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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7.4
RHEL offers significant cost savings, efficiency, and reliability over alternatives, enhancing productivity and reducing operational expenses.
Sentiment score
7.2
VMware vSphere reduces costs and enhances efficiency with virtualization, offering savings, agility, and improved resource utilization and scalability.
A long lifecycle is key to having a good return on investment.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has saved us time and increased productivity.
Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux can yield resource savings of 200 percent to 300 percent compared to Windows Server instances.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
RHEL support is generally praised for expertise and responsiveness, though initial challenges improve with escalation and prioritization.
Sentiment score
7.0
VMware vSphere's customer service is efficient and knowledgeable, but response times and complex issue handling can be inconsistent.
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.
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
Recently, support has been less friendly and slower, especially after the company was acquired by Broadcom.
If we have issues, the support tends to be unreliable
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Red Hat Enterprise Linux excels in scalability, adaptability, and seamless integration across diverse environments, supporting large enterprise applications efficiently.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware vSphere offers scalable, flexible environments with minimal downtime, seamless integration, and excellent performance across diverse hardware and business needs.
Many of our applications scale really well, with some having several hundreds of VMs, which we couldn't accomplish on Windows.
There are no issues with scalability when it comes to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Each computer has at least 24 to 72 CPUs in it, and everything runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Rocky.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
VMware vSphere is highly scalable in terms of the number of users and the number of servers it can handle.
It is a highly scalable solution.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
RHEL is renowned for its stability and reliability, offering minimal downtime, long uptimes, and ease of maintenance.
Sentiment score
8.0
VMware vSphere is highly stable and reliable, with minimal outages and quick resolution of issues, ideal for 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.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers great stability and performance compared to other operating systems.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
While they are generally stable, if outages occur, they tend to be due to brands like HP or Dell, not VMware vSphere itself.
I would rate the stability of VMware vSphere as eight out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

RHEL needs improvements in upgrades, user-friendliness, documentation, pricing, support, security, and accessible, affordable training options.
VMware vSphere needs pricing, interface, compatibility, management, integration, fault tolerance, performance, and technology support improvements due to user concerns.
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.
The cost changed from perpetual to subscription, and there is a need for alternative solutions.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
 

Setup Cost

RHEL offers strong support and stability but high licensing costs challenge smaller businesses compared to Ubuntu or CentOS.
VMware vSphere is costly but valued for advanced features and stability, especially in large-scale environments, warranting careful budgeting.
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.
Many customers are trying to avoid it due to its high cost.
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
The solution is too expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Red Hat Enterprise Linux excels in stability, security, and flexibility, with strong support, automation tools, and comprehensive documentation.
VMware vSphere offers centralized management and flexibility, enhancing data center efficiency with strong security and fast, efficient operations.
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.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
The tool is highly available, which is crucial for implementing critical applications requiring 24/7 availability.
The high availability feature is significant.
 

Categories and Ranking

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
294
Ranking in other categories
Operating Systems (OS) for Business (1st)
VMware vSphere
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
454
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and VMware vSphere aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is designed for Operating Systems (OS) for Business and holds a mindshare of 9.6%, down 12.5% compared to last year.
VMware vSphere, on the other hand, focuses on Server Virtualization Software, holds 16.5% mindshare, down 20.0% since last year.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Neeraj Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines virtualization and has features like high availability and vMotion
The primary use case is for virtualization, including the implementation of vSphere, vCloud Foundation, vCloud Director, and cloud automation with vSphere My customers, particularly SMBs, mainly utilize High Availability (HA), DRS, and vMotion features. The vMotion feature is beneficial for…
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Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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)?
Though a bit expensive compared to competitors, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is still recommended because it works effectively and delivers value for its pricing.
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
 

Also Known As

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Canonical, Oracle and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business. Updated: May 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.