Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

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.

It's what we run our primary mission systems on. Our office automation runs on Microsoft, which includes Word, email, etc. For everything that we present to the customers through the agency, the backend is an RHEL platform.

Through the various tools that we've utilized, RHEL was able to help improve our security posture. We run a very tight ship.

We use Satellite to do patch management and limited repository so that we don't have folks going out to the internet to get the repos. You have to get the repos through our Satellite system. We also do patches through that. We use Ansible for our automation to build boxes, to install all the security patches on them, and to run the vulnerability scan against them. It initiates that. Also, implementing IdM on them is done through Ansible. So, we use Ansible quite a bit, and we're just starting with OpenShift.

One benefit of using multiple Red Hat products is compatibility. Compatibility is the most important. We haven't had an issue where the tool doesn't understand the OS or doesn't understand the platform. Ansible written for Red Hat works perfectly. It understands the plugins and satellites, and it's having one ecosystem where it also gives one phone call. If there's a problem, we call Red Hat. That has been very handy.

RHEL’s built-in security features and security profiles are very good for reducing risk and maintaining compliance, but as a government agency, we have to use other baselines. CIS baseline is what we primarily rely on. We also put in a little bit of DISA as a baseline, but they're standard out-of-the-box solutions. It's pretty good. It just has to be tweaked slightly to get it to the level we have to run at.

It's relatively easy to troubleshoot using RHEL. Sometimes, the troubleshooting can take quite a bit of work, but it's an easily understandable OS. If you understand the basic key principles, you can pretty much work it out.

We're very happy with the amount of security customization we've been able to do with RHEL. The fact that Red Hat is really on top of security issues is also valuable. We get daily emails from Red Hat letting us know of possible issues and fixes, which is incredibly helpful for us.

Other than that, we use it as our primary DNS. So, DNS is an important piece of it. 

Compatibility is also extremely important. We get the ability to run as many applications on it. They are widely supported.

There are some things that we've seen from RHEL that have given us a little bit of consternation. Their IdM product could be improved greatly. It would be great if they had some type of application built in that would let you do whitelisting for applications. On the government side, for zero trust, that's becoming very important. We're currently using a third-party solution, and it's tough to get it to match up because anytime the kernel changes, you have to match the software to the kernel. If we get a critical vulnerability on a kernel, we have to roll out the new kernel but then our third-party software isn't cooperating, and it starts breaking down the system. So, it would be great if Red Hat could integrate that type of functionality into the product so that when a new kernel comes out, it includes the updated software to do whitelisting and blacklisting of applications and processes.

At the agency, we have been using it for about 10 years. For me personally, it has been about six years.

It has been relatively stable. The only time we see stability issues is when we introduce new third-party products. We have some mandates as a government agency to do some endpoint security stuff and integrating that in has caused us a few stability issues, but that's not so much the fault of Red Hat. It's a quagmire of the chicken and the egg. You have to run a certain kernel, but that kernel is not compatible with the other software that you are forced to run. So, we've artificially created stability issues.

They eventually work out or work themselves out. When the vendors get on board and update their products to match the kernel, then everything tends to function smoothly at that point until we introduce another hiccup. We're constantly throwing hurdles, but we also have a very good system for bringing stuff back to life after it's dead, and we've done it enough that we're pretty timely. We can get one of our servers up in about 10 minutes.

It has been relatively scalable. We don't have any super large deployments, but we've had some scaling of specific applications, which has worked out great. We're integrating it more into Ansible and using our virtual hypervisor platform to recognize times when it needs to scale, and when we expect a large deluge of customers coming into our website, we have to have the backend expand. We've been doing that manually up to this point, but we're looking forward to being able to automate that.

We wanted an enterprise platform that was going to be supported. So, support from the vendor has been very important to us, and Red Hat has always provided that. When IBM took over Red Hat, we were very afraid that it was going to change our relationship with Red Hat, but it worked out very well. We've got a great sales team that has helped us, and they've always been able to get us the technical support we need when we run into an issue.

Until we got our new salesperson, I would have rated them a two out of five. Now that we've gotten our new sales team, we've gotten the right people in the right places, it's definitely a five out of five. We had a salesperson who was more focused on larger agencies, and we're a relatively small agency. So, we weren't getting the amount of focus that we needed, but that changed when our Director and our CIO engaged Red Hat's Enterprise Management. They were able to get us someone who could be more focused on smaller agencies and be a lot more helpful, and he has absolutely done that.

Positive

I was involved in the deployment or setup of RHEL to a degree, but it was mostly during our life cycle refreshes when we moved from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7 to RHEL 8. And now, we're looking at RHEL 9. 

On the backend development of the base image, I'm part of the team that puts together the base design, and then we put the steps into our repository so that we can rebuild the images easier. Right now, it's a manual process. We want to get to the point where we have all of the changes documented in a GitHub solution or something where we can make a change, push a button and have it implement those changes in there by using a script or something else. I'm mostly the one yelling to the Linux developers to get their stuff done because they have a tendency to run multiple instances while they're transitioning. They'll run an RHEL 6 box, an RHEL 7 box, and an RHEL 8 box at the same time when they have to get off of RHEL 6 and RHEL 7. So, I'm more of the management yelling at them to get this stuff done.

I would advise making sure you get a good support contract and you have a very good salesperson to work with.

In terms of RHEL's effect on our organization's management and efficiency, it can always be improved, but we probably are a three out of five on efficiency. As we move into OpenShift and get a lot more automation working, we will move slowly to the five, but that's not the fault of Red Hat. That's the fault of our organization having limited resources, and Red Hat is helping to provide the tools to get us to the next level.

Given that we started running everything on Microsoft, Red Hat is a lot more flexible in giving us the ability to span out specifically as we move into containers. It's going to give us the ability to stand up a lot more resiliency. When we're getting a heavy load, we can expand. Even currently, we have the ability to expand slightly but moving into containers will give us even more capability. We've chosen Red Hat as our platform. Red Hat has done well enough for us, and that's the platform that we're moving to with containers.

At this point, I would rate it an eight out of ten because there's always room for improvement. I don't feel that there's a perfect OS. I would even rate Windows as a seven. There's definitely room for improvement, and with Red Hat being one of the larger targets out there for hackers and people, there are always issues coming up.

I'm using Red Hat as an OI solution with some Oracle databases and an FTB server on top of it. I am not using containers in Red Hat. It's solely serving as an OS with direct applications installed on it. We have a few thousand users benefiting from Red Hat indirectly, but only 10 to 20 people work directly with it. I only use Red Hat in one location right now. Previously, I had it deployed in a cluster. 

The most important thing for any organization is stability and uptime for the application and the environment. Red Hat provides us with stability and uptime, and it gives us all the tools we need to integrate with our other solutions. 

It's also a suitable environment for applying security certificates. You can perform all the requirements on Red Hat. For example, you can do everything you need to comply with BCI, ISO, or any other certificate. 

The most valuable thing about Red Hat is its stability, uptime, and support for various hardware vendors. Linux servers, in general, are relatively secure and they are more secure than Windows and other products. 

Red Hat provides additional tools to customize your environment and harden your OS. For example, you can apply security patches and use benchmarks. You can do everything in Red Hat, so you can always have a highly secure environment. The interface is pretty good. Our engineers like the PLI interface.

I've been using Red Hat for around 10 years. 

Red Hat is as stable as you want it to be. We periodically have some bugs, but we can resolve these issues quickly. 

Red Hat can be scalable, especially if you are using it for virtualization. For example, KVM is easy to implement and scale up. You only need to add more nodes to scale as much as you want.

I rate Red Hat support nine out of ten. It's nearly perfect. Red Hat support has one of the best teams I've dealt with. 

Positive

I've used some open-source environments like CentOS and some other solutions like Solaris and HBOX. We switched to Red Hat because it's easier to deploy and manage.

Setting up Red Hat is straightforward if you're doing a basic installation. They have a beautiful installer that handles everything. For a more advanced deployment, you may need to go through some more complicated steps to customize it for everyone's best practices. 

You only need one person to handle the installation, which takes anywhere from a few minutes to an hour, depending on the installation. If you install Red Hat correctly based on your requirements, you don't need to perform any maintenance. You might need to patch, upgrade, add resources or harden the OS. When discussing security, you always need to follow up on patching and security hardening.

The cost could be lower. Red Hat is considered a costly solution. It can be expensive if you want all the features in the license. A cheaper license would make Red Hat more accessible to a broader range of users. It's reasonable given the features and performance, but a lower price would encourage more people to adopt it.

We looked at HBOX servers, but they are far more expensive than Red Hat. Red Hat is more optimal in terms of cost versus performance and stability than other solutions like Solaris and HBOX.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten. It's an excellent solution. Go for Red Hat If you want stability at a reasonable cost. It's the best.

I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as an operating system for government contracts. 

I like the flexibility Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers in terms of permissions. The patch management is much shorter and easier. Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps us move workloads between different clouds and data centers. It's pretty smooth and transparent. 

We use AMIs — machine images — for provisioning. The image builder is nice. It's a vertical Amazon machine image. They have each machine image, so you don't need to install anything. You can just copy the machine image. 

There's an operating system called EdgeOS, which is an edge operating system used by edge computing nodes in the cloud. If Red Hat Enterprise Linux had a version incorporating EdgeOS-type functions, that would be great. Otherwise, you have to learn a little bit of EdgeOS to work with those nodes.

We have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux for several years.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10 for stability. 

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10 for scalability. 

I rate Red Hat support nine out of 10. 

Positive

Red Hat offers better support and stability. There are several others, including Windows, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a pretty stable standard operating system. 

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10 for ease of deployment and migration. Deploying an AMI is straightforward. We hardly had to do anything. It's pretty much automatic and uninterruptible. 

I wasn't involved in the licensing, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux's price should be reasonable if the government and others get it. 

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 out of 10. It's the top of the line.

We primarily use RHEL for data analysis servers supporting our scientific researchers, who access the systems remotely.

The reliability and long support lifespan of RHEL are crucial for us. It lasts for ten years, meaning we don't need frequent changes. Updates are quick, simple, and reliable, automatically backing out if issues arise, saving us from patching headaches.

I'm eager to see how the AI features in RHEL can enhance our capabilities. We hope it will improve tasks we have found challenging in the past, like documentation searches. We are particularly interested in automation and easily finding information.

I have been using RHEL for 15 years.

RHEL is scalable. We have scaled our data analysis clusters with it quite well.

I would rate the customer support as a nine out of ten.

Positive

Deploying RHEL for the first time was simple. It was a long time ago, and we had documentation from previous admins which made it straightforward. We did the deployment on our own.

We have seen ROI with RHEL. Our biggest investment is in professional development through Red Hat Summit, online training, and a Red Hat Learning subscription, which we have used for courses.

Our experience with RHEL pricing and setup costs has been good. We will be purchasing an extended license for another year.

We have used RHEL since I joined my company about 15 years ago. We have looked at other options like Fedora and Ubuntu for more up-to-date libraries, but we keep coming back to RHEL for its reliability and long-term support.

Using RHEL for containers has simplified our processes. While we, as system managers, aren't heavily involved in development, we provide RHEL containers for our developers. Overall, it has improved support for container management within our organization.

We rely on Linux for our web and file servers to ensure file integrity and service verification. Additionally, we use the host firewall regularly on all our hosts for enhanced security.

We started agile development and containers help us by making it easier for developers to teardown and recreate environments. This allows for more frequent updates, improving our workflow.

Our Red Hat portfolio reduced our cost of ownership by using RHEL Workstation instead of full server licenses where possible, saving money. We use full RHEL only on our enterprise production servers.

I would advise a colleague to check out Red Hat for its long-term support and reliability compared to other open-source Linux-based operating systems.

Overall, I would rate RHEL as a nine out of ten.

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

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

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

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

The product enables us to achieve security standards certification.

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

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

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

We evaluated Oracle Enterprise Linux. 

I'm a customer and end-user. 

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

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We prefer Red Hat Enterprise Linux as our operating system due to its excellent support. If a business wants something, we deliver it and we prefer a Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based system because of the support. It can be a simple application to a big system. It doesn't have pre-defined roles. It's a go-to operating system. 

Our use cases for it vary from plain operating system management to handling specific tasks such as running Oracle databases or other similar applications. They include quite a broad spectrum of requirements. Also, they are not limited to predefined roles but encompass the entire operating system infrastructure.

The solution's SELinux feature is a gold standard for security. It also has the best ecosystem. 

In addition, its automation platform, ITM, is a good product and works well for us.

Some of the solution's features need to be automated. We encounter the hassle of registering the system and attaching a subscription. Our company has development teams, and we have to develop subscriptions for them. Here, having the solution up and running on the developers' machines is a bit of a hurdle. Although we can run it on platforms like Red Hat Connect but, it needs to be somewhat more accessible so developers can just download it and start with the work.

I have been using the solution for 10-15 years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable when combined with automation features. I rate its scalability a nine.

The solution's customer service is good.

Positive

I have used Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, and macOS. Initially, I worked as a Red Hat Certified Administrator in RHEL 5. Later, I began to work for its partner company. That is how I switched to the solution. It was not a conscious choice. It just evolved that way.

The solution's initial setup process is straightforward. You have to follow the steps, copy the template and multiply it.

The solution's price is reasonable. If you have a license for the support, they provide excellent services. The support team is always available for help in case of errors or system downtime issues.

RHEL’s built-in security features for simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance are good. If you keep SELinux on, it is all good. If you have a system with SELinux off for a long time, it could get you in trouble. The system will make many changes, like restoring files could break your application later. In case you resolve the problems simultaneously, it is fine. 

The troubleshooting feature of Red Hat is excellent. It can solve many issues on the machine right away. In addition, if you have an external scene, then Red Hat Insights is on. I sometimes go to this feature to see its status and what is happening. 

I don't do this on a daily basis and only check it every two weeks, but it's nice to have. I mainly oversee the high-level view of all the systems. This way, I know if the clients' machines need a patch system. 

There are some missing modules for SELinux in Ansible, like the playbook. It becomes a genuine hurdle to manipulate SELinux at the moment. I have to go to the machine, take a file to the repository, and deploy it.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I use the solution to develop OS for our internal use. I deliver it to our internal clients, so they can use it for whatever applications they may need to use it for.

The product is very stable. The knowledge base is excellent.

The solution should improve its documentation.

I have been using the solution for 16 years.

The solution scales well.

The support is good. I would rate support an eight or nine out of ten. The documentation should be improved to make it a ten.

Positive

The deployment is very easy for me because my organization has been doing it for a long time.

The product’s resiliency is pretty good. It responds fast to security updates compared to some other closed-source vendors. 

We moved from other priority operating systems to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it saves us costs on the commodity hardware. Overall, I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten.