're paying for. We use other products, like Red Hat IDM for identity management but that's part of RHEL. When it comes to the integration between these products and RHEL, we're able to use Satellite for our dynamic inventory, with Ansible to help deploy new servers or manage servers, and we use Ansible Tower to patch our servers. Everything works pretty well.

That integration has helped to improve things compared to how they were when I got here. For example, we have a more automated process for patching. As we develop it and work through issues, we hope it will be more of a pipeline and a lot easier and faster, compared to how it was done before. Similarly for building servers, now that we're able to use Satellite as our dynamic inventory, we're able to run Ansible, whether it's predefined playbooks or ad hoc, without having to do something manually or maintain an inventory file.

We also use the AppStream feature in some cases. We have a couple of applications that require different versions, and we're able to install it and it makes the requirements for those specific applications.

The most valuable features are

• stability
• supportability.

Those have been the two common and important features over the years. They're pretty equal. You want to have something that's up and running and stable, something that's not going to crash. But if we do have an issue, we can get somebody for technical support who can help us work through the problems.

As for the consistency of application and user experience, we spin it up and almost forget about it. It just does what it's supposed to do, regardless of the underlying infrastructure. It's all good and there are no issues as far as supporting applications or things crashing go. Because it's doing what it's supposed to do, it's not a source of concern.

And similarly, there are no issues when it comes to deploying current applications and emerging workloads across bare metal, virtualized, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud environments. We just have to take note of whatever the requirements are for the application we're deploying, to make sure requirements are met, and then build a server based on those requirements.

In this environment, I'm not doing any cloud work, but in my last environment we did do a bunch of public and private cloud and we had no issues there. It worked fine and as expected in AWS and OpenStack. We were doing infrastructure-as-code in that environment as well. We would create an image-base, whether for AWS or OpenStack, and then we would automate the deployment again, using Terraform and Ansible for configuration. It made deployment of cloud-based workloads relatively quick.

My biggest issue right now is Red Hat Consulting and trying to use some of their services to help get us going. Technically, they're good, but we seem to have issues with scheduling.

Also, we initially deployed it with Red Hat Satellite. We're now moving more to automation using Terraform within VMware, to automate the clone and then follow up with Ansible to configure. Red Hat's standard deployment is with Satellite and Kickstart, but we're looking at other options to help speed it along. We do have a mix of bare metal and virtualized servers and it's easier to spin up in the virtualized world versus bare metal. That's why we're looking at some options outside of Red Hat, for the bare metal. We'd like something that we can use to build a server a lot faster, as well as address network latency issues.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since version 4 or even before that, since 2000 or 2001, before it was RHEL.

In the environment I'm in right now, we've never had any issues. It's very stable. 

In another environment that I worked in, we had some Oracle Databases, but that wasn't really an issue with the operating system. It was more an issue with some configuration items between the database and the OS. And that was about four years ago.

In the last company I worked for we were deploying a PasS environment, where we were doing some stuff with containers, and RHEL worked well. In my current environment, it's more of an application base but, again, it seems to scale. Both have worked fine.

Red Hat's tech support has been pretty good. I'll open up a ticket to see if I can get information from Red Hat when I don't have the time to find it on my own. But 99 percent of the time we get great support and we're able to get the answers that we need.

Positive

The pricing is fair. We do a bunch of dev work and there is some free dev licensing out there that's great for doing proof of concept work. When that was brought out a couple of years ago we heard about it, but it didn't seem to have been communicated to our Red Hat representative. We would ask him about it and it seemed that they were confused. 

But the cost has been pretty stable over the years for what you get.

We figure out what we need for servers, make our purchase, and then manage it all in Satellite. We just make sure we're using what we pay for.

In the past, I've used other versions of Unix, such as Solaris and HP-UX, as far as paid versions go. In other environments we also used community versions, like CentOS and Oracle Linux. 

Oracle Linux would probably be the closest thing to a paid solution, although I think it's free. But using Oracle Linux wasn't a good experience. Dealing with Oracle support was not the best. Maybe it has improved, but it just wasn't the same as Red Hat support.

Times have changed from when I first started using it. Back then it was just a matter of putting a CD in and installing it. One of the companies I worked for did a lot of homegrown stuff and I used their tools that were like Kickstart. Now it is all automation with infrastructure-as-code. The complexity of deployment is about the same. Some of what we're doing to deploy stuff is outside of Red Hat and it's a matter of finding what tools are available.

We're in the process of deploying something right now where we have different versions of Python. That's the only use case we have with multiple versions on the same server. I don't expect any issues, but it's still early in that deployment.

We have three people dedicated to maintaining the infrastructure environment that we work in. That includes managing Linux servers, the applications that go with them, and dealing with day-to-day tasks like patching. It's the typical life cycle maintenance functions: break/fix, dealing with hardware issues, deploying new applications, and maintaining a VMware environment.

The reason we're using it is because it's stable and we know we can get support. I know there are other versions of Linux, ones that I've used, but I've never experienced the kind of support with those versions that Red Hat has provided. Red Hat is a stable Linux solution provider.

Our banking applications, primarily those focused on transactional data services, operate on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

We run our workloads on Red Hat Enterprise Linux due to its compliance and long support cycle.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development by providing a standardized image that we customize for developer laptops, developer environments, virtual machines, and production machines.

Our containerization projects run on OpenShift, a virtualized platform based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, where we deploy and manage our workloads and applications.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a high-performing operating system that effectively supports our business-critical operations, including high-latency, high-throughput applications essential for transaction services.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has robust built-in security features that effectively reduce risk in our environment.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux significantly contributes to our business continuity and compliance efforts by inherently supporting various compliance standards, including PCI and others. This built-in compliance functionality is a major advantage, as it simplifies the process of meeting regulatory requirements and provides robust evidence for audits. Ultimately, Red Hat Enterprise Linux streamlines our compliance procedures and strengthens our overall security posture.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux portfolio helps reduce our TCO.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a strong foundation for compliance and offers extended support, which is particularly valuable for critical upgrades and assistance.

To enhance Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would like to see more focus on improving performance and tools such as compilers.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for almost ten years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers high performance for our business-critical operations, especially for high-latency throughput applications that are critical for transaction services.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is flexible, and we always get support from the team if something is not working.

The customer support and technical service from Red Hat is good. When we needed support, such as for Java 21, we received early access. However, it's rarely the case that we need support.

Positive

The most significant return on investment is the long-term support, as we don't need to worry about support over an extended period. It ensures the continuation of service.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux licensing is not cheap, but it is worth it, especially considering the compliance and support it provides.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten.

If you're considering a third-party Linux OS, try Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It offers a free subscription for developers, and if it suits your needs, you can easily transition to the production-ready Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine.

We have a database that we maintain for root passwords, and sometimes I need to break the root password to reset it. We work a lot on logical volumes where I need to grow and shrink volumes on the fly. I did not have to shrink the logical volumes much, but I worked a lot on growing logical volumes on the fly to make them available for the database team. I have done network-related things. I configured network multipathing or IP multipathing where we can parallelly route the traffic to multiple ethernets.

I work a lot on user-related issues as well. We are also using Ansible a lot for automation. I am writing some playbooks, so there are a lot of use cases.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps us a lot. We host a lot of our applications on the Red Hat platform. We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for both on-prem and VM platforms. Most of them are VMs, but we do have some old legacy systems where we have Linux running on some Dell architecture. Our goal is to get rid of them this year and implement everything on virtualization because virtualization is growing a lot.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. We are using it in the production and lower environments. We are using a common platform for our deployments. We have a centralized environment.

In terms of portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for keeping our organization agile, it is flexible. Agile methodologies are very popular nowadays, and they help with coordination between dev and production teams. It is fulfilling the gaps between these teams. It is helpful.

I see so many features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux that I do not see in other Linux operating systems, such as Ubuntu. That is why Red Hat is very popular. All my experience is mostly on the Red Hat side. In terms of features, I like breaking root passwords, and I like the XFS file system over ext4.

I have not used it on the cloud side. I have not heard much about how Red Hat is doing on the cloud side. In the market, AWS and Azure are very popular, and they have captured most of the market. If Red Hat can improve on the cloud side, they can retain their customer base. Their customers do not need to go out for other cloud resources, and they can use the Red Hat cloud.

We are using it on-prem and in the virtual environment on VMware. We are using a cloud, but it is not a Red Hat cloud. We are using AWS in our organization. We have some EC2 instances deployed with Red Hat Enterprise Linux images, but I cannot say it is a Red Hat cloud. It is an AWS cloud, and we have instances. We are depending on a third-party cloud. If Red Hat provides that kind of service to our company, we can retain Red Hat. We do not need to go for a public cloud.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for almost 12 years. I started with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

It is a stable platform, but our company still wants to stick to the older version. They do not want to change the application base. They do not want to take risks. Unfortunately, Red Hat is not able to help to provide the patches for older versions. They suggest upgrading, but management is not doing that, so the Red Hat Enterprise Linux side is good, but our management side is bad.

Its scalability is good. We plan to use it more. We are growing. As our infrastructure grows, we are buying more licenses.

Their customer service is excellent. I like it. I am in touch with Ed who is one of the support engineers with Red Hat. He is helping me. 

I am also in touch with a few other people at Red Hat. If I run into any issues, I can simply email them, and I get a quick response from them. Based on the support I am receiving, I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We did not use any similar solution previously.

We are using it on-prem and in the virtual environment on VMware. Our cloud provider is AWS.

We are using the CI/CD model for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are using blue/green deployments as well for our containerized applications, and we have some canary deployments.

My initial deployment experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux was not great. It was not as easy as the current version. It was difficult during those days. We had to load the GUI and then change to CLI. It is better now. Red Hat has made some improvements in the newer versions. The current version 9 looks better than any other previous version.

I did not use any integrator or consultant. I downloaded an ISO image from Red Hat. I downloaded and installed it myself, and it worked very well. I did not run into any issues with the installation process.

Over the last few years, we have been within budget. We do not have any constraints about Red Hat. We are a big organization. We use a lot of products from different vendors. We are working on cost optimization for some of the vendors but not Red Hat, so Red Hat is still good. We are still happy with it.

The biggest return on investment is the customer base. We are in the telecom industry. We try to get as many customers as we can. Red Hat is not the only product that we are using, but it is a major product that we are using in our company.

We are good as of now. We do not have any concerns about licensing. Its price is still good for us.

We are not using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. We are using Kubernetes and Dockers for that.

When it comes to patching, our goal for 2024 is to make all the systems compliant. Especially at the infrastructure and application levels, I am actively working on the compliance tasks, and our goal is to fix all vulnerabilities. I am working with someone at Red Hat on some issues because I am not able to find the exact patch for certain vulnerabilities.

For now, we are happy with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are happy with what we are getting.

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. The reason for reducing two points is that I have not explored other operating systems very well.

I use the solution in my company to deploy our custom apps or to set up servers for DevOps operations, like running containers and those kind of tasks.

The benefits associated with the product for my company stem from the enterprise support the solution offers. Based on the fact that our company has technical exchange meetings with the product's staff members, I can say that I have never seen something like that happening in a hands-on engagement with our company, so that is just great. Being able to talk to the solution team about our company's issues and problems related to the tool all the time is something that really helps a lot.

I can't say anything specific about the product's valuable features, but I would say that whenever I have questions, I feel the tool's documentation is on point since I can always find anything I need easily.

There are some points in the solution's documentation where a few areas seem generic. The aforementioned area consists of the same scenario when it comes to some of the other products, so it is not just applicable for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) alone, but also for some of the other supported products. I have never had a problem with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), as it is really easy to use.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for five years.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

I believe that there are definitely some plans to increase the use of the solution in our company in the future.

I believe that there are definitely some plans to increase the use of the solution in our company in the future, especially if we start to get more customers and there is a need to ramp up automated testing since we would need more systems.

The solution's technical support is really good and responsive. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

I believe that my company used to use a few products before starting off with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but I believe that it was before I joined the organization.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on-premises models.

In terms of the ROI, my experience using the solution revolves around the product's community. The fact that I can just go out and even in an ecosystem in general with tools like Fedora, CentOS, and other stuff, I can always find what I want with the help of the community where there are people with similar experiences, especially if it is not available in the documentation part. I feel Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is community-focused, and I really appreciate that as a developer.

Running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on the foundation of a hybrid cloud deployment has impacted our company's operations and I can say that it has been easy because there is not much to do between the two environments, as it is consistent, and that just reduces a bunch of headaches.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped me centralize development. The operating system that we are developing is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). In our company, we are able to use everything in the solution with the help of documentation, support shared knowledge resources, and all of that. Just using the tool to support our company's infrastructure is really great, and now we don't have to branch out and use other technologies. The tool is a platform that supports many different things.

I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for containerization projects in my company as it is easy to use.

When it comes to the built-in features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance, I can't really say anything much about it because the product is used in our company for a specific use case and we put ourselves on top, so we don't really use the aforementioned components for the policies.

In terms of how I would assess the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for keeping our organization agile and flexible, I would say that the offering of minimal images and all such stuff really helps cut it down and make deployments faster. In our company, we are really excited to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to check the containerization of our apps, so being able to do such things for our products helps keep everything moving quickly. In general, my company is excited that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is moving towards the area to check the containerization of apps.

I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to a colleague who is looking at open-source cloud-based operating systems for Linux.

In terms of the deployment model used in my company for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I would say that the tool is basically deployed on-premises for closed environments and in the cloud because some of our company's customers prefer to deploy the product on the cloud. Mostly, my company uses the cloud services offered by AWS, while some of our company's customers use the services from Azure.

I like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) considering the support that it offers to our company along with good documentation.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for running various things. We have a lot of virtual machines. The applications that are running on it are a bunch of shell scripts for processing orders, marketing campaigns, generating reports, or running some Java applications.

We have the customization capability. We can easily customize it, and we can also automate and deploy it. I have a command line interface. I am a command line junkie, and I am able to use that, config files, and Ansible to be able to easily figure out what I need to do to automate things. It feels like I know what it is doing and how to make it do what I want. I do not have to weave some magical arcane hack the way I have to do in Windows.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development in a lot of ways. We have it hooked in through our GitHub. We are trying to combine where we are storing things and then have a standard way of how we are deploying things and have some standard configurations. With every single server, we do not have to worry about how to set this up because we are doing the same thing the same way. We can just do it across the board, and then we only have to worry about the interesting parts.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features are great for risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance. There are published CVEs, and there is SELinux, which I do not use and I always turn it off. Firewalls and tooling around that make it easy to use. The automation on top of that makes it easy to configure. With a push of a button, it is done.

We do not have to worry too much about portability. We are coming from Oracle Linux. We were primarily an Oracle Linux shop, and because that is based on it, it just works. We have not had any issues.

The fact that it is Linux is valuable. Why I like it in general is that I know what it is doing. I can figure out what it is doing, and I can make it do what I want. I am not delving into arcane registry things.

I am still trying to figure out the features it has. There is so much that it can do. What it does really well is that it allows you to do things.

It was probably 2008 when I first started using it. The company was using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and I was with the internal help desk supporting the Linux side.

Its stability is great. It is stable and rock-solid.

Its scalability is also great. It does not matter if the host is beefy or not. It is just going to run on it, and it is going to handle the work. Whether you have a couple of cores or 64 cores, it is just going to do it.

Their support is good. There is good responsiveness. They quickly get me to the person who knows the answer, but I have not used them much.

Positive

We were using Oracle Linux. We are switching because of some of the things. Oracle licensing has been a point of frustration. Their support is comparably difficult to work with, and the support documentation is a mess.

Red Hat is so much easier to navigate. It has been overall a much more pleasant experience to work with Red Hat.

We are using it on-prem, and then our cloud is a Kubernetes cluster on AWS, so it is basically on-prem.

Our deployment model is a manual kickstart with Ansible for configuration. My experience with deployment is good. I kickstart it and then hit it with Ansible, and it is done. It is very easy.

I did the deployment on my own.

We have not yet seen an ROI. It has not been in for long enough. There are no savings in terms of manhours because the actual day-to-day usage remains the same with Oracle Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. However, getting some of the metrics with Red Hat Insights is going to be helpful as we get into a better patching cycle. I am anticipating an easier life.

We are expecting an overall decline in the costs because of the differences between the Red Hat licensing and Oracle licensing. We are expecting a net decrease in overall cost. For using it, other than the license, there is no cost.

The setup cost is non-existent. With licensing, there was a little snafu because I misread something. There was a slight learning curve because we use virtual data center licensing. We had to understand how it all maps. We had to understand how that mapping works when the hypervisors are Red Hat or VMware. There is a slight learning curve, but it worked out. It ends up being easy.

I did not evaluate other options mainly because I have had experience with it before. From my prior experience, I already knew what I wanted.

We are trying to use Red Hat Insights. I need to finish updating the playbooks to hook our host. We are in the midst of transitioning from Oracle Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I have not fully hooked everything in, but we will be using Red Hat Insights.

We just started using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. We have not yet seen any impact of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on containerization projects.

If a colleague is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a lot of it would depend on their use case, what they are going to need for it, and whether they have an enterprise environment. There is a cost associated with it which can be a downside. I am an open-source lover. I do not like paying for stuff, but I get it. They need to look at the cost, and if the cost is prohibitive, they need to look at something that is compatible and as similar as possible.

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. I generally do not give out a ten. There needs to be something spectacular for a ten, so that is my personal bias against the top of the scale.

The SAP solution subscriptions have made things a lot easier because it's a standard build. 

The solutions were premium and standard, which were not the same. They've combined those into just one standard version. Only the support hours are different. That is fantastic for us. It makes life easier.

For the standard subscriptions, in the past, updating the OS could increase your downtime. With the production ones, it did not. It got our non-production and production out of sync. Now, they've combined that all into one. It's just the support hours that are different. They're fantastic.

We use the SAP solution subscriptions only for SAP, which are great. 

We also use Ansible. Ansible is a wonderful tool for automation. We use it to automate our patching. We use Ansible to get playbooks to take care of anything that's manual.

We were able to achieve our security standard certifications.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has affected our HA systems in a negative way. We're working through some of those issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 came up with a new feature that's like a MOM API in our cluster. It goes out into the AWS side and it needs to be adjusted. It does a retry that causes a cluster to failover pretty quickly, so we turned that feature off. That's something that could be improved. 

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a long time. It has been at least 10 to 15 years.

Support has been great. We get the right people for what we need.

Positive

The patching has been good, but we scan with Qualys all the time. It comes up with thousands of EIDs all the time, but putting on the patches seems to resolve that.

We're operating right now from 7.9 to 8.6. We have to go with the supported versions. We did qualify for RHEL 9. 

We used Unix in the past. We did have to come up with the SAP side. It was always Unix.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We had a lot of IBM AIX servers. We migrated a lot of them to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We have a lot of VMs, and we have a few physical servers. Currently, we are moving all the Red Hat VMs to the cloud. There are 1,600 to 1,700 Red Hat VMs that we are currently running.

The main benefit is that it can be easily recovered and easily restored. It is on the VM. We can easily restore every image that we back up on the VM. If something happens, we can easily fix it. Support and maintenance are easy. The most common issues that happen with Red Hat Enterprise Linux are password restore issues. We can go and restore the passwords through the single-user mode. This feature is well-developed and good.

We are using Ansible for the most automations. We can push everything through Ansible. We are moving towards automation to make sure our system can be easily maintained, and we can recover, restore, and do the things that we want. We have 1,600 to 1,700 servers. We have Ansible Tower, and we have a few satellite servers and a lot of capsules to support Red Hat servers.

If anything is supported by Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the feature is available in Red Hat Satellite, we are able to install it on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are using Red Hat Satellite to install all the patches and all the packages, so if a feature is available, we can easily install it if it is supported.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has built-in security features for simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance. We are working with most of the security environments. Security is our main concern. We have zero tolerance when it comes to security. We are able to apply security rules and regulations within the Red Hat environment.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, and we normally look at how it can easily support the system. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, we have a high-security system. We have a lot of features there. That is the main thing, but currently, we are moving from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Leapp and Red Hat Insights have been useful. RHEL Web Console is also helpful.

We have access to the Red Hat knowledge base. We have frequent meetings with Red Hat. Red Hat partners provided us with all the information and any kind of training.

We are using the features that are available with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ansible. As such, there are no specific features that we are looking for. 

We have frequent meetings with them. We have had some issues on the application side and the OS side for which we opened cases and discussed those concerns and questions in the meetings offered by Red Hat.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for almost 10 years.

Upgrades and migrations are ongoing processes to stay current. We are a big company. We always have migration going on. We always have the build process. Red Hat's presence keeps increasing in our environment. We are going to have about 2,500 Red Hat Enterprise Linux VMs in the next year.

If there are any concerns, we have a meeting with Red Hat, and they provide the required support. When we have any concerns or questions, they answer them. It is easy. I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We have probably seen an ROI. Red Hat is getting better every day. 

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.

We have various use cases with about 12,000 instances across four data centers and three different clouds. In general, it's for the adoption of and standardization with other vendors, so that other vendors' software is known to work. We're doing lift-and-shift of existing hardware infrastructure that is onsite into the Cloud.

It enables us to deploy current applications and emerging workloads across bare-metal, virtualized, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud environments. Typically, there haven't been a lot of issues in terms of the reliability of applications across these environments.

The AppStream feature provides access to up-to-date languages and tools in a way that interoperates with third-party source code. It makes it a lot easier to maintain that, as well as keeps our developers happy by having newer versions of development languages available.

In addition, as we roll into version 8 and, upcoming, 9, it makes the migrating of older applications into these environments easier.

We also use Red Hat JBoss Fuse and Red Hat Insights, the latter being a part of RHEL. Red Hat products integrate greatly with the OS itself. We're pretty pleased with that. The integrated approach simplifies our operations to a great extent.

The most valuable features are the

• flexibility of the OS itself
• reliability
• support model.
  

Also, the two versions we use are fairly standard. Most of our applications work with versions 6, 7, and 8 meaning migration and maintainability are pretty good.

In addition, we run multiple versions of the same application on a specific operating system, between different instances. RHEL is great at managing and maintaining those different versions. It's so much easier, and it does it without destroying the operating system itself.

I don't see anything that needs improvement with RHEL itself, but there is room for improvement of the support infrastructure for it. The management and updates to Satellite, which is the support update, have been cumbersome at best, including releases and changes to a release. Communication on how that will work going forward has not been great.

I've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for about 20 years.

We chose Red Hat for the stability.

The scalability is really good too. In terms of increasing our usage, I can only foresee it becoming greater in the environment.

Sometimes the tech support is hit and miss, but most of the time they're really responsive and knowledgeable. If the first-line tech doesn't know something, they will escalate quickly.

If I were to compare the tech support from Dell, HP, and Red Hat, Red Hat is probably our best support structure.

Positive

I've been with my current company for 10 years. We've used other UNIX platforms, like Solaris and AIX, but those are for different use cases. The company I started at, which was bought, had seven different implementations and I standardized them on RHEL, before the acquisition.

We switched to RHEL because those seven different operating systems were supporting a single team and none of them had a great management infrastructure, or they were just plain open source with no support. And getting to a single, supported, managed environment was the goal.

Red Hat's open-source approach was a factor when we chose the solution. I'm a big fan of the entire open-source consortium. The more people there are who can look at the code, validate it, and make sure it works as it moves upstream into the solidified package that Red Hat supports, the better. It gives you more visibility, more transparency, and you can customize it more. Whereas with closed code, you have no idea what's going on in the background.

The initial setup of the solution is relatively simple. It's pretty much click, click, click, done. And the single subscription and install repository for all types of systems make the purchasing and installation processes easier.

Depending on the platform, deployment of a single RHEL instance could take anywhere from  five to 30 minutes. Bare metal is going to take longer than deploying the cloud.

The licensing is a subscription model and the only product whose model I don't like is Ansible. At $100 per server, with 12,000 servers, it adds up.

My biggest advice would be to read the documentation and reach out to Red Hat, or even just search the internet, so that you understand what you're getting into and what you're implementing.

I can't think of very much that needs to be improved with RHEL. The model that they have for maintaining patching, and their cadence on Zero-day attacks is fantastic, and their support is really good. I don't see any issues.