Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as an infrastructure support operating system across both x86 and s390 platforms. Specifically, we are running it on x86 Intel and Linux s390 mainframe on Zynq.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a stable operating system. We recently upgraded the majority of our systems from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. We were able to automate most of the upgrade process and did not encounter any major issues. As a result, we were able to bring our systems up to date quickly and easily. This is a major advantage of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

From an automation standpoint, we have been able to automate some of our patching workflows. This has definitely saved us time and money.

From a security and compliance standpoint, it is easy to maintain compliance. This is mostly accomplished by patching Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a frequent basis. The availability of security patches is also quick, which allows us to keep up with our client requirements quickly. Red Hat usually does a good job of making fixes available in a timely fashion, so we can remediate high-priority issues when they arise.

From a containerization standpoint, Docker and Podman now give us the ability to move workloads and structures around with little effort. It is very flexible and consistent, and the results also provide us with a stepping stone as we move towards an orchestration platform like OpenShift. Our ability to run Podman on servers and then migrate those Podman deployments to OpenShift is very beneficial.

The most valuable features are ease of support and the ability to run a read-only course on the operating system.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is easy to maintain. We currently use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 with Docker for containerization. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, we are moving to Podman, which is a native container runtime that is part of the operating system. 

I suggest that Red Hat move to a continuous delivery model instead of major releases. I know that this is a trend for many middleware products. We do not have a major release network. We only have monthly or quarterly roll-on releases on our continuous delivery model, which reduces the impact of a major version. This would probably be the easiest change to make.

The technical support has room for improvement.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

Since we run a number of hypervisors for all of our real systems, I believe that a lot of the scalability comes from a level higher than the operating system. However, Red Hat Enterprise Linux can accommodate these tools.

Red Hat support could be improved, and they should have a better relationship with IBM and VMware. This is because a lot of what we do involves working with IBM, both from a hardware standpoint and from a hypervisor standpoint. We have a long history with IBM, and we are now starting to work more with Red Hat on OpenShift private cloud solutions and other tooling. However, Red Hat and IBM are not on the same page. They are still very different companies, and they don't always know what the other one is doing. This can lead to contradictory information, inaccurate information, and frustration for customers. I think there is a relationship between Red Hat and IBM that could be improved. If Red Hat and IBM could work together more effectively, it would put customers at ease and make them more confident that they could get the work done. It would also help IBM and Red Hat to better understand each other's products and services, which would lead to better customer support.

For example, we recently had an incident that started as a severity two on the scaling. A number of our account representatives called and emailed us, saying, "Hey, we wanted to let you know that you have an open case. We need some help with this." The incident was not a production outage, but it was preventing us from doing something, so there was an indirect production impact. After about ninety minutes of back-and-forth communication, we were told, "Okay, go ahead and bump it up to severity one. That should get traction." We did not hear from anyone for four hours. This does not happen every time, but in this case, it needed to be dealt with well before four hours. It made things more difficult than they needed to be. Sometimes the support is an eight out of ten, and sometimes it is a four.

The end result was still good because they acknowledged what happened and got everyone together to resolve it but it was not done in an efficient way.

Neutral

The initial setup of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very straightforward. It is not much different from any other Linux operating system. Most of the things we need to consider when deploying Linux are relatively standard. Therefore, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is easy to deploy and maintain. If we know how to administer Linux operationally, then Red Hat Enterprise Linux should be easy to deploy.

I do not know enough to give a comprehensive answer, but other operating systems are in use at my company because they have more favorable licensing terms. This is a major factor in why we do not use Red Hat Enterprise Linux everywhere.

We evaluated SUSE Linux Enterprise and a few others. Depending on the computing platform, it is sometimes better and sometimes not. For some of our environments that are running on s390, SUSE Linux Enterprise gives us a better price point. However, for some of our other environments, such as x86 on VMware, it is more valuable. It is a better financial move for us in those cases. Therefore, the value of SUSE Linux Enterprise changes depending on the computing architecture.

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

We have a requirement to have a Linux operating system.

I'm not sure how our developers are building their images. I believe they use some desk start products.

We use SUSE Linux Enterprise for Linux on the mainframe. In a particular enclave, we have some government contracts where we use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a number of reasons, including licensing for hosts. These hosts are hosted with OpenShift. We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for all our Bastion hosts and OLS for our other hosts.

The Red Hat knowledge base is generally an eight or nine out of ten, but it can be difficult to get the information we need. The initial level of support is a six or seven, but it improves as we escalate the issue.

I am a Federal Contractor. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is one of the FedRAMP-approved operating systems, so the government is comfortable with using it. That is why we use it, even though it is a bit outdated. Most of our software runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux because we work in Identity Access Management. For example, Oracle Identity Stack runs on Linux, so we have to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We follow very strict security protocols, and we use Ansible to enforce them. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the easiest way for us to do this.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a trustworthy and highly scalable operating system. The federal government needs an operating system that they can rely on, with enterprise support and long-term service. As well as being stable and well-known within the community.

I have not yet experienced a disaster recovery scenario, but resiliency is important, and risk is very reliable. The auto logs are very clear. Additionally, with those support communities, it is straightforward enough to understand what we are looking for and to eventually resolve the issue.

I actually like the in-place upgrade that Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers. It has made our upgrade process from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 much easier than we originally thought. 

I know that many people prefer in-house support, but I personally prefer Red Hat's support. It is easy to get in contact with their support team.

Even though it is not directly related, the fact that Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ansible are closely related makes it easier for us to move forward.

The package management, repository, and satellite repository are easy to use.

I am a bit biased because my client is air-gapped. This means that we cannot connect to the internet, so all of our operations are disconnected. I would like to see better support for disconnected operations. For example, the in-place upgrade from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 initially relies on a lot of online resources. This makes sense, but it would be nice for a consumer or integrator like me to be able to say, "Hey, we need an offline solution so we can upgrade our government clients on-premises." Red Hat does provide instructions on how to create a repository, but the instructions are not very clear. This leaves us scrambling to figure out why we are missing a repository in our satellite image. Red Hat should provide a way to mirror repositories or at least provide a solution for us to bubble up packages throughout the entire process.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for four years. We started with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, and we upgraded to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 in an airgap environment. We are currently in the process of upgrading to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable. It is deployed in a 10,000-plus enterprise company.

The support team is always direct and easy to find. Their answers are so helpful that I have not yet had to call them. I also appreciate how they approach troubleshooting. They don't assume that you're doing anything wrong. Instead, they try to educate you on how to fix the problem. In my experience, the support team has always been very positive.

Positive

I have experience with most Linux operating systems, including distributions like Apache, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, and others. From my perspective, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not necessarily the top standout product, but I know that it is a product that I can rely on. It is the standard image that enterprise users in the community will use. We can rely to a degree on the standardization of how packets are used to support it. However, it does not stand out to us as much as the other products. Nevertheless, I know that it will have a positive partnership with us. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a more suitable operating system for enterprise environments in terms of stability and reliability.

We are currently in the process of reviewing our initial solution for upgrading from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. The in-place upgrade for the airgap environment is an area where we are still struggling to understand the documentation. However, Red Hat has been very supportive and has offered us pathways to move forward. We do not have much to say at this time, as we are still in the middle of the process.

When we upgraded Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, it took us around six months due to external factors not related to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Our client has a direct subscription to Red Hat.

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. I am not a firm believer that everything is perfect right out of the gate. Everything can be improved. I am a little biased. I wish there was better support for offline environments. I understand that I am in the minority in this case, as everyone is connected to the internet now. However, as a federal contractor and integrator, we have requirements that we must meet. It is not fun having to download binaries offline and then figure out how to set up our own repository. These are not straightforward tasks like Red Hat telling me what to do. We just wish it was easier to do things like patch management. Perhaps there could be more support for air gap environments. These are not environments where we can temporarily connect to the internet. They have never seen the internet.

Depending on our customer's environment, sometimes they have GovCloud, but we still use Red Hat Enterprise Linux images there. Sometimes the customer can't use that so we use the offering from CentOS. But we still try to match it with CentOS.

The reason why some clients don't use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the cloud is not because of security concerns. I think it's more about cost and their current contract situation. They need a low-cost, open source alternative, and our recommendation would be CentOS. However, many clients are not ready to pay for the enterprise edition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so they may choose to scale back their plans.

I have not used the Red Hat Enterprise Linux knowledge base strictly. I have only used the Red Hat Enterprise Linux support.

Clients who use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the cloud, typically use AWS GovCloud. As a government integrator, we strive to design our solutions in a way that does not lock our clients into any specific cloud provider. This is why we chose Linux, as it can be run on any cloud platform. This flexibility is important to our clients from a price contract perspective. For example, Amazon provides Kubernetes services, among other things. We try to figure out open source solutions or at least architecturally determine them and provide them to our clients. For example, we can tell them that they can move all of their GovCloud data to Azure or Google Cloud. Government agencies really like Amazon right now because it is FedRAMP. However, for other classes that are not government or commercial, we try to introduce them to the CentOS perspective so that they can get a taste of the upstream.

We do not use the image builder tool provided by Red Hat. Instead, we use the one provided by Amazon. We take a base image, coordinate it with Ansible, and provide it to any environments that have used the cloud. For on-premises solutions, we strictly use manual processes.

I don't have a perspective on the golden image, which is at least with our client. The parts that we use are always evolving, so we don't really maintain the golden image. We do have a relative backup of what we deployed to, but we don't necessarily have a strict golden image.

Migrating workloads between the cloud and the data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not entirely applicable to us. We did migrate from on-premises to the cloud at one point, but migrating from Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-premises to Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud was not a concern for us. We knew it would be stable and fine. The main concern was migrating our customer data from our enterprise to the cloud.

If someone is looking for an open source cloud-based operating system for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would like to eventually drive them over to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but I would recommend starting with CentOS. CentOS is a good gateway OS because it is very similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and the knowledge transfer between the two is very straightforward. This makes it a good choice for users who are new to Linux, or who are looking for an OS that is compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I use it for almost everything. I run a company in South Texas and Mexico. We are a cloud service provider, and we have implementations for almost everything. We are using it for websites, virtualization, orchestration, and containers, and we are also using it a lot for telecommunications. We use almost all of its features.

We have many versions. We have versions 8, 9, 9, 9.1, 9.2, etc. 

When we implemented all the security frameworks with RHEL three years ago, that was the first time we had a non-issue audit. It was a great implementation.

It helps with the headcount. With the kind of orchestration and automation that we have, we don't need a lot of engineers. We can have fewer engineers on site.

There is reliability. We can rely not only on their operating system but also on their server. Red Hat not only has operating systems; it also has many different servers.

It helps to achieve security standards certification. It is one of the most important things that I do every single day. We need to comply with a lot of frameworks of security, such as ISO2701, ISO2717, ISO2721, PCI compliance, and HIPAA for the health sector. We also have some local compliance requirements. For example, in Texas, there is one for financial entities, and in Mexico, there are several based on GDPR. It is very important for us.

It is helpful when it comes to building with confidence and ensuring availability across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructures. There are many features to ensure or enforce high availability.

It helps us to centralize development with OpenShift. We don't do a lot of DevOps, but we have a supply chain where everything goes to the on-premises cloud, and then it is pulled to the public cloud.

The Red Hat support is most valuable. My team and I are really good at Linux, and we can do almost everything in any kind of Linux solution, but sometimes, we have a really nasty problem, and the Red Hat engineering support at the third level has been fantastic. They know how to fix almost everything. The reason why I pay so much money to them is to have this kind of service and assurance.

Containers are the strongest feature that they have. In terms of the quality, between VMs and containers, Red Hat with OpenShift is fantastic. I have more than a million containers right now in my cloud, and it works fantastically.

Network virtualization resources could be better. When you have any kind of trouble with network virtualization, such as with OVS, which is like a switch in a virtual environment, it takes many hours to find what is happening. Other vendors, such as VMware, and even other Linux implementations for network virtualization have better resources. It is much easier to escalate, and there is better documentation.

I don't use Ceph, which is their software-defined storage, because they don't have the best price. It doesn't make sense when you compare it in terms of the hardware cost, better performance, and better capabilities. That's my main complaint at any meeting with Red Hat. I want to use Red Hat Ceph, but it costs so much money.

I have been using it for about 20 years.

If you have the correct hardware, it is stable, but if you do not, you will have a problem any time soon.

It is reliable. If you don't know how to secure your Linux implementation, Red Hat can do it for you with two or three simple clicks, and you will be very secure without any kind of knowledge.

It is scalable. It is not the most scalable in the Linux area, but for 99% of the companies, it is scalable enough for any kind of workload.

We have plenty of clusters, and we probably have more than 400 servers. We are a private cloud solution provider. We don't have anything in the hyper-scale, such as AWS, Azure, etc. We own everything: the data center servers, racks, networking, and storage. That's our competency, and this way, we can provide a better solution to the kind of customers we are focused on.

We have three different locations: one in the states and two in Mexico. At each location, we have at least three different clusters for three different market verticals. We have one for the financial, one for the healthcare system, which has a lot of compliance requirements, and one for the general public, which doesn't have too much sophistication.

We plan to increase its usage, but it is not my decision. If I sell more, I will buy more.

They are exceptional. We have a lot of experience in these matters. Usually, when we have any kind of issue, it is a really difficult one, and I need to talk to somebody at level two or three in the support area. They skip the line for us because we send everything perfectly documented to open the PR. They put us in touch with the best engineer to solve the issue. If the engineer isn't able to understand what is happening, usually, he calls the RHEL developer or engineer that handles that part of the code. They are usually able to fix a complex problem in less than eight hours.

Their support is fantastic. I have dealt with many different vendors, but Red Hat is the only one that does it in this way. They do it in a simple and fast way. They understand you, and they are willing to help you and fix everything. If you have a problem or situation that is causing downtime for the customer, they understand that it has an impact on your business, and they are affecting the revenue of the company. They are really committed to fixing it as soon as possible. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

We use RHEL and Canonical. We have some SUSE implementation in the Linux area. In hypervisors, we use VMware and Hyper-V. So, we are in many different technologies, and we are not always on RHEL. RHEL has almost 45% of all our hardware. It is the biggest one, but we use almost all the solutions. In terms of security, Red Hat and Canonical have almost the same level of security.

I am no longer involved in its deployment. I last deployed it about four years ago.

In terms of maintenance, every server requires some kind of maintenance, but we have everything automated. We don't put any effort into it. 

We have 8 to 12 people for deployment and maintenance. They handle the deployment and change of the environment in the data center. For DevOps, I have another team of probably 30 people. They develop solutions for customers.

We have definitely seen an ROI. The return on investments comes in the 14th or 15th month.

For the basic operating system, its price is fair. It is not cheap, and it is also not expensive. For the OpenShift or OpenStack implementation, the cost is a little higher than what I would expect, but it is doable. For a storage solution, it is almost impossible to pay.

In comparison to open-source competitors, RHEL has the most cost-effective open-source subscription model. The way I pay for everything, such as Ubuntu or RHEL, is very similar. When you compare how much money I put in for a customer, in terms of licensing, or even support, my margins with RHEL are really good. If I compare it with VMware or Hyper-V, which are not open source, the difference is totally insane.

I am a vendor-agnostic solution provider. If my customer needs something with RHEL or something that's specifically with another vendor, I use that. If they don't know, or there is a new implementation, I surely send everything to the RHEL implementation. In the end, this is not my decision. It is a market decision. If my customer is telling me that they should be on RHEL, I will bring in RHEL for them.

I would advise paying for the enterprise-level support at least for the first year.
For sure, it is expensive, but it would be helpful. With experience, you can downgrade to the second level.

We have had some issues with container compression that broke everything. So, I don't recommend using it if you don't know how to fix everything.

The biggest lesson that I've learned from using this solution is to read before starting the implementation.

I would rate it a 9 out of 10 because there is nothing perfect.

In the past, we ran almost everything on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but now we use it for applications that are only supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, LDAP servers, and other stuff that runs better on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We've migrated the rest to Ubuntu. We don't use it for containerization yet, but I'm learning about OpenShift. 

We are considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux for some AI projects at the university, some for researchers and research groups, and others for administration or student enrollment. There are many opportunities to use AI. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has made us more agile, and more applications were ready-made for Linux. It was also easier to maintain the environment. 

It enabled us to centralize development, but we had some issues with cost, so we migrated off. We use the Linux security heavily.  I'm unfamiliar with the new security stuff incorporated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but SELinux and all the security features are good. It doesn't particularly reduce risks, but there are some added layers of security for internet-facing applications we like

Red Hat Enterprise Linux been stable, and we could do anything we wanted with it. OpenShift is a concise environment, and it is one of the most stable Linux distros on the market. 

The only issue for us was the cost. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive.

We have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a long time. We started using it on version 4, and now we are on 7, but we migrated most of our environment to Ubuntu a few years ago.

It is stable and mature.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux can scale to fit our needs. 

I rate Red Hat support nine out of 10. I was happy with it. Their expertise and technical knowledge were good. It was one of the best support experiences I've had. 

Positive

When Oracle acquired Sun, we migrated from Sun Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It wasn't easy, but it was a light effort.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10. If you're purchasing commercial Linux, I would look into Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it's highly stable and mature overall. It's a true enterprise OS. 

The main use case is generating golden images. All the deployments of operating systems and virtual machines on the servers are based on the golden image. The developers and providers can run all the applications on top of those.

Whenever we need to remediate any vulnerabilities, patches are available. These patches are not only for current exploits but also for back-porting for bug fixes and security fixes. These patches are available from the most recent versions to the specific version that we are using.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. We have a golden image of the operating system. That golden image sets the standard for all the security policies that we are applying to it. For example, the partition scheme and the best practices that we apply to the golden image are the starting point for all the developers to start working with all the applications and also executing appliances or applications from providers.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Podman for containerization projects. Red Hat offers what is called UBI or Universal Base Image. That image is already configured to be secure and have good performance. To start working with containers, we just have to pull UBI as a base for our images and start working on those. It has impacted our containerization project because instead of using Docker, we can use Podman. There is a common container image that is used by the majority of the customers, but I forgot the name of that one. Instead of using that, which is like a very minimal image, we are using UBI because it is already secure. It has the majority of the benefits of our Red Hat Enterprise Linux image but in a container image.

There is portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for keeping our organization agile. That is a very good option to have because you do not have to worry about the underlying system. You just have to worry about your application and have the application running on top of your image based on UBI. It is going to be so easy to have the application running either on a machine with Podman or have the same application running just on top of OpenShift. It is so easy to move a container-based application that can be executed on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Podman or on top of OpenShift. 

Security, packages, and updates are valuable. There is also the possibility to do unattended installations. This way you can define how you want the installation to behave and be configured whenever you do the deployment.

One of the best features is having a tool called OSCAP, which is a tool that is going to allow us to apply security profiles to the golden image. This way, all the security features or policies can be applied in real time. This way, we can follow all the policies that are defined by our security teams.

There are not a lot of areas to improve because the majority of the time, Red Hat is constantly improving it. The only area would be in regards to being capable of running on other architectures like ARM. They are about to release a new version that is available to be executed on ARM architecture.

We have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for about a year.

It is very stable.

It is scalable. We have plans to increase its usage.

It used to be better. It is still good as long as you can get in touch with a level 3 support engineer. If you have a trained engineer who helps you with what you need and who understands how to ask for specific details of what you need, you should be good. But, unfortunately, if you start with a simple detail of what you are experiencing and what kind of help you need, you will receive the same response. For example, you are pointed to a knowledge base article, and that is it. The support engineer is supposed to help you with your issue or request, but unfortunately, that is not happening anymore. It used to, but I understand.

We are looking for a support engineer to go all the way. The only way for you to contact support is via the support case system or page. After that, you interact through the ticket or email. You do not have a chance to have a call. If we have escalated a case, it is usually better if you have a person for a proper understanding and proper advice on what you have to do and how to resolve the issue. It could be that you need a new product, subscription, or service, but you do not know that.

Neutral

When I got into the company, they were already using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but back in the day, I used to have HP-UX. That was a very ancient system. It was Unix-based. It was a proprietary solution. HP-UX was a platform licensed based on the old Unix code that was tightly integrated into hardware built only by Hewlett-Packard. You could not run HP-UX in any other place. You could only run it on hardware created by Hewlett-Packard. The intention with that was to run only on the Itanium architecture, whereas Red Hat Enterprise Linux can run on x86 architecture. It is also open-source.

We have it on-premises. It is in different locations. We are following a strategy to publish the images of the operating system. This way, multiple teams can grab the images and have their own procedures to deploy within each separate environment. We have multiple teams working on developments and they need a base image to start working on all the development stuff. Because they are all independent teams, they have access to a single source of image. This way, they can start working on further customizations and whatever they need.

We implement it in-house.

The ROI is in terms of the time that I have to invest in doing customizations, applying security policies, and fixing the supply to the system, wherever I need those.

The reason for going for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is to improve the time to market. It is so easy to just generate a new image. We can configure it with all the security features and all the libraries and packages we need. We can also configure it with the ones requested by developers. We can do all of that. It is so much easier than what we can do with Windows, for example.

It is very straightforward. We do not have to think much about having to get all the subscriptions related to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux fleet that we have because all the subscriptions came in pairs of CPUs or even for an entire bare-metal server. That way you can partition your bare-metal server into multiple virtual machines, and then you are covered. As long as your bare-metal server is covered, you can roll out any number of virtual machines on top of it. It is very easy to get subscriptions for your bare-metal server, and you can utilize whatever you want.

We evaluated operating systems or Linux distributions created by the community or run by the community only. We evaluated them mainly because of costs.

To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would say that they would not have the same team supporting all the operations and all the critical features and patches that they receive with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They can go with one of the clones, but unfortunately, at the end of the day, the clones are going to deviate from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you can also create support cases to receive back-ported bug fixes and security fixes, and you get very cool features such as Insights, Satellite, or system roles provided along with Ansible. 

We are currently not using Red Hat Insights but that is an awesome tool.

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. It is an enterprise Linux distribution. It was one of the first distributions to focus on the enterprise. There are others, but Red Hat is the main contributor to the Linux ecosystem. Because of that, it is so stable. It has proper support. It also provides the Linux ecosystem with new features and enhancements.

When we are looking for Linux servers or developers need Linux, we have standardized around Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We do not use Ubuntu or any random flavors of the day. If it is a Linux deployment, it is Red Hat.

It helps with standardization. If someone comes to us and requests a Linux server, we have one product offering. We have a couple of different flavors of it, but people know what they are getting from us. The consistency, reproducibility, and standardization of it have been fantastic.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-prem and on the cloud. We have it in Azure, VMware, and on-prem. We have it on bare metal. It is all over the place. Our operations are simpler, more efficient, and easier to handle. Our Linux team now supports one OS rather than a whole bunch of flavors that everyone has brought in. It has just made things more efficient and simplified.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. Those developers are now developing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Previously, we had people who were developing on Ubuntu and trying to push Ubuntu to production, but we did not necessarily support it. Red Hat Enterprise Linux gave us a clear path to production. Our developers also get an easier experience. They know which OS to use and what they are using from day to day. There is less confusion for developers.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. It has helped with simplification. We do not have to create too many of our own custom container definitions and do our own thing. We use minimal images and whatever is provided is supported under our subscription. It simplifies things and puts guidelines around things.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features are good when it comes to risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance. We use Red Hat Satellite to manage our Linux. That makes it all very simple. There is a feature called OpenSCAP. We use it for security scanning. All the features that they provide on top of the base OS make it very easy to manage.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is great for keeping our organization agile. We know we can rely on that middle layer. We can start with the container and then build on top of that. Having a solid and standard foundation makes it all easy to do.

The enterprise aspect of it is valuable. There is security patching, security scanning, and compliance. There are all kinds of features around managing and keeping it up-to-date and secure. Everything is in a box for us from Red Hat which makes it very easy to manage them.

It is constantly improving. It is important to continue to improve. That is another reason I like it. They are using newer kernels, which gives us access to newer hardware. They are already doing that. I cannot pretend to tell them what to do better. They can just keep on doing what they are doing.

Personally, I have been using it for about 12 years. I have only been with my company for about four months, but I know they also have been using it for years.

It is stable.

It is scalable. They define scalability. I am a basic user. I just deploy more VMs if I need to. It is easy to do. Its scalability is great.

They are great. I would rate them a ten out of ten. A big selling point is that when you submit a support ticket, you know you are reaching out to experts. That is great, and that is one of the primary reasons we went with Red Hat.

Positive

In my company, they were using AWX for automation, and we moved them to AAP. For Linux, I was a part of a project to migrate some of the other operating systems over to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I am on the tail end of the move or standardization to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

There were a lot of Ubuntu operating systems in the environment, but they had challenges standardizing around it. There were different versions. There was also CentOS, but it was old CentOS. They are naturally moving that to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The support and the standardization around it were the main reasons for going for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. CentOS is more of a community thing now, whereas we can call Red Hat and they help us with everything. The support and the enterprise features we needed pointed at Red Hat Enterprise Linux rather than CentOS. It is a better choice for production.

We deploy them from AAP and then we deploy them into VMware. We deploy them into Azure, which is our main provider. We do that all orchestrated through Ansible and Satellite.

We have outsourced support. TCS is a general contractor, but for Red Hat deployments, we generally go with Red Hat Consulting. We just finished a consulting engagement with them for that. I know they have used them in the past prior to me being here. We generally just use Red Hat Consulting.

We have standardization. I know what I am walking into every day. I know there is support behind it. There is the support of Red Hat and the community behind it. I feel confident using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I might use other Linux operating systems at home, but a lot of the time, there is no documentation for them. There might be three guys in a forum from ten years ago who may have talked about my problem. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, when I am going to work, I know what I am walking into. I can feel safe and assured using something industry standard that works, and I can get help with it very easily. It makes life a lot easier.

Our total cost of ownership across our enterprise landscape has gone up because we were using a lot of mixed and free open-source solutions. However, there was an extra cost of operations and extra cost of hiring for specialized skills and things like that. With the Red Hat portfolio, I feel that we spend more on subscriptions, and we save in terms of efficiency and operations. I feel that we spent some money to save money on the backend, and I hope that is how it ended up.

I do node counts for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux system. I am gathering data for our decision-makers about how many nodes we need and how many things we need. Once or twice a year, they ask us to true up and find out how many nodes we are using and what the actual consumption is. I then report that, and then the account team usually works on the money part of it. I just work on the count.

We use Red Hat Insights a little bit. I am more of an Ansible guy, and we use Red Hat Insights for our licensing and a few other things. We have not been using Red Hat Insights as much as we wanted to. I know that on the Linux side, they are using it a lot for license count, monitoring, and other things.

I feel we are underutilizing Red Hat Insights. Our account executive has shown how it works and where it is, but we have not committed to it yet. That is coming soon. As we gain more Red Hat products and standardize more, we will have to rely on a single pane like that, so we will be using it more. I know that Red Hat Insights provides vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, but we are not utilizing it right now.

To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would say to go for whatever they find to be the best. My standard for an enterprise solution is Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It works very well, but they have to make sure that it fits their use case. Fortunately, Red Hat Enterprise Linux fits most use cases. They might end up there, but if there are licensing or cost restrictions, there are other free options, such as CentOS. The ecosystem of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is healthy, so I would recommend it, but if they want to use something else, they need to come up with all the standards around that.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. It is my preferred enterprise operating system. Everywhere I go, they are using it. It has been great. There are no complaints.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

We have an older environment with a lot of servers. They are development servers for a lot of in-house development. We have a lot of things. We have Ruby on Rails, Java, and a lot of Oracle applications

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is mostly on-prem in my current job. In my previous jobs, we have had it on AWS or Azure.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features are good when it comes to simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance. It is something that they do very well. It is one of the reasons why we like running it. It is rock solid in all areas. Red Hat does a really good job of keeping on top of vulnerabilities and making the patching process easy.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has impacted our uptime and security. We have had no breaches, and our systems are usually up.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not yet enabled us to achieve security standards certification because that is not a requirement for where we are, but I am pretty confident that we would meet those standards. Our security teams are usually chasing problems on the other side of the house.

I like most of the features. I like its stability. I like its views. It provides a very stable environment. There is not a lot of downtime. There are not a lot of issues. Primarily, we are deploying things and configuring things, and occasionally, we add new things for developers as needed, but it does not require much troubleshooting or break fixing. That is rare.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux is another thing I like about it. It is particularly easy to find an answer to your problem online. There is very good documentation, very good user communities, and good support when you need it.

The upgrade procedures are a little bit cumbersome. It would be nice if they are not because every three or four years we have to update, and I find that to be a bit on the cumbersome side. We have been able to automate most of it, but we still run into things where the job does not finish. There are things that require additional steps. There are things that need to be removed and that always require manual intervention. I do not know how they can get rid of that, but it is cumbersome in an environment where you have hundreds or thousands of servers.

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

I would rate their support a nine out of ten. I just do not give tens. I am sure there are some areas where they can improve, but they are good. They are responsive.

Positive

I have got experience with Windows and Solaris before that. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is my favorite. With Solaris, that stream stopped a long time ago, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux has all of the nice things about it, and they have continued to develop and build many new things. For instance, when you had to patch on a Solaris box, you had to take the server down into single-user mode and apply the patching. I like it better than Windows in every way. It is more intuitive to me. I like that I can do more things from the command line. It is easier to automate things.

I have been involved in the upgrades and some migrations for migrating things from Solaris. We also had CentOS, which was converted to DevStream, so we have had to change those to Red Hat. The upgrades and migrations were not terribly difficult. Usually, the tools were there. We called support when we ran into problems, but for the most part, it worked.

I have used Convert2RHEL. It was a bit helpful. It did the job.

We mostly use Ansible for deployment, patching, and managing the system in general. Our experience has been good. I am looking at some of the newer things they have at the conference that we have not had a chance to play with, but it meets our needs.

We have seen a return on our investment. We are able to do what we need to do without any problems or interruptions, and we are able to do it quickly.

For me, it is not too bad, but my company pays the bill, so I do not worry too much about it. 

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