My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include database, Java applications, programming, and Python. We were interested in using AI workloads with RHEL last year but then realized the hardware cost was not going to permit us to manage that.
Senior Systems Engineer at a retailer with 51-200 employees
Standardized our workloads and has simplified secure patching, support, and compliance
Pros and Cons
- "Overall, I think Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a great product that I enjoy using, and my advice for other companies considering it is that if you have a need for support and are in a situation requiring audit and maintaining a certain level of uptime, having the safety net of Red Hat behind you is important."
- "Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) could be improved by including in-place upgrades, allowing us to go from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 to 10 on certain hosts, such as database hosts, instead of needing to build a new system and then transferring the data, which would be a better way of improving it."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points such as having nicely packaged dependencies, so when we need to install dependencies, we can easily rely on Satellite to be able to get the packages from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to be able to then install without needing to track down everything that we need. This is more reliable and having the security of Red Hat verifying things is better.
DNF helps my company because Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Satellite has all the packages there, allowing us to patch our systems relatively easily and install any applications through the Yum repository makes it much easier than before.
Satellite helps navigate our security risks by providing us a dashboard of what systems we have, what their patch levels are, and where we need to go with them. It's a good dashboard to monitor. All the CVEs coming in from Red Hat are what we rely on. When Red Hat provides a CVE, we know it's safe to install it.
Satellite is very good in helping to identify quickly what we need, who's wanting what packages, and verify and go forward. It's a nice product to have.
What needs improvement?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) could be improved by including in-place upgrades, allowing us to go from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 to 10 on certain hosts, such as database hosts, instead of needing to build a new system and then transferring the data, which would be a better way of improving it.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for 20 years.
Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
June 2026
Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues; it has been rock solid for us.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In terms of scalability, we grow our servers size-wise, both horizontally and vertically, so I have no issues.
How are customer service and support?
The customer service and technical support I receive are really good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) at my company, I was using Amazon VMs at different companies, along with CentOS and Fedora. With Red Hat, I get the benefit of a company behind me that can support me, and if I run into an issue, they have the resources to figure it out and address it.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment process of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) really depends on your environment because if you have VMware, you have one way of doing it, and if you have Nutanix, you have another way of deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). We use Ansible to deploy, so we just have to configure it for the environment that we're using.
What about the implementation team?
We did a major version upgrade with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Ansible Automation Platform, going from 8 to 9, where we basically rebuilt new hosts and reinstalled on the new hosts, with a few systems we couldn't rebuild, so we did an in-place upgrade using Leapp. The experience was easy and nice. Tooling-wise, it was nicely done.
What was our ROI?
The biggest return on investment using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for me is standardization, relying on support and knowing there's a group behind it that can support us no matter what happens. It's easy to open a ticket, and easy for them to get back to us and help resolve issues.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is nice since we have a site license, but I don't know what the prices are.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not consider other solutions while using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I think Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a great product that I enjoy using, and my advice for other companies considering it is that if you have a need for support and are in a situation requiring audit and maintaining a certain level of uptime, having the safety net of Red Hat behind you is important. If you need recovery in minutes and hours, you should go with Red Hat; if you can't recover in less than days, go with something else. I would rate this product a 10 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Last updated: May 18, 2026
Flag as inappropriateProgram Manager, Customer Delivery & Global Manager, Delivery Bfs Accounts at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has enabled resilient operations with faster and high-volume transactions while minimizing downtime
Pros and Cons
- "Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points by enabling faster transactions and more transactions."
- "I have not really seen an ROI with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)."
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is for the central monitoring of the operations.
What is most valuable?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points by enabling faster transactions and more transactions.The feature I like the most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is its resilience.A huge amount of transactions benefits my organization because we use this cluster to include the performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped to mitigate downtime and lower risk.
What needs improvement?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) could be improved with frequent updates.I think frequent upgrades should be included in the next release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would assess the stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) by stating that it is very secure, reliable, and fast.I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales effectively with the growing needs of my organization.I have not experienced any issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
How are customer service and support?
I would evaluate customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as good, and we have vendor coordination with them.On a scale of one to ten, I would rate customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as an eight because it needs the streamlining of things.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I was using a platform from IBM initially, which was pushed into containerization.
How was the initial setup?
I would describe my experience with deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as not complicated and manageable, and that works well.
What about the implementation team?
I manage my Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems with mass provisioning and patching, and I am very satisfied with the management experience.I managed the expansion on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as well.
What was our ROI?
I have not really seen an ROI with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that pricing is heavy on this.The setup cost and licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) involves a perpetual license.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
The other solutions I considered before selecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) included open source options.What stood out to me in my evaluation process of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that the main feature is security on top of the open source, and we are considering the open-source platform to be implemented.
What other advice do I have?
The complexity of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) comes from the methodology, which is complex.Security requirements were a consideration in choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).My assessment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)'s built-in security features is that it is effective when it comes to simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance.My upgrade and migration plans for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to stay current include frequent patching and upgrades annually.I assess the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as good for a few use cases.The factors that led me to consider the change to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) were stability and reliability.I would describe my experience with deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as not complicated and manageable, and that works well.I have no advice to give to other organizations considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I would rate this product a nine overall.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
IBM
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Last updated: Nov 11, 2025
Flag as inappropriateBuyer's Guide
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
June 2026
Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Solutions Architect at Infosys
Supports long-term industry migrations and improves infrastructure versatility across consulting services
Pros and Cons
- "In my organization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) provides an agnostic interface for many storage vendors that we deal with, which helps us to have a wider spectrum of offerings in our consultancy offerings."
- "Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been one of the key strategic providers offering a good price to implement automation and containerization across all of the network elements we manage with several vendors, and in the latest five years, we have observed a good investment return in terms of ROI."
- "Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved by adopting a feature similar to YaST from a big European competitor, which would significantly enhance Red Hat technologies."
What is our primary use case?
My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are that it has been part of our core delivery solutions for many industries, mostly for telecom.
What is most valuable?
The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I find most valuable include all of the features since system V.
In my organization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) provides an agnostic interface for many storage vendors that we deal with, which helps us to have a wider spectrum of offerings in our consultancy offerings.
What needs improvement?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved by adopting a feature similar to YaST from a big European competitor, which would significantly enhance Red Hat technologies.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since 2005 when it was in release four, which makes it 20 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would assess the stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as favorable, noting that during the last five years, we've experienced fewer crashes and downtimes compared to other commercial Unix and Linux distributions in the market.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales excellently with the growing needs of my organization, and I would rate it ten out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
I evaluate customer service and tech support as excellent; with either the partner portal or customer portal, we receive very good RCAs and analyses for any case we submit to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). On a scale of one to ten, I would rate customer service and technical support as ten out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I was using Commercial Unix, Oracle Solaris. The factor that led me to change was that during the last decades, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has absorbed many features straight from Solaris, enabling us to perform effective migrations from Commercial Unix to RHEL.
How was the initial setup?
At the very beginning, at the earliest versions of Red Hat since version six, there was a kernel that was not compatible with many cluster vendors, and that's why we were adopting another vendor of Linux. However, we've seen that during these past years, Red Hat has been experiencing a lot of enhancements overcoming these kinds of barriers. And now Red Hat has become more versatile in accepting more hardware that allows us to standardize our Red Hat offerings in our consultancy services.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). For data points, in one of the key industries I handle, which is telecom, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been one of the key strategic providers offering a good price to implement automation and containerization across all of the network elements we manage with several vendors, and in the latest five years, we have observed a good investment return in terms of ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that I strongly believe Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers a good relationship between value and price, and despite it being quite pricey, it's definitely worth it.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before selecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I considered SLES, which is a competitor of Red Hat.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to other organizations considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is to have a good plan and to establish the relationship as a key strategic reference for any upcoming migration. The partnership and customer support provided is a high-value option. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped mitigate downtime and lower risk through high availability solutions and key features that enable network redundancy, allowing us to achieve this.
I would assess the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as excellent because it has become one of the key standards in the industry for following guidelines according to any topic in the RHEL environment.
On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution an eight.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Software Developer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Server reliability enhances cloud analytics efficiency with fast reboot and infrastructure flexibility
Pros and Cons
- "Time has been saved since using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and the application performance has improved after using it."
- "Compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Ubuntu is more stable for Kubernetes and Docker-related applications."
What is our primary use case?
I am working on a Cloud Infra project in which many analytics applications are hosted on Cloud Infra, and their applications are hosted on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
The applications are customer-facing and mainly focus on analytics regarding an automotive company.
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) was pretty smooth, as we can subscribe the servers from the RHEL portal.
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on both on-premises and public cloud.
What is most valuable?
One of the best features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that it is lightweight and it is the industry standard.
Whenever I start the servers, they switch on very fast compared to other Linux servers.
We can deploy clusters in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and we can scale up and scale down our infrastructure with the help of the RHEL server.
The subscription model and vendor support are also good. We can subscribe our servers to RHEL so that we can get the packages installed for our project-related dependencies.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has positively impacted my organization. The speed of the applications has improved after deploying them on RHEL.
Whenever we face an issue and need to reboot the server, it comes up very fast compared to other servers, and it has improved the latency of our applications.
Time has been saved since using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and the application performance has improved after using it.
What needs improvement?
There should be some automation for patching the servers in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Patching in the sense that automatically, whatever servers we need, we can patch them using a utility present inside RHEL.
It is stable, but compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Ubuntu is more stable for Kubernetes and Docker-related applications. If improvements can be made in RHEL so Docker and Kubernetes-based applications can be deployed more easily, that would be great.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for the past six months.
How are customer service and support?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales up very easily, and RHEL vendor support is also good; it has helped us many times.
We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) from the start; we can see that RHEL provides good vendor support and bug fixes.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not evaluate any other options before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
What other advice do I have?
I can see more improvements can be added to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). They provide many certifications such as RHCE and RHCSA which are very important for learning Linux, learning about automation, and deploying the servers in the cloud.
The architect-level certifications are very important. The customer support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) rates around an eight.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a great platform to learn Linux. Red Hat provides many certifications such as RHCSA, RHCE, and RHCA, which is architect level.
RHCA is an architect-level certification through which you can learn Ansible and many automation-related activities in Linux; it can help you grow your Linux knowledge as a professional in the IT industry.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an 8.5 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Support and automation significantly save time and cost
Pros and Cons
- "Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers a very easy-to-use experience in the Linux environment apart from any other flavors, and it's a very easy, systematic structure that provides easy support from Red Hat if any complex issue arises, which is the best point of RHEL, along with its affordable subscription model."
- "They should provide patches on a quarterly basis instead of monthly, as patching every month makes it a burden on us."
What is our primary use case?
It depends on the company environment and client environment. Currently, we are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for application deployment and server management, and sometimes we use it for DB deployment also.
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for learning purposes for new things in Red Hat technology.
What is most valuable?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers a very easy-to-use experience in the Linux environment apart from any other flavors, and it's a very easy, systematic structure that provides easy support from Red Hat if any complex issue arises, which is the best point of RHEL, along with its affordable subscription model.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) saves time, saves money, and it's very easy for automation purposes; we support third-party tools for automation, so it's very beneficial.
I see a return on investment from using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) because patching is very easy; it supports third-party tools such as BMC or BigFix, so it's very time-saving for patching and performing any operation to fetch data from multiple servers.
What needs improvement?
To improve Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), they have to provide a playground for their OS for free or for some time, or they have to provide OpenShift multitenant clusters for improving skills in Red Hat technologies and in RHEL also, which will be very easy for a growing career in technology and providing support in an organization.
They have to make it easier to raise a ticket for Red Hat. Currently, when we raise a ticket, they show multiple options, so they should provide a direct option for raising the support cases.
They should provide patches on a quarterly basis instead of monthly, as patching every month makes it a burden on us.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since my career started in 2020.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is stable. In my last five years of experience, I haven't encountered any stability issues when everything is done properly.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has good scalability, and with the RHEL OpenShift tool, we use the scale up and scale down features.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very quick and provides support on call. It's easier to get support from RHEL compared to other enterprises such as IBM.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did everything manually before Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but since working with RHEL, we use automation, which saves time and costs.
How was the initial setup?
I am not aware of billing, but for the setup of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), it's very easy because we directly get a golden image and replicate to make a new machine, so it can be set up in very little time.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I evaluated other options such as CentOS, Rocky Linux, and Ubuntu. However, RHEL is an enterprise OS that provides multiple features and support, with a very systematic structure.
What other advice do I have?
The Ansible tool is very nice, and currently, they have released OpenShift, which is also a very nice product provided by Red Hat.
I would advise others looking into using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that if they don't have budget issues, they should go for RHEL; otherwise, they can consider AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux, which are also open-source products.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a very nice Linux distribution that provides quick support, and in my last five years in the corporate world, I found it to be a very good OS, but they should lower their charges for mid-scale and startup companies in countries such as India, Bhutan, and Nepal, as they can't afford that much amount in dollars.
On a scale from one to ten, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Architect at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
The integration of tools enhances autonomy and operational efficiency
Pros and Cons
- "Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points with all the integrated tools that it brings to us, including all the Ansible Towers that we exceedingly use."
- "AI features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) would be an improvement because they reduce operational time and help administrators with features such as finding and troubleshooting issues and resolving them automatically."
What is our primary use case?
My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are for our private cloud, so we deploy it and use RHEL extensively for that. We set up the environment and their applications will run on our environment, and I work in that architecture space where we will set up the environment for our customers to come and deploy their applications.
What is most valuable?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points with all the integrated tools that it brings to us, including all the Ansible Towers that we exceedingly use. My favorite feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is Ansible as a tool to work on RHEL. The combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) reduces the operational overheads and helps keep us autonomous, allowing us to move faster with less time.
What needs improvement?
AI features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) would be an improvement because they reduce operational time and help administrators with features such as finding and troubleshooting issues and resolving them automatically.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for about a year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is, so far, very good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Regarding scalability, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) keeps up with our demands, so I think it is on par, as we've been partnering for a long time.
How are customer service and support?
I would evaluate the customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as great. From one to ten, I would rate customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as an eight.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Security requirements were definitely a consideration before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The reason security requirements were considered is that it's just part of our bread and butter as a company, and we would not be able to do anything without security.
How was the initial setup?
Currently, we are not in the middle of any migrations or upgrades regarding Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), so it's running what we have right now, and that's what we're focusing on.
What about the implementation team?
I am not directly involved in managing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems when it comes to provisioning and patching, but I have teammates who do that, and they seem to have a very good experience.
What was our ROI?
From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the platform itself; I would say it's a good investment that keeps our job running.
What other advice do I have?
My assessment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)'s built-in security features is that I have had good experiences so far. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped me to mitigate downtime and lower risks, though the specific details are confidential at this time.
The improvements with AI in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are exciting, as I was attending one of the sessions, and RHEL 10 with AI is already coming. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10, I look forward to seeing the AI features they were describing.
I assess the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as pretty good; there is still extensive documentation that I constantly refer to if I get stuck. My advice to any other company that's thinking about choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as their solution is to try it out and find out for yourself. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) overall as an eight.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Solutions Architect at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Building images efficiently and managing on-prem systems seamlessly allows for faster lifecycle tasks
Pros and Cons
- "The feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) I appreciate the most is the ability to build images from the Red Hat pipeline, which is very effective."
- "Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales with the growing needs of our company quite effectively, as we're still on-prem and a VMware shop, so it functions seamlessly."
- "As for how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved, besides being cheaper, I am uncertain."
- "Cheaper pricing would definitely be beneficial."
What is our primary use case?
Our main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) at our company involve it being our primary operating system for most of our servers. We're about 80% Red Hat Linux, 20% Windows.
What is most valuable?
The feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) I appreciate the most is the ability to build images from the Red Hat pipeline, which is very effective.
We also have an on-prem image management system that works really well with Red Hat. These features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) benefit our company since they allow us to perform life cycle tasks faster.
Our upgrade or migration plans to stay current with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are that our operating strategy is to put all net new on 8.10, and we are going to stay on 8.10 until 9.10. We typically just stay on the long-term release.
What needs improvement?
As for how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved, besides being cheaper, I am uncertain. From a technical perspective, everything is addressed, which is part of the reason why we have as many systems as we do. It's probably one of the reasons why we moved away from SUSE Linux all those years ago, and cheaper pricing would definitely be beneficial.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for approximately ten years. I've only been with the company for three years, and Red Hat has been there since before I arrived.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Regarding stability and reliability, we haven't had any issues with Red Hat VMs crashing due to a Red Hat issue.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales with the growing needs of our company quite effectively, as we're still on-prem and a VMware shop, so it functions seamlessly. Many of our applications scale really well, with some having several hundreds of VMs, which we couldn't accomplish on Windows.
How are customer service and support?
The customer service and technical support experience is good. We have many highly qualified senior tenured engineers with Red Hat, so there are very few instances where we need to call somebody for assistance. It's usually account-related or access-related, not normally technical issues.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Historically, we used SUSE Linux before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
How was the initial setup?
Our architecture doesn't get hands-on. We guide and influence, so we have done upgrades over the years. We've done upgrades on upgrades on upgrades over the years. We typically don't do cross-version migrations if we can avoid it. It's a lot cleaner to do migration from major revision to major revision.
What was our ROI?
From a technical perspective, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that compatibility and supportability are easier to adopt. There's a wider range of things that support it, and it has a larger community for getting support compared to Windows. From a server perspective, it functions better, and there are better capabilities for getting things to work and supporting any issues that might occur.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I'm not involved in the pricing, setup costs, or licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I hear that it's expensive, but everything is getting expensive these days, so I don't think it's Red Hat specific. VMware's kickoff after the Broadcom acquisition has created a catalyst for everybody to increase their prices.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I haven't considered changing to other solutions since CentOS went their own route. For the most part, everything is Red Hat for us. It just depends on the capabilities that determine what version we run. 8.10 is the standard, but before eight, we would have several instances on 7.5, 7.3, depending on the features and capabilities the application needed. If it was just a generic application without special requirements, we usually put them on the latest version.
What other advice do I have?
When it comes to managing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems regarding provisioning and patching, we are moving to Ansible. We are on VMware's vRealize operations and orchestration, and we are moving all of our management and deployment strategies to Ansible. We are transitioning to Ansible since we have so many different systems and ecosystems that we need to touch; having one platform rule them all makes it easier for life cycle management and deployment. Ansible allows us to do everything in one seamless pipeline versus having to run five different automations for standing up a VM, standing up storage, and creating firewall rules.
I'm not very familiar with Red Hat Enterprise Linux's (RHEL) built-in security features when it comes to simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance. Cybersecurity requirements are abstracted from us, and they have their own tool suites, but we do have integrations with Red Hat. We use CrowdStrike, Carbon Black, and Rapid7, and all of those tools have integrations or abilities with Red Hat, so we leverage those tools but nothing is necessarily native to Red Hat.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has not helped to mitigate downtime and lower risks any more than any other operating system. The contributing factors of downtime are typically external, whether it's power or networking or storage. In our ecosystem within a Red Hat space, crashes are very infrequent and usually something external.
On a scale from one to ten, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partnership
Linux HPC Systems Administrator at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Reliable patch management, high uptime, and incredible knowledge base
Pros and Cons
- "I enjoy the patching processes and the way Red Hat Enterprise Linux has elements set up. I have never had a patch session fail, even when installing a thousand packages at a time."
- "Their security library is well-maintained."
- "I wish IBM would give them more leeway. IBM seems to have restricted Red Hat Enterprise Linux more since the acquisition."
- "The organization moved away from Red Hat because IBM introduced paywalls and additional barriers that did not exist before, which made everything a lot harder."
What is our primary use case?
I have been a sysadmin handling everything about Red Hat Enterprise Linux, primarily for on-premises environments. I have built projects based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, including development and support projects in the companies. I have handled pretty much everything. Anything you can imagine, I have probably done with it.
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What is most valuable?
I enjoy the patching processes and the way Red Hat Enterprise Linux has elements set up. I have never had a patch session fail, even when installing a thousand packages at a time.
Their implementation of Yum is effective. I have used it quite a bit to pull additional information out because, for a while, I was doing security work. It is nice to have all the security information they provide on the inside. Their security library is well-maintained. I have used it exclusively for 15 years now, and I have been nothing but happy with it.
What needs improvement?
I wish IBM would give them more leeway. IBM seems to have restricted Red Hat Enterprise Linux more since the acquisition.
The organization moved away from Red Hat because IBM introduced paywalls and additional barriers that did not exist before, which made everything a lot harder. They moved from there to the Rocky version, which is a fork of Red Hat. It is run by people who have left IBM or Red Hat engineers who left IBM. Giving Red Hat Enterprise Linux more independence could be beneficial.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux exclusively for about 15 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It has demonstrated great stability, with systems running for multiple years without issues. I have no problem with uptime. It is as long as you want it to be.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It offers excellent scalability. The HPC system that the organization runs is a small one, but it has 8,000 computers. Each computer has at least 24 to 72 CPUs in it, and everything runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Rocky. It is eminently capable. They run jobs because they do some of the hurricane forecasting and things. The things that they run on it take 900 nodes and 70,000 CPUs. You walk into that data center, the air comes out of the floor at 50 degrees. By the time it gets through the computers, it is about 110, so they are working them hard. The room itself stays at about 90.
How are customer service and support?
Before the acquisition by IBM, support was incredible. I could directly engage with developers and get immediate assistance. It was great.
I have not had a lot of experience with them post-acquisition. At this point, the entire department is moving to Rocky. It is not a huge change for me, but a part of the move was the lack of support through IBM.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
The company we are contacted with has just moved from Red Hat to Rocky, which is Red Hat-based. It is a fork of Red Hat, so it is like all Red Hat derivatives. It is binary compatible. You can do anything you want with it. For the things the organization does with the HPC environment, it is a lot nicer because there are fewer restrictions. Open source works best for HPC environments. You have to recompile a lot of drivers and things to get things to work. Being able to do that is critical in that business.
How was the initial setup?
For the most part, upgrades and migrations are very straightforward. In one of the cases, it was very straightforward to install the OS, but it was a lot more problematic to find all the pieces that ran the underlying hardware and get those working right. We had to do a lot of testing between lots of different versions of both the OS and the hardware drivers before we found good combinations. From what I hear, going from Red Hat to Rocky was a lot cleaner than going from Red Hat 6 to Red Hat 7. That was a big change.
In terms of maintenance, for the most part, once you get it set, you can walk away from it.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I do not have any insights, but I know why the prices went up. At the time, it made sense. I do not know what the pricing is like now. Previously, the pricing model was advantageous as it allowed unlimited installations for a single price, focusing on support. The recent introduction of paywalls complicates the cost landscape.
What other advice do I have?
I have used the web console, but I am more of a command-line person. I did not see a lot of use for it, but I have used it in the HPC world because you can do some things that are handy, such as pulling in entire groups of things and building them as a boot group. It is nice to have when you need it.
Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
System Engineer & Principal Officer at Pubali Bank Limited
Security improvements help maintain compliance and optimize operations
Pros and Cons
- "Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has positively impacted my organization because its improved security helped our team to maintain compliance issues, even though it's a bit complex."
- "The GUI operation needs to be improved, especially for day-to-day desktop operations."
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is for all the tasks, which can be utility services or web services, DNS, NTP, or identity service as well as mail service in my day-to-day work.
What is most valuable?
The best features Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers are that it's a well-managed operating system, and I can use anything regarding the system and other features.
It is good for performance, reliability, and updates.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has positively impacted my organization because its improved security helped our team to maintain compliance issues, even though it's a bit complex.
What needs improvement?
It's acceptable to work with the current system and current initiation regarding how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) could be improved; I don't have significant frustrations.
The GUI operation needs to be improved, especially for day-to-day desktop operations.
For how long have I used the solution?
I'm working about 10 years in my current field.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is stable in my experience.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a highly scalable solution, and it can handle growth and increased demand well.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is exceptional; I have interacted with their support team, and it's awesome.
I rate the customer support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a 9 out of 10.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used Oracle Linux before Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but I prefer RHEL now.
What was our ROI?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) saved our money and is good, which indicates we've seen a return on investment.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We have evaluated Ubuntu before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
What other advice do I have?
I absolutely give others looking into using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) the advice to adopt RHEL for their other production systems. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Founder at Asynka
Using robust security and detailed documentation has improved our enterprise operations
Pros and Cons
- "The best features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are its stability and the RPM, Red Hat Package Manager, which is perfect."
- "Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very expensive. It is not suitable for an SMB company; it is not payable or affordable."
What is our primary use case?
I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and we have a couple of customers using OpenShift, the Kubernetes platform based on Red Hat, and also Red Hat Virtualization. My first contact with the Linux platform was with Red Hat.
What is most valuable?
The best features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are its stability and the RPM, Red Hat Package Manager, which is perfect. They also deliver Satellite, a platform for updates. It is a very robust, excellent platform.
For me, and for every Linux distribution, the most important security feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is SELinux. Security is often misunderstood by others. SELinux is very important because it provides security for the kernel. Many people disable SELinux, but it is the most important and most misunderstood feature. People do not understand it. The updates and SELinux are very important to me. SELinux is very good, but it is complex, and I have seen many administrators disable it because instead of helping them, it causes trouble. For example, securing my NGINX configuration is a pain. It is a very good security option, but I would say it is excellent only if one is an expert.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) documentation is very good and very complete. Regardless of my opinion about the IBM acquisition, the documentation is excellent.
What needs improvement?
IBM committed two major mistakes with Red Hat. The first was destroying the CentOS project, which was a fork of Red Hat. The second was limiting the use of free options and restricting hardware to support Red Hat on just some limited hardware. One can use the system for free, but the statement is not entirely true because it is limited to a couple of virtual processors and I do not remember if it was 24 or 16 GB of RAM. If one goes beyond that configuration, one has to pay, and IBM is IBM. Many companies were in trouble because from one day to the next, IBM said they would no longer support CentOS and told them to move to another distribution. People had to migrate, and for that reason, there are Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, and other Linux distributions that are trying to rise and taking advantage of that situation. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is just for corporate companies with money to waste on licensing.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very expensive. In the case of our customers, the couple of customers with OpenShift, they have enough money to license Red Hat. They bundle Red Hat with virtualization and OpenShift packages. However, it is not suitable for an SMB company. It is not payable or affordable. For me, it is very expensive.
For how long have I used the solution?
I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a lot, though I do not remember the exact frequency.
How are customer service and support?
I have worked with Red Hat support, and it is very good because they have very good engineers. In Latin America, during my time, the support in Spanish was mostly provided by engineers from Argentina. In Colombia, I have worked with a couple of engineers from Colombia, and they were very good. I have not worked with support in English for Red Hat, only in Spanish with those engineers.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
What other advice do I have?
My first Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) certification, Red Hat Certified Engineer, was for version 6, which was approximately 12 to 15 years ago.
I have tried Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Image Builder and System Roles, and it is pretty good.
I would rate the support at an eight out of ten. My overall rating for this product is ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Last updated: Dec 24, 2025
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