Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

My organization has different departments. In my department, we mostly work with containerization. I am using Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a part of OpenShift. I use the basic package and base image of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

For scale-up in our platform, we use CoreOS as the master, and for the workers, we use the Red Hat Enterprise Linux service. From OpenShift version 4.10 onwards, we cannot use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 worker nodes. We were using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 worker nodes, so we upgraded to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. 

For OpenShift, there are some recommendations from Red Hat in terms of what needs to be used for the control plane and what needs to be used for the worker nodes. When you are using CoreOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux worker nodes, there are some difficulties in managing them. For example, when you upgrade OpenShift, you need to upgrade two times. The control plane is upgraded separately because it uses CoreOS. The control plane has a lot of certificate updates that will in turn be updated on the worker nodes, so you have one restart of all worker nodes, and then when you need to upgrade your worker nodes, there will be one more restart. 

Overall, you have two reboots in your production environment, which is an issue, but it is related to your choice of product in your environment. We have this issue because we opted to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 worker machines, whereas Red Hat recommends using CoreOS because it is pretty fast in terms of rebooting and functionality. When you upgrade the control plane, that itself will update the worker nodes, so you are done in one shot. When you need to upgrade your Red Hat Enterprise Linux machines, you need to use the Ansible Playbook. You can then upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, 8, or any other version. Regardless of the versions, you can upgrade the operating system and the OpenShift version. For this purpose and for some ad-hoc activities, we are using Ansible Playbooks.

For us, its security, management, stability, and hardening are most valuable. All of these features are better in Red Hat Enterprise Linux as compared to Microsoft Windows.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very good in terms of risk assessment. It is also good for maintaining compliance. It is better than Microsoft Windows.

From the administration perspective, I do not have any issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For me, it is more convenient than Microsoft Windows.

My organization has been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a long time. They have been using it before I joined the organization.

It is pretty good in terms of stability. It is a stable product. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of stability because sometimes the packages can have bugs.

Its scalability is good. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of scalability.

We never encountered any issues while using OpenShift.

I have mostly been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 

I have been involved in the deployment of OpenShift. It is pretty straightforward. We just need to get the licensing, and we just need to create a pool for our containers session in Red Hat Satellite. We can do the configuration from there. It does not take long because we are adding the nodes to OpenShift. During the scale-up process, we only need to subscribe to the nodes with the Red Hat subscription. It does not take much time. If we have a good spec, the scale-up would not take much time. It would take less than twenty minutes. It is pretty fast.

In terms of maintenance, when we have the bug report, we need to do the security assessments. Over time, there might be some bugs related to some packages. At that time, if it is critical, we will be scheduling a maintenance activity on our platform. 

Red Hat provides high availability from the application perspective. You get high availability when you are using OpenShift, so when you are doing a maintenance activity on the OpenShift side, there would not be any downtime. The high availability is very good. For the end-users, there would not be any application outages if you configure your application with proper replicas. They would not even realize that there is a maintenance activity happening to the underlying workers.

It was implemented in-house.

We did not evaluate other solutions. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the choice of most of the companies.

If you want to integrate with OpenShift or build an OpenShift cluster with the master Red Hat Enterprise Linux and worker Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you can do that, but you need to plan your upgrade or maintenance activities. It would be better if you choose CoreOS for both. CoreOS would be a better choice in terms of maintenance activities or upgrade activities in the future. If you cannot afford that, you can go with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, but you need to do two upgrades. You first need to upgrade the control plane and then you need to separately update your worker nodes. That is the only thing you need to keep in mind.

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

We have warehouse management systems (WMSs) where we run Oracle as our database. The app tier is basically Java. We are using a vendor-supplied Java, and the application itself is managed by the vendor. There are just one-offs here and there, such as utility boxes, but the majority is Oracle and the application that connects to Oracle.

On larger systems, like HANA, we have it deployed physically. On everything else, we have deployed it in a VMware environment. It is all on-premises. While there is some cloud, that is being done by contractors. 

We are on versions 6 through 8. As soon as version 9 gets released to GA, I am going to start working on getting that image ready. Currently, about half our images are on version 8, two-fifths are on version 6, and then version 7 is squeezed in-between.

The solution provides features that help me tweak or configure the operating system for optimal use, such as Insights Client, which I have used quite a bit to help me.

Our users are removed from the environment. They don't really know that they are running on RHEL. There have been very few complaints about speeds, application, or stability on RHEL platforms. Whereas, on Windows platforms, there are a lot of complaints.

Satellite 6.10 and RHEL integrate with each other perfectly. This integrated approach enables me to be a single person managing my images since it does a lot of the manual labor that I used to do, such as building patches, doing system maintenance, and keeping systems consistent. It does all that stuff for me. So, it has offloaded those responsibilities, giving me more work-life balance.

It is a bit on the pricier side. However, due to the stability and support that they provide to my management and me, we really don't see a reason to choose another way to go. Red Hat offers excellent support in a sphere where it is difficult to find good support.

I have been using RHEL since 2013.

It is a good operating system. It is very stable. It does not take a lot of maintenance. You set it up well and it runs. To give some perspective, we also have Windows admins. That team is about six people and growing. They manage twice as many servers as I manage, keeping them busy all the time. Whereas, I pretty much have a life; the work-life balance is very good.

RHEL is very stable. You build an image and deploy it, then it runs.

As far as the operating system contributing to reliability, it is very stable and has low maintenance. It keeps running.

We found that two of our outages in the past eight years were related to the operating system. All our other outages were related to the application and the use of the application.

I don't find the solution’s tracing and monitoring tools impact performance at all.

We can scale out. When we need more machines, we just build more machines. That is not a problem. We don't do the scale ups or any of the other scaling that is out there. That is partially because of the way our applications work. You need to scale according to the application. If the application requires new nodes, we just spin up another node and it is no problem. I could run 10,000 images, and it is not a problem.

Because we buy companies, we will probably continue to increase the usage of RHEL. I don't think that will be a problem because it is so stable. We are running about 200 images right now and about 60% of those are in production. I can't see it shrinking, but I can see it growing.

I like the fact that they really dig into things and then provide answers. As the single Linux guy, I kind of need that second admin next to me sometimes to say, "Hey, what about this?" and I am able to do that through the portal. I get my questions answered and trouble tickets resolved.

The technical support is superior to many vendors with whom we interact. They pay attention. Rarely will I run into a support person who doesn't seem to know what they are doing, then it doesn't take very long to get the issue escalated to somebody else. Out of a hundred cases, I have probably escalated three times. I would rate the support as 10 out of 10.

Positive

I came from a Unix background. I was on HP-UX on OSS and AIX. So, the transition to Linux was very simple. I am a command line person, so I wasn't scared. I just moved into it and found it to be very attractive. In fact, I don't run GUIs on any of my Linux boxes.

The biggest benefit for me, coming out of the Unix arena, was that it matched Unix very closely. So, I am able to draw on my Unix experience and use that in the RHEL environment. There is almost a non-existent learning curve in my situation.

The initial setup of RHEL is about 10 times easier than Windows. It is literally just click, click, bang. It just installs. If you have a problem with the install, you just reinstall it. It takes very little time to install, about 10 minutes. As a base image, it is very easy to set up. Then, you have post tweaks that you need to do, and I have scripts for that. Since I can script it all, I just run another command, then boom and it is all done.

For my implementation strategy, I build the gold image, which is basically just going through the CD and making my selections for a base image. Then, I freeze that image, which is on VMware, and run my scripts. My scripts basically set up logs for auditing. Whether we are going to ship logs or keep logs locally, it sets up the basic users. For instance, it will set up my account with pseudo access so I can do the remainder of the work using my account with pseudo access. It sets up tracing, the host name, IP addresses, and ESXi host files. It sets up the basic fundamentals of an operating system and gets it ready for deploying the application. 

There are also different kinds of file systems that need to be deployed and additional users that need to be added. Those are all manual processes.

We have one admin who manages all the images. That is the return on investment. The company hasn't had to hire a second admin (FTE) to keep things running.

We have moved to the Simple Content Access (SCA) model. It is much easier to do renewals and see how I am using my licenses. I used to have to do it all by hand. It would take me a good couple of hours every few months to make sure that we were up to snuff on everything. However, with the new model that they have, this is very easy. I just go to cloud.redhat.com to look and see how I am utilizing my licenses. If I am running out of bounds, I can find out why. If it is simply that we have images that need to be removed, we remove those images. If we need to buy more licenses, then we can start the process of purchasing more licenses.

I think it is worth the price. I wish the pricing was a little bit more friendly, so when I go to my boss, he tells me, "That's too much money." I can say, "It's not too much money."

Especially if you are a newbie, buy the support and use the support. Get a couple of images going and really play around with them: crash them, burn them, and figure out how support functions when you have a really gnarly situation. Otherwise, it is just inserting the CD and booting the machine. It is very easy to set up and run.

I have looked at SUSE or Ubuntu. They are so radically different in their total management, e.g., everything from getting packages to configuration and in how that is all done. Therefore, it would be a learning curve to go to another solution. So, there is benefit in staying with RHEL. 

I do not have a lot of experience with Ubuntu or SUSE. Those would be the bigger contenders. The thing that I keep coming back to though as I'm talking to vendors and VARs is that though SUSE is a contender out there in the SAP landscape, RHEL has the stability. SUSE appears to function more like a desktop operating system ported to a server environment, whereas RHEL is built from the server hub. The management tools show that. It is a mature management infrastructure.

There are some things that are nice about SUSE. People talk about their app configuration wizards, but if you're coming from a Unix background overall, RHEL feels like a real operating system.

My interaction with Ubuntu has been as a desktop. It is very GUI-oriented. In my estimation, it is more like a toy. It is deployed in server environments, but it is more because admins are familiar with the desktop version of it. They just port that over as opposed to having grown up on Unix and moved into Ubuntu.

A Unix admin will prefer to go into something like Red Hat, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, or even Oracle Enterprise Linux because they will simply feel much more like a data center operating system than some of these other solutions.

RHEL provides features that help speed deployment. I am currently learning how to take advantage of those features.

As far as deployment goes, I build a golden image VM and just deploy the images themselves. I don't really use any RHEL tools specifically for the deployment portion.

The solution is constantly expanding and moving into new areas, like jumping into the cloud.

I need more experience with their self-monitoring tools. That is the one area where I feel like I am lacking. I am still using a lot of the stuff that I learned in the Unix realm. I haven't really matured into using the specifics that are being supplied. I am a member of the accelerators team and have been exposed to some of these tools through their lectures. I am starting to play with them a little bit, but I have not fully gone into that arena. So, there is improvement needed on my access to RHEL.

I would rate the solution as 10 out of 10.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers and Satellite for patch management. We're also using Ansible for automation and hardening. Additionally, I'm doing a migration project from RHEL 7 to RHEL 9. Our environment is a mixture of on-prem and cloud systems. We are a hospital, so we can't keep some information on the cloud for compliance reasons. 

We have a separate team for the hybrid, and I'm part of that team. We've been migrating a few servers from on-prem to the cloud. Everything used to be on a hardware server, but now we use the cloud for the storage network. We share workloads between the cloud and the physical data center. Our Rubrik data backup archives to the cloud with Microsoft Azure. We also partner with Pure Storage, which we use for on-prem storage.

We have physical Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers for the Splunk environment, which is the security solution we use. Hadoop went to the cloud, but it used to be on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We have VMware, and our VMs are reserved for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

We have been using Red Hat since I was hired. All the app owners want Red Hat. Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports SQL and Oracle databases, which is helpful.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has made significant improvements in terms of storage. You can mount an 18 terabyte file system. It also supports NFS shares and the SIP share for the photos. There have been many features added since RHEL 6. It's more user-friendly and graphical. 

We use Ansible as a go-to for provisioning and hardening the servers. It's so much easier with Ansible because we used scripts in the past. We had to log into each server as such, and it took a long time. With Ansible, we just run one playbook, and it takes care of everything. 

I used Leapp for my upgrade from RHEL 7 to 8. It's an excellent utility tool. When I run the Leapp script, it tells me everything I need to take care of before I run a migration. Red Hat Insight is good because it tells you about the future patches available. 

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux image builder. Our golden image is a real image. We harden it, and it's our golden server. When we need a new VM, we can just make a snapshot of that. If it's a physical server, then I have to do it manually.

AIX will be out of support in the next few years, so that is a problem because a lot of the clinical apps use AIX. 

I have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux since I started working at this hospital six years ago.  

I rate Red Hat support eight out of 10. It's helpful when we face hardware issues, kernel panics, or the server is hanging. We always open a support case with Red Hat, and they're helpful at every level. It used to be in the United States, but now they outsource everything to India, so there is a big time difference. That's the only issue. 

Positive

We have always used Red Hat, but they use CentOS for a few applications. Most are using Red Hat. Another team uses Microsoft Windows 2016. It's a different team. The application team decides which one they prefer, but most clinicians use Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers.

The application owners like Red Hat instead of CentOS or another flavor of Linux because the support is reliable. If something breaks, they can call Red Hat support. It's the enterprise standard Linux.

I do the Red Hat Enterprise Linux upgrades. It's straightforward because I can just run Leapp to upgrade it

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10. 

We are a Linux shop, so a lot of our engineers are familiar with Linux. We try to push Red Hat Enterprise Linux instead of Windows. The reason for it in the beginning was licensing. Some of it was because of the way the contract was set up. It was cheaper, but we do use it now just for the ease of it. I do not know if it is because of Ansible, which we use for a lot of our day-to-day operations, that we tend to lean more toward Red Hat.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has affected our system's uptime or security. I know Microsoft publishes zero-day vulnerabilities for Windows as fast as Red Hat, but we noticed that in terms of problems or alerts that we get for attacks or viruses, there is not anything on the Red Hat side. That is why we feel that it is more secure. It might be just the nature of Red Hat where all services and ports are off. It is not like Windows where everything is on, and you have to turn it on. I was having a conversation with one of the gentlemen who is also attending the Red Hat conference, and I got to know that there are built-in NIST features with Red Hat that we could turn on, so we do not have to try to figure out how to harden our system.

The testing of the updates or the packages of the kernel is valuable because I used to be a part of the Fedora project. I know it is all vetted out before it gets to production, but a majority of it is the support and the relationships I have with the Red Hat employees assigned to our account.

As they move over to newer versions, certain things change, which is expected as the technology matures or new things come out, but what really surprises me are the features that are there in the cloud, such as Red Hat Insights. They are not there on-prem. There are a lot of things on the cloud portal that I did not notice before, and I was surprised because we were unaware of them. Red Hat is doing a lot of investment in that sense.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux is good. It is easy to parse through all of the knowledge base. I do not know if Windows does it because I have not looked at it, but in Red Hat's knowledge base, there are a lot of things. They fast-track a lot of things in their knowledge base, even when they are not yet official. Especially with the tie-in with Bugzilla, even though it is not a true KB, we can see and follow if other people in the world are hitting a certain problem or something similar to what we are experiencing. I like that.

It would be great to have an overview of how various Red Hat products work together. They can show how to tie all those pieces together and how to have the products that we work together for our day-to-day processes.

I started with the company around 2012, and they have been using it even before then. At that time, it was Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and now, we are up to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.

In 10 or 11 years of using Red Hat solutions, I have opened only one or two support tickets. It probably was something during a patch and during Satellite 5 to Satellite 6 migration. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

In Linux, there are so many different flavors, but I am partial to Red Hat because I have been a part of the Fedora project. At our place, we have only two operating systems: Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I know CentOS, but that is usually because the appliance from the vendor was set up using that. That is why we had a few instances of CentOS in the past, but nowadays, I do not see any other flavors of Linux.

For the majority of our use cases for Red Hat, we have on-prem deployments. There are some things that they are trying to spin up on AWS. I do not know if they are cloud-native apps or not, but I know our developers are now moving on to it.

I have been involved in the initial setup, upgrades, and migration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I did not have any problems while going from major OS versions. I always push new upgrades or homogeneous migrations, such as from version 6 to version 7 to version 8. There is probably an option to upgrade in place. Overall, with Red Hat OS, I have not seen many problems. A long time ago, when they went from Python 2 to Python 3, there were certain things we had to change in the script.

I know that Red Hat is moving to Wayland from X11, but I do not see any problems there. From Satellite 5 to 6, it was a bit hard in the beginning, but now, it is pretty self-explanatory. Overall, everything about which we had questions was very well documented.

In terms of our upgrade and/or migration plans to stay current, first, we look at the EOL and the roadmap of Red Hat because of security. We used to offer every single version before the said EOL happened, but now, we just do an n-minus-one. We try to maintain the newest and one level below version. SAP users are the biggest Red Hat Enterprise Linux users in our environment. They have a particular PAM and upgrade path that they have to do with Red Hat. We also wait to be certified to certain versions, but our main strategy is the newest and one major version down. We try to get everybody off the other versions.

Our provisioning is all done using VMware products. We have a vRealize automation, now called the Aria automation, to spin it up. Patching is done through Satellite. I do not do it, but when I watch them doing it, it seems it is just using remote SSH commands against the list of non-prod and prod servers. It is something simple. We do not seem to be doing anything complicated. I am wondering if there is a better way to do versioning control or patching and whatnot, but currently, it is very simple.

I am satisfied with the management experience not only in terms of patching but also the day zero to day one or day two stuff. We are interested in utilizing Ansible to eliminate human error and whatnot. During provisioning, we have Pearl scripts that we have to manually trigger. I know we can use Ansible for that, but it comes down to the cost of entry which is still very high. 

A lot of people are moving into the core count for licensing. We still have a few with one-to-one standard server licensing, but we are utilizing the virtualization host licensing. We license it based on the host, not based on VMs, which is cool. I was very happy that there was certain licensing with SAP to have access to SAP repos. Its cost was the same as the regular one, so I was happy about that.

The only pricing that bugs me right now is the Ansible pricing. We wanted to take a look at Ansible, but the biggest thing a year back with Ansible was that the management did not want to spend half a million on Ansible Tower. They wanted to see first if we would use it and not waste money. I do not know if things have changed now, but Ansible is probably still expensive. That is one of the routes that we want to go to. We will see if we can utilize Ansible Tower, so pricing-wise, that is the only thing that pops up. It is too expensive. The cost of entry seems quite high.

Overall, I do not see any issues with what we have spent on Red Hat. We also have learning subscriptions that we pay to Red Hat for the training, and I do not feel we have wasted any money.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has built-in features, but we do not use them. It is one of the things about which I need to talk to our account manager. There are so many different ways to skin a cat. My department has so much money, so they bought everything, but a lot of the security features, such as SELinux, are disabled for us. We handle the firewall rules, access lists, and other things at another location rather than on the actual VM itself. It does not hurt to do it at multiple places, but operations-wise, it would be a nightmare, so we try not to do it. I know there are a lot of cool new things built in Red Hat, and that is something we should circle back and take a look at.

I have seen Red Hat Insights. I clicked on it one time when our account manager was showing us something. They have so many features in the cloud that we do not know we can use. Maybe it is wrong to assume, but the reason I do not look at Red Hat Insights is that a part of our patching is already included. We are not that strict about what we patch in terms of the versions. It is useful, but Red Hat emails us anyway. They tell about the severity of an issue. We do not look at Red Hat Insights. We see those emails and we see CVEs. If a package is installed and applicable to our VMs, we just use Satellite and patch that particular vulnerability. 

I have also tried the web console once. It looked interesting, but we do not have much use for it because a lot of our customers or application owners are server admins. About 99% of our Red Hat installs are all minimal installs. We do not have a GUI. There is just a terminal screen. Even though they could console in and do whatnot, it is all done via SSH.

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a 10 out of 10.

We have Ansible deployed on our Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. We use it to manage the security of our fleet of Ubuntu virtual machines.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is way ahead of Ubuntu in terms of security and compliance. It is mainly the ecosystem of data science tools that our developers want that pushes us in that direction. As a security engineer, I have a lot more peace at night knowing that my Red Hat servers are doing a good job keeping our Ansible infrastructure safe because that has fingers into everything we do. It is pretty critical.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not affected our system's uptime in any particularly noticeable way.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not enabled us to achieve security standards certification because we do not have any yet. We will have them hopefully in the future.

There are some nice integrations with scanning for vulnerabilities. That is the feature I have enjoyed the most because I am a security person, and that is my bread and butter.

Ansible has certainly been a game-changer. It is a lot easier to keep a whole bunch of virtual machines consistent with each other and make a change consistently across all of them. We use them for data science activities. Our data scientists are constantly trying out new packages and downloading new tools. We have to enable them to have root access on their machines but also need to ensure that they are not doing anything stupid at the same time. There are competitors to Ansible, but we are a big Python shop, so it is a very comfortable environment for us.

The only issue we have had with it is around the SELinux configuration because the way Ansible installs, it sticks the platform passwords in a flat file. We want that locked down more strongly than what is there currently with SELinux. 

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

I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

Positive

Primarily, we have used Ubuntu. We have had some of our use cases on CentOS, and then, of course, our workstations are all Windows, but I wish they were not.

We chose Ansible, and that chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux for us.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud. We have Azure because it is the corporate standard. We do not have any concerns about using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud. Obviously, everything in the cloud is more exposed than everything on-prem, but it has got good, sensible, and secure defaults built in, so there are no concerns there.

In terms of Red Hat Enterprise Linux upgrades, when we upgraded Ansible this fall, that pushed us from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. It should be a little easier from now on. Now that we have made the big jump from the older Ansible to AAP, we will probably be upgrading the systems on a quarterly basis.

We probably have not yet seen an ROI. We purchased it a couple of years ago, but we have not had the time to put it to as much use as we wanted to put it to. The cost is low, so it would not take very long to reach a return on investment.

We have not made use of the Committed Spend.

For its use case, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.

We are currently in the midst of a POC phase with a standalone cluster. This cluster consists of both coordinator and worker nodes, with a metadata store for storing various metadata. The entire setup is deployed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, and we have established a connection to the OpenShift UI.

While using it, we encountered far fewer complexities, and the entire process is much smoother and streamlined. For patching purposes, we simply need to communicate with our system administrator. They take care of the patching process, so we don't have to get involved and we can easily connect to the artifact repository and download the necessary artifacts to install in our system. 

We have a set of JSON files containing YAML configurations where all the required image details are documented and this setup makes it very straightforward for us.As for the Web Console, if you're talking about the user interface for tasks like creating ports, deploying applications, managing secrets, and other functions, I haven't encountered any significant issues. 

The process is generally straightforward and quick, taking just a few minutes. OpenShift offers two types of interfaces: one where you can edit YAML files for more advanced customization, and the other where you can use forms for faster deployment, though with fewer features.

Continuous improvement is essential to enhance user experiences and address evolving needs.

I have been working with it for approximately six months.

Our experience with its customer support is very good. Whenever we encounter any issues, we receive prompt and comprehensive assistance. There's no need to wait or take any additional steps to get the help we require, which is highly appreciated. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

In the past, our work primarily involved Hadoop, and we also dealt with Solid Cloud for security and other purposes, but we found that this setup was slow and not open source. On the other hand, the DLP solution we're currently using is not only cost-effective but also significantly faster. 

I also used a Linux browser, specifically the KCL browser which required me to go through the process of installing packages and various components, while in the current setup, everything is seamlessly connected. We simply use the OC command with a private key to connect to OpenShift. There are no extra or additional steps required, making the whole process exceptionally fast and efficient. It's quite remarkable and makes the workflow truly hassle-free.

The initial setup was easy.

The deployment process is straightforward. I simply had to deploy the images using OC commands, and the process of connecting to OpenShift was remarkably fast and smooth.

Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

We deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-prem and in the cloud as a fallback.

We are a private cloud provider and we host Linux ourselves because they are tough to manage.

We offer our customers the option to host their Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Azure or on our private cloud.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features help simplify risk reduction. Red Hat offers a subscription service that provides critical security updates within 24 hours. The service also includes an excellent database of known security vulnerabilities. If a CVE identifier is known for a vulnerability, it can be entered into the web interface. The web interface will then indicate whether Red Hat Enterprise Linux is affected by the vulnerability and what steps need to be taken to fix it. The fix will be included in the next security update. This is a valuable security feature that helps organizations to stay up-to-date on security patches and mitigate risk.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is beneficial for keeping our organization agile. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and 9 include Podman, a newer software similar to Docker. Podman was built to address the problems that Docker had with creating and running containers, and it also includes the support of Red Hat. There is a good synergy between Red Hat and Podman.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has helped improve our organization. We provide a service to our clients, which they pay for each month. This service includes our support. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a stable operating system, so we do not have to provide much support. When we do need to provide support, it is usually for an application, not for the operating system.

I can build with confidence and ensure availability across physical and virtual cloud infrastructures using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-premises since 2008 without any problems. It is easy to automate. Virtualization is always present, so I work with virtual machines. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very easy to deploy on a virtual machine. We can create a virtual machine, and if we are working with VMware, we can create a template to use for new systems. There is no need for a classic installation.

The updates are the most valuable feature. In the past, we had 800 or 900 Linux systems with Red Hat, and all of the systems were updated every night. In the 14 years, we have only had ten issues with the updates.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a good configuration.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is secure but the security always has room for improvement.

Scaling can be complicated and has room for improvement.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 14 years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

I give the stability an eight out of ten.

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a seven out of ten. 

Updating Red Hat Enterprise Linux from version 8 to 9 is a complex and time-consuming process. It is often easier to install a new server with Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine and migrate our data and applications. However, if we only need to resize the CPU or memory of our existing server, we can do so using the hypervisor without having to reboot.

Red Hat support is fast, and they are capable of answering 90 percent of our questions.

Positive

We previously used Debian, Ubuntu, and SUSE Linux. In our case, if we wanted a conservative Linux system that did not have the newest version, these were perfect systems. However, if we wanted to install them on our laptops or on our clients, they were the wrong solution. We switched to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the Red Hat support. Debian also offers its own support. Ubuntu does not offer direct support, so we were required to order it through another company. SUSE had other problems that we did not want to deal with. Red Hat Enterprise Linux support has been very helpful to our back-end admins.

The initial setup is complicated, but with Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine, there is a graphical web interface where we can create a new image every week. We have created a golden template that enables us to update the image every month and upload it to both our private and public clouds for usage. 

The deployment time depends on whether we have a template or not. With a template, deployment can take between five and ten minutes. If we have to install the software, the time it takes depends on our internet bandwidth. Ten gigabits of bandwidth can take around 15 minutes to install.

The implementation was completed in-house.

As a provider, we must follow a different licensing model. We charge €2,000 per system for three years. Each month, we provide Red Hat with a number of new and old systems. Red Hat then invoices us based on the number of systems in use that month. This only applies to our cloud customers.

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the best thing I have.

We always install a minimized Red Hat Enterprise Linux system for our customers. If they require more features, we provide them as requested.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the most perfect OS I have ever worked with. It is nice knowing when we have to use the OS and when we don't.

All Linux solutions are open source, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a commercial product that includes support and frequent updates. Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be downloaded for free, but it is not recommended to use it without a subscription, as it will not receive security updates or bug fixes. Red Hat reinvests a portion of the subscription revenue back into open-source projects, making it possible for other organizations to use these technologies for free.

Maintenance requirements depend on our needs. If we only want to have a server and install updates every night, no additional maintenance is required. Red Hat Enterprise Linux does not require any special support. However, if we want to ensure that the system time is always correct, that all updates are installed within a month, and that the system reboots after updates are installed, we will need to perform some additional maintenance tasks. These tasks can be automated to ensure that our system is always running smoothly. We currently have three people for the maintenance. We currently have 900 systems.

I recommend evaluating multiple Linux solutions and conducting a proof of concept because, although Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a great operating system, it may not be the best choice for every organization. I do not recommend using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a new laptop because the versions included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux are typically two to four years old. This is because Red Hat Enterprise Linux is designed to be a stable OS, and newer versions may not have been fully tested and may have issues. If we have a server or software that is certified for Red Hat, then I would always recommend using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

We are currently using Red Hat Enterprise Linux's versions 6, 7, and 8. We run the OS both on-prem and in the cloud.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for web applications, containers, Kubernetes, and simple scripting servers. The scripting servers are used to run scripts on run drops and so on. However, the biggest use cases are containers and web app workloads.

The cloud providers are AWS and Alibaba.

Red Hat helps our organization avoid cloud vendor lock-in because we can run Kubernetes and a few different workloads directly on Red Hat across different cloud providers. Since Red Hat is an operating system, we can migrate our workloads to any cloud provider that supports Red Hat.

Avoiding vendor lock-in and being able to move workflows between cloud providers has saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is easy to recover, especially from a backup. I believe this is because of its resilience. If I use an instance, I can go to my backups and restore it without much trouble. I was going to compare it to Windows for a moment, where there might be some additional steps required to clean things up after recovery. However, I haven't had many issues where I needed to do any cleanup afterward.

It is easy to move workloads between the cloud and our data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The ease of migration depends on the cloud provider and what they allow us to do. However, for the most part, replication-based migration between cloud providers or on-premises works well. 

Linux is good for hardening the operating system. Logical volumes allow us to dynamically expand volumes, which is valuable from an operational perspective. This is especially true in cloud environments, where we pay for every kilobyte of storage. By using logical volumes, we can expand the disk on demand without downtime, which can help us keep costs down.

The price has room for improvement.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for three years, but I have known about the OS since version four.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is definitely resilient and easy to recover, especially when compared to Windows. I enjoyed working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux more than Microsoft Windows, especially because of its resilience.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's scalability is easy to manage. We can simply spin up more instances as needed, and then turn them off when we no longer need them. This means that Red Hat Enterprise Linux's scalability is not as much of an issue with the cloud provider.

We have around 2,500 instances of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in our environment.

Red Hat support is generally good, but it can sometimes take a little longer than we would like to get a response, especially when the issue is through a web-based chat.

Positive

The on-premises deployments are subscription based, and the cloud instances are from the providers which are AWS and Alibaba.

We can always ask for Red Hat Enterprise Linux to be less expensive but when we compare it to other options, there are savings in the long run.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux was our first choice because of its enterprise support. That was the key factor. We do also run other Linux distributions, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is our primary choice because of the enterprise support. 

The big difference between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Linux-based operating systems is the support. There isn't much difference other than the syntax, where the command is "at, get" versus Red Hat using YUM or DNF for installation. So outside of that, the support is the main difference.

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. No solution is perfect, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very close.

Our engineering team probably used the image-building tool. I am on the operations side, so I do not see that part of the process. I take the images that are already built and deploy them.

I think it's just a workflow issue. We need to improve our own workflows to be able to manage them better. Red Hat support is already good when we encounter something we're unfamiliar with. So, we need to get Enterprise CoreOS from Red Hat for those cases. I think as we encounter more of our own workloads, we'll need to improve our workflows even further.