I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to create directories and files and configure security settings for the Red Hat Certified System Administrator exam.
Software Developer | Red Hat Certified Engineering | Red Hat Certified System Administrator at Francis Xavier Engineering College
The cloud platform provides a real-time experience, enabling us to practice for exams easily and enhance our Linux knowledge
Pros and Cons
- "The cloud platform provides a real-time experience, enabling us to practice for exams easily and enhance our Linux knowledge."
- "Sometimes, the platform would be very slow, making it difficult to open labs."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux comprehensively covers the fundamental knowledge required for the Red Hat Certified System Administrator and Red Hat Certified Engineer certifications. My experience taking the Red Hat examination was positive, and I am satisfied with their product.
I can easily work with Red Hat OS because it is user-friendly, even for manual tasks. While it may be as expensive as Windows, they offer a four-month trial and provide cloud access. This is valuable for understanding Linux concepts and working within the Linux environment. Overall, it's a great learning experience.
What is most valuable?
We prefer not to install the Linux OS manually, so we opt to work in the cloud instead. The cloud platform provides a real-time experience, enabling us to practice for exams easily and enhance our Linux knowledge. This proves highly beneficial for students pursuing Red Hat certification.
What needs improvement?
While preparing for the Red Hat administrator examination, I worked with the cloud platform, which was generally good but occasionally experienced some lag. Sometimes, the platform would be very slow, making it difficult to open labs. It could take around 30 minutes to start a lab, and there were limitations on data persistence. Any work or files created would only be available for one week before disappearing, requiring recreation. This lack of long-term storage is a disadvantage of the Red Hat Cloud platform.
Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
June 2025

Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.
For how long have I used the solution?
I am currently using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux seven out of ten because of the lagging.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
The support team was helpful in addressing the lag in the cloud.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I used UNIX before switching to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. UNIX did not provide adequate support for developers, making it challenging to work with. Though it's open source, UNIX lacked the features that we needed. So, I transitioned to Red Hat. Red Hat offers developers extensive support and access to technologies like OpenShift and Kubernetes. This makes it easier for developers and large companies to manage workloads and adopt new technologies.
I installed UNIX on my laptop and experienced no lag, unlike the lag I've encountered in the cloud with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
How was the initial setup?
Installing Red Hat is easy. We download the file and run it in our labs.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
One Red Hat license costs USD 131, which I find reasonable.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux eight out of ten.
We have 15 members in our group that use Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
I recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's much faster than UNIX and offers extensive management support, making it valuable for startups and engineering developers.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.

System Administrator at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
Has made it easier to automate a lot of our tasks
Pros and Cons
- "The product is easy to use, and you can get support whenever you want."
- "Some problems may occur with the product if you don't patch it after a year or two."
What is our primary use case?
I use the solution in my company for regular servers with databases, load balancers, Apache, and so on.
How has it helped my organization?
The benefits of using the product revolve around the fact that it has made it easier to automate everything on it, which includes automating servers and so on.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is an upcoming, more stable product, like Oracle OS. The tool has everything that IBM Red Hat Redbooks has.
In terms of how I would assess the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for keeping our organization agile and flexible, I would say that since my company is a service provider, we get the containers from the customers, which we don't use for our own selves, but we use Red Hat Universal Base Images (UBI) 9 for some things like to to get our own containers and so on.
What needs improvement?
My company has not tried to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 since we are still using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8. In the future, I am expecting to see Podman 5.0 released for RHEL 9.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a nice and stable solution. Some problems may occur with the product if you don't patch it after a year or two.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There are no problems with the scalability of the product, as it works fine.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, my company used to use a simple version of RHEL and other tools depending on the needs of our company's customers.
How was the initial setup?
Regarding my experience related to the deployment process, I would say that everything is automated now. You just fill out the survey, and then you just deploy the tool. The product's deployment phase is easy.
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.
What about the implementation team?
The team members can deploy the solution in my company.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
If the customer wants to pay for the support and so on, then we can go for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Otherwise, one can go for any other open-source platform. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), you get the latest on everything. If you are running Oracle Linux, it gets hard to find some patches. It is easy to find new things like Podman or Red Hat Subscription-Manager, especially if you want to run something on Oracle OS, then you need to compile the patches yourself.
What other advice do I have?
The product has helped centralize development in our company. In our company, we are mostly automating all the server installations on Red Hat template by filling in IP addresses with Postman.
We don't use the built-in features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance since they are only available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.
To a colleague who is looking at open-source cloud-based operating systems for Linux other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I would say that previously people preferred CentOS until Red Hat stripped it apart. At the moment, it is like, if you want an RHEL-based tool, it is either Rocky Linux or Oracle OS because I think Fedora is too lenient, while CentOS is somewhere in the middle.
I would be spending the same amount of time on some other solution if I was not using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since everything is automated now, and in such a case, it will just be another image you use on some other product.
My company uses Ansible as a part of the deployment model.
The product is easy to use, and you can get support whenever you want. The solution also the latest packages, which include Red Hat Subscription-Manager, Podman, Linux, and other such functionalities.
I rate the tool 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.
Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
June 2025

Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Engineer III at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Has significantly helped our company grow by enabling automation, allowing us to provide multiple services simultaneously
Pros and Cons
- "Ansible is one of my most-used tools, and I especially appreciate its automation capabilities."
- "While Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers many valuable features, some, particularly the latest ones, are not immediately available until deployed on-premises."
What is our primary use case?
As a system administrator, I specialize in building infrastructure on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, with a focus on automation from initial design through to implementation.
How has it helped my organization?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has significantly helped our company grow by enabling automation, allowing us to provide multiple services simultaneously and reduce repetitive tasks through the creation and sharing of solutions with other teams.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux enabled us to centralize development.
What is most valuable?
Ansible is one of my most-used tools, and I especially appreciate its automation capabilities.
What needs improvement?
While Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers many valuable features, some, particularly the latest ones, are not immediately available until deployed on-premises. Additionally, although I need to become fully acquainted with its built-in security features, the dashboards could be enhanced to provide more comprehensive security insights.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable. I've never had any problems with its stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support and technical support are good. Normally, I can find my own solutions and if not, I can reach out to the vendor for assistance.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux eight out of ten.
We face restrictions in accessing the latest features for various tools, including Elastic and Red Hat. For instance, we cannot utilize certain Elastic features because they are not publicly available. Similarly, with Red Hat, we must wait for the newest features to be released on-premises before we can access them. This limitation hinders our ability to leverage the most up-to-date technology.
The key advantage of Red Hat Enterprise Linux over other open-source Linux distributions is its comprehensive support, which includes access to updates, security patches, and technical expertise.
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?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Last updated: Oct 30, 2024
Flag as inappropriateServer Automation Administrator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Offers simplicity and is easy to maintain
Pros and Cons
- "The solution's most valuable feature revolves around its simplicity, especially when maintaining it, which is an easy process."
- "I would like to see a better way to organize the jobs within Ansible, specifically with the automation platform."
What is our primary use case?
The use of the solution keeps varying, considering that we have web apps and a lot of homegrown stuff as we build a lot of our own apps. My company also uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for the operating systems for a lot of our other applications that we use for authentication purposes and so on.
How has it helped my organization?
I can't really talk much about how the product has benefited the organization since it is not in my wheelhouse, and I mostly deal with the area of configuration management and the automation of configuring it. In my company, we have a Unix team I work with, and when they want to automate processes, then they come to me and I help direct them.
What is most valuable?
The solution's most valuable feature revolves around its simplicity, especially when maintaining it, which is an easy process.
What needs improvement?
I have not seen anything in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that causes any queries or doubts in my mind, so I am not really sure if I see any need for improvements in the product at this point, especially when I have good communication with the sales teams and support. I have also recommended the changes I want to see in Ansible, an area where my company sees progress. There is nothing my company is disappointed about regarding Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
I would like to see a better way to organize the jobs within Ansible, specifically with the automation platform. Right now, in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, everything is just flat as there are no directory structures or folders and no ways to designate specific jobs for specific things as everything is in one big pile.
With Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), my company has not seen anything requiring improvements. My company is really happy with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). My company is still in the migration process right now since, from all of our seven boxes, we are moving on to the eight and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9. The aforementioned process has been really smooth and slick. My company likes the speed and simplicity of the OS.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for twelve years. My company has been using the product since before I joined.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution.
How are customer service and support?
I went to have dinner with my sales team the previous night, and we just had a chat, after which I got to know some professional services offered by some people willing to come and help our company with the solution if required. Based on the aforementioned area, I can rate 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?
My company has experience with AIX, Solaris, and Windows. My company switched over to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) because people wanted it, specifically the app developers. My company uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) based on supply and demand factors. You just build what is needed for the infrastructure side or when you are in the operations.
How was the initial setup?
The product's deployment phase was simple.
There is a different group in my company that has built up a strategy to deploy the product, so I don't have to do anything in its deployment phase. To request a new system is just a matter of filling out the ticket and submitting it easily, after which the box is built, which is great.
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment phase for the tool was carried out with the help of our company's in-house team. The product was deployed with the help of vRealize Orchestrator Appliance.
What was our ROI?
In terms of the ROI associated with the product, I would say that with a lot of stuff I do in the company, I also get involved with the patching side, especially the patching of servers. I can patch 1,500 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) boxes in the time it takes me to patch ten boxes from Windows. Patching in Windows is bad. Being able to patch Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is simple since I think the most I have ever seen it takes is around 35 minutes to patch a box. When our company started to move towards a more containerized approach, we saw that being able to have your container or your OS can open a whole new world. Being able to spin up systems and have multiple systems that are already pre-patched, I don't have to have downtime for the enterprise.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
There were a couple of operating systems, including CentOS, which my company looked at before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as it offered a strong support model. The consistency offered by the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) was also one of the other reasons why my company chose it over other tools.
What other advice do I have?
Though my company does not currently have a hybrid cloud environment with the tool, we are working on it since regulatory compliances in the banking sector require us to stay compliant. My company is not in a place where we can just jump into cloud infrastructure, but we do hope to do so in the future. Presently, the product is on an on-premises model.
As I am not required to deal with the developers in our company, I don't know if the product has helped centralize developments.
My company uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for containerization projects. The product has made dealing with containerization projects easy for my company since we get to use a lot of Kubernetes and Docker platforms that snap right into Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and works.
Considering the built-in security features offered by the tool for risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance, I prefer Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) over a lot of other products. Our company is like an Active Directory shop, so we are doing a lot of tying to it, which is a little bit disappointing, but it is just business. I like the security end of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I also like the way the file handling takes place along with its management part, so I have no issues with the tool.
Speaking about the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to keep our organization agile, I would say that it is something that will happen in the future as my company is a slow adopter. I am not really sure why it has been slow. My company does have a new organization that is really focusing on opening up new avenues so that we can actually be more agile and have the ability to move to things like OpenShift and having our containers offer more high availability while not having any downtime.
I don't use Red Hat Insights.
If I have to speak to a colleague who is looking at open-source cloud-based operating systems for Linux, I would say that CentOS or Fedora are good options since both products have had an association with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for a long time. I personally like and prefer CentOS.
I would not be able to comment on whether the Red Hat portfolio has affected our total cost of ownership across our enterprise landscape because we just spin them up and keep building them. My company was primarily an AIX house, using Solaris and a lot of Windows boxes from Windows. Right now, my company has gotten rid of the AIX and Solaris systems, and now we are down to about a 50-50 split when it comes to Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). There have been times when we have had more Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) boxes in our company over the ones from Windows. I can see that in the near future, my company is going to be more of a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) shop than an organization that has boxes from Windows.
In terms of the deployment model, I would say that my company has three data centers, mostly where VMware is used.
I rate the tool a ten 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.
Technology Operations Engineer III at a hospitality company with 10,001+ employees
We have a reliable OS for production, and I can't speak highly enough of their support and community
Pros and Cons
- "Their support is valuable. Whenever I had a problem, I could get on a phone call with somebody. I did not have to go to some random forum or send an email and wait forever. I could call somebody."
- "It does have a workstation option, but you rarely hear anything about it. I would love to see the workstation replace Windows. That is a stretch goal, but it is possible."
What is our primary use case?
The use case in my very early years was for dedicated servers for doing web applications.
How has it helped my organization?
We almost exclusively use Red Hat. The benefits boil down to the support. There is no problem getting support. Whenever we have an issue that we cannot solve, which does not happen often, we have somebody who is there either virtually or physically.
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-prem and on the cloud in a hybrid environment. We probably also have edge devices. I am not completely sure about that one. Having it in a hybrid cloud deployment has been no different than having it on-prem. Running it on-prem is just as good as running it on the cloud for us. It simply works.
I appreciate the dashboards that are available online. There has been a lot of feedback on the CVEs. The most recent one that came was probably related to Zutil. Red Hat made an announcement very quickly saying that if you are using only Red Hat features, you do not have to worry about it. It does not run on their operating system. Unless you are custom compiling, it does not work on their system. I greatly appreciate little things like that because they save us a lot of time. If Red Hat is simply saying that it is not a part of their repo, I do not have to look for it.
We use Red Hat Insights but not company-wide. It is one of those things that simply saves you time. I do not want to have myself or anyone on my team go out and check various things. That is the whole purpose of using Red Hat Satellite. The whole purpose of all different dashboards and these websites is to use what you have. Let it report out what you have and not continue to write scripts just to check things.
What is most valuable?
Their support is valuable. Whenever I had a problem, I could get on a phone call with somebody. I did not have to go to some random forum or send an email and wait forever. I could call somebody.
What needs improvement?
It does have a workstation option, but you rarely hear anything about it. I would love to see the workstation replace Windows. That is a stretch goal, but it is possible.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since version 4. It has been a while.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable as long as you do not do something stupid.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Red Hat specifically works hard to make it difficult to not be able to scale it into anything. The only thing that I do not see it being capable of, officially at least, are the IoT devices. Technically, it is possible to get it on those devices, but that is not something Red Hat is focusing on right now. From a scalability standpoint, it comes down to what makes a reasonable profit and what is a good return on investment while choosing how to scale and where to scale. Red Hat is doing it right so far.
How are customer service and support?
Prior to a few months ago, the support that we got from a TAM point of view was next to none. Now that I understand the scenario a little bit more, it was not because Red Hat was not doing its job or did not want to do more support. It was because of how the contracts aligned, and more importantly, who in our organization was handling those contracts. We had a recent change in our organization in terms of who is running what and who is handling what. When that change happened, the doors really burst open. Now that we have a different person he is working with, we are getting incredible support from our TAM. He is in communication with us on a very regular basis. While I have been here at Red Hat Summit, we have gone out to have meetings twice. I cannot speak highly enough. I would rate their support a ten out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
My current organization has pretty much always used Red Hat, specifically Red Hat Enterprise Linux. There are all sorts of flavors of Unix in our environment. Almost all of them are there because they are managed network devices.
We wanted to stay close to Red Hat Enterprise Linux simply because of the mentality of the business. We have got some people who have been around for 20 years. Things such as switching from YUM update to APT update are easy. People can usually change from one to another pretty quickly, but some of the other commands that you are used to running in Red Hat Enterprise Linux are slightly different for different versions of Unix. It did not make sense.
I have used a lot of different variants through the years. I could be running Raspberry Pi, or I could be using Ubuntu to do a job but not for the production environment. I do not waste my time anymore. I know what works and where support is.
How was the initial setup?
Our setup is a bit of a hybrid. We are streamlining a lot of things and trying to redesign how we are doing things. In terms of the cloud, we are 100% TerraForm. We are building out infrastructure as a code and TerraForm pipelines. On-prem, we have a Jenkins job that runs some TerraForm, which then runs some Ansible and then some Puppet. There is some cleaning up needed there.
Currently, we use all three major cloud providers: Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS. Each has its purpose.
The initial experience of deploying it at the current company was terrible, but it was not a Red Hat issue. It was an internalized issue that took a little bit of time to work out. After that, it was not a problem.
What about the implementation team?
We implement it on our own.
What was our ROI?
I have not run into a single person who knows about Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is not being helpful. You can get talking with somebody at Red Hat Summit about what you are doing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and they will be like, "I did that a couple of days ago. Did you run into this problem too?" There is a community. I am sure there are communities for other variants, but my return on investment is simply community and support. I cannot speak highly enough of these two.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would say, "Good Luck!" We looked at a lot of different options to potentially leave Red Hat simply because of the cost. We tried out CentOS. We tried out Rocky. There were even talks about trying out Ubuntu, but there was the hassle of changing all of our mentality and code to work with different systems. It just did not make sense. CentOS worked almost side by side with Red Hat, but certain things that we have specialized with Red Hat were not working on CentOS for some reason.
We chose not to use CentOS because we had a misunderstanding of what AppStream was in terms of end-of-life for CentOS. Rocky was ruled out pretty quickly simply because of a lack of understanding in terms of:
- Where does Rocky come from?
- How reliable is it?
- Where is the support?
Red Hat's support model trumps a lot of those other ideas. I tell people that even if they are working in a home lab environment, get a developer license and get a developer account with Red Hat. Use Red Hat because more and more businesses I work with simply use Red Hat. It is great to have Fedora on your laptop as a workstation. It is great to have CentOS as a workstation. That is because those are still a part of Red Hat. You can transition and use Red Hat for a company. I have not been a fan of Ubuntu and some of the other variants because of how easy it is for people to make changes to operating systems that are not fully backed or tested. In my opinion, you do not want to put production on it.
What other advice do I have?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not enabled us to centralize development. We are moving towards centralized development, but there are still so many different teams, so centralized development is not yet there.
We are partially using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. Within the next year, I hope to bring OpenShift in and replace AKS. I do not have a use case for the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Based on what I have seen here at Red Hat Summit, I have a lot of ideas spinning around in my head to make it happen, but I do not yet have anything around containerization.
Red Hat Insights provides vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, but we are currently not using that side of it. It helps in my limited sandbox environment, but of course, my sandbox is built up and torn down like crazy. It is valuable, but we do not have a great use case yet.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. I have been working with Unix systems for a while now. The first Unix system I touched was in 1992. There were so many variants that were striving to become well-known. You would hear all of these weird names. There were all of these weird animals and all of these different logos through the years. Even before 1992, there were a lot. As things progressed, you quickly saw different ones die out. I do not remember when I truly got onboarded with Red Hat. I know I started with version 4. It is one of those companies when you are looking for a name that sticks around and about which you do not have to question if they are going to be around for a while. You do not have to question that with Red Hat. You do not have to question that with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, whereas a lot of other variants do not even exist anymore, or they exist, but they have not been maintained longer than some people have been alive.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
System administrator at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Extensible integration enhances open-source projects while addressing hypervisor compatibility
Pros and Cons
- "Automation makes compliance a lot easier."
- "We have encountered compatibility issues with certain hypervisors, mainly with RHEL six hosts on the newer versions of FoxMox."
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution primarily for simulation and CAD solutions. It serves as the main use for our operating systems.
How has it helped my organization?
The openness of the operating system makes auditing a lot easier, plus the tools for auditing make that a lot easier to maintain.
Automation makes compliance a lot easier.
The knowledge gained from using the system completely makes troubleshooting easier and increases the knowledge pool in the company.
What is most valuable?
The extendibility of the solution and its openness, along with its integration with all of our other open-source projects, are highly valuable.
We appreciate that it is one of the few enterprise-enabled Linux operating systems we can use.
It is very extensible, which aids as our needs change.
What needs improvement?
We have encountered compatibility issues with certain hypervisors, mainly with Red Hat Enterprise Linux six hosts on the newer versions of FoxMox.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for over ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution has performed really well for our business-critical applications and is very stable. I have no issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is very extensible, adapting perfectly as our needs change.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is very helpful and insightful. I would rate it very well, approximately an eight on a scale of one to ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
What was our ROI?
The biggest return on investment is the knowledge gained by using the system. The access we have to the operating system increases user involvement and facilitates troubleshooting, thus expanding the company's knowledge pool.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing and licensing are reasonable.
What other advice do I have?
For non-business critical applications, a third-party Linux OS may suffice, however, for something running 24/7, it is advisable to go for stability and enterprise support.
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 does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Last updated: Oct 30, 2024
Flag as inappropriateSenior Solution Architect at Nuventure Connect
The lifecycle management features help us maintain compliance and keep the components updated
Pros and Cons
- "RHEL is the most reliable Linux flavor in terms of enterprise governance. I prefer it for its code stability, support, and integration. The lifecycle management features help us maintain compliance and keep the components updated."
- "I also want the co-pilot to provide more granular control and more features in the GUI, so we can have one configuration from the GUI itself. It would be helpful to have a feature similar to the one in Windows where we can manage all the net flows from one console in a single pane of glass and install it on-premises like an admin center. It would be great if Red Hat had some kind of admin center to manage all the RHEL boxes without using an additional product like Satellite or something, we could use the co-pilot on all the systems to monitor the dashboard."
How has it helped my organization?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux's role-based security model enables us to provide discretionary access levels to users based on their roles and their responsibilities. We can also assign access based on service level to maintain service-level accounts for any purpose. If we need to back up a Red Hat Enterprise Linux box, we can assign a role to access that box only on the backup level.
Red Hat Insights allows us to find vulnerabilities and conduct assessments from our central portal. It gives us insight into the compliance levels of different boxes and their licenses. Red Hat Insights helps us be proactive by giving us the details of recurring issues and vulnerabilities or zero-day threats. It automatically shows us what needs to be prioritized. It improves operations to have a single pane of glass for all your inventories and business. You can also implement automation and remedy most things from the cloud console. This is very helpful.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps us achieve security standards certification. Most of our customers require compliance with regulations and internal security policy also. We have to be compliant with the profile for each standard based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux profiles or OSCAP integration. Satellite helps us remedy and manage compliance issues in daily operations.
What is most valuable?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the most reliable Linux flavor in terms of enterprise governance. I prefer it for its code stability, support, and integration. The lifecycle management features help us maintain compliance and keep the components updated.
The built-in security features simplify risk reduction. For example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has built-in OSCAP profiles that we can select during implementation based on our industry and compliance needs. Using the OSCAP profile, we can minimize the effort needed to keep the software up to date. We also like the Red Hat Co-Pilot, which allows you to configure most things from the GUI.
We also have OpenShift, which enables elaborate, portable, and reliable ccontainerization. We use the System Roles feature when we have to disable root users and assign the system roles on the application level because some applications do not require root-level access or real group access. The System Role feature allows us to impose level controls and segmentation between the users. We can also automate security configurations to maintain consistency across systems over time.
What needs improvement?
I would like to use OSCAP profiles without the dependency on Red Hat Insights. If you install the OSCAP profiles from Red Hat Insights, I'm not sure if it is currently available in the cloud console. Most of the time, we manage compliance from Red Hat Satellite, but this feature could also be built into the console. Maybe it's not an issue price-wise most of the time, but it would be easier if we could use the same console and test-level capabilities.
I also want the co-pilot to provide more granular control and more features in the GUI, so we can have one configuration from the GUI itself. It would be helpful to have a feature similar to the one in Windows where we can manage all the net flows from one console in a single pane of glass and install it on-premises like an admin center. It would be great if Red Hat had some kind of admin center to manage all the Red Hat Enterprise Linux boxes without using an additional product like Satellite or something, we could use the co-pilot on all the systems to monitor the dashboard.
For how long have I used the solution?
We started with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 in 2015. Now, we are on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, so it has been around eight or nine years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a robust product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability depends on the computing capacity and architecture. It varies based on whether we are replicating boxes or putting the Red Hat Enterprise Linux images into containers. The tool we use for orchestration is also a factor.
How are customer service and support?
I rate Red Hat support 10 out 10. We are mostly dealing with Level 1 or Level 2 support, and we always get a prompt response. Remote support is also available, which is nice.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used some open-source Linux flavors that are now obsolete and CentOS. Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides excellent support for migrating from CentOS to Red Hat Enterprise Linux at any level, so kudos to Red Hat for that. There is a great tool that enables us to migrate an existing application without any changes, so we can convert CentOS boxes.
There are one or two commercial Linux flavors that can compete with Red Hat, but their based on different architectures. Red Hat has a large portfolio, including OpenShift and SQL automation, offering deep integration between these tools. I don't think there is a competing product that offers a comparable product portfolio because Red Hat is under the umbrella of IBM now and also provides a multi-cloud solution.
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment is straightforward. There's no problem. However, it also depends on what we want to achieve. Some of the options add a little complexity. It isn't very complicated, but it requires a different method. Overall, the general installation and configuration are effortless, and we don't have any issues. The initial installation can be done in 15-30 minutes, depending on the computing and storage capacity.
We have one administrator experienced in Red Hat Enterprise Linux and enterprise Linux for maintence. We prefer a certified person who can understand the data complexities and advanced configuration, but a technician doesn't need to be a specialist to conduct the installation.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing depends upon the customer's bill of materials and what the customers are planning. Sometimes, a reseller and vendor partners provide a better price. I recommended buying the Red Hat Virtual Data Center instead of buying the Red Hat Enterprise Linux standalone licenses if anyone just wants to run a workload in the cloud environment. Virtual Data Center is the most cost-efficient.
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux license has a one-time cost, but there is an ongoing subscription for support with various levels. The license is perpetual, but we pay annually for support. Red Hat's support license is robust. You get three levels of professional support plus community support. Our banking, finance, and telecom clients rely on Red Hat Enterprise Linux entirely for their production workloads, so they need to minimize downtime. There is no comparison between professional and open source. We can provide support for some of our clients and set up redundancy, so that's something we can consider when we're looking at licensing or support costs.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 out of 10. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is an affordable product and a great value. It is constantly evolving and adding capabilities. We can orchestrate a multi-cloud environment for Nutanix under Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's an excellent product for virtualization.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
IT Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees
The product is optimized for resource utilization, and patching is very streamlined and easy
Pros and Cons
- "The product is optimized for resource utilization."
- "All resources should be available on the website."
What is our primary use case?
I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for running applications and databases on them.
What is most valuable?
It has a smaller footprint, so it uses less storage. The product is optimized for resource utilization. Patching is very streamlined for the operating system compared to Windows. We prefer using Red Hat Enterprise Linux over Windows whenever we can. Patching is much easier, and it seems more mature. When we apply a patch, we're less likely to have problems after. It's more stable.
What needs improvement?
All resources should be available on the website.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for about three years.
How are customer service and support?
I rate the support a nine or nine and a half out of ten. I am not rating support a ten out of ten because if we were able to receive all of the resources that we could from the website, then we wouldn't need to reach out and contact support. It's a learning curve.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, we used CentOS. We have also used Oracle Linux, which is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux's kernel. Now, we're strictly trying to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We switched to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it provides great support.
The products are pretty similar. A lot of the implementations, commands, and updates are very similar. Overall, we've had a more positive experience using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We have a basic build routine when building new servers, updating, and installing add-ons. When we run those scripts, it seems like it's so much more streamlined with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It could be because we're converting everything to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
What other advice do I have?
We're exploring more automation features. Three years is still relatively new for an operating system for our department. As we explore more automation-rich features and tools and subsets of tools, we'll be able to utilize the solution better. Red Hat Enterprise Linux may be very good at it, but our knowledge and experience are still growing. We need to take a deeper dive into implementing automation.
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Microsoft Azure. We did not have concerns about using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud because we had spoken to other customers of Azure that had been running Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We can install Red Hat Enterprise Linux on our own, or we can use the custom-built Red Hat Enterprise Linux images available through Azure. It makes the deployment of a server much quicker and more efficient.
We have been migrating some workloads and applications from on-premise to Azure. However, we do not constantly move workloads back and forth between Azure. It's more of a one-way migration. We're trying to be less on-premise and more in the cloud. There's definitely a learning curve for the migration. There were some hiccups with learning how to do the migrations. We've done a handful of migrations so far, and each time, we learn from our previous experiences and mistakes. We use our lessons learned and have a better experience each time that we do a migration. It's getting smoother each time.
The knowledge base offered by the product is really good. There are a lot of resources available on the website. We have a direct contact for support, which we utilize on a regular basis. We have enterprise licenses, so we pay for support. We get support whenever we need it. I have been involved in Red Hat Enterprise Linux upgrades. It's pretty straightforward. We just convert from different Linux operating systems to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. My technical team has used Red Hat Insights, Image Builder, and Convert2RHEL.
We keep pretty close to the most current versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. There are many different versions of the product. Version 9 is the most current. We're trying to stay up with at least one or two versions close to the most current version to stay updated. We don't want to get to a version that would be at the end of its life.
The solution has helped us streamline and optimize our infrastructure for any applications or databases we run on a Linux operating system. They help us save on our physical resources because they're less demanding. Therefore, we don't have to spend as much money on a server that has a lot of CPU and a lot of memory. We can fit many more VMs on a single physical virtualization host because it's optimized. The support is great, and we can find quite a bit of information either directly through the Red Hat website or through the Red Hat community. We're able to do research on our own and find most of the information that we need. If we can't, support will assist us.
Overall, I rate the tool a ten out of ten.
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?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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