Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for model bases and websites.

We chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux for its robust security and reliable support, which are critical for our government healthcare department and require 24/7 operation.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize our development by consolidating all our servers in one location using VMware and deploying a single instance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux across that infrastructure.

It provides stability to our containerized workloads.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has performed well for our business critical applications.

The built-in security features are great. We have never had a security breach in our Red Hat environment and receive monthly updates.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enhances our system's security by providing monthly updates, including critical security patches, significantly reducing our overall risk.

Itcontributes to our business continuity and compliance efforts through its stability and rapid issue resolution.

We use Red Hat Insights to ensure compliance with any Red Hat product integration.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is helping to reduce our total cost of ownership, and our planned shift to virtualization is expected to further decrease TCO.

Red Hat's support is valuable for our employees who are new to OpenShift.

I'm seeking a streamlined method for migrating from an OpenShift environment to a VMware virtualization platform utilizing Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The price of Red Hat Enterprise Linux always has room for improvement.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 15 years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers scalability as long as licensing compliance is maintained.

The Red Hat technical support is excellent.

Positive

The greatest return on investment from Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the skilled support it provides to our application teams.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive, particularly for governments operating with limited budgets.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. While it is open source, which typically means ongoing improvements, there are still some minor details that could be refined.

When choosing between a third-party Linux OS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, consider the workload. Less critical workloads that don't require 24/7 operation can utilize various third-party options. However, for stable, secure, and mission-critical systems demanding 24/7 uptime, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the optimal choice.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for file transfers and changing file permissions. It is also used to check file spaces and for migration purposes. Our tools are hosted on the Linux environment, and our agent services run on it.

We use Red Hat Linux to start and stop our agent services during migration, install new agents, and transfer files. The primary benefit is that it's a widely used open-source solution with good support. Now that we've migrated from CentOS to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we will realize some benefits. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has more features. 

I like Red Hat Enterprise Linux's clustering capabilities and high-level architecture. It has high availability, built-in disaster recovery, SSH features, and scripting. 

The documentation is excellent. Since it was acquired by IBM, the open-source tools and technologies hosted on the Linux environment have been updated with many new features. 

It would be great if Red Hat had its cloud instead of using AWS, Azure, or GCP. Red Hat Enterprise Linux should have a dedicated cloud. I would also like to see more Windows support. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux could also be more user-friendly and use AI or machine learning to automate processes. That is the most dynamic feature in the information technology industry.

I have used Red Hat for five years.

We have intermittent issues with stability, but we're hoping they will improve in the latest version.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is quite scalable. We can place a lot of agents on Linux servers, some on the cloud, and a few on-prem. It can handle the workload. 

I rate Red Hat support eight out of 10. We have communicated with Red Hat support via email. 

Positive

Before Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we used CentOS. Another Linux flavor I've used is Ubuntu. 

The first deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux had a learning curve, but I've learned a lot since then. Once you know the process, then it's straightforward. It uses a command-based process, but if it were based on a GUI or a console, like a Windows installer, that would be a significant improvement. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux requires some housekeeping. We have to restart and patch servers weekly or biweekly and check the CPU, memory size, file size, the database used, and whether the IP network protocols are defined. All this happens monthly, weekly, or fortnightly.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux eight out of 10. 

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for running SQL servers, Oracle databases, Java applications, Apache, and data store types of things.

We use it for all sorts of functions. We have different levels. I am primarily an SE building and configuring the servers. The application-related work is for everyone else.

In terms of our environment, we might have some cloud. We have different engineering teams working on different parts of the technologies. My team and I do not touch that, so we have a basic cloud-based and non-cloud-based setup.

We are primarily able to standardize on the platform. By keeping everything standard, you know what might break or should not break. That is the true benefit. It seems to help keep a better level of standard across all groups, business standards, and application types.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to centralize development. That goes with platform uniformity. The development team has a common toolset and expectations from the toolset and what they are working with. It just makes things easier for each developer.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very good for keeping our organization agile.

It is the most lightweight platform to use. It is very flexible. It is not very difficult to manage, configure, and deal with. That is a plus point.

Migrating people from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to 8 has been good so far. Irrespective of whether we are doing an in-place upgrade or a full rebuild, most people are able to convert over. There is no problem.

For our use case, it seems to be working well, so I cannot think of what it could do better. I know for our purpose and what we have been using it for, it has been working well. Their support, however, can be better.

I came on board when they bought our company. At the time, I was using CentOS. From what I know, they have been only using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I started using it from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. It has been about 13 years.

It seems stable, but developers might have a different response. When you have a problem with a Windows server, you typically reboot it, but you do not have to reboot a Linux server to get it to work better.

It is a scalable platform.

It is pretty good. It varies based on the support person that you get. They might understand what you are talking about right away or not.

For one of the cases that I opened, I laid out every single detail possible. The first thing they said was that it was not that. It was something else. They kept going back and forth with different support teams on the same ticket. Finally, it clicked with somebody and they figured out what caused the issue. Somehow an RPM of a different version was installed on one server versus another one, and no one caught that. Some people were going down the wrong path saying it was networking and not some sort of binary that was installed which changed something. They went back and forth with different troubleshooting paths. Eventually, someone saw and understood what I meant.

Positive

We have always been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux at our workplace.

Deployment for our builds is typically PXE. I do not have insights into that because the build is built and configured by another team. I deploy and provide the server for the development team. I understand how Kickstart and other things work, but I do not install and configure it. It seems relatively easy. From what I have done in the past, it does not seem that difficult.

I am not aware of taking any external help for deployment.

The biggest ROI is in terms of consistency. We know how it works which makes going forward a lot easier.

We are coming from CentOS, so technically, our total cost of ownership has gone up, but it is still cheaper than Windows for a database server and things like that.

I was not a part of the evaluation. I came on board and began working with what was there.

In terms of security features, we do not use anything too advanced other than what is out of the box. We do not manage the compliance piece and things like that. There is a different group that manages that piece.

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

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to run quite a few pieces of software. It's mostly for jPOS, but we also run some Apache solutions and some security applications.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has streamlined a lot of the support issues. When we've had problems, Red Hat has been proactive about solving the problem with us. Support is always an issue with open-source platforms. By providing this support, Red Hat makes it much easier to adopt Linux.  

I love Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security. You can see who is trying to do what and who isn't allowed. You get an alert for that. We also use a product from Symantec on the Linux system for real-time threat detection, but I think we probably don't need that. Red Hat already has these capabilities, but the security team needs something they can centrally manage. They need to know whether the system is protected and the agent is running. 

We use it on VMware, and we have a multi-site deployment, so it's very easy to patch and keep the servers up. We use Ansible automation for patching, which has really helped with the service uptime.

I like the speed of the OS data and the ease of Ansible automation. I don't need to spend much time managing everything. The provisioning and patching using Ansible is seamless. Ansible automation gives you almost a cloud-like capability on-premise. Most of my group doesn't have cloud skills. I learned it on my own and got my Kubernetes certification. I'm familiar with the automation infrastructure, how to build the execution environment and implement the private automation hub. Others still need training.

I've used Red Hat Enterprise Linux Image Builder for testing and development, but I haven't put it into production. We have a VMware template, and we've been doing training on VMware, but we are not there yet. I think they might move from VMware to another product. They are looking at other options, such as OpenShift, but we don't have training for OpenShift yet. They should try to have a salesman come and get OpenShift training for customers. If they make training free for the customers, more would switch to OpenShift from VMware.

I use Linux on Satellite with Ansible infrastructure. It would be great if there were a universal interface to control Red Hat Enterprise Linux's policy from Satellite. It could be a dashboard showing which policies were enabled on what system and allow you to apply them from the dashboard. 

I think Red Hat training could be cheaper. A company can move fast technologically with enough training. They will be stagnant without training and remain unable to fully leverage the technology. I have been encouraging the group to get a subscription to the training course for five years, but we haven't been able to take advantage of it because of the cost. They should make it cheaper for clients and offer big discounts at scale. 

When people lacked training for the technology we use, we migrated away from it. I worry that if we don't have enough training available to the client, they will eventually migrate away from Red Hat. More affordable training on key technologies like Satellite and Ansible automation will help us retain customers on those products. Downstream it will help them migrate to the latest and greatest Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as well. 

I have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux since 2005.

I rate Red Hat support 10 out of 10. I've been very impressed with the knowledge base and the support from Red Hat. When I create a ticket, they respond and resolve the issue quickly or they point us to the correct resources. For example, we had an NFS issue with ISO, so they helped us with the mounting options. We also had an issue with IBM AIX and Red Hat integration. Red Hat referred us to the IBM support stack, and we were able to get IBM to help us out.

Positive

Initially, I used Solaris because I liked it the best, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux has improved so much that it has overtaken Solaris. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is easier to use and has better documentation. I also like having the ability to use Satellite and Ansible automation to manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 

The deployment is straightforward because we use Ansible automation to spin up a new system and install applications directly from the Ansible workflow. We were planning to have Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 online last year, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 came out, so we decided to wait for a bit, and we're almost ready to upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.  The application folks still haven't had enough time and money to migrate everything over, and we need a project manager. 

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 out of 10. It comes with all of these nice tools like the Satellite automation web console. 

We primarily use it for OS purposes. 

It's very good for support compared to other operating systems. For decades, it's been providing good support and service. Even during implementation, there's a dedicated team to answer any queries. We are a very big company running critical applications and having that support is very important.

The patching tool is good. We're also introducing the possibility of automation.

The built-in security features are okay when it comes to simplifying risk reduction. It makes life easier, especially in regards to the lifecycle and what we need to install, et cetera. The features and tools help us to maintain security overall. 

It is easy to maintain compliance.

The portability of applications and containers is good. Now we are just starting with the containers and anything related to Kubernetes. 

Red Hat is always providing security on time. Any vulnerabilities are immediately dealt with to fill the gap and deal with the issue.

It's a good tool. I'm very confident with this product.

The system role features for automation security configurations, et cetera, for Ansible, we started using it. We are new in terms of automation. We'll start to use it heavily in the near future. Ansible is another great tool from Red Hat.

It enables us to maintain consistency across systems over time. My role is to maintain stability, even during upgrades and patches. So far, it's been a positive experience. We use the entire ecosystem around Red Hat.

We use Red Hat Insights. From a security perspective, we may stop using it. With Insight, if you have Red Hat Satellite, it gives you an in-depth view of everything. The only thing missing is the insights related to performance. We may not continue with it. We'll see if we'll push it and have everything on the cloud. 

In the area we are using it, we are satisfied.

Maybe in OpenShift, which is our next step, there can be more improvements with integration with Kubernetes. We're not experts there yet. 

Maybe it could have a better user experience and less coding. Reducing the effort for the end user or administrator would be ideal to make daily operation and maintenance easier. 

If they can make the integration with Ansible easier, that would be ideal.

They should offer more in terms of learning materials to make learning easier. 

They need to make things more affordable or accessible. 

The solution is stable. We barely have any issues with a server setup. So far, it's manageable. The biggest challenge is the criticality of releasing patches. When we have any critical alerts we action them. We tend to try to wait for the release of a stable version. 

How many people use the solution depends on the application. We likely have thousands of users. We do have some products that maybe only have a few or a few hundred. 

We've had no challenges with scaling. It can support any type of load within the data center. 

Support is excellent. 

Positive

We did use a different OS. I have used Unix in the past. I started with Unix 30 years ago. I've also used SUSE. Red Hat offered more service and support. 

I was involved in the deployment. Our team managed the process. It's pretty straightforward. We handle implementation, tuning, and patching. 

How long it takes to implement the product depends. We're trying to mitigate the time by automating with Ansible. We want to handle one VM or server in five or fewer minutes, however, it can take days. At this point, we can provision servers in a few minutes. It's becoming faster. 

We have a team of ten to run the infrastructure on the OS level. 

I'm not an expert on ROI. We are paying to use the solution, however, the utilization we get and the support both offer good value. 

The pricing model isn't something I deal with directly. The pricing is fair, especially compared to virtualization like VMware. We do use VMware and are thinking about moving sandboxes and testing over to Red Hat. This may end up being a big cost savings with our CAPEX and OPEX. 

From the price level, the cost is almost the same for us, if we look at Red Hat versus SUSE, however, we get a higher level of support with Red Hat. 

Red Hat was always our first choice. 

We're a Red Hat customer. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

The solution offers stable distribution and is very focused on security. It's very committed to delivering security fixes. That way, we don't have to keep moving forward with new versions. 

They are very focused on security and their products are well-designed in that regard. Their delivery of fixes for all products is great. It helps us maintain compliance and helps with risk reduction.

They provide satellites as an account management solution to deliver fixes. It helps us figure out where there are security gaps in our system. They offer good compliance out of the box.

We are starting to roll out container approaches for delivering new solutions. It's still early. We are using a very simple setup and we're beginning to test OpenShift. 

The product enables us to achieve security standards certification.

We can build with confidence and ensure availability across physical infrastructures. From the OS perspective, they do have a lot of reliability features. The virtualization is being phased out (their previous solution) and now they are moving to OpenShift. We're just starting to adopt it. 

We can automate security configurations. We're using the Red Hat security ecosystem to manage logical access and security. It delivers a lot of information with regard to security and hardening and how to use its products properly with regard to security, and we try to follow those guidelines. 

Overall, they are doing a good job. We're hoping that they continue to onboard open-source products into their operating system.

I've been using the solution for about seven years.

Technical support is pretty good. It's one of the main reasons we chose Red Hat over competitors. 

Positive

We've been working with CentOS. It was used in a very limited scope. We've also used Oracle Enterprise Linux for a limited scope. Red Hat has a more solid community and certifies its products more effectively. 

We're quite experienced with the initial setup at this point. For us, the process is a standard procedure.

The product does require some maintenance. There are about four people dedicated to the technology at this time.  

They are becoming very competitive. There has been more pressure based on competition, which is healthy. They could continue to work on their pricing model. The subscription model for some products needs improvement. The automation shouldn't be combined with managed hosts. Pricing should be based on socket and not endpoints. 

We evaluated Oracle Enterprise Linux. 

I'm a customer and end-user. 

We do not use Red Hat Insights just yet due to some restrictions around sending sensitive information off-premises. We're quite limited in terms of using that feature at the moment.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

I work in the energy sector, so we use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a variety of purposes. These include high-performance computing, running applications like SAP, geospatial applications, and Oracle. We rely on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a wide range of applications, including those that require running Oracle databases.

It is important to our organization to have a solution that avoids cloud vendor lock-in. We just don't want to be locked into just one side or the other. We want to have the flexibility and availability to explore other options.

One of the main reasons we chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux was its reliability and stability. Compared to the Microsoft Windows environment, the Linux environment provided much greater stability. Therefore, we decided to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for all our critical applications at that time, as they required a Linux-only environment.

We use Red Hat Image Builder as well. The golden images created by Image Builder are okay. In our organization, we prefer to create our own images because we need to incorporate our own security measures and harden the images accordingly.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux could do better in live patching. In this day and age, vulnerabilities are constantly emerging, I feel that Red Hat Enterprise Linux has fallen backward in terms of live patching, particularly live kernel patching. There are other products available that can perform this function, and they often follow their direction. 

Currently, my company has a live patch solution where we can patch the kernel without rebooting. This is essential because certain applications cannot tolerate downtime for reboots. However, there is a security concern when the patching process is delayed, as it exposes the system to high vulnerabilities and risks. So, when critical applications go down due to rebooting, it has a significant impact on both the financial and operational aspects. It requires a lot of money and manpower to schedule and execute the reboots, and during that time, the application downtime results in losing money. I believe this is an area that Red Hat Enterprise Linux should focus on to address this challenge.

I have been using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system for around 20 years. We transferred our existing subscriptions to the cloud version. We are actually exploring hybrid solutions and availability options. As we transition to Azure, we are bringing our own subscription.

The scalability is good. We are able to scale efficiently. In our high-performance computing department, they handle a lot of scaling, and it's going well. Red Hat Enterprise Linux scales well.

I'm not particularly fond of the support. For example, when we have a server that's down, we raise a ticket indicating the severity of the issue. Then we receive another email suggesting things we can try to resolve the problem. I miss the days when we could directly speak to someone because sometimes, depending on the maintenance contracts and SLAs, it can take a lot of time without actually making any progress. Whereas speaking with a support representative could significantly reduce the downtime. So, I'm not really crazy about it.

The knowledge base is good. I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

Neutral

One of Red Hat Enterprise Linux's pros is that it has been around the longest. When working in a large corporate environment, reliability is crucial. In case something breaks, you want to have the assurance that there is a reliable support system to address the issues. Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides that level of support. 

However, it's important to note that even with a solid distribution like in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the effectiveness may vary depending on the specific customer or scenario. It's about assessing how well the distribution handles issues when the next customer raises a complaint. So, we need to carefully consider the pros and cons based on our requirements. For certain workloads and development tasks, we might consider freestyle options that don't require paid subscriptions. In my company, we have a development program that greatly supports our decision to go with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Personally, I find the deployment process straightforward, but I've been doing it for quite some time. I can't speak for someone who is new to it. However, from my experience, it's relatively straightforward. I've been in this role for a while, so I'm familiar with the process.

Currently, we use Azure AVS, which allows us to migrate existing physical machines to the cloud until we can fully modernize them. It's much easier than it was a couple of years ago, but there is still some work to be done. Overall, it's manageable for us to move workloads between the cloud and on-premises or data center environment using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

We have streamlined our deployment process within our guidelines. I can build a server in just three minutes. The time required depends on the type of server we need. If it's a more specialized server, it may take longer. However, it's nothing like the old days when it used to take several days. Especially in the cloud environment, it's quite fast. On-premises is a different story because we need to consider hardware availability, which can take longer. But once we have the hardware, the deployment itself typically takes less than an hour, especially when we leverage tools like Satellite for automation.

We have indeed realized a return on our investment. If we hadn't, we wouldn't still be using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. However, we are always striving to improve our return on investment. That's why we continually conduct due diligence and explore other operating systems to ensure that we're not blindly sticking with a particular company. We want to find the best solution that can potentially save us more money while delivering an equal or better return on investment.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is starting to realize some other companies are gaining some footing in the industry. Red Hat's pricing still needs to get a little bit better. When you look at what you pay for a subscription compared to what you can pay with some of these other companies that do offer a lot of technical backing behind them, it starts turning heads.

Red Hat should focus on making enhancements and providing better support in that arena.

Before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we did evaluate other Linux-based solutions. When we initially chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we had options like Solaris and SGI. However, even recently, we have continued to evaluate other distributions because the Linux landscape is constantly evolving. There are new solutions emerging, so we have to perform our due diligence and assess what they can offer.

For customers looking for alternatives to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, my advice would be to choose something that aligns with your requirements and that you are happy with. Don't just pick something because it's cheap. You gotta look at the long term. Also, know what is needed for your project. For example, if you have issues, can you get those issues resolved in a timely manner? If you run into an issue, you're stuck, and they can't help you out, this means your project will be delayed. You will need to weigh that out.

Our memory-intensive applications run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

We opted for Red Hat Enterprise Linux for our workloads due to its stability and the comprehensive support provided.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize our development to some degree.

We use it in containerization projects for workloads that need to run in private clouds, as it simplifies the process of shipping them as containers. The advantage of this approach is standardization, while the disadvantage is the necessity of shipping the container itself. Deploying containers on a platform like Kubernetes running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux may require some extra steps for scalability, but it is not a significant obstacle.

I appreciate that Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as a foundation for hybrid cloud deployments, is a commercial solution with reliable support.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has performed well for our business critical applications.

We extensively use Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features because they are excellent.

Red Hat Insights has significantly helped us reduce risk in our environment by allowing us to identify which CVEs are impacting our systems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux contributes to business continuity and compliance efforts by simplifying OS migration. Its generational upgrade path allows for easy transitions between versions, streamlining the process and reducing potential disruptions.

The time saved during audits and the ability to map CVEs using Red Hat Insight are valuable security benefits.

It helps avoid emergencies stemming from security issues, non-compliant settings, or unpatched systems.

Red Hat Insights provides the tools for proactive environment management. For example, it simplifies patch verification by confirming the desired automatic patching functioned correctly in one fleet, suggesting its likely success in the next. This clear visibility makes it easy to monitor ongoing operations.

Red Hat's portfolio helps lower the total cost of ownership for our enterprise landscape by providing reliable documentation that simplifies troubleshooting and reduces the need to resolve issues from scratch. 

Red Hat Insights provides good visibility and proactive management of our environment.

The primary issues are related to integration. Red Hat Insights utilizes several APIs that lack proper communication, resulting in inconsistent results.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for about four years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux itself doesn't have issues. It performs well for our business-critical applications.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux scales quite well, allowing us to adapt as needs change.

While the support is generally good, prompt attention often requires escalating issues or marking them as high importance.

Positive

Red Hat Enterprise Linux saves time with good documentation and other benefits.

The licensing is a bit odd because we need to procure the licenses from a third party. We prefer a pay-as-you-go model with monthly increments instead of buying licenses in bulk that expire in a year.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. While it has occasional bugs and software flakiness, updates are regularly released to address these issues.

To ensure your operations are compatible across different operating systems, prioritize OS agnosticism. Unless modifying the OS is a core function, consider a commercial solution like Red Hat. Although cost-effective, Red Hat may not be suitable for all companies.