Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

I use the solution to manage Atlassian applications. In our company, we initially deployed Atlassian applications on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). For most of the products my company uses, we create Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)-based servers because we have Red Hat Satellite, so we just bring them up and make them supportive for us.

The most valuable benefit of the product for my organization revolves around standardization, which is why we have all the same types of machines and operating systems. It makes it very easy and familiar across the board. The tool is also very reliable.

My company does have a hybrid cloud environment. Running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as the foundation for the hybrid cloud deployment strangely impacted our operations. I think that when my company moved off from the tool's on-premises version for certain applications, we had to leave Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Everything in my company is based on whatever AWS provides, specifically when Linux is on AWS, and I guess it negatively affected my company.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped my company centralize developments because we know what we are going to use in the product, and so we don't have to make any decisions. Owing to the aforementioned area, I would say it offers a good standard.

In terms of the tool's built-in security features when it comes to risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance, I would say it is very easy to patch, which helps our company to keep it up to date and avoid all downfalls.

Speaking about the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to keep our organization agile, I would say that we don't tend to move that much with applications. The tool has helped to weave a path for an upgrade while creating a new application server, after which one can transfer it over. Considering the aforementioned details, the tool is portable. In short, whenever I try to use the product's portability feature, it does work.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that the upgrade in the patching area is really easy.

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

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution since it is easy to make changes in the tool.

If the product is deployed on an on-premises model, it will be deployed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system.

I haven't had a reason to use the support services of the product for a long time. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

In the past, my company used CentOS for a while. There were some other products which were also used in my company. My company started to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as it provided standardization, and we required something nice and uniform in nature.

The product was already up and running when I joined the organization.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. If my company opts to have the product deployed on cloud, then we would opt for the cloud services offered by AWS.

I am sure my company did not seek help from many integrators, resellers, or consultants to deploy the product.

The biggest ROI I experienced using the product stemmed from the fact that it was really fast to deploy right from the beginning when we were building our company's new systems. The product works fine.

I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)to a colleague who is looking at open-source cloud-based operating systems for Linux since it offers Red Hat Satellite, so everything is just so encapsulated and there in the tool.

I can't speak of whether the Red Hat portfolio has affected our total cost of ownership across our enterprise landscape since I don't know the cost.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux in different application servers. 

The tool's most valuable feature is simplicity. There is value in having a fully CLI-based operating system instead of a GUI-based one. It is lightweight and can be leveraged without resource constraints. 

I want Red Hat Enterprise Linux to stick to the open-source routes. As a company, we experience challenges in managing the budget. 

I have been using the product for three years. 

From a licensing perspective, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is flexible. We leverage our licenses based on the VMware cluster. 

Accessing the knowledge base from the public perspective is challenging. You can get much more from the documentation if you are a supported organization. If Red Hat Enterprise Linux continues to keep the documentation open-source, it will benefit us. 

We leverage Ansible to help with the upgrades. It makes upgrades easier. We rely on a reseller for Ansible AWS upgrades. 

We are shifting our Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers from version 7 to version 8. 

I rate the product a seven out of ten. 

We have general use cases.

It's a well-supported OS. I don't know what we'd use if we didn't have it.

Moreover, the last time I had an issue flagged with the vulnerability, I was able to go to the Red Hat website and find a patch. It worked pretty well.

The built-in security worked well when it came to solidifying risk production and maintaining compliance. The uptime or security of our systems has been pretty solid.

It helps us maintain our security standards and keeps us up to date on security. 

One of the most valuable features is the package manager because it makes it easier to keep everything up to date.

The package compatibility between different releases is a little confusing sometimes.

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

We've also used Ubuntu. 

It's a matter of certain servers that need to be kept secure, so we chose Red Hat. 

When I order a server in our organization, it comes installed, and then they spin it up.

I am involved in the upgrade processes. The upgrades weren't complex but required some downtime. We don't normally upgrade until a particular OS version becomes end-of-life and the new one starts.

Our in-house IT department did the deployment. We have a separate IT department that leverages the training provided by Red Hat.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten because most of the information I need I could find on the Red Hat website.

We use the product to host operating systems, applications, or infrastructure for our customers. Our customers use the product as a long-term solution that they don't have to upgrade every other year. They can get people that know the solution from the get-go.

The biggest feature is the longevity of the distribution. Compared to any other product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a stable backported solution for a long time. It is important because we have moved a lot of software containers. We want to update it but don't want to unless we have to. So it's great to have something stable for a long time.

The biggest thing that the solution could introduce is an even slimmer version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are moving to containers, but we also have a lot of void loads that don't go into containers. It would be nice to have an even thinner operating system. Even if you choose minimally, you still get a lot of useless stuff you don't need.

I have been using the solution for 20 years.

I rate the product’s stability a nine out of ten.

I rate the solution’s scalability a seven out of ten.

It's really difficult to get to someone that knows something. When you get to the right people, support is really good. But there are a lot of people that can only answer first-level questions.

Neutral

We're using a lot of different OSs. We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux because we are a partner.

It's pretty simple to install the product. However, some tools required to install it are missing.

The pricing is great for virtual systems. The pricing for physical systems is way too high.

The overall costs depend on the project and the company.

We continuously evaluate other options. The main difference between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other solutions is the complete ecosystem's longevity and possibility. Other products may present something similar, but they don't have the ecosystem around them.

We probably purchased the solution from a cloud provider. We are using versions 5 to 9 currently.

The solution’s built-in security features are pretty good, but it's not something that I would take as a major selling point. The portability is good because we have a stable baseline for applications and containers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s security posture is pretty good. I don’t know if it's the strongest selling point, but it's up there.

In some ways, Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to centralize development. However, that's not mostly what we focus on. The primary output from Red Hat Insights is targeted guidance. Targeted guidance has not affected our uptime much.

It makes sense to go with a stable distribution compared to others. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Its use cases include general system management, setting up service with the web server, setting up a virtual, private wall with OpenVPN and FTP servers, etc. I have been working with all the aspects of the system in general.

The stability and the number of users that can access the servers are some of the valuable features. 

The stability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is most valuable. I have machines running and working for hours, weeks, and months. The servers don't go down. In Windows, too many services hang, but in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the servers continue working for months. I have had to reboot the machine only two times in years. The system keeps on working. So, stability is the best feature. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very secure. There hasn't been any successful attack from hackers in years. It's one of the best features. The iptables command is helpful for setting your firewall policies. Only the machines that have the permissions can access the box.

We have had issues with the identification of new volumes when you add new disks or storage. You need the remove the machine, which can cause problems when you have high availability. If they can resolve the problem of detection of new volumes, it would be good for system administrators.

I've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since version 6.

It's very stable.

I don't have direct contact with their support, but I know that their support is good because I know people who work directly with their technical support.

I've worked with Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, and other companies. In the past, Debian was the better operating system for servers and Red Hat Enterprise Linux was the better system for desktops, but nowadays, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Oracle Linux are the better system for servers in my opinion, and Ubuntu is better for desktops.

This operating system is used by our clients. We don't have it in our organization. We use Windows. I'm not the one who decides about this. My director is the person who take decisions, but I prefer Linux. I like Red Hat Enterprise Linux in servers because there is support, stability, and more users that can access the service. However, in our organization, we use Microsoft Windows because they are partners. 

Most of our clients are institutions or public organizations. They have their own infrastructure for security reasons. Having a cloud environment has its own advantages and having your own infrastructure has its advantages. I prefer having my own infrastructure. When you have your own infrastructure, you have more control over all the processes and data of your organization, but I understand that having a cloud setup has advantages because you can manage and automate several systems or processes in the organization.

It's easy to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's not difficult to install. You have the typical steps of the installation of any Linux-based operating system. Anyone can install this operating system. If you want to install servers such as an Apache server or a web application server, you need certain skills, but the installation of the operating system is easy.

I don't know about the pricing because I am not responsible for taking decisions about products used in the enterprise. Our clients use this product, and we use this product with the clients. In my home office, I use a free operating system. There is no support, but I can use it to practice. Our clients need support because it's used in the production environment. I don't know the price of the product, but I understand that with the support that Red Hat offers, compared to other operating systems, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is cheap.

It's easy to install and secure. You can customize it and manage various aspects. It's a good operating system for servers with security. It can run on machines without a powerful CPU or a lot of memory. It's stable.

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

The main use case is general system administration, which includes configuring networking, configuring storage volumes, managing users, and running backup applications.

Application performance is one of its main benefits. The applications that run on RHEL are very stable. 

I've not done much work with containers, but with general applications, as compared to other solutions that I've used, RHEL has the best portability. I have not had any issues or application failures while migrating. I've moved virtual machines and systems from one platform to another, and I've never been scared of RHEL. I never had to deal with application failures while moving them from one place to there. That's why I'm pretty confident with RHEL when it comes to working with it.

I like its integrations. I would put it higher than any other Linux version when it comes to availability. Its integrations with different applications and solutions are the best. We work with a lot of clients that use RHEL, and we could easily and quickly integrate any cloud solution, virtualization solution, storage solution, or software with the RHEL system. It is better than the other solutions we have worked with.

I like the way the updates are done and the way packages can be installed through the Red Hat Package Manager. I like it because of how fast and straightforward it is.

Its user interface could be better for people who want to use the GUI. They can provide a better user interface with more features. Storage works perfectly fine. Of course, continuous improvements should be made all the time, but it isn't at all lacking when it comes to storage and other features.

I've been using RHEL for four years, but in the last 12 months, I've used it more.

It is the most stable one. It is very stable. 

It has the ability to scale. I know that it can scale, but because of my limited experience with scaling, I don't know how good scaling is. I have only done the basic scaling, but I would assume that it can scale way more than what I have done.

Most of my usage of it is on a private cloud. I've used it in a hybrid cloud environment, but I've not done a lot of work with the hybrid cloud because most of the clients we work with have private clouds. The little bit of experience I have had with the hybrid cloud was related to basic application installation and scaling. For the scaling part, I was able to have the applications first in the private cloud and then migrate or move it to a hybrid cloud. I was able to integrate them, and I was able to change the environment, as well as have them work in a cluster. The scaling part was seamless. It was pretty easy. It was easier than I thought.

The private cloud is deployed at three locations. The public cloud is deployed across two regions. There are a lot of users of this solution. There are different systems for different applications and different services. I can't put a number on the total number of users. Some systems have 50 and some systems have close to 70. There are systems with just 10 or 5 users.

They can be faster. Because I work in support, I classify support in terms of how well you can resolve an issue and how fast you can resolve an issue. They don't reply fast enough. In a lot of instances, they don't get back to you immediately, and you have to wait for a while after creating a support ticket. They can be faster at that, but when it comes to resolving your issue, they are good. Overall, I would rate their support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

Prior to using RHEL, I was using Windows. I've also done a lot of work with Ubuntu, SUSE, and other Linux solutions, but Red Hat is the best one. I prefer it over other solutions because I'm used to it, and I find it better than other solutions. I'm used to the commands, and it is easy for me to navigate my way through it. If I have to choose between Windows and Linux, I would always go with Linux and choose RHEL because of its stability and agility.

I also use CentOS for my personal things or running some tests. For example, if I want to run a test with a client, it doesn't make sense to run a test in the client's production environment. I have a test environment with CentOS, and I run the test on CentOS before going to RHEL. I'm pretty comfortable using CentOS. CentOS is like my own testing environment.

The reason I switched over to RHEL was that over here, almost everybody or every client who uses Linux has RHEL. So, I had to understand how RHEL works. I realized that most people use it because of its stability. People find this system and its architecture good. A lot of clients talked about how they preferred the architecture of RHEL. Some clients find the commands to be easily readable, and some clients find it easy to integrate with others. A lot of clients find patching and package management pretty easy.

In terms of the deployment model, we have a private cloud. We have VMware for virtualization and Azure Stack for the private cloud. There are also public clouds, such as GCP, AWS, and Azure, and then there is the physical hardware. Some of our deployments are on physical hardware. So, we deploy RHEL on physical servers, and then, there's also the hybrid model when some clients want to integrate the private cloud and the public cloud together. They want the public cloud to be like a backup environment, or they want the private cloud to be a backup environment.

I was mostly involved in the deployment of the hardware and the private cloud.  I was also a part of the team that set up the hybrid environment, but I didn't do a lot of work on the public cloud side. The only complex part of the deployment was the hybrid configuration, where we were trying to interconnect the private cloud and the public cloud. The deployment on the public cloud was more straightforward than the deployment on the private cloud because, on a public cloud, the image is already there, whereas, on a private cloud, you have to set the image up yourself.

Each deployment model took approximately one week to deploy, but the hybrid model, requiring interconnecting the private and public clouds, took more than a week because there were a lot of dependencies.

In terms of maintenance, it does require maintenance. That's the main reason why people pay for support. 

We have definitely seen an ROI. There are around 15% savings.

It is pretty expensive, but it is worth it. Generally, in an enterprise environment, there is no cheap solution. This is coming from someone who is working with a company that provides a lot of solutions a bit cheaper than the industry standard. In the enterprise environment, I believe no solution is inexpensive, but RHEL is still pretty expensive.

Additional costs that I am aware of are usually for support and setup. A lot of banks use RHEL. I've seen the cost of the support and setup. Some of them complain about it, but they also talk about how well it works.

I have not compared the overall costs of open-source competitors to the overall costs of RHEL when it comes to supporting business operations over time. The only other distribution for which I have seen the pricing is AIX, which was a bit more expensive than RHEL.

I would always advise doing a proof of concept where the client gives out his requirements and you run a proof of concept based on those requirements to make them confident of purchasing the solution. It is always better if a proof of concept is done. This way, everybody knows what they're getting into.

Its built-in security features are definitely helpful, but at the end of the day, you have to go further than using the built-in ones. You have to do a few other things yourself. The built-in features are helpful for compliance, but we, and most enterprise organizations, always want to go further than using built-in features because some built-in features could be more open to risks. We use the best built-in features, but we always want to go further and integrate other features into the RHEL system.

I have used Red Hat Insights only once, and I have not worked much with it, but my colleagues handling monitoring used it. It was helpful for the unpatched system. They checked Red Hat Insights and saw the systems that need patching. We got an email saying that it is a security requirement and that we need to patch them because it may affect the security of the systems. Coincidentally, after doing the patching, we read blogs about security hacks out there for some of the older systems that were not patched early enough.

Red Hat Insights provide us with vulnerability alerts, but I am not sure about targeted guidance. Vulnerability alerts have impacted the uptime, which is something that we take very seriously. Uptime was one of the major reasons we wanted to work with Insights because we didn't want any attacks that would cause downtime.

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

The primary purpose of any operating system is to run all sorts of applications and databases on servers. We use RHEL to run applications and host containers but not much else. We don't use it for databases, and none of our clients use Red Hat virtualization, so no KBM. We install them onto VMware and use them like Red Hat virtual machines.

I primarily work for banks that tend to have a proper on-premise cloud because the data can't leave the premises. We also work for insurance companies, government, and law enforcement organizations. Most of them use it on a virtualized platform like VMware. Some are hardware installations, and other clients are experimenting with cloud infrastructure. One of the banks we work for has started to build its own cloud to get experience and move specific applications to the cloud.

One client has RHEL deployed across two data centers, which is usually a mirrored setup. In other words, two hardware servers are doing the same thing. It can be active-active or active-passive. The VMs also stretch across two data centers, but it's a Metro cluster, so it's in the same city. I've been working with my current client for a couple of years. Our three-person team manages 250 hardware services and about 400 VMs.

We are still migrating a couple of solutions to Red Hat, so the user base is getting bigger. 

We decided to use Red Hat Linux instead of Solaris or something else because it's widely used and accessible. It's easier to find people who know RHEL. It has also made the automation through Satellite and Puppet easier, which are built into Enterprise Linux. 

RHEL is stable, mature, and relatively easy to handle. I'm pretty confident in it. We haven't had to raise a serious support ticket for any server in I don't know how many years. It has built-in high availability solutions for VMware on top of the hardware.  

Red Hat Linux is also useful for keeping applications from misbehaving. I like the fact that it has firewall controls.

Red Hat can be tricky at times, but all operating systems are. The moves to systemd and NetworkManager haven't made the product more user-friendly. The network management they had before was easier and somewhat more reliable than NetworkManager, which Red Hat forces us to use now.

That may just be my personal preference because I've been working on Red Hat for so long. It's something new that doesn't do exactly what it used to do, so it's probably more of an old person's complaint.

The firewall controls can also be somewhat challenging in terms of automation. An application may use a different setup, so you need to consider that if you want to automate installations. 

You can't easily port an application to another operating system unless it's CentOS or Fedora. It's not portable if you want to port it to something like Windows except for Java and containers. Unless it's another Red Hat, CentOS, or Fedora, the application itself isn't portable if it's installed on a thick virtual or physical machine even. It's not easily portable because you must recompile the application or make changes.

I have been using Red Hat for more than 15 years.

There are bugs, but you can usually find a workaround quickly. When somebody discovers a bug, it's fixed pretty quickly in the next release.

The services run well, and it can handle pretty much anything provided you have enough hardware resources. That's something you always have to watch out for.

RHEL is so stable in the environments I've been working on that I have never had to call Red Hat. Any issues we've had were either hardware or application problems. It's never an issue with the operating system. 

The community resources are helpful. You can find answers to most questions you have in terms of setup or troubleshooting. There are issues now and again, but you can go to the website or a discussion board to find the solution, and it works. When I say we've never had a problem, it's not exactly true. Sometimes it doesn't do what you expect, but you can usually find the solution, so we have never had to call support to ask.

A lot of my clients used to use Oracle Solaris, but many of them switched to Red Hat due to hardware costs. Oracle hardware is expensive, but it is good stuff. We had systems that ran for three years without any issues, but it gets expensive if something breaks or you need to replace hardware due to the lifecycle. 

You can install RHEL on any x86 hardware and deploy it on several Dell servers, which is much cheaper than a single Oracle server. For example, we needed to replace a system because the hardware got sold. We were quoted a price for Solaris running on an Oracle T5. It was four times the price of replacing it with HP hardware. So that's the main reason many clients have shifted to RHEL. 

It's a vicious cycle. As more companies switch, other clients say, "Oh, but there's not much user base left. How long will this run? Let's follow the mainstream trend." That said, I love Solaris. It's unbelievably stable and easy to use, but just the hardware underneath it is too expensive.

I've been involved in deployment, but it depends on the client. I've done everything from architectural design to installation and administration for specific clients. Setting up RHEL is pretty straightforward if you know what you need to know. Of course, you have to do your homework before. For example, if you are deploying it on a VM, you need to see the size you need and what else you have to install. 

When someone orders a server, we typically tell them the deployment will take half a day, but the installation takes around an hour. You may need to install other things, but the out-of-the-box operating system takes about an hour.

We're just one team who manages the infrastructure for one department. It's highly specific. There's a specialized market team that does stock exchanges and financial services. The demands for hardware and availability are particular to that segment. We have three people responsible for installation, maintenance, and administration.

RHEL is stable and relatively cheap, so you get much more out of it than other Linux flavors. I mostly work as a consulting system engineer and am usually not involved in any of this financial stuff.

I can suggest how many subscriptions they need and how much it will cost, but I can't say if it's worth it to the client. I don't know, but we have never had any complaints. People never say, "Oh, but this is expensive, and it doesn't fit into what we had planned."

RHEL has a decent pricing model. It's a subscription, which makes sense. The OS itself is free, but you pay for the support. I have never heard any complaints about the pricing.

You can also purchase a virtual data center license that allows you to set up a hundred virtual servers. You can also add a Satellite license subscription to your standard server. There are several different add-ons that will increase the price of the subscription, depending on the functionality you need.

It's hard for me to compare Red Hat with other open-source solutions because we only have clients who work with Red Hat Linux. Of course, there are entirely free ones you could use. Fedora is the most extensive free version of Red Hat. You could use Ubuntu or any other Linux flavor, which is mostly free. However, I have no idea what additional cost you'd pay if you want to support.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten. I would recommend it, but I need to qualify that by pointing out that I don't have enough experience with other Linux flavors to say that it's better than the others. I've mostly used RHEL because it's so ubiquitous.

We are a telco company hosting internal applications on the OpenShift platform. It's for general IT workloads, such as backend systems for billing. We are also using it for containerization projects.

With an open-source solution, there is no vendor lock-in at the OS layer, so it's more flexible. I am happy with the value Red Hat delivers, so we don't see a reason to change that.

I like open source and prefer it over some closed proprietary software. In my early days, I was involved in the open-source community of the Red Hat Directory Server, communicating with developers to ensure password policies were implemented and asking questions. It showed me the power of open source.

While the built-in security features are excellent, we don't use all of them. It has many available capabilities, but it's not always up to the infrastructure people to decide what to use for security. 

I'm happy with the value Red Hat Enterprise Linux delivers, but there's always room to improve. 

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

I've never heard of any issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux's performance on business-critical workloads. If there is a problem, it's mostly on the application layer, not the operating system.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has native containerization, so it can scale. It uses open-source technology and has Kubernetes underneath, which gives you the scaling you need. .

I rate Red Hat support seven out of 10.

Neutral

We have been a Red Hat customer for over a year, and we are happy with the value it delivers.

I don't know the exact pricing. Red Hat's subscription model is cost-effective because you pay as you go, which is better than paying upfront high license costs. 

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux eight out of 10. If you plan to implement Red Hat Enterprise Linux, make sure you get a vendor who can deliver and support it correctly.