Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We are running databases and applications on it. We are also using the Squid proxy server, NGINX, and Apache, so we are running multiple services on the servers.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux eight and nine. We also use Red Hat Satellite and Red Hat Ansible Tower.

I've mostly worked with the telcos and banking sectors, and they mostly have on-prem setups. We do have a hybrid environment where we have multiple machines running on AWS. I am based in Saudi, where they are using another cloud called Din. They are running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Din as well.

Their trainings should be free.

It's more stable than the other operating systems. That's why everyone is using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform instead of Windows on the server side.

They regularly send us updates regarding patches and security vulnerabilities. We patch our servers quarterly. Mostly, we do patching every three months. They always send us updates on our official email, so it's quite good.

It would be very good if we can easily migrate from CentOS to Red Hat. We are about to move from CentOS to Red Hat. It would be great if they can give us a free version. Otherwise, we need to purchase licenses, which are quite expensive.

I've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for five to six years. I have only been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux over these years.

Its stability is quite good. I'd rate it a nine out of ten.

I'd rate it a nine out of ten in terms of scalability. It's being used in the banking center, and they are running their applications and databases on it. 

We have LVM configurations, so according to the application, we can increase the disk size. The environment is quite good for my use.

Their support is quite good, and they're responsive, but they first send us to the platform to check the issues. They don't provide direct support immediately. For a new engineer, it can be quite difficult. It would be good if they put us directly on the call in case of an emergency.

Some of the newer engineers require support in a quick manner. Those of us who have experience of six to seven years don't require the support, but in the beginning, we required support, and their support was quite good.

Positive

The product selection depends on the company. Telco companies have the budget, and they are using licensed products, whereas small companies usually use the free versions of Linux. They go for Oracle Linux, CentOS, etc.

We are using CentOS and Ubuntu on some of the machines. The company wanted to go for a free product, but I told them that for any support in the future, we need a licensed product, and they are now migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

It's best in terms of security features. We configure the templates and then we implement the CIS controls, security features, and complete patching of the server.

In terms of maintenance, Red Hat provides us with the details about the security vulnerabilities, and the engineer needs to implement all the security on the servers.

We did it on our own.

We haven't seen an ROI.

From a management point of view, it's quite good, but everyone is complaining that it's more expensive than the other operating systems.

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

Absolutely rock solid performance, security, stability and reliability, essential features for a business that needs to mission critical applications in a 24 x 7 environment.

Plethora of useful tools and services that just make getting the job done a lot less time consuming.

RedHat Enterprise Linux has been running mission critical systems in my organization now for nearly 8 years, in a 24 x 7 environment.

During this time we have never, ever had any of our servers fail to function as needed.

Red Hat Linux has given us five nines (99.999%) uptime for years.

I have been using Linux in various forms for 10+ years

Mainly just the usual issues one will encounter whilst learning the platform, working out the best way to deploy and configure the servers, other than that though, the actual deployments were very straight-forward.

None, our RHEL servers have been rock solid.

No, we have RHEL servers of varying capacities and workloads, so far it's taken everything we can throw at it.

The technical support subscription is absolutely worth while if you need to use RHEL in production, knowing you can get support if you need it is comforting.

I've lodged a few support tickets over the years and always had prompt, informative responses, I would rate their support as being excellent.

We were using an earlier version of HP UX running on PA-RISC architecture, however we became concerned about the cost of remaining on the PA-RISC HP UX platform and possible future issues at virtualization.

When setting up any Linux environment, make sure you understand how the LVM works. Other than that it was all fairly straight-forward.

It was implemented in-house.

The uptime and reliability are the main ROI's, the product is also very competitively priced RE: Licensing, so many thousands of dollars in licensing costs alone.

The ROI on 10 years of rock solid reliability is almost impossible to calculate.

In Australia, you need to go through a channel partner, shop around and find a good partner that understands the licensing model well.

We evaluated HP UX 11.23, which we had been using before hand. However HP (at the time) had not delivered an x86 port of HP UX at the time when we were going to virtualization, so we needed an alternative to HP UX as we could not move into onto VMWare.

RHEL ticked all the boxes and was support by our technology provider.

Well worth a look if you want supported enterprise Linux.

We use the solution internally for developing our software, including running databases and banking applications. These are the kinds of services we provide to customers, as well as our own internal software products.

The solution has helped enormously in terms of development and infrastructure. It enables us to centralize development and improve productivity significantly by providing a stable platform with documentation and best practices for deploying robust solutions.

One of the most valuable features is the ease of consumption and the extensive community-driven resources. The documentation is extensive, allowing users to get started without difficulty. 

Additionally, the support and stability provided by Red Hat Enterprise Linux contribute significantly to its value.

The solution requires a lot of prerequisites and understanding of the Red Hat ecosystem before one can get started. This complexity could be improved. 

More comprehensive support for OpenShift integrations and a less customized, Red Hat-specific setup process would be beneficial.

We have been using the solution for more than ten years.

The solution has been stable. We partner closely with Red Hat, and the operating system has been reliable for a long time.

I am not directly involved with scaling aspects, so I can't provide specific insights on this.

We have been very happy with customer service and support. Red Hat offers prompt support with a good turnaround time, effectively addressing any issues.

Positive

The pricing is competitive. It is not cheap. That said, it provides value considering what it offers.

I would suggest that anyone starting to develop should consider starting with a community-based version, however, for production workloads, it is important to have the support model from Red Hat as it provides stability and quick issue resolution.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to host website content. 

The tool's most valuable features are stability and maturity. Linux offers cost efficiency. Red Hat comes at the top of other Linux vendors. I am very satisfied with Red Hat Enterprise Linux's maturity. 

We had issues migrating from the old to the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux version in the virtual environment. It forced us to spin up a new virtual environment to have the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux version. 

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

My experience with Red Hat's support team is positive. They are a lot better than our cloud CMS vendor. 

Positive

We used Sun Microsystems and Unix on on-prem. 

The product supports our hybrid cloud strategy well. 

We move workloads between different clouds and data sandboxes. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's knowledge base is quite extensive. It is free, which helps us to advocate the product. I would like it to continue and rate it positive. 

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux web console was helpful and offered visibility through dashboards. It helped us see what was going on with our system. 

I rate it a nine out of ten. 

We host our applications and database servers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

We mostly have an on-premises setup. We also have Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on a virtual machine.

Compared to our previous Unix distro, it is pretty easy and less time-consuming to do patching and maintenance. It saves a lot of time during maintenance.

I started with Solaris 10, and then we migrated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Apart from local zones and a few other things, its features are similar to Solaris 10. It is getting our job done. It is hardware-independent. We can use Dell, HPE, or any other hardware. It is also more reasonable than the other operating systems.

It integrates closely with other products of Red Hat, such as Ansible, which makes it more efficient.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since 2010.

We are getting all the support that we need on a timely basis. In the case of any issue, we are getting all the support needed to bring the production back online. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

We were using Solaris 10. We moved to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it is cost-efficient and hardware-independent.

I am a part of the team that does the OS deployment. Its initial deployment is straightforward. We use automation for deployment. We have a kickstart to deploy the OS. Once we create that kickstart configuration file, the deployment is straightforward.

In terms of our upgrade and migration plans to stay current, we upgrade it before the OS is end of life. It is pretty straightforward. We are pretty satisfied with Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems when it comes to provisioning and patching.

We deployed it on our own. 

It is cost-effective.

There were not many options available.

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

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux mostly for development.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Git apps in our closed environment to develop and run scenarios.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's documentation could be improved. Sometimes when you call up support to have that Red Hat answer, they send you back a Reddit or Google link. I can Google or go to Reddit, but I want an answer from Red Hat.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since it started back in the 1980s.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten for stability.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten for scalability.

I rarely call Red Hat Enterprise Linux's support, but when I do, they send me a Google link.

Neutral

Since I've been deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux for so long, it's not complex for me. Once we configure our kick start, we power up a new system, attach it, and it builds it.

We implemented Red Hat Enterprise Linux directly through Red Hat.

We have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux concerning the ability to develop what we need, what we do, and our scenarios. The solution saves us man-hours, and man-hours equals money.

We cannot use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the cloud because I work as a contractor for the government, and all our development is in a classified area where we can't touch the internet at all.

In the last quarter, Red Hat Enterprise Linux products like Satellite Server and OpenShift stood out because of their ease of administration. I do system administration. When my customers need something, assisting them with these products is easier than giving a long configuration of YAML.

I like Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features. We use their SCAP features when we do our kickstart and build it.

We were using Docker, and the Docker swarm was trying to get all the containment. We're now switching to Podman and getting our developers to learn that more so we can give them the ability to kick off containers.

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

My main and only usage of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is for the on-premise workload. We use it for running Red Hat Ceph Storage and running automation using Ansible. Other than this, I use it for doing any auto test that I would like to do on a Linux-based machine.

From a security perspective, the most valuable feature is SELinux. SELinux provides good security. It's doing a good job of protecting my real estate.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is great.

It has its own ups and downs. Most of the time, it's pretty stable, but sometimes, you'll find some weird bugs that could affect the availability of your running machine. Red Hat can improve its operating system by making it better from the quality assurance perspective. Users do find bugs, which they, of course, shouldn't encounter. A better QA would probably make the job a lot better. It would make the product a lot more stable than it's today.

I've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for over three years.

It has its own ups and downs. The operating system itself is pretty much stable, but there could be some bugs that could affect your availability. While running the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, I did experience some bugs from time to time that did affect the availability on my machine.

Overall, it's pretty stable, but when you do something more hardcore or special, then its stability could be affected. I can't recall anything that I faced in the last few weeks or months, but as you go around production with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and have lots of machines running on it, you can get stability issues or kernel issues. A machine might suddenly be rebooted for no reason. That's my experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux's stability.

It's deployed at multiple locations. Approximately, there are 200 people using this solution.

The support in Israel from the guys sitting in Israel is great, but when contacting the support engineers across the globe, the support level just decreases, and the reliability decreases as well. The support guys locally in Israel are great, but the support guys worldwide aren't that reliable. Overall, I'd rate them a seven out of ten.

Neutral

I used Ubuntu and Fedora, but mainly Ubuntu. Ubuntu was a great operating system. We had to change from Ubuntu to Red Hat Enterprise Linux due to subscriptions. The enterprise had more and more need for container orchestration, so we ended up purchasing the Red Hat OpenShift container platform, and the use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the organization grew significantly.

The security features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux are aligned with the entire industry. They do not have any higher advantage over other competitors, such as Ubuntu from Canonical, so security-wise, it's okay.

It was pretty much straightforward. Deployment of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system didn't take longer than two days.

It was deployed in-house. Three to four people were involved in its deployment.

In terms of maintenance, it just works unless you do anything special with it.

It's pretty expensive, but I'm not familiar with the pricing of other vendors for their operating systems. I'd rate it a seven out of ten in terms of pricing.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's main advantage is the support that you get by purchasing their subscriptions. 

We looked at OpenSUSE, but we eventually ended up with Red Hat Enterprise Linux because of the support that Red Hat has in my country. In Israel, Red Hat is a lot bigger than OpenSUSE, so we ended up going with Red Hat Enterprise Linux because of the available support in the country.

If you're evaluating this solution, I'd recommend having your own architects discuss your architecture with the local Red Hat personnel in your state. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a good product, and it could be even better if you know how to integrate it based on the preferences of your organization. So, my advice would be to have your guys discuss your IT architecture with the local Red Hat people and then decide how to specifically integrate your IT infrastructure with the Red Hat software.

Overall, I'd rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a seven 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.