Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for configuration management of on-premise servers within the bank, making it a bank-wide solution.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is hosted in the cloud, but the use cases are for on-premises.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enabled centralized development by controlling deployments through features like sign-in, role-based access control, and Ansible Tower. The API integration enhanced control by standardizing deployments, providing oversight, and enabling management from a central location.

It facilitates easier environment management and performs well in that aspect, as we haven't encountered any issues.

Regarding the portability of applications for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the only tool we utilize is Ansible Tower. Its ease of use on servers and local machines, consistent interface and debugging process ensure a streamlined workflow regardless of the platform.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux significantly enhances the bank's capacity to manage numerous deployments. Its integration with Ansible Tower provides exceptional scalability, which has proven invaluable. Furthermore, the seamless integration change simplifies deployment management, making it substantially more efficient.

API integration streamlines connections with other tools, simplifying data sharing and enhancing workflow efficiency. Features like sign-in, role-based access control, and API integration provide crucial control over deployments.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux packaging could be improved to simplify infrastructure maintenance and provisioning. While Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a robust operating system, managing it alongside external tools can present maintenance, provisioning, and compliance challenges. Streamlining the packaging process would enhance efficiency and ease of use for administrators.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for two years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a stable platform.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is highly scalable. By adding more hosts and doubling the number of VMs, it has successfully worked for our needs.

Technical support responds quickly to urgent issues, but minor bugs may take a considerable amount of time to resolve.

Neutral

Our projects utilized various solutions, including XLD and UCD, as well as some legacy technologies. Red Hat Enterprise Linux proved easier to configure than previous platforms, offering greater flexibility and alignment with current best practices.

While I lack direct deployment experience, I understand that Red Hat Enterprise Linux facilitates straightforward modifications, minimizing concerns about system disruptions.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers the greatest return on investment through its invaluable support, which is crucial for our critical applications. The comprehensive documentation and extensive resources, including Q&A and solutions to previous issues, are also essential.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers robust built-in security features that help with risk reduction, business continuity, and compliance. However, hosting external tools within a bank environment can create challenges in synchronizing policies and meeting security expectations. Ensuring the tool's security configurations align with the bank's server requirements can be complex, but this challenge is not unique to Ansible and is a common issue when integrating external tools into secure environments.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers greater control and a higher level of security compared to some open-source alternatives, which can be crucial for enterprise applications where stability and reliability are paramount. This focus on security is a key factor in choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

As an organization, we use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for its stability and security.

I have worked with it on the cloud as well as on-premises. We use it with AWS.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is great when it comes to provisioning and patching. I am satisfied with it.

The user base and the knowledge base of Red Hat are way better than those of others. They make the user install and solve the issues easily.

We have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux Image Builder. It is a great tool for managing multiple systems. It can copy an exact image of my existing server to multiple servers. It is a great way to save time.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has helped us a lot. After switching from Ubuntu to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, there has been a drastic difference. The stability and the efficiency have enhanced greatly.

At the moment, we only have AWS cloud, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux is working well. We have plans to switch to GCP.

The package manager of Red Hat is very convenient and efficient to use. With other Linux versions, such as Arch Linux and Ubuntu, package managers might not always be stable. When installing any software, the dependencies can vary, and there can be conflicts, whereas Red Hat has efficiently managed all of that so that users can install packages without any conflicts. We do not use the graphical interface, so the package manager and security features are mainly valuable to us.

After installation, the initial setup can be simplified or improved a little bit for new users coming from a distribution like Ubuntu or Windows. For example, for Arch, the user guide is very good. If a user does not have any experience, he or she can refer to the guide and install it successfully, whereas, for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the user needs to have some understanding of Linux.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for two years.

It is very stable for us. I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.

It is quite scalable. I would rate it an eight out of ten for scalability.

Before using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we were using Ubuntu as our main server. Ubuntu is more consumer-oriented, whereas Red Hat Enterprise Linux is more professional and work-oriented.

The main concern for us was how to get it installed perfectly. Before me, there was a fairly new person installing Red Hat, and he was not able to get it installed perfectly. The partitions were very differently implemented in Red Hat than in Ubuntu. That was one of the major issues for him.

My colleague was handling the main setup, but he was not able to figure out how to get everything to work. He was able to install it with the ISO, but he could not set up partitioning and Wi-Fi drivers. It was complicated for him because he knew Ubuntu, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux was complicated for him. We had to refer to the documentation for our network drivers and then we could get our Red Hat Enterprise Linux working. It took us around three to four hours.

In terms of maintenance, timely patching is required.

Overall, we have about 1,000 users of these servers, but we are the only ones who work with these servers. No one else in the company operates these servers because one mistake can bring down the entire server.

It saves us time. There are about 40% savings.

It is cost-efficient for the tasks it does and the improvements that it brings. For a professional environment, it is very cost-efficient. It was easy to purchase the subscription.

If a user is using it for commercial purposes, I would not recommend it. If a user is using it as a server or a workstation, I would recommend it.

We do not use the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Web Console much. We only use it for the initial steps to configure the users. Other than that, we do not use it much.

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

I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to create directories and files and configure security settings for the Red Hat Certified System Administrator exam.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux comprehensively covers the fundamental knowledge required for the Red Hat Certified System Administrator and Red Hat Certified Engineer certifications. My experience taking the Red Hat examination was positive, and I am satisfied with their product.

I can easily work with Red Hat OS because it is user-friendly, even for manual tasks. While it may be as expensive as Windows, they offer a four-month trial and provide cloud access. This is valuable for understanding Linux concepts and working within the Linux environment. Overall, it's a great learning experience.

We prefer not to install the Linux OS manually, so we opt to work in the cloud instead. The cloud platform provides a real-time experience, enabling us to practice for exams easily and enhance our Linux knowledge. This proves highly beneficial for students pursuing Red Hat certification.

While preparing for the Red Hat administrator examination, I worked with the cloud platform, which was generally good but occasionally experienced some lag. Sometimes, the platform would be very slow, making it difficult to open labs. It could take around 30 minutes to start a lab, and there were limitations on data persistence. Any work or files created would only be available for one week before disappearing, requiring recreation. This lack of long-term storage is a disadvantage of the Red Hat Cloud platform.

I am currently using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I would rate the stability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux seven out of ten because of the lagging.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable.

The support team was helpful in addressing the lag in the cloud.

Neutral

I used UNIX before switching to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. UNIX did not provide adequate support for developers, making it challenging to work with. Though it's open source, UNIX lacked the features that we needed. So, I transitioned to Red Hat. Red Hat offers developers extensive support and access to technologies like OpenShift and Kubernetes. This makes it easier for developers and large companies to manage workloads and adopt new technologies.

I installed UNIX on my laptop and experienced no lag, unlike the lag I've encountered in the cloud with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Installing Red Hat is easy. We download the file and run it in our labs.

One Red Hat license costs USD 131, which I find reasonable.

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

We have 15 members in our group that use Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's much faster than UNIX and offers extensive management support, making it valuable for startups and engineering developers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux serves as the foundation for our cluster infrastructure, allowing us to deploy applications and connect servers. We further enhance operational efficiency by deploying Kubernetes on top.

We chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux for its stability and well-rounded features and its proven track record of decades of reliable operation.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features and mandatory access control help to mitigate and secure the OS from threats.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is well documented and anyone with a technical background can easily understand and use the OS.

Red Hat's image builder is helpful.

Building upon the industry's 95 percent adoption of Linux OS, our Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Kubernetes setup has helped our operations.

We have not encountered any downtime while using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to achieve security standards certification.

The performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is consistent between on-premises and cloud deployments. The key difference is simply a shift from owning hardware to renting cloud space for the operating system.

Red Hat is open source, so what we get with Red Hat Enterprise Linux is valuable support that is not included in the free version.

Recently, whenever we have applied a Red Hat patch, we have encountered errors requiring additional work. Unfortunately, the release notes for these patches are not always updated accurately, creating further challenges during troubleshooting. Specifically, the notes often fail to mention dependent packages that are also updated alongside the main package.

While the OS hardening feature is helpful, it could benefit from additional automation. A one-click package for hardening all files would significantly improve efficiency compared to the current manual process, especially considering the hundreds of files we've processed over the years.

The support has room for improvement.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for eight years.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is deployed across multiple locations in our organization with 95 percent of our employees that use it.

To ensure optimal performance and security, we must prioritize installing operating system updates as they become available.

Taking the Red Hat administration course beforehand will significantly ease the user experience when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I work as a consultant for a bank. They were using another type of Linux and facing some scripting issues. We are using Ansible for infrastructure, but they depend on different languages. In this fintech use case, the bank performs transactions between two banks. The transactions were getting stuck, but they detected that the money had been transferred. 

The money comes from the bank. They transport it from the cloud and deliver it to the channels like Visa, MasterCard, etc. The national bank is also involved at that stage, so there is a pause. When we are using auto-scaling, it requires a small amount of time, so your application will have an error. This is a millisecond process. That is the duration. We were looking for issues like bank fraud. You need to conduct an analysis and restart the service. The data is on Red Hat Linux, and we use EKS for containerization. 

We have a hybrid solution combining AWS with an on-premise environment. Moving data to the cloud requires a stable connection because we have multiple systems on-premises and on the cloud. This platform helped us communicate among multiple clouds and our private cloud network. 

Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to subscribe to other Red Hat services from our portal. We can connect to Satellite with single sign-on logins. We can use the Spring CLI call and the Docker hub. We have a direct subscription.  

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has helped us avoid cloud vendor lock-in. We could easily migrate between cloud services from AWS to Azure if we wanted to. Everything is an SCL, so we could deploy the same thing on another cloud. It's highly useful. We can make a script and move the entire infrastructure. 

The Red Hat Linux comes with Anaconda, a fascinating tool that is useful if I need to connect multiple systems. I also like role-based access. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a little expensive for some customers who don't have the budget. It depends on the client. They can save money by not purchasing some of the added packages and services.  If the client has a budget of $10 million, we can go for the whole bundle. 

I have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux for four or five years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable, but it depends on the deployment. 

I rate Red Hat support 10 out of 10. I'm a big fan. 

Positive

I have used Ubuntu, which has its own cloud service. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a better option if the client has a budget. Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be certified and meet compliance requirements. 

Deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux is straightforward, but the complexity and time required depend on whether we are deploying on a virtual machine or a desktop. If we have the correct documentation, the total process can be completed in three to five days.

I have used the Image Builder Tool, but in the latest deployment, I pulled down the repository from the Docker hub. We use our own XML file and create the repository. It's a two or three-day design process for Red Hat Linux. We need one data resource for that process and a second engineer on the support side if we want to set up more servers from their on-site services.

It's affordable, but everything costs money. At the same time, everything adds value for our clients.  For example, I was working on a machine-learning project, and they needed more team resources, and all the projects used computing power. By running multiple clusters, the client exceeded the rate for that data. We buy services from AWS, the Azure Marketplace, or directly from Red Hat. 

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10. I recommend buying the services in a package if you can afford it. If the client doesn't have the budget, we can find alternatives. It depends on the client's needs. 

We predominantly use Red Hat CoreOS we use it to connect to different types of OpenShift clusters.  Whenever I work with RHEL, it's always been with the CLI.

Previously, when we were using other distributions, we weren't getting a lot of support for the operating system itself. However, Red Hat has mainly focused on the operating system, so we get more support. 

AWS has its own version of Linux for its instances. All these cloud providers provide more support for the infrastructure and services, but they don't focus on the operating system itself. But Red Hat, with its customer portal, provides better support if something goes down. That's what differentiates RHEL from other products.

One great thing about RHEL is that it has a big community of users. There's a huge community that uses CentOS. If you need some help or have a question online, you get more resources for RHEL compared to other products. 

It's a really good operating system by itself. It's more versatile, integrating with tools like Ansible for automation.

There are amazing resources online, and because we are an enterprise, we have enterprise support. We can always create a support case, and we have some resources to help. The knowledge offered by Red Hat is great.

Another feature I tried was RedHat Insights because they offer it for other RedHat products as well. I've used it for OpenShift. It was helpful. It provides a good, in-depth understanding of what's going on in the actual infrastructure. It gave us good insights into the level at which we can run the containers and if you can scale the infrastructure vertically or horizontally and how to manage it better.

There is room for improvement in integration with different cloud platforms. There should be better integration because right now, a lot of cloud platforms have their own versions of Linux, which runs better on them, and they have better integration with the services. RHEL is great, but RHEL is more of a generic form of what Red Hat provides.

I've been using RHEL for about four years now.

There were certain times when I encountered issues. There are certain problems with integrations. 

For example, we had an issue once where the operating system had issues accessing the data server on our VMware infrastructure. So we did have a couple of engineers help us out with that, but that's one area where it can improve. But that's nitpicking. 

It's been great so far, but that's one thing I would like to see that would make RHEL a little better product.

Positive

We prominently use RHEL, but we've also used Ubuntu. We also have used PCF. I use Ubuntu Xenial and have worked with Amazon Linux for a while.

One pro is that at the operating system layer, RHEL has better support from Red Hat, and if something goes down, I found many resources for troubleshooting online.

For example, we predominantly use Amazon Linux if I'm using AWS. There aren't a lot of resources if I run into an issue. RHEL has way more documentation on Linux. It has a bigger community, from an operating system perspective.

One of our deployment models is on-premise, and the other is on the cloud. It's a hybrid. We have a big footprint on the cloud.

We use Azure because a lot of resources are already deployed on it. We can use all the features I build on RHEL, but you can scale up the infrastructure, depending on the demand. That's the reason why we use Azure.

For the upgrade process, we mainly use Ansible automation. Whenever we want an upgrade, we just go into the Ansible Tower, change the version, and make sure we are applying that to the right environments so that there's no outage. 

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

Primarily, we use it for a couple of different servers. Some are doing data hosting, and some are doing network management-type functions.

We use it on-premises. We do not use it on the cloud. Because of government work, we're not cloud-based.

By implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we were mainly looking for stability. By having a lot of open source solutions, we ran into problems where there were too many flavors and too many variables. We ran into issues with ISO and other things where this particular site was a one-off from this site, which was a one-off from this site, which was one-off from this site. That became a problem for making sure that we stick to a consistent level and patch to a consistent level across the board.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been good. We do a lot of containerization and a lot of microservices. It has worked really well. It helped in keeping our organization agile. Our partners provided us with a lot of quick utilities and reuse of things. We can shut down a container and spin up a new container to introduce new capability quicker. 

The biggest feature that I have found valuable is stability. 

The way it lent itself to automation has been very invaluable for us. It makes the setups a lot more consistent and repeatable across the board. We're able to deploy the product quickly in a very consistent manner, which meets our timelines. A lot of what we do has very short spending dates, and they need a lot of product work.

It has been pretty good for us. I have no complaints as such. We just learned that we can get access to more support documents by going through the portal. I didn't know that. If it was something that was more known or advertised, that would have helped us to find out some of the information a little better.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for about a couple of years.

It's a 10 out of 10 in terms of stability.

It's a 10 out of 10 in terms of scalability.

The customer service is good. There is a lot of support documentation out there for anything you're looking for.

Positive

We tried quite a few flavors of different things, but nothing provided the consistency that we are getting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We tried everything such as Ubuntu, Mint, etc.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux stood out for its consistency and stability. We had several different problems with drivers on Mint. There were so many different flavors. We had one developer who built everything on one, and then another developer built on another, and none of that was coming together. It was not meshing, so we finally went to a common platform with stability and supportability. It was a lot better. It has allowed the developers to focus more on their code rather than having to worry about fighting the underlying things, such as drivers aren't on this one, and that one is not working.

It was very straightforward. We've pushed in further to make our own ISOs, so we're making sure that everything is getting the same applications and everything is deployed across the board, and we are able to virtualize in some cases. It has been good.

You definitely get what you're paying for. From what we've seen, it has been great. It has also allowed virtualization and making their own ISOs. We're able to package all that up, and it has worked consistently and repeatability. We've written our own Bash scripts so that we can automatically deploy that and stick it as part of the build. We're saving a lot of time and getting to a common platform repeatedly.

Overall, I'd rate it a nine out of 10. There's always room for a little bit of improvement.

I am an administrator for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a hybrid environment running off of on-prem servers and also AWS. 

I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a variety of purposes. For example, we use it in cloud control systems at our factories. We also use it for test systems, data acquisition, databases, and web services.

The biggest problem we were trying to solve by implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux was scalability. I have found that since implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we get a lot more value for our money from our hardware. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has also increased our utilization of Windows as a solution.

I am not the one who moves workflows between the cloud and our data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. However, we have tested it and I believe it is seamless. It just works. This is one of our disaster recovery methods. We will have images, and we use Veeam for this. Veeam actually takes the image we have and moves it to the cloud. We then fired it up and did not have any problems.

The most valuable feature is the reliability of Red Hat's support.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux analytics are cryptic. While it is user-friendly, it is also very picky about who it takes for a user. It is rock solid, but it can be difficult to find things in there. Google is probably the best way to find information, but solving a problem can be difficult if we don't know what flags or permissions we need. We need more transparency or ease of use.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable.

I can always get a hold of someone when I call, and they always resolve my issue. I only have to call them once or twice a year, because things just work.

Positive

I have used Fedora and Oracle Linux. I have some systems that run CentOS. 

Our organization requires us to use different solutions. We have had instances where products were developed on Oracle Linux. These products are medical, and switching to a different platform is not a simple task. I am encouraging the organization to switch everything to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because, although Oracle Linux is a fine platform, it is eight months behind Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The main benefit of CentOS is its cost. Both systems are reliable, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a major advantage: Red Hat support. With Red Hat support, we have access to top-level Linux experts. If we need help with anything related to Linux, we can call Red Hat and they will connect us with an expert who can help us.

The first time I deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I was swapping floppies. It has gotten a lot easier since then. The deployment process is straightforward. I usually map an ISO, and then check a bunch of boxes and let it run. I can have a server up and running in about fifteen minutes. After validating the system and installing the necessary software, I can deliver it to the end user in an hour. I know that if I automate the process, I could probably reduce the time to six minutes.

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten because there is always room to grow.

Someone looking at an open source, cloud-based Linux OS instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux should consider what is being used in their customer base. If they are putting something up there as a proof of concept, then dabbling in open source is fine. However, if they have customers relying on them and they want minimal downtime, then they need Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The knowledge base can be a bit cryptic at times. We can go in there and read the same information that's in the documentation, but sometimes it's not clear enough. So I'll often go to a half dozen other websites that tend to give us examples and other helpful information. The knowledge base is a good place to start, but it's not the end-all-be-all.