IT Team Leader at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-09-26T10:23:00Z
Sep 26, 2024
I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it is more secure, reliable, and scalable. I used System Roles two years ago. It was simple to use System Roles. I succeeded in implementing them, so it was simple. They can be managed, but I used them only one time, so I do not have this much experience with them. I also used a service called Cockpit. It was easy to use. It was very helpful and easy. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux eight out of ten. We have to apply patches weekly, monthly, or quarterly, depending on their purpose. We had no concerns about using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud because both AWS and Azure supported it, and they provided support if needed.
Head of Information Technology Operations at NXL Projects
Real User
Top 20
2024-09-13T12:46:00Z
Sep 13, 2024
We started off as a partner to IBM, and IBM opened up the opportunity for us to build certifications for Red Hat through the certification program. Then we became support specialists, taking on RHEL projects. We are in the process of becoming a reseller. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. We're doing a lot of big data infrastructure and they are giving us good stability and performance.
System admin at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-09-02T12:52:00Z
Sep 2, 2024
If a user is using it for commercial purposes, I would not recommend it. If a user is using it as a server or a workstation, I would recommend it. We do not use the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Web Console much. We only use it for the initial steps to configure the users. Other than that, we do not use it much. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
Cybersecurity Instructor at Gwinnett Technical College
Real User
Top 20
2024-08-21T18:28:00Z
Aug 21, 2024
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is eight out of ten. Regarding challenges, I've attempted to replicate the Linux environment using Red Hat, combining virtual Red Hat clients with third-party platforms to emulate a real-time atmosphere. One major hurdle has been motivating students to understand and utilize the system for these purposes. However, I've consistently found ways to overcome this challenge by using virtual machines and engaging in group discussions to explore the system's capabilities. I strive to emulate the real-time environment using my own systems, demonstrating the potential benefits and encouraging students to visualize how the system works in practice.
Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux eight out of ten. The system requires immediate maintenance due to necessary security patches, unresolved vulnerabilities, and a constant influx of operational tasks from other teams. These daily demands include critical adjustments such as modifying service ports and implementing local firewall rules. I recommend new users visit the official Red Hat Enterprise Linux website to review the guides, explore the community, and research information related to their Red Hat Enterprise Linux tasks.
Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-05-29T08:10:00Z
May 29, 2024
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.
IT Systems Engineer & Architect at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-05-09T15:44:00Z
May 9, 2024
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containers in our organization. It has made things simpler because our developers, familiar with Docker, easily transitioned to Podman. We have been able to provide better support with Podman than we had with Docker. We use SELinux on our web and file servers to ensure files aren't placed without our knowledge and that services run with verified files. It helps increase security, manage production risks, ensure business continuity, and maintain compliance. We use the host firewall, FirewallD, regularly on all our hosts as well. We just started agile development, and containers help us by making it easier for developers to teardown and recreate environments. This allows for more frequent updates, and the containerization workflow has greatly improved this process. We have reduced our cost of ownership by using Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation where a full server license isn't needed, and only using Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server for our enterprise production servers. I would advise a colleague considering open-source, cloud-based Linux systems to check out Red Hat for its long-term support and reliability. We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux in two data centers with production systems in each. Most environments are virtualized with VMware, and we have storage replication for high availability between the data centers. Everything is physically located in East Tennessee, near Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a nine out of ten.
Senior systems engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-05-08T22:41:00Z
May 8, 2024
We just switched from open source, which was CentOS, to Red Hat. My advice is to stick with Red Hat only because with open source, you do not get the updates at the same time. The updates come later for vulnerabilities and things like that. I would not recommend open source for an organization. If you are at home, you can go ahead and easily use CentOS. It is free, so why not use it? For an organization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is better. Currently, we are not using Red Hat Insights the way they are meant to be used. We are planning to do so at some point in the future. Currently, we only use it as a tool to make sure that it keeps track of all of our servers, whether we delete or add servers. Red Hat Insights keeps track of that and lets us know what version it is and things like that, but we do not utilize Red Hat Insights the way they are meant to be. Red Hat Insights provides vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, but we use Nexpose for vulnerability scanning. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not yet enabled us to centralize development. That is because of the way the company is structured. Everything is fragmented. We have a separate networking team. We have a separate Linux team and we have a separate software team. Getting something done and centralized is pretty much impossible at this point. Any small tweaks are like pulling teeth at this point. I do not know if that is going to change. Hopefully, it will. We are planning on moving to OpenShift. I am hoping that it will make everything more centralized and it will bring the company to a less fragmented spot. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.
Manager Infrastructure Engineer at Cox Automotive Inc.
Real User
Top 20
2024-05-08T20:27:00Z
May 8, 2024
We are an agile environment. We practice agile methodology. Anything we manage and deploy has to go through a sprint phase. We do not have a fully containerized environment. In the future, once we adopt OpenShift, it is going to increase our productivity because of how we manage things through agile. It is going to help us a lot. 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 it all comes down to the company and how a company foresees security. Anything we support and manage has to have a support base. If something gets impacted from the security side, we know that we have Red Hat support, and it is reliable. We can get the patch we want. If you install an application that needs a bug fix, you can reach out to Red Hat and open a ticket. If you want to have a stable environment, then I would highly recommend getting the support and running Red Hat. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.
If a colleague is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, they should go for something based on the use case. They have to look at what they are trying to do and what they want to do. They can get away with Fedora, for instance, but the question for me always comes down to supportability. Do they want to be able to call someone and say, "This is broken. Help. Hurry," or do they have the skills in-house to do that? Most companies do not have those skills. They have one or two very good engineers, but they cannot fix everything at the same time. If they want portability, then they should not look somewhere else. They should go to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because they have the Red Hat name behind it. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. There is always room for improvement in a product. Tens are unicorns. No one gets a ten. Maybe if Jesus made an operating system, he would get a ten.
Platform Engineer at a hospitality company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-05-08T16:05:00Z
May 8, 2024
Everyone should evaluate what their needs are, test out different products, and pick the product that is best for their needs. I know that the Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a very good solid product. One thing I would say is that their support is top-tier, so from that aspect, I would recommend Red Hat. At this time, I am trying to develop a platform that facilitates developer workflows. We may adopt more of a GitHub mindset and use Red Hat tools, such as OpenShift and Ansible. We are currently not using containers as much as we would like to. We are working on setting standards. That is going to come down the road. Our workloads right now are mostly virtual machines and monolithic applications built on VMs. We will use them more. We will make more microservices and use pods to contain the applications. We will use more Red Hat tools. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. There are many things to take into account. From a production perspective, it is a ten out of ten. From the innovation and latest features perspective, it is probably a seven. That is not necessarily a bad thing because that is their unique point. They prioritize stability, but if you want something with your features, you can use Fedora.
Lead Software Engineer at OWL CYBER DEFENSE SOLUTIONS, LLC
Real User
Top 20
2024-05-07T23:11:00Z
May 7, 2024
To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would ask, "Why?" We plan to stick with Red Hat as far as we see in the future, and we have no plans to change. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not helped us to centralize development. It is not something we are looking to use it for. We use Red Hat Insights very little. We work mostly in an offline environment. It is hard to use Red Hat Insights in an offline environment. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
System engineer at a financial services firm with 1-10 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-05-07T20:26:00Z
May 7, 2024
We are not using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. We are using Kubernetes and Dockers for that. When it comes to patching, our goal for 2024 is to make all the systems compliant. Especially at the infrastructure and application levels, I am actively working on the compliance tasks, and our goal is to fix all vulnerabilities. I am working with someone at Red Hat on some issues because I am not able to find the exact patch for certain vulnerabilities. For now, we are happy with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are happy with what we are getting. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. The reason for reducing two points is that I have not explored other operating systems very well.
If a security colleague is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would be interested to understand what that colleague's objectives are and why they would consider something other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux. If it is something that fits their particular use case more, they can obviously go with that. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a standard solution for Linux. If any colleague wants to go for another solution, I have to understand why. I would have to understand what Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not able to provide. However, this has not happened to me. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a full ten out of ten.
Advanced Systems Administrator & Analyst at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-05-07T17:11:00Z
May 7, 2024
I am not yet certain about Red Hat Insights' vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance. We are at the beginning. We are just adding systems. I have not set those alerts up if they exist. I assume there are some. I am also going to evaluate how accurate the vulnerability and patching information is because we have other security products that are looking at the same things on the Windows side, and they have already identified many of the vulnerabilities. As a new customer, I want to make sure that if our other system says something is a vulnerability, Red Hat Insights also says that it is a vulnerability. I want to feel confident in the vulnerabilities that I am getting from Red Hat Insights. I want to make sure that other products are also scanning for the same thing. I suspect it is. To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would recommend going for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I cannot think of another OS that can match this. I will start off with an optimistic ten, and I will rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.
Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-05-07T16:30:00Z
May 7, 2024
We have not yet fully leveraged Red Hat Insights. We are working on that. It might help with cohesion and security. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. It is reliable for deploying applications. It has a lot of different features. I can find solutions to all my problems, and the industry support is there.
Network and Linux System Administrator at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-03-04T14:13:00Z
Mar 4, 2024
For security purposes, we use the SSH key algorithm, MD5, and SHA256. We have set up a firewall in our network, and all servers are password-based. We also block some common ports that are open when we install the OS. We also have monitoring tools to ensure uptime. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a 9 out of 10.
Senior System Engineer Linux Professional Level | Cloud Engineer at Tanmeyah Micro Enterprise Services
Real User
Top 10
2024-02-29T19:28:11Z
Feb 29, 2024
My company uses the normal security features provided by the product. Presently, I am taking some courses related to security. My company uses solutions for security purposes, like CrowdStrike Falcon Protection. I use the documentation provided by the product. I also joined the academy operated by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to learn about courses related to OpenShift and virtualization. The documentation is very easy to understand, and it is also good for learning purposes. I joined the product's academy courses when Red Hat opened a new branch in Egypt. I have got certificates for learning about OpenShift and virtualization. I am planning to learn OpenStack. For provisioning and patching, I use Foremen, which is an open-source product implemented by Red Hat Satellite. Foremen is very good and easy to use for patching and security updates. Leapp or Red Hat Insights are not features that are enabled by default. I don't usually use the aforementioned in the product. I use Red Hat Store for image-building purposes. Some other programs are installed after the images get installed with the help of the product. Speaking about whether I use the web console or Convert2RHEL, I would say that I use the terminal console provided by the product, and it is also very easy for me to use. The product has affected my company's security and uptime since Linux offers a firewall that provides complete security, which is very good. I hope to use the product in a hybrid environment. I need to prepare for security standard certifications from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since it can help me understand the features and the security that I need to get from the product for my company, making it something very important for my organization. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a big part of my company since we use a lot of servers with its open-source services. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) serves as the base of the servers in our company. Sometimes, I take care of the maintenance of the product, but it is not something that is required all the time. The maintenance process is pretty normal. As a part of our company's migration or upgrade plans to stay updated, I will be upgrading from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9. The product does what it is meant for, especially if MariaDB is installed over the tool. I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a six out of ten. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is deployed across multiple locations in our organization with 95 percent of our employees that use it. To ensure optimal performance and security, we must prioritize installing operating system updates as they become available. Taking the Red Hat administration course beforehand will significantly ease the user experience when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
System Admistrator at Lifestyle Services Group (part of Phones4U)
Real User
Top 20
2023-12-13T15:40:00Z
Dec 13, 2023
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. The amount of people required for Red Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance depends on the type and size of each project. Red Hat already provides tools to maintain up-to-date migration plans. These tools can not only identify which components require upgrade but also preserve any already installed elements. Additionally, Red Hat offers a web-based solution for managing upgrade processes if required. However, we can choose alternative options: implementing the solution ourselves or employing open-source software for upgrades. I see no significant challenges with utilizing Red Hat tools for the upgrade process. I recommend evaluating all the available solutions that offer the tools that Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers and comparing their functionality and cost to avoid issues after purchase.
Middleware and applications specialist at FABIS bvbb
Real User
Top 20
2023-11-13T14:44:00Z
Nov 13, 2023
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux eight out of ten. Numerous open-source Linux operating systems are available, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides robust support and a stable platform for large organizations that would benefit from the support. Organizations should base their decision on which operating system to use for their specific requirements. For Windows or Oracle systems, the corresponding OS should be chosen for support reasons. For Unix systems, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides the best support. When I first used Linux 1.0 over ten years ago, I was surprised at how well it worked. I never expected it to become so successful that it would surpass all the major Unix systems, but that is exactly what happened. Today, Linux is used for a wide variety of applications, regardless of the platform. This is due to its exceptional scalability and the low cost of hardware.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten. I recommend using Red Hat Enterprise Linux over an open-source OS because it offers better support. Red Hat Enterprise Linux requires minimal maintenance. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a reliable solution and I recommend it to others.
Software Development Engineer at Intel Corporation
Real User
Top 20
2023-10-23T22:47:00Z
Oct 23, 2023
The only inconsistency we've noticed so far is with the server, which might be the only aspect we could potentially raise concerns about. Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.
Test Automation Infrastructure Architect at a government with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-10-23T22:43:00Z
Oct 23, 2023
I've had a very positive experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. My only point of comparison is Ubuntu, which I use for personal projects. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a solid enterprise product with a greater emphasis on security. However, Ubuntu Server is easier to use in many ways compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This may just be a matter of familiarity, but I find it easier to get current versions of Ruby with Ubuntu than with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This is based on my somewhat limited use, but it's my impression nonetheless. That's what keeps it from being a ten out of ten.
Tech Advisor at a energy/utilities company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-10-19T17:13:00Z
Oct 19, 2023
I would like to see user training sessions that last about one to two hours on new features and releases. We have a separate team that creates dashboards for us. I rate the product a seven out of ten.
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux with AWS. We started our practice with AWS, and most customers use it instead of GCP or Azure. We use the product in a hybrid environment, mostly when shifting the containers or existing workloads from legacy systems. Most of the customers use Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it is the only approved OS. The tool's knowledge base is good but is limited to subscriptions. The upgrade migration is straightforward. For the initial projects, we used to execute CLI scripts. We plan to upgrade the system if everything works well in the lower environment. I have used the image builder feature. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.
We use RHEL 7 and RHEL 8 on on-premises. RHEL 8 is on the AWS. There is a security policy like CIS when deploying the solution. You can embed it on the image. I am not sure if there is HIPAA compliance yet. Migration from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9 is easy. Upgrade depends on the application that is running on each instance. You need to check if it is compatible with the kernel. We need to plan things before migrating to the latest version. We need to stay current to ensure compliance. We plan to move from RHEL 7 to RHEL 9 and use RHEL 8 and RHEL 9. We use Red Hat insights but do not utilize them. It helps with the remediation. I use Image Builder to build AWS and GCP images. I haven't deployed them. I rate the product a nine out of ten.
Server Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-10-19T17:05:00Z
Oct 19, 2023
We use the on-premise, cloud, and hybrid versions. We have deployed it on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Most of our infrastructure is in the Azure cloud. I work in the server infrastructure team, and other data collectors work on AWS and GCP. We haven't used the tool's features like the image builder. The product supports our hybrid cloud strategy. We have been migrating using tools from Microsoft Azure. Its knowledge base is good. Sometimes, finding an article is difficult. However, once I reach them, it contains good information. We used Azure's tools for migration to the cloud. It is straightforward. We have no problems deploying the servers. Our main strategy focused on data centers. We use the Leapp tool to manage the upgrades. It works smoothly on our Oracle databases. Leapp is straightforward to use. We use Red Hat Insights quite a bit. I have not explored all the features yet. We use it to look for events our monitoring hasn't picked up. It also helps us with tips and hints for fine-tuning applications like SAP and Oracle. We go by these recommendations and follow them to put the applications in place. I have downloaded the Playbooks for remediation. I use system rules for SAP tuning in Oracle. I do not use the image builder since we already have a process to do the server builds. I use the web console once in a while. I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-10-17T12:48:00Z
Oct 17, 2023
As a consultant, I handle sizing, design, and optimization for new infrastructures and I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux to anybody considering it. Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Consultant at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Consultant
Top 20
2023-09-18T09:33:00Z
Sep 18, 2023
I'd rate the solution an eight out of ten. I'd advise new users to learn from someone who has done everything before. It's much easier than trying to learn by yourself from scratch. They should also have their own environment for testing.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten. The ease of moving workloads between the cloud and our data center depends on the application architecture. If the application has a monolithic infrastructure, it may be easier to move to the cloud. However, if the application is already running mostly in the data center, it may be more difficult because we would need to recreate all of the infrastructure and topology from scratch. This is because there are so many parts to consider when migrating a microservices-based application to the cloud. For someone who wants to use an open source Linux operating system, I would recommend Rocky Linux. However, they should be aware that open source solutions do not come with the same level of support as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Four network team members are required to maintain Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The Red Hat knowledge base is good and well-documented. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the only Linux solution that is supported for enterprise-level organizations. I recommend this solution for large organizations that want professional support for their Linux systems.
To those looking into implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would advise making use of Red Hat's community. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has had some impact in terms of security, but we have other security measures and procedures. We have not used SELinux and other embedded security features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
Deputy General Manager Delivery at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
MSP
Top 5
2023-07-13T08:15:00Z
Jul 13, 2023
I would recommend it based on the use case and the budget. If it meets your needs and budget, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the best option. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
I would advise following the best practices recommended by Red Hat. It will minimize the downtime of the application or system. Partner with the vendor and get that support. Know the business case and build a strong relationship with the vendor. Trust them and tell them your use case, and they will come up with the best solution possible. I am not a big authority on Red Hat or other Linux or Unix products. Only recently, I have been exposed to the concept called hardening and penetration testing. I do not know whether Red Hat provides a hardened version of the OS. My basic distribution is Gentoo which provides a hardened version of Linux. On the client side, the organizations we work with have different departments, such as the security department and the compliance department. For security, they work with various options that are available. For penetration testing, we engage a penetration testing consultancy company once a year. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
Director at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T13:18:00Z
May 28, 2023
Regarding the problems we are trying to solve by implementing the solution, I would say that it is our operating system of choice. I think the support is good since we have Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions. We get support for all the operating systems from them. It's great and stable. Regarding the solution's resiliency, it is good. We've been running, and we have over 99 percent uptime all the time. We also do monthly patching and everything, so it works. Kernel upgrades also work as expected. So it has been pretty good. Regarding how easy or difficult it is for you to move workloads between the cloud and your data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we don't use relative migrating solutions. It's considered a separate environment, but we use the same base image. I consider the solution to be the main OS because going with an open source solution like Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you have better support. The support is great. We also have integrations with other products, especially with whatever Red Hat releases. We have all those integrations available and we can easily take advantage of it. I rate the overall solution between seven and eight out of ten.
Senior Service Specialist at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T13:18:00Z
May 28, 2023
By implementing the solution, my organization is trying to solve the agility issue. Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we are not tied to Windows patches. Windows patches break sometimes, and then the application goes down, which is a big issue. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we have that reliability and robustness. I am very impressed with the solution's resiliency. Regarding how easy or difficult it is for us to move workloads between the cloud and our data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I have found it to be very easy. Regarding portability, it is easy. I was speaking to someone over there who benefits from containers. I mentioned it to my manager, and we are going to have a discussion about it. In terms of my assessment of the solution's built-in security features when it comes to simplifying your risk reduction and maintaining compliance, I feel it is good. We haven't ever had an issue ever with the solution. As nothing is perfect, I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.
I am running my workloads on-premises and on the cloud. I mainly use AWS. Resiliency-wise, the solution is very good. It's good because we don't have a problem with our environment at this moment. When we don't have a problem, we don't need to explain what is to be improved in the solution. It is reliable and doesn't break or bring us any problems. Regarding how easy or difficult it is for me to move workloads between the cloud and my data center using the solution, we don't have problems. In general, it's easy. We are talking about moving applications from on-premise to the cloud. We need to see if that represents any cost savings. We would need to go through a migration process, and that would be an extra cost.We would need to see if that is beneficial. I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.
My company is a private cloud company. Mostly, we have our own private services, providing private cloud services to the customers. But we also provide public clouds like Azure and some Amazon clouds. Regarding resiliency, it is a good standardized OS with stability. But sometimes, it is a little slow in reaction to problems that might appear. For example, we had this big Java Log4j bug where their reaction was very slow compared to other distributions. Of course, they found the solution when they had it, but it was quite a slow reaction. In general, it's a very stable OS. Regarding how easy or difficult it is for you to move workloads between the cloud and your data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I don't have any solution for that. I have to migrate it manually right now. Regarding the cost-saving capability of the solution, I would say that it is possible to save on costs because of the automation we use through Red Hat Satellite for maintenance and how we have managed automation, time to spend on the service, maintenance, test, problems, etc. So, you can say that it's been a cost-saving procedure. I rate the overall product a seven and a half out of ten.
The solution's key element is its cohesive ecosystem between hybrid and cloud environments. It helps clients such as giant banks create a single space for managing workloads in different hyper scalers. This way, it helps in cost management and visibility. It creates a single platform to manage work. It helps in saving costs, especially with subscription plans. It provides them with a consistent cost structure. Also, being an open-source solution has benefits that fit within the ecosystem. I rate it an eight out of ten, primarily for the support and licensing terms. It helps some of our enterprise clients navigate open-source licensing and export control complexities. There are areas of improvement, such as the cycle of updates and the ecosystem as a whole. Also, the elements like Ansible are priced separately. For automation, there is an opportunity to combine everything. Even though they are different products, they shouldn't be charged separately from the ecosystem perspective.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T10:02:00Z
May 28, 2023
We run some applications on the cloud, but they are not business-critical applications. We run all business-critical applications on-premises. We are not dependent on the cloud for business-critical applications. We are not locked with the vendor. We use Qualys to scan the underlying node. We expect any critical vulnerabilities to be patched as early as possible. We have an enterprise policy wherein any business-critical vulnerabilities seen on business-critical applications or nodes need to be fixed within 30 days. If some running application is exposed to the internet, we want that to be prioritized. If vendors can prioritize a 30-day life cycle for critical vulnerabilities, that would really help many other organizations. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the only option we are currently looking at. We don't want to go with Windows. We already have this ecosystem where we use OpenShift, and it's already integrated with ACS. So we would not like to go with any other different OS. Red Hat Enterprise Linux will integrate easily with the entire ecosystem. Overall, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten.
Director Security Engineering at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T09:40:00Z
May 28, 2023
In terms of the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I don't know how much that applies to us. In our case, someone develops an application in a Podman container, and we ingest that and run it, but we're not doing much more than that. So, all of the Java-based applications that we run, are run within a couple of different containers, and that's about it. I personally use Red Hat Insights in my home lab. We can't dial out for that for a lot of customer-based work, but I personally use it. It hasn't helped avoid any emergencies because it's super low risk for what I'm using it for, but I can see the benefit of it. In a more enterprise setup, such as health care where I used to work, things probably would have been interconnected, and we would have been using Insights, but we're not using it currently. Overall, I'd rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a 10 out of 10.
UNIX/Intel/ARM manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T09:35:00Z
May 28, 2023
We haven't used the image builder tool or insights, but it's something that we might explore in the coming months. I'd rate it a ten out of ten. It's very customizable and very supportive. It never seems to crash. There could be better integration with apps, but from an OS perspective, it's excellent.
Senior Linux System Administrator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T09:33:00Z
May 28, 2023
I've been trying to find a reason to use containers, but I just can't. I know our company uses it a lot, and they love it. They love the ability to shift things around and bring down servers when they want, and all of that, but for my own use cases, I haven't had a reason. Overall, I'd rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. Everything is great.
Linux Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T09:29:00Z
May 28, 2023
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.
Senior Systems/Automation Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T09:27:00Z
May 28, 2023
I use Ansible Builder to build my containers. However, I do not use Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s image builder tool. We do not use Red Hat Insights yet, but we're planning to use it in the near future. As soon as we get more servers in our environment, our firm’s directors might decide to start using Red Hat Insights. Right now, we are just using Automation Analytics. The solution’s resiliency is pretty solid. We implemented the solution because we wanted automation. We cannot install Ansible Automation Platform in operating systems other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.
Network and Systems Engineer at Kratos Defense and Security Solutions Inc
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T09:25:00Z
May 28, 2023
I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. For those who are looking at other open source cloud-based operating systems for Linux, I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is well-documented and has a large pool of information available. We can also use CentOS content with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The pool of information for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is far greater than some other open-source solutions. The environment in which we deployed the solution is enterprise-level.
Senior Linux Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T09:23:00Z
May 28, 2023
Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s built-in security features, in terms of simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance, are an area where I've observed some of the developments with Satellite and Red Hat Insights. But since we have different operating systems, such as Windows, Mac, Linux, and a mix of server and desktop environments, I'm not sure if Satellite or Insights can integrate seamlessly with all these platforms. Currently, we use a different product to assess our CVE vulnerabilities across hosts, including phones and other devices. I do find the discussions about software supply chain security intriguing. Focusing on that aspect seems really promising. The portability of applications and containers, specifically for those already built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, seems pretty good. Red Hat offers UBI images that are freely available without the need for licensing. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and container platforms provide a solid setup for portability. Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Principal Systems Administrator at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T09:21:00Z
May 28, 2023
I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten because there is always room to grow. Someone looking at an open source, cloud-based Linux OS instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux should consider what is being used in their customer base. If they are putting something up there as a proof of concept, then dabbling in open source is fine. However, if they have customers relying on them and they want minimal downtime, then they need Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The knowledge base can be a bit cryptic at times. We can go in there and read the same information that's in the documentation, but sometimes it's not clear enough. So I'll often go to a half dozen other websites that tend to give us examples and other helpful information. The knowledge base is a good place to start, but it's not the end-all-be-all.
Systems Analyst at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T09:16:00Z
May 28, 2023
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.
Principal IT Infrastructure Engineer | Specialist II at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T09:06:00Z
May 28, 2023
I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. Cloud vendor lock-in is inevitable when we adopt the cloud. This is because once we adopt a cloud service, such as DynamoDB or AWS, we become dependent on that provider for support and maintenance. It is very difficult to work with multiple clouds 100 percent of the time, as this can lead to problems with failover and other issues in multiple cloud environments because the risk is high. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux ecosystem is more attractive because we are not just buying an operating system. We are buying an ecosystem that helps, supports, and secures our platform. I believe this is the better option. Applying patches in the new versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is more time-consuming than in Oracle Linux because Oracle Linux does not require legacy environments to be patched or changed through applications. For someone looking for an open source cloud-based Linux OS instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I recommend AWS Linux. It is a very stable version of Linux and does not require a subscription.
Cloud Engineer at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-05-28T09:02:00Z
May 28, 2023
For customers looking for alternatives to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, my advice would be to choose something that aligns with your requirements and that you are happy with. Don't just pick something because it's cheap. You gotta look at the long term. Also, know what is needed for your project. For example, if you have issues, can you get those issues resolved in a timely manner? If you run into an issue, you're stuck, and they can't help you out, this means your project will be delayed. You will need to weigh that out.
You have to deploy it and evaluate it. You can see that there's a lot of difference compared to other operating systems. It also depends on where exactly you're going. There are mainframes and other different places where you can deploy it. Even on the mainframe, it makes a lot of difference. With Red Hat, there are a couple of things you need to consider while building your infrastructure. You need to have good hardware, and you need to have a compatibility matrix to be able to have a stable environment. It has to be tested in a proper way, rather than deploying it on any box. In terms of the golden images created by the image builder tool, we have vendors who come with their solutions. They come with the containers, and they deploy them. Most of them are using GitHub, and we just provide the infrastructure. From a technical perspective, there's a solutions department that's into APIs. They handle everything, and we just provide the infrastructure. Overall, I'd rate it an eight out of ten.
I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. I think open source software is generally cheaper than Red Hat. However, I don't think that cheaper software is always better. And I don't think that Red Hat is necessarily better than open source just because it costs more. It really depends on our specific needs. If we're comparing Red Hat to an open source equivalent, I would say that Red Hat would probably be a better fit for us. This is because Red Hat offers support, a back-end, and a team of experts who can help us if we need it. With open-source software, we're often on our own and have to figure issues out on our own. With Red Hat, we have the peace of mind of knowing that we can get help if we need it. We have Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployed across multiple contracts and multiple data centers. It was not on the cloud; it was all on-premises. However, we were able to deploy it across multiple data centers, multiple customers, and multiple departments. This flexibility was a major advantage. We used Red Hat Enterprise Linux to patch and update the system, including drivers, the OS itself, and security updates. We also monitored disk space usage and swap usage, but this was not too time-consuming. We had a team of three or four people to rotate tasks, so no one person was stuck on the same thing all the time. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a good product. It has a good ecosystem and support. It is lightweight and does what we need it to do. It is a good alternative to Windows for lightweight containers or servers. It is also good for specific roles. The operating system is a great way to learn about Linux. While some people will always choose Windows, it is not always the best answer. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is more stable and less resource-intensive than Windows, and it is also more trustworthy. This makes it a good choice for environments where reliability and security are important.
Enterprise Systems Engineer at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Top 5
2023-02-12T18:12:00Z
Feb 12, 2023
It's normally an issue of balancing the cost of support and the features that you are looking to achieve. If security is number one to any organization, Red Hat is a no-brainer. If support is a key issue, Red Hat again is a no-brainer. If you're facing any security or support issues, I'd recommend going with a distribution that has some sort of licensing tied to it. I'd rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten.
It is important to make sure your patches are up to date. Any part of regular maintenance should not be skipped. I recommend the solution because it is stable and easy to manage. I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
I would always advise doing a proof of concept where the client gives out his requirements and you run a proof of concept based on those requirements to make them confident of purchasing the solution. It is always better if a proof of concept is done. This way, everybody knows what they're getting into. Its built-in security features are definitely helpful, but at the end of the day, you have to go further than using the built-in ones. You have to do a few other things yourself. The built-in features are helpful for compliance, but we, and most enterprise organizations, always want to go further than using built-in features because some built-in features could be more open to risks. We use the best built-in features, but we always want to go further and integrate other features into the RHEL system. I have used Red Hat Insights only once, and I have not worked much with it, but my colleagues handling monitoring used it. It was helpful for the unpatched system. They checked Red Hat Insights and saw the systems that need patching. We got an email saying that it is a security requirement and that we need to patch them because it may affect the security of the systems. Coincidentally, after doing the patching, we read blogs about security hacks out there for some of the older systems that were not patched early enough. Red Hat Insights provide us with vulnerability alerts, but I am not sure about targeted guidance. Vulnerability alerts have impacted the uptime, which is something that we take very seriously. Uptime was one of the major reasons we wanted to work with Insights because we didn't want any attacks that would cause downtime. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten.
System engineer at a government with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2022-11-14T14:51:00Z
Nov 14, 2022
It is easy to troubleshoot with RHEL. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. If you are in the government space and you're looking to modernize your systems but you're not quite sure about the cloud, using OpenShift to containerize is a good first step. It will give you that cloud-agnostic capability so that you're more readily able to move to the cloud when you're ready. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
Look at the security features of the solution and compare them with other options. Open source is great, but at the end of the day, you need someone supporting the product. Another option is to just listen to groups that write on the internet, but you have to decide if you trust that along with their adversaries. Government offices have to worry about adversaries from other countries because the code they use is unclear. The idea of open source is to be able to evaluate the code but it is not clear if anyone actually reviews it. I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Infosec IT specialist at a government with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2022-11-14T11:03:00Z
Nov 14, 2022
It is important to ensure there is a level of training for implementation. You need to understand compliance for your organization to determine whether vendors can provide appropriate tools. Do not be afraid to ask questions once the solution is implemented in your environment to ensure you are where you need to be. Stay on top of version or patch releases to prevent bugs or security vulnerabilities to your ISSO or agency. I rate the solution a seven out of ten.
Virtualization Specialist with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Top 10
2022-11-06T23:37:00Z
Nov 6, 2022
To anyone interested in using Red Hat for the first time, I would definitely advise starting with the GUI because now, the GUI option is quite good, and you can do all the things. After that, you can slowly start moving to CMD. For learning, there are a lot of resources available online, such as YouTube and LinkedIn Learning, whereas Red Hat Academy is quite expensive. The biggest lesson I have learned from using this solution is that when you're using the command line, you need to be extra careful. That's because when using the command line, a single slash can make a huge difference. That's what I learned at the start of my career. I started with Red Hat Version 5. Now they have version 9, which I haven't used, but if I just consider the evolution from version 5 to 8, 8.2, or 8.4, there has been a huge difference because, at that time, people were scared of using Linux, but now, things are different. There has been a revolution in terms of OS. A lot of things are being changed, but in terms of the things that we do, for us, it is the same because we are doing system administration. As a system admin, there is nothing different for us. We are doing the same things again and again because the applications require the addition of storage. There is also a change in terms of security features. If I compare the old versions with the new versions, in old versions, adding any exception in the host firewall was a real task, but now, things have either become smooth, or we have gotten used to it. Overall, for me, things have become easier. They are getting more and more secure, but with the vulnerabilities and the assessments that have been done, we need to keep updating. Now, everything has caught up with the latest security required in the market. In our environment, we're using virtual servers. There are no physical ones. We are shifting to containers in my current organization. Most of the applications we are using are containerized, and it has been easy for us to manage those applications. However, we also require some in-built applications, and for that, a change in people's mindset is required. It's not about the OS; it's about the people who do the development. It is becoming a bit hard for them because they were using a different platform previously, and now, they need to move to the Linux platform. It is a little bit different for them. Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. When comparing it with AIX, AIX is a bit easier in terms of use and it also has the Smitty tool.
System and Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Real User
2022-10-24T11:13:00Z
Oct 24, 2022
Compare the documentation and the answers that are published by Red Hat. Review these aspects and that should help you decide. I strongly recommend RHEL as it fits well in on-premises or cloud development, whether for a small or a large company, and it's a professional product. It's very integrated with container technology, including with Podman and Docker, although we recommend Podman for containers. RHEL fits well in a lot of situations and container environments. It's a good product.
Sr IT Solution Architect at a wholesaler/distributor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2022-10-11T08:21:00Z
Oct 11, 2022
I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10. I've been pretty happy with RHEL over the years. That's 20 years of Unix right there. I tell anybody coming into Linux or Unix to learn the program. Scripting is your best friend, and you can't understand automation if you don't understand basic scripting. If you've never seen Unix or RHEL before, go to a class and learn how to do it in a lab so you don't have to screw up your job. Once you're comfortable with that, start learning containers because I firmly believe containers will replace how we do most of what we do today.
Senior System Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
2022-10-09T22:43:00Z
Oct 9, 2022
I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten overall. I don't think RHEL is exactly perfect, but it's a trusted, easy and well-supported solution. They are constantly improving and trying to make it easier.
CTO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Reseller
2022-08-24T22:55:00Z
Aug 24, 2022
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.
Times have changed from when I first started using it. Back then it was just a matter of putting a CD in and installing it. One of the companies I worked for did a lot of homegrown stuff and I used their tools that were like Kickstart. Now it is all automation with infrastructure-as-code. The complexity of deployment is about the same. Some of what we're doing to deploy stuff is outside of Red Hat and it's a matter of finding what tools are available. We're in the process of deploying something right now where we have different versions of Python. That's the only use case we have with multiple versions on the same server. I don't expect any issues, but it's still early in that deployment. We have three people dedicated to maintaining the infrastructure environment that we work in. That includes managing Linux servers, the applications that go with them, and dealing with day-to-day tasks like patching. It's the typical life cycle maintenance functions: break/fix, dealing with hardware issues, deploying new applications, and maintaining a VMware environment. The reason we're using it is because it's stable and we know we can get support. I know there are other versions of Linux, ones that I've used, but I've never experienced the kind of support with those versions that Red Hat has provided. Red Hat is a stable Linux solution provider.
Senior Cloud Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Consultant
2022-03-22T14:58:00Z
Mar 22, 2022
Some of my customers use OpenShift, many of my customers use Ansible, and a lot of them use a local Docker and Podman. The ones that actually run within Red Hat integrate just fine. The ones that Red Hat runs on top of, those are a little more difficult to speak to. Running Docker inside of RHEL is easy. It is much better on EL8 than it is on EL7. I like it enough that I use it as my own operating system for my personal web and mail server. So, I would rate it as eight or nine out of 10. The primary hits against it are that if you want to do anything bleeding edge, the pursuit of stability works counter to that.
Sr. Designer Data at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Real User
2022-03-18T23:24:00Z
Mar 18, 2022
The biggest lesson I have learned with RHEL is don't complicate your design. You can always find an easier way to do things. Sometimes you'll think, "Oh, we can do this," and you start thinking about very complicated processes. It's better to think and start simple. With RHEL, we have patching in place, automation in place, and we already know the support. We are very satisfied. We have done a lot of work on it and now it's easy to deploy VMs immediately. We are not looking to implement any other version of Linux.
My biggest advice would be to read the documentation and reach out to Red Hat, or even just search the internet, so that you understand what you're getting into and what you're implementing. I can't think of very much that needs to be improved with RHEL. The model that they have for maintaining patching, and their cadence on Zero-day attacks is fantastic, and their support is really good. I don't see any issues.
Cloud and Infrastructure Architecture at CommScope
Real User
2022-03-17T00:29:00Z
Mar 17, 2022
One of the new features in RHEL version 8 is AppStream. We're still doing our RHEL 8 deployments and although we've started using AppStream, we haven't gotten very deep into it. Its use is on a very limited scope. RHEL 8 is about halfway through its lifecycle and we're still trying to see how it works. When it comes to the deployment of cloud-based workloads, this solution helps to automate activities. We are just starting our cloud journey and as such, we currently don't have any cloud-based workloads. However, we plan to, and my understanding is that it will be much easier using Red Hat Gold images for Azure, AWS, etc. My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to automate as much as possible. Overall, I think that this is a good product. I'm a pretty big proponent of Red Hat and in fact, as we speak, I'm wearing a Red Hat RHEL 8 shirt. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
Systems Administrator at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2022-03-15T13:02:00Z
Mar 15, 2022
We have plans to increase usage. Every new application that supports running on Solaris or Linux is going to be deployed on RHEL these days. I hope it will be our major operating system in the data center. So, in the foreseeable future, there would only be two operating systems: RHEL and Microsoft Windows. I would rate this solution as nine out of 10.
They are a great company overall. It is hard to say where they could improve. They have user groups. They put out a lot of messaging and information. The solution is easy to learn and get to know their products and what they do. From a personal standpoint, I have everything that I need. If I wanted to run multiple versions of Node.js, there are ways to do that without using AppStream. More recently, I have been working with different versions of Node.js, having it in different versions on one machine. It works well. Just the fact that I have the capability is great. Among the other distributions of Linux out there, I would rate it as 10 out of 10. If I have to compare this solution against everything else out there, this solution is at the top of the list.
Make sure that you have well-trained engineers who are familiar with RHEL. If you are looking for a solution that runs in a mission-critical environment, you always want a supported solution. If you're looking for Linux, I don't think that there's a better-supported solution than RHEL. In our particular scenario, our underlying infrastructure is either VMware virtualized or bare metal, although the latter was mostly in the past. Rolling out to a virtualized solution or rolling out to bare metal with RHEL—with the exception of the bits that are unique to those platforms—the operating system installation and the like are going to be very similar. Overall, RHEL is a very solid solution.
CEO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
2021-12-14T00:35:00Z
Dec 14, 2021
You cannot compare it with anything that is in the market because there is nothing that does the same. Amazon is doing something similar, but it is still a different service. Everything that they give us surprises us and changes the way we are doing things. It hasn't simplified adoption for non-Linux users because we have mostly deployed servers, and they are not visible to the users. Users are just using the applications, and they don't know what is going on in the background. They don't know if they are using Linux or something else. They are using Windows on the client, but on servers, they don't know what is running. We aren't using bare metal for servers. Everything is virtualized and working just fine. We have VMware, OpenShift, etc. Everything is deployed on our own cloud, and everything is on our server. We use the dashboard of OpenShift to monitor the whole infrastructure, but we also have two solutions that are not by Red Hat. One is Zabbix, and the other one is Pandora. Both of them are open source. The dashboard of OpenShift doesn't significantly affect the performance of existing applications, but it is helpful because it can send triggers. It has triggers to send alerts and things like that. It is not really resource-consuming. It is really good. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a 10 out of 10.
Senior Information Technology System Analyst at National center of meterology
Real User
2021-09-05T14:09:00Z
Sep 5, 2021
It is very stable, and you can easily run a lot of production workload on RHEL. Red Hat products are well established. They have been around for many years. Red Hat is dealing with multiple products and applications and is constantly doing research to develop new products according to industry trends. With RHEL, you can get an end-to-end solution with their multiple products, which is something not available through other vendors. Red Hat's open-source approach was a factor when choosing RHEL. We are utilizing a lot of open-source solutions in our Test and Dev environment before going into production. We are able to get a lot of information in the open-source community, and we also have local community support in our region. Its newer versions enable us to deploy current applications and emerging workloads across bare-metal, virtualized, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud environments, but the older versions are not supporting these features. They have included more features in the newer versions to integrate and merge with other applications that are on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid cloud setup. In the older versions, we faced some issues in moving some of the applications from on-premises to the cloud, but in the newer versions, it is very easy to move or merge to the cloud. The applications that we have deployed across these environments are very reliable, except for the bare-metal. They are not much reliable if we are using a bare-metal solution on-prem. For virtualization, we are not using the native RHEL virtualization. We have VMware for virtualization, and it is okay in terms of directly deploying some of the applications to the public cloud. It is quite reliable. It doesn't simplify adoption for non-Linux users. For non-Linux users, it is somewhat difficult to manage this solution or have this solution. However, as compared to other Unix platforms, RHEL is okay. We are not using RHEL to run multiple versions of the same application or database on a specific operating system. In a specific operating system, we are running an application according to our end-user features requirements. We go through a lot of documentation and do multiple PoCs for deploying an application on the RHEL platform. We have a lot of user acceptance test procedures for each application in terms of how we have to do benchmarking and what are our requirements. So, we are managing with an individual operating system and not using the whole centralized solution. We use automation tools to move to the cloud. When we are planning to move to the cloud, we do multiple cloud assessments for which we have third-party tools as well as in-built RHEL tools. Each vendor has a different way of migration and automation for moving the on-prem workload to the cloud workload. Each vendor gives you different tools, and we follow the best practices given by them while moving the on-premises workload to the cloud. I would rate RHEL an eight out of 10.
Senior Systems Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2021-09-01T14:38:00Z
Sep 1, 2021
RHEL provides features that help to speed deployment, although we don't use their tools. We use tools from a third party. My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing RHEL is to make sure that it is going to work for you. Ensure that it supports all of the products that you need it to support once you've actually assessed all of those things. It is a quality product, there's no doubt about that. Once you have made that assessment, I would say, "Great, go for it." In summary, this is one of the products that works well and does what we need. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
We have approximately 14 servers running Red Hat 6 but we used Red Hat 6 all the way to Red Hat 8. The AppStream feature is something that we have tried but on a very limited scale. We have had mixed results with it, although it looks promising. At this point, I can't say whether it is a good feature or not. My advice for anybody considering Red Hat depends on the role of the person that is making the decision. If they're an end-user or their organization is using office productivity software, then they're probably not going to want to use it for the backend. This is because there are not a lot of users that are using Red Hat as their office productivity operating system. If on the other hand, you're somebody that's looking for servers that just need what they call five nines or high availability, Red Hat is your solution for that. That's what I would say to anybody, any technical person that I've talked to, if you can afford it, definitely get Red Hat for your web development. Your web servers should be either Apache, or NGINX, which is their web server stuff. Red Hat should also be used to host an Oracle database. We found that that works really well and is very competitive with Microsoft's SQL server. It's about the same cost; the Red Hat product is actually a little cheaper than Microsoft's SQL product. Considering the cost, ease of deployment, and ease of use, Red Hat is the better product for your main infrastructure. For things that just have to be up and running, Red Hat is the product that you want to use. I can't be strong enough in my opinion that Red Hat does what it does very well for the mundane tasks of infrastructure. For instance, when it comes to web servers, no other OS does a better job than Red Hat for web servers or databases. Similarly, it does a very good job for proxies. For things that just need to run and have very little human interaction, Red Hat's your solution. If you're looking for something that's for an office, such as for accounting, then Red Hat is not the solution to choose. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
IT Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2021-05-18T09:48:43Z
May 18, 2021
I would recommend this solution to others. I would advise others to do their research before deploying it and make sure that they are up to speed with the OS and what it can do. It is fairly easy to use as long as you know what you're doing. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight out of ten.
Principal Analyst - AIX and Linux at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2021-02-09T15:01:00Z
Feb 9, 2021
We are a bunch of techies here. RHEL is not managed by end users. We don't really mind the GUIs, because the first thing that we do is stop using them. We are using Ansible, which is now part of RHEL, and that can automate the living heck out of everything. For now, we are not using the Power approach, but we may in the future. We are doing a business case for that, as it would be an easy sell for some communities and the use cases are not techie-to-techies. There is a cloud, but we have very little infrastructure as a service in the cloud right now. It delivers to the targeted audiences. Could Red Hat Enterprise Linux be used in all types of other scenarios? Most likely. They have an embedded version for microcontrollers, i.e., things that you put into your jewelry or light switches. However, this is not what they're aiming for. I would rate RHEL as a nine and a half (out of 10), but I will round that up to 10.
Associate Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2021-01-14T12:42:54Z
Jan 14, 2021
I would tell potential customers that they should go for the latest releases. If they want to buy it, they should get a developer account from RHEL first and use that dev account before buying it. They might have some hands-on experience before spending too much money on Red Hat. On a scale from one to ten, I would give Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight.
I would definitely recommend this solution. It is my most preferred solution. I like using terminals, and with Red Hat, I get to work on terminals and shell commands. It has good security. I would rate Red Hat Linux (RHEL) an eight out of ten. I find it excellent, but no system can be 100% perfect.
Try the product out. If you decide to purchase a subscription, don't be afraid to submit a ticket or a support case to Red Hat, because that's why you pay for a subscription. It took us a long time before we started to open support cases, because we thought, "Ah, we can fix this ourselves." But now we use the support system quite often and it works quite well. One of the things I've learned from using RHEL is that there are applications that work so much better on Linux than they do on Windows.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a stable and reliable open-source operating system for running application servers, databases, web servers, and production systems. It is also used for cloud infrastructure services, BI, and disaster assistance. Its valuable features include support and subscription, ease of management and troubleshooting, integration with existing infrastructure, security updates and hardening tools, scalability, and flexibility.
Red Hat has helped organizations accelerate...
It is important to use the knowledge base and familiarize oneself with key commands to gain more about Linux and ease its usage.
I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it is more secure, reliable, and scalable. I used System Roles two years ago. It was simple to use System Roles. I succeeded in implementing them, so it was simple. They can be managed, but I used them only one time, so I do not have this much experience with them. I also used a service called Cockpit. It was easy to use. It was very helpful and easy. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux eight out of ten. We have to apply patches weekly, monthly, or quarterly, depending on their purpose. We had no concerns about using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud because both AWS and Azure supported it, and they provided support if needed.
We started off as a partner to IBM, and IBM opened up the opportunity for us to build certifications for Red Hat through the certification program. Then we became support specialists, taking on RHEL projects. We are in the process of becoming a reseller. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. We're doing a lot of big data infrastructure and they are giving us good stability and performance.
If a user is using it for commercial purposes, I would not recommend it. If a user is using it as a server or a workstation, I would recommend it. We do not use the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Web Console much. We only use it for the initial steps to configure the users. Other than that, we do not use it much. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is eight out of ten. Regarding challenges, I've attempted to replicate the Linux environment using Red Hat, combining virtual Red Hat clients with third-party platforms to emulate a real-time atmosphere. One major hurdle has been motivating students to understand and utilize the system for these purposes. However, I've consistently found ways to overcome this challenge by using virtual machines and engaging in group discussions to explore the system's capabilities. I strive to emulate the real-time environment using my own systems, demonstrating the potential benefits and encouraging students to visualize how the system works in practice.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux eight out of ten. The system requires immediate maintenance due to necessary security patches, unresolved vulnerabilities, and a constant influx of operational tasks from other teams. These daily demands include critical adjustments such as modifying service ports and implementing local firewall rules. I recommend new users visit the official Red Hat Enterprise Linux website to review the guides, explore the community, and research information related to their Red Hat Enterprise Linux tasks.
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.
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containers in our organization. It has made things simpler because our developers, familiar with Docker, easily transitioned to Podman. We have been able to provide better support with Podman than we had with Docker. We use SELinux on our web and file servers to ensure files aren't placed without our knowledge and that services run with verified files. It helps increase security, manage production risks, ensure business continuity, and maintain compliance. We use the host firewall, FirewallD, regularly on all our hosts as well. We just started agile development, and containers help us by making it easier for developers to teardown and recreate environments. This allows for more frequent updates, and the containerization workflow has greatly improved this process. We have reduced our cost of ownership by using Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation where a full server license isn't needed, and only using Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server for our enterprise production servers. I would advise a colleague considering open-source, cloud-based Linux systems to check out Red Hat for its long-term support and reliability. We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux in two data centers with production systems in each. Most environments are virtualized with VMware, and we have storage replication for high availability between the data centers. Everything is physically located in East Tennessee, near Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a nine out of ten.
We just switched from open source, which was CentOS, to Red Hat. My advice is to stick with Red Hat only because with open source, you do not get the updates at the same time. The updates come later for vulnerabilities and things like that. I would not recommend open source for an organization. If you are at home, you can go ahead and easily use CentOS. It is free, so why not use it? For an organization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is better. Currently, we are not using Red Hat Insights the way they are meant to be used. We are planning to do so at some point in the future. Currently, we only use it as a tool to make sure that it keeps track of all of our servers, whether we delete or add servers. Red Hat Insights keeps track of that and lets us know what version it is and things like that, but we do not utilize Red Hat Insights the way they are meant to be. Red Hat Insights provides vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, but we use Nexpose for vulnerability scanning. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not yet enabled us to centralize development. That is because of the way the company is structured. Everything is fragmented. We have a separate networking team. We have a separate Linux team and we have a separate software team. Getting something done and centralized is pretty much impossible at this point. Any small tweaks are like pulling teeth at this point. I do not know if that is going to change. Hopefully, it will. We are planning on moving to OpenShift. I am hoping that it will make everything more centralized and it will bring the company to a less fragmented spot. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.
We are an agile environment. We practice agile methodology. Anything we manage and deploy has to go through a sprint phase. We do not have a fully containerized environment. In the future, once we adopt OpenShift, it is going to increase our productivity because of how we manage things through agile. It is going to help us a lot. 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 it all comes down to the company and how a company foresees security. Anything we support and manage has to have a support base. If something gets impacted from the security side, we know that we have Red Hat support, and it is reliable. We can get the patch we want. If you install an application that needs a bug fix, you can reach out to Red Hat and open a ticket. If you want to have a stable environment, then I would highly recommend getting the support and running Red Hat. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.
If a colleague is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, they should go for something based on the use case. They have to look at what they are trying to do and what they want to do. They can get away with Fedora, for instance, but the question for me always comes down to supportability. Do they want to be able to call someone and say, "This is broken. Help. Hurry," or do they have the skills in-house to do that? Most companies do not have those skills. They have one or two very good engineers, but they cannot fix everything at the same time. If they want portability, then they should not look somewhere else. They should go to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because they have the Red Hat name behind it. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. There is always room for improvement in a product. Tens are unicorns. No one gets a ten. Maybe if Jesus made an operating system, he would get a ten.
Everyone should evaluate what their needs are, test out different products, and pick the product that is best for their needs. I know that the Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a very good solid product. One thing I would say is that their support is top-tier, so from that aspect, I would recommend Red Hat. At this time, I am trying to develop a platform that facilitates developer workflows. We may adopt more of a GitHub mindset and use Red Hat tools, such as OpenShift and Ansible. We are currently not using containers as much as we would like to. We are working on setting standards. That is going to come down the road. Our workloads right now are mostly virtual machines and monolithic applications built on VMs. We will use them more. We will make more microservices and use pods to contain the applications. We will use more Red Hat tools. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. There are many things to take into account. From a production perspective, it is a ten out of ten. From the innovation and latest features perspective, it is probably a seven. That is not necessarily a bad thing because that is their unique point. They prioritize stability, but if you want something with your features, you can use Fedora.
To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would ask, "Why?" We plan to stick with Red Hat as far as we see in the future, and we have no plans to change. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not helped us to centralize development. It is not something we are looking to use it for. We use Red Hat Insights very little. We work mostly in an offline environment. It is hard to use Red Hat Insights in an offline environment. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
We are not using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. We are using Kubernetes and Dockers for that. When it comes to patching, our goal for 2024 is to make all the systems compliant. Especially at the infrastructure and application levels, I am actively working on the compliance tasks, and our goal is to fix all vulnerabilities. I am working with someone at Red Hat on some issues because I am not able to find the exact patch for certain vulnerabilities. For now, we are happy with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are happy with what we are getting. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. The reason for reducing two points is that I have not explored other operating systems very well.
If a security colleague is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would be interested to understand what that colleague's objectives are and why they would consider something other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux. If it is something that fits their particular use case more, they can obviously go with that. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a standard solution for Linux. If any colleague wants to go for another solution, I have to understand why. I would have to understand what Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not able to provide. However, this has not happened to me. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a full ten out of ten.
I am not yet certain about Red Hat Insights' vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance. We are at the beginning. We are just adding systems. I have not set those alerts up if they exist. I assume there are some. I am also going to evaluate how accurate the vulnerability and patching information is because we have other security products that are looking at the same things on the Windows side, and they have already identified many of the vulnerabilities. As a new customer, I want to make sure that if our other system says something is a vulnerability, Red Hat Insights also says that it is a vulnerability. I want to feel confident in the vulnerabilities that I am getting from Red Hat Insights. I want to make sure that other products are also scanning for the same thing. I suspect it is. To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would recommend going for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I cannot think of another OS that can match this. I will start off with an optimistic ten, and I will rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.
We have not yet fully leveraged Red Hat Insights. We are working on that. It might help with cohesion and security. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. It is reliable for deploying applications. It has a lot of different features. I can find solutions to all my problems, and the industry support is there.
For security purposes, we use the SSH key algorithm, MD5, and SHA256. We have set up a firewall in our network, and all servers are password-based. We also block some common ports that are open when we install the OS. We also have monitoring tools to ensure uptime. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a 9 out of 10.
My company uses the normal security features provided by the product. Presently, I am taking some courses related to security. My company uses solutions for security purposes, like CrowdStrike Falcon Protection. I use the documentation provided by the product. I also joined the academy operated by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to learn about courses related to OpenShift and virtualization. The documentation is very easy to understand, and it is also good for learning purposes. I joined the product's academy courses when Red Hat opened a new branch in Egypt. I have got certificates for learning about OpenShift and virtualization. I am planning to learn OpenStack. For provisioning and patching, I use Foremen, which is an open-source product implemented by Red Hat Satellite. Foremen is very good and easy to use for patching and security updates. Leapp or Red Hat Insights are not features that are enabled by default. I don't usually use the aforementioned in the product. I use Red Hat Store for image-building purposes. Some other programs are installed after the images get installed with the help of the product. Speaking about whether I use the web console or Convert2RHEL, I would say that I use the terminal console provided by the product, and it is also very easy for me to use. The product has affected my company's security and uptime since Linux offers a firewall that provides complete security, which is very good. I hope to use the product in a hybrid environment. I need to prepare for security standard certifications from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since it can help me understand the features and the security that I need to get from the product for my company, making it something very important for my organization. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a big part of my company since we use a lot of servers with its open-source services. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) serves as the base of the servers in our company. Sometimes, I take care of the maintenance of the product, but it is not something that is required all the time. The maintenance process is pretty normal. As a part of our company's migration or upgrade plans to stay updated, I will be upgrading from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9. The product does what it is meant for, especially if MariaDB is installed over the tool. I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. We have ten people that are using the solution in our organization.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a six out of ten. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is deployed across multiple locations in our organization with 95 percent of our employees that use it. To ensure optimal performance and security, we must prioritize installing operating system updates as they become available. Taking the Red Hat administration course beforehand will significantly ease the user experience when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. The amount of people required for Red Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance depends on the type and size of each project. Red Hat already provides tools to maintain up-to-date migration plans. These tools can not only identify which components require upgrade but also preserve any already installed elements. Additionally, Red Hat offers a web-based solution for managing upgrade processes if required. However, we can choose alternative options: implementing the solution ourselves or employing open-source software for upgrades. I see no significant challenges with utilizing Red Hat tools for the upgrade process. I recommend evaluating all the available solutions that offer the tools that Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers and comparing their functionality and cost to avoid issues after purchase.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux eight out of ten. Numerous open-source Linux operating systems are available, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides robust support and a stable platform for large organizations that would benefit from the support. Organizations should base their decision on which operating system to use for their specific requirements. For Windows or Oracle systems, the corresponding OS should be chosen for support reasons. For Unix systems, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides the best support. When I first used Linux 1.0 over ten years ago, I was surprised at how well it worked. I never expected it to become so successful that it would surpass all the major Unix systems, but that is exactly what happened. Today, Linux is used for a wide variety of applications, regardless of the platform. This is due to its exceptional scalability and the low cost of hardware.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten. I recommend using Red Hat Enterprise Linux over an open-source OS because it offers better support. Red Hat Enterprise Linux requires minimal maintenance. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a reliable solution and I recommend it to others.
The only inconsistency we've noticed so far is with the server, which might be the only aspect we could potentially raise concerns about. Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.
I've had a very positive experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. My only point of comparison is Ubuntu, which I use for personal projects. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a solid enterprise product with a greater emphasis on security. However, Ubuntu Server is easier to use in many ways compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This may just be a matter of familiarity, but I find it easier to get current versions of Ruby with Ubuntu than with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This is based on my somewhat limited use, but it's my impression nonetheless. That's what keeps it from being a ten out of ten.
Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten because it needs more integrations.
Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten because most of the information I need I could find on the Red Hat website.
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.
Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.
I would like to see user training sessions that last about one to two hours on new features and releases. We have a separate team that creates dashboards for us. I rate the product a seven out of ten.
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux with AWS. We started our practice with AWS, and most customers use it instead of GCP or Azure. We use the product in a hybrid environment, mostly when shifting the containers or existing workloads from legacy systems. Most of the customers use Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it is the only approved OS. The tool's knowledge base is good but is limited to subscriptions. The upgrade migration is straightforward. For the initial projects, we used to execute CLI scripts. We plan to upgrade the system if everything works well in the lower environment. I have used the image builder feature. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.
We use RHEL 7 and RHEL 8 on on-premises. RHEL 8 is on the AWS. There is a security policy like CIS when deploying the solution. You can embed it on the image. I am not sure if there is HIPAA compliance yet. Migration from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9 is easy. Upgrade depends on the application that is running on each instance. You need to check if it is compatible with the kernel. We need to plan things before migrating to the latest version. We need to stay current to ensure compliance. We plan to move from RHEL 7 to RHEL 9 and use RHEL 8 and RHEL 9. We use Red Hat insights but do not utilize them. It helps with the remediation. I use Image Builder to build AWS and GCP images. I haven't deployed them. I rate the product a nine out of ten.
We use the on-premise, cloud, and hybrid versions. We have deployed it on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Most of our infrastructure is in the Azure cloud. I work in the server infrastructure team, and other data collectors work on AWS and GCP. We haven't used the tool's features like the image builder. The product supports our hybrid cloud strategy. We have been migrating using tools from Microsoft Azure. Its knowledge base is good. Sometimes, finding an article is difficult. However, once I reach them, it contains good information. We used Azure's tools for migration to the cloud. It is straightforward. We have no problems deploying the servers. Our main strategy focused on data centers. We use the Leapp tool to manage the upgrades. It works smoothly on our Oracle databases. Leapp is straightforward to use. We use Red Hat Insights quite a bit. I have not explored all the features yet. We use it to look for events our monitoring hasn't picked up. It also helps us with tips and hints for fine-tuning applications like SAP and Oracle. We go by these recommendations and follow them to put the applications in place. I have downloaded the Playbooks for remediation. I use system rules for SAP tuning in Oracle. I do not use the image builder since we already have a process to do the server builds. I use the web console once in a while. I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.
Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
As a consultant, I handle sizing, design, and optimization for new infrastructures and I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux to anybody considering it. Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.
I'd rate the solution an eight out of ten. I'd advise new users to learn from someone who has done everything before. It's much easier than trying to learn by yourself from scratch. They should also have their own environment for testing.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten. The ease of moving workloads between the cloud and our data center depends on the application architecture. If the application has a monolithic infrastructure, it may be easier to move to the cloud. However, if the application is already running mostly in the data center, it may be more difficult because we would need to recreate all of the infrastructure and topology from scratch. This is because there are so many parts to consider when migrating a microservices-based application to the cloud. For someone who wants to use an open source Linux operating system, I would recommend Rocky Linux. However, they should be aware that open source solutions do not come with the same level of support as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Four network team members are required to maintain Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The Red Hat knowledge base is good and well-documented. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the only Linux solution that is supported for enterprise-level organizations. I recommend this solution for large organizations that want professional support for their Linux systems.
To those looking into implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would advise making use of Red Hat's community. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has had some impact in terms of security, but we have other security measures and procedures. We have not used SELinux and other embedded security features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
I would recommend it based on the use case and the budget. If it meets your needs and budget, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the best option. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
I would advise following the best practices recommended by Red Hat. It will minimize the downtime of the application or system. Partner with the vendor and get that support. Know the business case and build a strong relationship with the vendor. Trust them and tell them your use case, and they will come up with the best solution possible. I am not a big authority on Red Hat or other Linux or Unix products. Only recently, I have been exposed to the concept called hardening and penetration testing. I do not know whether Red Hat provides a hardened version of the OS. My basic distribution is Gentoo which provides a hardened version of Linux. On the client side, the organizations we work with have different departments, such as the security department and the compliance department. For security, they work with various options that are available. For penetration testing, we engage a penetration testing consultancy company once a year. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
Overall, I'd rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
Regarding the problems we are trying to solve by implementing the solution, I would say that it is our operating system of choice. I think the support is good since we have Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions. We get support for all the operating systems from them. It's great and stable. Regarding the solution's resiliency, it is good. We've been running, and we have over 99 percent uptime all the time. We also do monthly patching and everything, so it works. Kernel upgrades also work as expected. So it has been pretty good. Regarding how easy or difficult it is for you to move workloads between the cloud and your data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we don't use relative migrating solutions. It's considered a separate environment, but we use the same base image. I consider the solution to be the main OS because going with an open source solution like Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you have better support. The support is great. We also have integrations with other products, especially with whatever Red Hat releases. We have all those integrations available and we can easily take advantage of it. I rate the overall solution between seven and eight out of ten.
By implementing the solution, my organization is trying to solve the agility issue. Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we are not tied to Windows patches. Windows patches break sometimes, and then the application goes down, which is a big issue. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we have that reliability and robustness. I am very impressed with the solution's resiliency. Regarding how easy or difficult it is for us to move workloads between the cloud and our data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I have found it to be very easy. Regarding portability, it is easy. I was speaking to someone over there who benefits from containers. I mentioned it to my manager, and we are going to have a discussion about it. In terms of my assessment of the solution's built-in security features when it comes to simplifying your risk reduction and maintaining compliance, I feel it is good. We haven't ever had an issue ever with the solution. As nothing is perfect, I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.
I am running my workloads on-premises and on the cloud. I mainly use AWS. Resiliency-wise, the solution is very good. It's good because we don't have a problem with our environment at this moment. When we don't have a problem, we don't need to explain what is to be improved in the solution. It is reliable and doesn't break or bring us any problems. Regarding how easy or difficult it is for me to move workloads between the cloud and my data center using the solution, we don't have problems. In general, it's easy. We are talking about moving applications from on-premise to the cloud. We need to see if that represents any cost savings. We would need to go through a migration process, and that would be an extra cost.We would need to see if that is beneficial. I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.
My company is a private cloud company. Mostly, we have our own private services, providing private cloud services to the customers. But we also provide public clouds like Azure and some Amazon clouds. Regarding resiliency, it is a good standardized OS with stability. But sometimes, it is a little slow in reaction to problems that might appear. For example, we had this big Java Log4j bug where their reaction was very slow compared to other distributions. Of course, they found the solution when they had it, but it was quite a slow reaction. In general, it's a very stable OS. Regarding how easy or difficult it is for you to move workloads between the cloud and your data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I don't have any solution for that. I have to migrate it manually right now. Regarding the cost-saving capability of the solution, I would say that it is possible to save on costs because of the automation we use through Red Hat Satellite for maintenance and how we have managed automation, time to spend on the service, maintenance, test, problems, etc. So, you can say that it's been a cost-saving procedure. I rate the overall product a seven and a half out of ten.
The solution's key element is its cohesive ecosystem between hybrid and cloud environments. It helps clients such as giant banks create a single space for managing workloads in different hyper scalers. This way, it helps in cost management and visibility. It creates a single platform to manage work. It helps in saving costs, especially with subscription plans. It provides them with a consistent cost structure. Also, being an open-source solution has benefits that fit within the ecosystem. I rate it an eight out of ten, primarily for the support and licensing terms. It helps some of our enterprise clients navigate open-source licensing and export control complexities. There are areas of improvement, such as the cycle of updates and the ecosystem as a whole. Also, the elements like Ansible are priced separately. For automation, there is an opportunity to combine everything. Even though they are different products, they shouldn't be charged separately from the ecosystem perspective.
We run some applications on the cloud, but they are not business-critical applications. We run all business-critical applications on-premises. We are not dependent on the cloud for business-critical applications. We are not locked with the vendor. We use Qualys to scan the underlying node. We expect any critical vulnerabilities to be patched as early as possible. We have an enterprise policy wherein any business-critical vulnerabilities seen on business-critical applications or nodes need to be fixed within 30 days. If some running application is exposed to the internet, we want that to be prioritized. If vendors can prioritize a 30-day life cycle for critical vulnerabilities, that would really help many other organizations. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the only option we are currently looking at. We don't want to go with Windows. We already have this ecosystem where we use OpenShift, and it's already integrated with ACS. So we would not like to go with any other different OS. Red Hat Enterprise Linux will integrate easily with the entire ecosystem. Overall, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten.
In terms of the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I don't know how much that applies to us. In our case, someone develops an application in a Podman container, and we ingest that and run it, but we're not doing much more than that. So, all of the Java-based applications that we run, are run within a couple of different containers, and that's about it. I personally use Red Hat Insights in my home lab. We can't dial out for that for a lot of customer-based work, but I personally use it. It hasn't helped avoid any emergencies because it's super low risk for what I'm using it for, but I can see the benefit of it. In a more enterprise setup, such as health care where I used to work, things probably would have been interconnected, and we would have been using Insights, but we're not using it currently. Overall, I'd rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a 10 out of 10.
As an operating system, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.
We haven't used the image builder tool or insights, but it's something that we might explore in the coming months. I'd rate it a ten out of ten. It's very customizable and very supportive. It never seems to crash. There could be better integration with apps, but from an OS perspective, it's excellent.
I've been trying to find a reason to use containers, but I just can't. I know our company uses it a lot, and they love it. They love the ability to shift things around and bring down servers when they want, and all of that, but for my own use cases, I haven't had a reason. Overall, I'd rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. Everything is great.
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.
I use Ansible Builder to build my containers. However, I do not use Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s image builder tool. We do not use Red Hat Insights yet, but we're planning to use it in the near future. As soon as we get more servers in our environment, our firm’s directors might decide to start using Red Hat Insights. Right now, we are just using Automation Analytics. The solution’s resiliency is pretty solid. We implemented the solution because we wanted automation. We cannot install Ansible Automation Platform in operating systems other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.
I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. For those who are looking at other open source cloud-based operating systems for Linux, I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is well-documented and has a large pool of information available. We can also use CentOS content with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The pool of information for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is far greater than some other open-source solutions. The environment in which we deployed the solution is enterprise-level.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s built-in security features, in terms of simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance, are an area where I've observed some of the developments with Satellite and Red Hat Insights. But since we have different operating systems, such as Windows, Mac, Linux, and a mix of server and desktop environments, I'm not sure if Satellite or Insights can integrate seamlessly with all these platforms. Currently, we use a different product to assess our CVE vulnerabilities across hosts, including phones and other devices. I do find the discussions about software supply chain security intriguing. Focusing on that aspect seems really promising. The portability of applications and containers, specifically for those already built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, seems pretty good. Red Hat offers UBI images that are freely available without the need for licensing. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and container platforms provide a solid setup for portability. Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Overall, I'd rate it a nine out of 10. There's always room for a little bit of improvement.
I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten because there is always room to grow. Someone looking at an open source, cloud-based Linux OS instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux should consider what is being used in their customer base. If they are putting something up there as a proof of concept, then dabbling in open source is fine. However, if they have customers relying on them and they want minimal downtime, then they need Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The knowledge base can be a bit cryptic at times. We can go in there and read the same information that's in the documentation, but sometimes it's not clear enough. So I'll often go to a half dozen other websites that tend to give us examples and other helpful information. The knowledge base is a good place to start, but it's not the end-all-be-all.
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.
Overall, I'd rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. Cloud vendor lock-in is inevitable when we adopt the cloud. This is because once we adopt a cloud service, such as DynamoDB or AWS, we become dependent on that provider for support and maintenance. It is very difficult to work with multiple clouds 100 percent of the time, as this can lead to problems with failover and other issues in multiple cloud environments because the risk is high. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux ecosystem is more attractive because we are not just buying an operating system. We are buying an ecosystem that helps, supports, and secures our platform. I believe this is the better option. Applying patches in the new versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is more time-consuming than in Oracle Linux because Oracle Linux does not require legacy environments to be patched or changed through applications. For someone looking for an open source cloud-based Linux OS instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I recommend AWS Linux. It is a very stable version of Linux and does not require a subscription.
For customers looking for alternatives to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, my advice would be to choose something that aligns with your requirements and that you are happy with. Don't just pick something because it's cheap. You gotta look at the long term. Also, know what is needed for your project. For example, if you have issues, can you get those issues resolved in a timely manner? If you run into an issue, you're stuck, and they can't help you out, this means your project will be delayed. You will need to weigh that out.
You have to deploy it and evaluate it. You can see that there's a lot of difference compared to other operating systems. It also depends on where exactly you're going. There are mainframes and other different places where you can deploy it. Even on the mainframe, it makes a lot of difference. With Red Hat, there are a couple of things you need to consider while building your infrastructure. You need to have good hardware, and you need to have a compatibility matrix to be able to have a stable environment. It has to be tested in a proper way, rather than deploying it on any box. In terms of the golden images created by the image builder tool, we have vendors who come with their solutions. They come with the containers, and they deploy them. Most of them are using GitHub, and we just provide the infrastructure. From a technical perspective, there's a solutions department that's into APIs. They handle everything, and we just provide the infrastructure. Overall, I'd rate it an eight out of ten.
I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. I think open source software is generally cheaper than Red Hat. However, I don't think that cheaper software is always better. And I don't think that Red Hat is necessarily better than open source just because it costs more. It really depends on our specific needs. If we're comparing Red Hat to an open source equivalent, I would say that Red Hat would probably be a better fit for us. This is because Red Hat offers support, a back-end, and a team of experts who can help us if we need it. With open-source software, we're often on our own and have to figure issues out on our own. With Red Hat, we have the peace of mind of knowing that we can get help if we need it. We have Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployed across multiple contracts and multiple data centers. It was not on the cloud; it was all on-premises. However, we were able to deploy it across multiple data centers, multiple customers, and multiple departments. This flexibility was a major advantage. We used Red Hat Enterprise Linux to patch and update the system, including drivers, the OS itself, and security updates. We also monitored disk space usage and swap usage, but this was not too time-consuming. We had a team of three or four people to rotate tasks, so no one person was stuck on the same thing all the time. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a good product. It has a good ecosystem and support. It is lightweight and does what we need it to do. It is a good alternative to Windows for lightweight containers or servers. It is also good for specific roles. The operating system is a great way to learn about Linux. While some people will always choose Windows, it is not always the best answer. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is more stable and less resource-intensive than Windows, and it is also more trustworthy. This makes it a good choice for environments where reliability and security are important.
The solution is self-explanatory. Most applications run on Red Hat Linux and related products.
It's normally an issue of balancing the cost of support and the features that you are looking to achieve. If security is number one to any organization, Red Hat is a no-brainer. If support is a key issue, Red Hat again is a no-brainer. If you're facing any security or support issues, I'd recommend going with a distribution that has some sort of licensing tied to it. I'd rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten.
It is important to make sure your patches are up to date. Any part of regular maintenance should not be skipped. I recommend the solution because it is stable and easy to manage. I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
I would always advise doing a proof of concept where the client gives out his requirements and you run a proof of concept based on those requirements to make them confident of purchasing the solution. It is always better if a proof of concept is done. This way, everybody knows what they're getting into. Its built-in security features are definitely helpful, but at the end of the day, you have to go further than using the built-in ones. You have to do a few other things yourself. The built-in features are helpful for compliance, but we, and most enterprise organizations, always want to go further than using built-in features because some built-in features could be more open to risks. We use the best built-in features, but we always want to go further and integrate other features into the RHEL system. I have used Red Hat Insights only once, and I have not worked much with it, but my colleagues handling monitoring used it. It was helpful for the unpatched system. They checked Red Hat Insights and saw the systems that need patching. We got an email saying that it is a security requirement and that we need to patch them because it may affect the security of the systems. Coincidentally, after doing the patching, we read blogs about security hacks out there for some of the older systems that were not patched early enough. Red Hat Insights provide us with vulnerability alerts, but I am not sure about targeted guidance. Vulnerability alerts have impacted the uptime, which is something that we take very seriously. Uptime was one of the major reasons we wanted to work with Insights because we didn't want any attacks that would cause downtime. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten.
It is easy to troubleshoot with RHEL. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. If you are in the government space and you're looking to modernize your systems but you're not quite sure about the cloud, using OpenShift to containerize is a good first step. It will give you that cloud-agnostic capability so that you're more readily able to move to the cloud when you're ready. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
Look at the security features of the solution and compare them with other options. Open source is great, but at the end of the day, you need someone supporting the product. Another option is to just listen to groups that write on the internet, but you have to decide if you trust that along with their adversaries. Government offices have to worry about adversaries from other countries because the code they use is unclear. The idea of open source is to be able to evaluate the code but it is not clear if anyone actually reviews it. I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
It is important to ensure there is a level of training for implementation. You need to understand compliance for your organization to determine whether vendors can provide appropriate tools. Do not be afraid to ask questions once the solution is implemented in your environment to ensure you are where you need to be. Stay on top of version or patch releases to prevent bugs or security vulnerabilities to your ISSO or agency. I rate the solution a seven out of ten.
To anyone interested in using Red Hat for the first time, I would definitely advise starting with the GUI because now, the GUI option is quite good, and you can do all the things. After that, you can slowly start moving to CMD. For learning, there are a lot of resources available online, such as YouTube and LinkedIn Learning, whereas Red Hat Academy is quite expensive. The biggest lesson I have learned from using this solution is that when you're using the command line, you need to be extra careful. That's because when using the command line, a single slash can make a huge difference. That's what I learned at the start of my career. I started with Red Hat Version 5. Now they have version 9, which I haven't used, but if I just consider the evolution from version 5 to 8, 8.2, or 8.4, there has been a huge difference because, at that time, people were scared of using Linux, but now, things are different. There has been a revolution in terms of OS. A lot of things are being changed, but in terms of the things that we do, for us, it is the same because we are doing system administration. As a system admin, there is nothing different for us. We are doing the same things again and again because the applications require the addition of storage. There is also a change in terms of security features. If I compare the old versions with the new versions, in old versions, adding any exception in the host firewall was a real task, but now, things have either become smooth, or we have gotten used to it. Overall, for me, things have become easier. They are getting more and more secure, but with the vulnerabilities and the assessments that have been done, we need to keep updating. Now, everything has caught up with the latest security required in the market. In our environment, we're using virtual servers. There are no physical ones. We are shifting to containers in my current organization. Most of the applications we are using are containerized, and it has been easy for us to manage those applications. However, we also require some in-built applications, and for that, a change in people's mindset is required. It's not about the OS; it's about the people who do the development. It is becoming a bit hard for them because they were using a different platform previously, and now, they need to move to the Linux platform. It is a little bit different for them. Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. When comparing it with AIX, AIX is a bit easier in terms of use and it also has the Smitty tool.
Compare the documentation and the answers that are published by Red Hat. Review these aspects and that should help you decide. I strongly recommend RHEL as it fits well in on-premises or cloud development, whether for a small or a large company, and it's a professional product. It's very integrated with container technology, including with Podman and Docker, although we recommend Podman for containers. RHEL fits well in a lot of situations and container environments. It's a good product.
I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10. I've been pretty happy with RHEL over the years. That's 20 years of Unix right there. I tell anybody coming into Linux or Unix to learn the program. Scripting is your best friend, and you can't understand automation if you don't understand basic scripting. If you've never seen Unix or RHEL before, go to a class and learn how to do it in a lab so you don't have to screw up your job. Once you're comfortable with that, start learning containers because I firmly believe containers will replace how we do most of what we do today.
I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten overall. I don't think RHEL is exactly perfect, but it's a trusted, easy and well-supported solution. They are constantly improving and trying to make it easier.
I rate this solution eight out of 10.
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.
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.
Times have changed from when I first started using it. Back then it was just a matter of putting a CD in and installing it. One of the companies I worked for did a lot of homegrown stuff and I used their tools that were like Kickstart. Now it is all automation with infrastructure-as-code. The complexity of deployment is about the same. Some of what we're doing to deploy stuff is outside of Red Hat and it's a matter of finding what tools are available. We're in the process of deploying something right now where we have different versions of Python. That's the only use case we have with multiple versions on the same server. I don't expect any issues, but it's still early in that deployment. We have three people dedicated to maintaining the infrastructure environment that we work in. That includes managing Linux servers, the applications that go with them, and dealing with day-to-day tasks like patching. It's the typical life cycle maintenance functions: break/fix, dealing with hardware issues, deploying new applications, and maintaining a VMware environment. The reason we're using it is because it's stable and we know we can get support. I know there are other versions of Linux, ones that I've used, but I've never experienced the kind of support with those versions that Red Hat has provided. Red Hat is a stable Linux solution provider.
Some of my customers use OpenShift, many of my customers use Ansible, and a lot of them use a local Docker and Podman. The ones that actually run within Red Hat integrate just fine. The ones that Red Hat runs on top of, those are a little more difficult to speak to. Running Docker inside of RHEL is easy. It is much better on EL8 than it is on EL7. I like it enough that I use it as my own operating system for my personal web and mail server. So, I would rate it as eight or nine out of 10. The primary hits against it are that if you want to do anything bleeding edge, the pursuit of stability works counter to that.
The biggest lesson I have learned with RHEL is don't complicate your design. You can always find an easier way to do things. Sometimes you'll think, "Oh, we can do this," and you start thinking about very complicated processes. It's better to think and start simple. With RHEL, we have patching in place, automation in place, and we already know the support. We are very satisfied. We have done a lot of work on it and now it's easy to deploy VMs immediately. We are not looking to implement any other version of Linux.
My biggest advice would be to read the documentation and reach out to Red Hat, or even just search the internet, so that you understand what you're getting into and what you're implementing. I can't think of very much that needs to be improved with RHEL. The model that they have for maintaining patching, and their cadence on Zero-day attacks is fantastic, and their support is really good. I don't see any issues.
One of the new features in RHEL version 8 is AppStream. We're still doing our RHEL 8 deployments and although we've started using AppStream, we haven't gotten very deep into it. Its use is on a very limited scope. RHEL 8 is about halfway through its lifecycle and we're still trying to see how it works. When it comes to the deployment of cloud-based workloads, this solution helps to automate activities. We are just starting our cloud journey and as such, we currently don't have any cloud-based workloads. However, we plan to, and my understanding is that it will be much easier using Red Hat Gold images for Azure, AWS, etc. My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to automate as much as possible. Overall, I think that this is a good product. I'm a pretty big proponent of Red Hat and in fact, as we speak, I'm wearing a Red Hat RHEL 8 shirt. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
We have plans to increase usage. Every new application that supports running on Solaris or Linux is going to be deployed on RHEL these days. I hope it will be our major operating system in the data center. So, in the foreseeable future, there would only be two operating systems: RHEL and Microsoft Windows. I would rate this solution as nine out of 10.
They are a great company overall. It is hard to say where they could improve. They have user groups. They put out a lot of messaging and information. The solution is easy to learn and get to know their products and what they do. From a personal standpoint, I have everything that I need. If I wanted to run multiple versions of Node.js, there are ways to do that without using AppStream. More recently, I have been working with different versions of Node.js, having it in different versions on one machine. It works well. Just the fact that I have the capability is great. Among the other distributions of Linux out there, I would rate it as 10 out of 10. If I have to compare this solution against everything else out there, this solution is at the top of the list.
Make sure that you have well-trained engineers who are familiar with RHEL. If you are looking for a solution that runs in a mission-critical environment, you always want a supported solution. If you're looking for Linux, I don't think that there's a better-supported solution than RHEL. In our particular scenario, our underlying infrastructure is either VMware virtualized or bare metal, although the latter was mostly in the past. Rolling out to a virtualized solution or rolling out to bare metal with RHEL—with the exception of the bits that are unique to those platforms—the operating system installation and the like are going to be very similar. Overall, RHEL is a very solid solution.
You cannot compare it with anything that is in the market because there is nothing that does the same. Amazon is doing something similar, but it is still a different service. Everything that they give us surprises us and changes the way we are doing things. It hasn't simplified adoption for non-Linux users because we have mostly deployed servers, and they are not visible to the users. Users are just using the applications, and they don't know what is going on in the background. They don't know if they are using Linux or something else. They are using Windows on the client, but on servers, they don't know what is running. We aren't using bare metal for servers. Everything is virtualized and working just fine. We have VMware, OpenShift, etc. Everything is deployed on our own cloud, and everything is on our server. We use the dashboard of OpenShift to monitor the whole infrastructure, but we also have two solutions that are not by Red Hat. One is Zabbix, and the other one is Pandora. Both of them are open source. The dashboard of OpenShift doesn't significantly affect the performance of existing applications, but it is helpful because it can send triggers. It has triggers to send alerts and things like that. It is not really resource-consuming. It is really good. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a 10 out of 10.
It is very stable, and you can easily run a lot of production workload on RHEL. Red Hat products are well established. They have been around for many years. Red Hat is dealing with multiple products and applications and is constantly doing research to develop new products according to industry trends. With RHEL, you can get an end-to-end solution with their multiple products, which is something not available through other vendors. Red Hat's open-source approach was a factor when choosing RHEL. We are utilizing a lot of open-source solutions in our Test and Dev environment before going into production. We are able to get a lot of information in the open-source community, and we also have local community support in our region. Its newer versions enable us to deploy current applications and emerging workloads across bare-metal, virtualized, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud environments, but the older versions are not supporting these features. They have included more features in the newer versions to integrate and merge with other applications that are on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid cloud setup. In the older versions, we faced some issues in moving some of the applications from on-premises to the cloud, but in the newer versions, it is very easy to move or merge to the cloud. The applications that we have deployed across these environments are very reliable, except for the bare-metal. They are not much reliable if we are using a bare-metal solution on-prem. For virtualization, we are not using the native RHEL virtualization. We have VMware for virtualization, and it is okay in terms of directly deploying some of the applications to the public cloud. It is quite reliable. It doesn't simplify adoption for non-Linux users. For non-Linux users, it is somewhat difficult to manage this solution or have this solution. However, as compared to other Unix platforms, RHEL is okay. We are not using RHEL to run multiple versions of the same application or database on a specific operating system. In a specific operating system, we are running an application according to our end-user features requirements. We go through a lot of documentation and do multiple PoCs for deploying an application on the RHEL platform. We have a lot of user acceptance test procedures for each application in terms of how we have to do benchmarking and what are our requirements. So, we are managing with an individual operating system and not using the whole centralized solution. We use automation tools to move to the cloud. When we are planning to move to the cloud, we do multiple cloud assessments for which we have third-party tools as well as in-built RHEL tools. Each vendor has a different way of migration and automation for moving the on-prem workload to the cloud workload. Each vendor gives you different tools, and we follow the best practices given by them while moving the on-premises workload to the cloud. I would rate RHEL an eight out of 10.
RHEL provides features that help to speed deployment, although we don't use their tools. We use tools from a third party. My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing RHEL is to make sure that it is going to work for you. Ensure that it supports all of the products that you need it to support once you've actually assessed all of those things. It is a quality product, there's no doubt about that. Once you have made that assessment, I would say, "Great, go for it." In summary, this is one of the products that works well and does what we need. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
We have approximately 14 servers running Red Hat 6 but we used Red Hat 6 all the way to Red Hat 8. The AppStream feature is something that we have tried but on a very limited scale. We have had mixed results with it, although it looks promising. At this point, I can't say whether it is a good feature or not. My advice for anybody considering Red Hat depends on the role of the person that is making the decision. If they're an end-user or their organization is using office productivity software, then they're probably not going to want to use it for the backend. This is because there are not a lot of users that are using Red Hat as their office productivity operating system. If on the other hand, you're somebody that's looking for servers that just need what they call five nines or high availability, Red Hat is your solution for that. That's what I would say to anybody, any technical person that I've talked to, if you can afford it, definitely get Red Hat for your web development. Your web servers should be either Apache, or NGINX, which is their web server stuff. Red Hat should also be used to host an Oracle database. We found that that works really well and is very competitive with Microsoft's SQL server. It's about the same cost; the Red Hat product is actually a little cheaper than Microsoft's SQL product. Considering the cost, ease of deployment, and ease of use, Red Hat is the better product for your main infrastructure. For things that just have to be up and running, Red Hat is the product that you want to use. I can't be strong enough in my opinion that Red Hat does what it does very well for the mundane tasks of infrastructure. For instance, when it comes to web servers, no other OS does a better job than Red Hat for web servers or databases. Similarly, it does a very good job for proxies. For things that just need to run and have very little human interaction, Red Hat's your solution. If you're looking for something that's for an office, such as for accounting, then Red Hat is not the solution to choose. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
I would recommend this solution to others. I would advise others to do their research before deploying it and make sure that they are up to speed with the OS and what it can do. It is fairly easy to use as long as you know what you're doing. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight out of ten.
We are a bunch of techies here. RHEL is not managed by end users. We don't really mind the GUIs, because the first thing that we do is stop using them. We are using Ansible, which is now part of RHEL, and that can automate the living heck out of everything. For now, we are not using the Power approach, but we may in the future. We are doing a business case for that, as it would be an easy sell for some communities and the use cases are not techie-to-techies. There is a cloud, but we have very little infrastructure as a service in the cloud right now. It delivers to the targeted audiences. Could Red Hat Enterprise Linux be used in all types of other scenarios? Most likely. They have an embedded version for microcontrollers, i.e., things that you put into your jewelry or light switches. However, this is not what they're aiming for. I would rate RHEL as a nine and a half (out of 10), but I will round that up to 10.
I would tell potential customers that they should go for the latest releases. If they want to buy it, they should get a developer account from RHEL first and use that dev account before buying it. They might have some hands-on experience before spending too much money on Red Hat. On a scale from one to ten, I would give Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight.
I would definitely recommend this solution. It is my most preferred solution. I like using terminals, and with Red Hat, I get to work on terminals and shell commands. It has good security. I would rate Red Hat Linux (RHEL) an eight out of ten. I find it excellent, but no system can be 100% perfect.
Try the product out. If you decide to purchase a subscription, don't be afraid to submit a ticket or a support case to Red Hat, because that's why you pay for a subscription. It took us a long time before we started to open support cases, because we thought, "Ah, we can fix this ourselves." But now we use the support system quite often and it works quite well. One of the things I've learned from using RHEL is that there are applications that work so much better on Linux than they do on Windows.