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Oracle Solaris vs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 7, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.8
Oracle Solaris enhances ROI with integration, ease of use, troubleshooting efficiencies, despite concerns about costs and limited feature benefits.
Sentiment score
7.0
Red Hat Enterprise Linux delivers strong ROI through cost savings, reliability, strong support, and efficiency-enhancing integrations and documentation.
In terms of ROI, there have been performance improvements because Oracle Solaris is lighter.
A long lifecycle is key to having a good return on investment.
Being able to transform common manual tasks that previously took all day into processes that take an hour, half an hour, or even less, demonstrates clear value.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has saved us time and increased productivity.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.2
Oracle Solaris support is reliable with 24/7 service, though some users find self-resolution faster than official assistance.
Sentiment score
7.2
RHEL customer support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, despite occasional first-line delays or regional differences.
The technical support by Oracle is good.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) support is great, as they go beyond their duty to help resolve issues and provide solutions even for third-party software such as XRDP.
When we do contact customer service, they are generally very knowledgeable and well-versed in our size.
Usually, I send the information, and they have something for me within hours, sometimes even minutes.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
Oracle Solaris offers robust scalability and adaptability, excelling in both vertical and horizontal scaling for large enterprises.
Sentiment score
7.2
RHEL offers seamless scalability and adaptability, easily handling diverse applications and workloads across cloud and on-premise environments.
Regarding vertical scalability, Oracle Solaris is probably one of the most scalable operating systems in the industry.
Many of our applications scale really well, with some having several hundreds of VMs, which we couldn't accomplish on Windows.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales very well with the growing needs of our company.
There are no issues with scalability when it comes to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Oracle Solaris is renowned for its high stability, reliable security, and minimal crash occurrences compared to other operating systems.
Sentiment score
7.8
RHEL is praised for its stability, reliability, minimal downtime, efficient resource use, and excellent support, ideal for business-critical applications.
It works consistently with minimal downtime and very few bugs or glitches.
It just works, and that's really the key factor; I can't remember the last time we had a system go down and had to restore it due to a bad patch.
We've not had a service outage with Red Hat in six years.
 

Room For Improvement

Oracle Solaris users seek better compatibility, modernization, open-source support, and enhanced documentation, with improved interfaces akin to Linux.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux needs intuitive upgrades, better AI and Kubernetes support, streamlined documentation, and improved compatibility and automation.
Oracle Solaris needs to improve its compatibility with office tools like Excel.
Oracle is going to discontinue it, so I do not think any improvement is possible in Oracle Solaris.
Addressing these limitations would significantly enhance the operating system's flexibility and efficiency.
The built-in security features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux were insufficient for our needs, necessitating the implementation of supplementary security measures.
By providing pre-installed, native automation tools within the operating system, Red Hat would streamline processes and improve user efficiency.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find Oracle Solaris competitive yet costly, valuing integration and security but noting complex licensing and setup expenses.
RHEL pricing is often high but valued for support; options exist, yet complex licensing can be challenging.
I find the pricing of Oracle Solaris to be affordable compared to competitors like Windows.
It may be considered expensive compared to other solutions like CentOS or Ubuntu, which offer some of the same features without additional costs.
Its pricing has room for improvement because it's more expensive in the local market due to purchasing power parity in India.
Windows Servers base their cost on the number of users and have high licensing fees, while Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers free versions alongside its paid, supported versions.
 

Valuable Features

Oracle Solaris excels in virtualization, security, and performance with features like Zones and ZFS, offering reliable cloud readiness.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is renowned for its stability, automation, and scalability, making it ideal for enterprises and governments.
The operating system is lightweight, which makes it easier to use on an average computer compared to systems like Windows.
Additionally, regarding security, you do not have to implement any antivirus software.
It also has strong security features, is OIS and FIPS certified, and has built-in Linux security configurations.
There is also no downtime.
The operating system allows for the simple addition of kernels, modules, and other applications, making it highly adaptable to various needs.
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle Solaris
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
347
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Oracle Solaris is 2.0%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 9.2%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)9.2%
Oracle Solaris2.0%
Other88.8%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Prabir Kumar Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience robust performance and security for large organizations
For big organizations who look for performance, better security, and better manageability, I usually recommend Oracle Solaris. It is not recommended for smaller organizations because you need a specialized person to manage this operating system. Linux can be managed by anybody. However, maintaining Oracle Solaris, creating clusters, and tuning at the OS level needs a specialized resource. Smaller organizations may not have those resources, or it will be too costly for them to maintain. Everybody is moving towards the cloud. I am not sure how they are going to do that because it is going to be a dead product already compared to its competitors. I would recommend Oracle Linux instead of Oracle Solaris now. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Oracle Solaris a 9.
Bruce Lundberg - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable patch management, high uptime, and incredible knowledge base
In terms of security, it does a lot of things that most people still turn off. SELinux is turned on by default. They have pretty good firewall rules in their defaults. The audit rules always take tweaking, but, overall, it comes out of the box not too bad. I used to write scripts to harden them from there. There are multiple ways to provision and patch. You have everything from local repositories to doing it by hand. Their knowledge base is incredible. There is so much information out there. It has never taken me longer than 30 minutes to find an answer to anything, even very tough ones. One company I worked for was a security company, and we did a lot of patching on everything. It was designed around security and email hosting, and uptime was pretty much whatever we wanted it to be. I have had a couple of times when the uptime was bad, but it was caused by a third-party solution. In fact, the Norton antivirus was definitely the worst. Red Hat had nothing to do with it.
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Comparison Review

it_user281973 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 24, 2017
It's improved our company's system environments that run Oracle databases.
Red Hat is mission critical to our environment Red Hat has improved the mission critical environments running Oracle databases, while CentOS has improved our web environment and MySQL. Oracle and SAP Environment and all HPC environments. 10 years No issues Very stable i don´t find any problem…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise44
Large Enterprise241
 

Questions from the Community

How does Oracle Linux compare with Solaris?
When comparing Oracle Linux and Solaris, I believe that Linux is more secure and more flexible. It is also very suitable for enterprises that are already Oracle solution users. I found Linux to be ...
What do you like most about Oracle Solaris?
We use the solution as an internal operating system.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Solaris?
I find the pricing of Oracle Solaris to be affordable compared to competitors like Windows.
Which would you choose - RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or CentOS?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is fantastic. It is an inexpensive solution that has excellent security, performance, and stability, and also lots of features. I specifically like that the solution has fe...
What do you like most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
It is open source. We can customize it as per our requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
My experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been largely positive, though there was a significant shift in their pricing structure last year. That change caused considerable discussion a...
 

Also Known As

Solaris 11, Solaris
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Siemens, IVV
Travel Channel, Mohawk Industries, Hilti, Molecular Health, Exolgan, Hotelplan Group, Emory University, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, HCA Healthcare, Paychex, UPS, Intermountain Healthcare, Brinker International, TransUnion, Union Bank, CA Technologies
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle Solaris vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
866,088 professionals have used our research since 2012.