Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

As a teacher, I have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux for server-side applications and containerization. My experience encompasses various system administration tasks, including managing servers, directories, data storage, files, and other related elements.

While teaching my students about Red Hat, I share my knowledge of system administration tools. This prepares them for Linux work environments that use Red Hat, exposing them to these tools and their applications. This also strengthens my organization's position as a Red Hat Academy, enhancing our sector's expertise. Red Hat is a valuable tool for learning system administration due to its widespread use and versatility.

In any Linux operating system, the patches come through, whether it's through long-term support solutions or community support. It's rapid overall. So when it's there, it's immediate and there's option to install and pass those updates.

The web console is beneficial as it provides an alternative method of accessing the operating system through a web-based platform, making it a valuable tool.

The hybrid environment, a relatively new infrastructure for us, offers flexibility and options. While there's always room for improvement, I find it exciting to have the choice between on-premises and cloud solutions. Although I'm still learning the nuances of this technology, it's been a positive experience so far.

Reliability is the most valuable feature.

Any form of technology always has areas for improvement, and Red Hat is no exception. They continually strive to enhance their products, evident in the frequent releases of new versions and updates to their operating system. Given that there is no perfect operating system, further development will always be needed. To facilitate this process, Red Hat provides support and encourages community involvement to identify and implement solutions that enhance its operating system's overall functionality, effectiveness, and user experience.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for almost five years.

The initial deployment is complicated and requires up to two hours to complete.

While expensive, Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers efficiency and performance. Its commitment to ongoing improvements makes it a valuable resource for businesses seeking a reliable and cutting-edge operating system.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is eight out of ten.

Regarding challenges, I've attempted to replicate the Linux environment using Red Hat, combining virtual Red Hat clients with third-party platforms to emulate a real-time atmosphere. One major hurdle has been motivating students to understand and utilize the system for these purposes. However, I've consistently found ways to overcome this challenge by using virtual machines and engaging in group discussions to explore the system's capabilities. I strive to emulate the real-time environment using my own systems, demonstrating the potential benefits and encouraging students to visualize how the system works in practice.

We are doing image building. Our team focuses on the image of the platform and presenting it in a secure way for everybody to consume.

My organization had already been using it before I started, so I am not sure what benefits they got from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They were already a Red Hat shop when I started.

We do not utilize Red Hat Insights as much as we would like, but we know that it is there. It provides the data, and we can act on that data, but we do not use Red Hat Insights the way we should. However, it does tell us when things are critical and need to be patched. If something is on there and it is critical, we can at least see that it is patched. The alerts and targeted guidance from Red Hat Insights have not affected our uptime so far.

It is open source. Most of the features are already there for you. They make solutions for challenges that we do not even think about sometimes, but we may consume them later.

I have not put in many feature requests. They have mainly been around small things such as monitoring with Ceph. I cannot remember the name, but monitoring was needed for a specific function. It was a pretty important function, but there was no monitoring set up. It took some extra effort. That was the only feature I asked for. I asked them if they could set up a monitor to make sure that the system was healthy or working correctly.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for about five years. 

Its stability is fine. I have not seen too many issues with stability.

Its scalability is great. We can scale up or down.

I do not have any issues with the customer service or tech support. It is good. I would rate them a ten out of ten because they can usually resolve anything.

Positive

The deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is pretty simple. There are not so many issues.

We are using it on the cloud and on-prem. We are trying to get to Azure. We are not using it in a hybrid cloud environment. I know we are setting up OpenShift in Azure and on-prem.

We have been using TerraForm to create images and Ansible to make sure everything is fine. We have some things on Azure, but we are trying to make it easier for people to consume Azure. We are trying to get that automation together so that it is a lot easier if anybody wants to spin anything up in Azure. They have a container to use that is secure. All of our business tools are on it.

We just use Red Hat. We do not use any integrator or consultant.

Our team does not use a lot of containerization, but we probably will be doing that soon with VMware changes. We are trying to get more of the monolithic stuff down to containerized workloads. We will hopefully see some return on investment after we get our VMware stuff out and get more things containerized. We are working with the OpenShift team, and we will be able to see some ROI.

That has been mostly handled by Red Hat. As we are a Red Hat shop, we have a lot of people around that already.

We do not use the security features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. There are so many scanners out there. We do not use what is on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but we do set it up. They are at least available to consume. We do not use them because we have so many security compliance tools. As a bank, we have to use those for auditing and other things like that.

To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would say to get something that is close to Red Hat. Red Hat is killing a lot of the downstream stuff. All my Linux is Rocky Linux because it is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I would suggest getting something that is close to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so that if they or their company does not want to go for Red Hat, they would still have the same tooling and the same infrastructure.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. I have not seen a lot of issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I am overall satisfied with it.

We are using the full setup in Linux and use the enterprise edition. We're migrating a lot of things over. 

We like that it's open-source and fully secure. We've fully migrated to Linux, and we were able to move everything over from the Red Hat database.

Compared to earlier tools, we get more options, and it's very user-friendly. The patching, for example, is easier. It can also support many things. It took us about six months to realize the solution's full benefits.  

The solution is very user-friendly. 

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux scripting is very good. It is easy for us to access those parts in the Linux portion. 

The security is very good. It helps us to maintain overall security.

I have a Linux certification, however, they do have good documentation in order for users to get information about the product.

The management experience for patching is very good. We can do the patching through the portal. We can use it based on our own timing. If there isn't something in production, we can do the patching. The patching experience is very nice compared to what we had to deal with previously. For example, with Windows, the patching would happen whenever. We can control it via the portal, and it is very user-friendly now.

We only use the command line. We do not use the GUI. The graphical user interface is useful. However, we prefer to use the command line as we can do many more things. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has positively affected our uptime. It's very fast. If you have to do patching, and need to reboot, it doesn't take too much time to do that. It might only take one to two minutes. 

For the most part, everything looks fine. Everything is going smoothly. 

Right now, we need to get memory and CPU via the console. If it was available in the console so that we could adjust these two things, that would be ideal. 

I've used the solution for the last four years. 

The stability of the solution is fine. I'd rate it nine out of ten for stability. It's user-friendly and the downtime is low. It won't impact business.

The solution is not deployed across multiple locations. We have around 300 end users.

It is scalable. We can immigrate to servers and it won't impact the business. 

We know there are some issues, and if we come across some vulnerabilities, we'll work with support. If we get an error, we'll go to them and discuss the issues. We take advice from them on how to work through problems. 

Sometimes, we'll get some errors and we'll send them an email. Sometimes it takes too much time for them to respond. The support time could be better.

Neutral

We did previously use a different solution. 

I was not involved in the installation. I have not worked on the OS level and I'm not involved in the migration to the cloud.

We have eight to nine people on our team that may handle some maintenance tasks. If there are any issues, we can patch and fix them. We go through the portal to handle patching and maintenance. We'll check the system pre and post patching.

I'm not aware of the exact pricing of the solution. 

We did not evaluate other options. We've fully moved to Linux and used Red Hat Enterprise Linux to do this. 

I'm an end-user. 

We will be moving to the cloud only. I'm not directly involved in that. The main thing will be that soon everything will be in the cloud only. Currently, I work with the on-premises version only. It's on a VM right now. 

This is a good solution if you are handling migrations or your internal environment. It's user-friendly and you can connect with technical support easily. It's also very secure. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We predominantly use Red Hat CoreOS we use it to connect to different types of OpenShift clusters.  Whenever I work with RHEL, it's always been with the CLI.

Previously, when we were using other distributions, we weren't getting a lot of support for the operating system itself. However, Red Hat has mainly focused on the operating system, so we get more support. 

AWS has its own version of Linux for its instances. All these cloud providers provide more support for the infrastructure and services, but they don't focus on the operating system itself. But Red Hat, with its customer portal, provides better support if something goes down. That's what differentiates RHEL from other products.

One great thing about RHEL is that it has a big community of users. There's a huge community that uses CentOS. If you need some help or have a question online, you get more resources for RHEL compared to other products. 

It's a really good operating system by itself. It's more versatile, integrating with tools like Ansible for automation.

There are amazing resources online, and because we are an enterprise, we have enterprise support. We can always create a support case, and we have some resources to help. The knowledge offered by Red Hat is great.

Another feature I tried was RedHat Insights because they offer it for other RedHat products as well. I've used it for OpenShift. It was helpful. It provides a good, in-depth understanding of what's going on in the actual infrastructure. It gave us good insights into the level at which we can run the containers and if you can scale the infrastructure vertically or horizontally and how to manage it better.

There is room for improvement in integration with different cloud platforms. There should be better integration because right now, a lot of cloud platforms have their own versions of Linux, which runs better on them, and they have better integration with the services. RHEL is great, but RHEL is more of a generic form of what Red Hat provides.

I've been using RHEL for about four years now.

There were certain times when I encountered issues. There are certain problems with integrations. 

For example, we had an issue once where the operating system had issues accessing the data server on our VMware infrastructure. So we did have a couple of engineers help us out with that, but that's one area where it can improve. But that's nitpicking. 

It's been great so far, but that's one thing I would like to see that would make RHEL a little better product.

Positive

We prominently use RHEL, but we've also used Ubuntu. We also have used PCF. I use Ubuntu Xenial and have worked with Amazon Linux for a while.

One pro is that at the operating system layer, RHEL has better support from Red Hat, and if something goes down, I found many resources for troubleshooting online.

For example, we predominantly use Amazon Linux if I'm using AWS. There aren't a lot of resources if I run into an issue. RHEL has way more documentation on Linux. It has a bigger community, from an operating system perspective.

One of our deployment models is on-premise, and the other is on the cloud. It's a hybrid. We have a big footprint on the cloud.

We use Azure because a lot of resources are already deployed on it. We can use all the features I build on RHEL, but you can scale up the infrastructure, depending on the demand. That's the reason why we use Azure.

For the upgrade process, we mainly use Ansible automation. Whenever we want an upgrade, we just go into the Ansible Tower, change the version, and make sure we are applying that to the right environments so that there's no outage. 

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We primarily use it for OS purposes. 

It's very good for support compared to other operating systems. For decades, it's been providing good support and service. Even during implementation, there's a dedicated team to answer any queries. We are a very big company running critical applications and having that support is very important.

The patching tool is good. We're also introducing the possibility of automation.

The built-in security features are okay when it comes to simplifying risk reduction. It makes life easier, especially in regards to the lifecycle and what we need to install, et cetera. The features and tools help us to maintain security overall. 

It is easy to maintain compliance.

The portability of applications and containers is good. Now we are just starting with the containers and anything related to Kubernetes. 

Red Hat is always providing security on time. Any vulnerabilities are immediately dealt with to fill the gap and deal with the issue.

It's a good tool. I'm very confident with this product.

The system role features for automation security configurations, et cetera, for Ansible, we started using it. We are new in terms of automation. We'll start to use it heavily in the near future. Ansible is another great tool from Red Hat.

It enables us to maintain consistency across systems over time. My role is to maintain stability, even during upgrades and patches. So far, it's been a positive experience. We use the entire ecosystem around Red Hat.

We use Red Hat Insights. From a security perspective, we may stop using it. With Insight, if you have Red Hat Satellite, it gives you an in-depth view of everything. The only thing missing is the insights related to performance. We may not continue with it. We'll see if we'll push it and have everything on the cloud. 

In the area we are using it, we are satisfied.

Maybe in OpenShift, which is our next step, there can be more improvements with integration with Kubernetes. We're not experts there yet. 

Maybe it could have a better user experience and less coding. Reducing the effort for the end user or administrator would be ideal to make daily operation and maintenance easier. 

If they can make the integration with Ansible easier, that would be ideal.

They should offer more in terms of learning materials to make learning easier. 

They need to make things more affordable or accessible. 

The solution is stable. We barely have any issues with a server setup. So far, it's manageable. The biggest challenge is the criticality of releasing patches. When we have any critical alerts we action them. We tend to try to wait for the release of a stable version. 

How many people use the solution depends on the application. We likely have thousands of users. We do have some products that maybe only have a few or a few hundred. 

We've had no challenges with scaling. It can support any type of load within the data center. 

Support is excellent. 

Positive

We did use a different OS. I have used Unix in the past. I started with Unix 30 years ago. I've also used SUSE. Red Hat offered more service and support. 

I was involved in the deployment. Our team managed the process. It's pretty straightforward. We handle implementation, tuning, and patching. 

How long it takes to implement the product depends. We're trying to mitigate the time by automating with Ansible. We want to handle one VM or server in five or fewer minutes, however, it can take days. At this point, we can provision servers in a few minutes. It's becoming faster. 

We have a team of ten to run the infrastructure on the OS level. 

I'm not an expert on ROI. We are paying to use the solution, however, the utilization we get and the support both offer good value. 

The pricing model isn't something I deal with directly. The pricing is fair, especially compared to virtualization like VMware. We do use VMware and are thinking about moving sandboxes and testing over to Red Hat. This may end up being a big cost savings with our CAPEX and OPEX. 

From the price level, the cost is almost the same for us, if we look at Red Hat versus SUSE, however, we get a higher level of support with Red Hat. 

Red Hat was always our first choice. 

We're a Red Hat customer. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We use the solution majorly for JBoss, Apache, Java workload, and Comcast. We also use it for Apache Sattelite to do all the patching and database management. We use it for almost everything. We were a pure RHEL shop, up until recently. 

The most valuable feature is Satellite. Its consistency in patch upgradation is great. For the ten-year lifecycle, we have been able to rely on it and not worry if the patch will break. We do not need additional patching features since it covers everything.

The Modules feature is awesome but it could be even better.

We have been using the solution for 25 years.

The solution is stable. I have never remotely questioned its stability. The downtime is rare. It is usually a vendor's application issue unrelated to it. 

My company only has one complaint; we have been using it for more than seven years out of its ten-year lifespan and have yet to receive any version update. The drivers have become stale. We are trying to upgrade them manually. It would be nice if they had updated the drivers. If they do not update them, the solution will end soon. They should prevent it from crashing every time we try to update it. We are still rolling Ansible to automate some of the functions but, it is complicated to process with a vast sync of firmware and drivers.

The solution is scalable. I am a Satellite owner and we've had scaling issues with it. Those issues are mostly because my company didn't make it scalable in the right way.

They have their own expectations of how to make something highly available. And Satellite doesn't fit into that. 

I rate the solution's technical support as nine out of ten, as there is always room for improvement. I never had an issue with the support services. It is good and worth the value. 

I don't usually put up a ticket for every minor error. I am an expert and know the technicalities required to resolve the issues. So, whenever I contact them, I expect it to get somewhere. Because most of the time, the executives put more than one problem in the same ticket unrelated to another. It becomes more complex and confusing.

Positive

Red Hat Enterprise Linux generates a return on investment. We have everything on it. We have Windows servers for SharePoint and multiple cloud providers as well. In addition, we have OpenShift and Docker Enterprise, and some other open-source applications.

The solution is a good value for money. They keep adding up essential features to the specific subscription plan. I am also not a big proponent of top-level open-source applications as they do not provide support services. Whereas, with Red Hat, I can call them for queries and get answers immediately. In comparison, open source doesn't have that facility. Even if you hire a support vendor, they just give their opinions and try to help but they don't own the project.

At the end of the day, we have a 999.99% reliability of only 20 minutes a year of downtime with Red Hat. It is impossible to get that with open-source vendors as sometimes the applications might break if it doesn't notify about the changes on time. Conversely, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a ten-year life cycle assurance, so we don't have to worry much. Also, we are in a TAM program. Thus, we can call the support team immediately for any issue.

Our organization constantly evaluates other options, as Red Hat Enterprise Linux's cloud version doesn't offer new features. Other than that, we go back and forth using Centralized and Rocky Linux. We prefer the ones we don't have to pay for the licenses.

It has a strong security posture. I did a SELinux contract for my current company. Compared with open-source alternatives, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides better support services and reliability. Also, we are rolling out a new Ansible platform for insights. It gathers information about how many jobs we have, how long they take to complete, etc.

We need to manage vulnerabilities for a massive base of clients' systems. We don't use open-source apps for it like Red Hat. We have a third-party tool as we straddle different compliances. However, Red Hat is great about security announcements. I can call them anytime for an update as well. But it is challenging to work with the vendor for scanning machines. It does not know how to work with Red Hat packaging version numbers.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Our company uses one of the solution's varieties, mostly CentOS. We are restructuring and moving to the licensed version of RHEL and its derivatives. 

We use both RHEL 7 and 8 mostly in the cloud but also have a small data center where the solution is used on bare metal. Our team does a lot of AIML work where we set up instances to run simulations. 

We are moving a bit into Redshift because we do not have many staff members with containerization or Kubernetes experience. 

We run most things on the solution and its impact has been huge. We do have a few items on Ubuntu but question its use. Conceptually, Ubuntu is for amateurs and RHEL and CentOS are for professional organizations with hardened security. 

The YUM repository is valuable. We are in an interesting situation because we cannot have access to direct YUM or browser repositories so we have to copy to a Nexus server and pull from there. From what we have seen, pretty much everything is available right there. 

The solution's use of Kubernetes as an internal or core process on the system is brilliant. You eventually get to Kubernetes whether via Redshift or other tools and do not have to worry about your hardware because you deploy and push to the infrastructure without worry. 

The Cockpit makes it very easy to maintain systems because you do not have the overhead of running gooey but still have the interface. I am a Linux person and had issues with Windows because they required gooey on servers when it was not necessarily needed. 

The solution is moving away from CentOS and there are growing pains from the customer's perspective. It was purchased by IBM and they are for profit which everyone understands. There is a huge shake up right now because customers who run CentOS do not know what to do with all their systems. One of the reasons CentOS is used for government offices is its security feature that does not change because it occurs after route. The solution placed CentOS in the middle so government customers do not trust it. The way the rollout occurred caused a lot of mistrust with Red Hat. 

The SELinux is great but the Amazon security features cause issues. For example, we run RHEL and CentOS on AWS but they control the cloud and do not give us access to security features. We have to go through multiple layers to deploy an instance. Something that could be controlled with a firewall or blocking ports is now controlled by security groups inside AWS that we cannot access. 

I am newer to the solution but our company has been using it for a long time. 

I previously worked with an Intel customer who used a lot of CentOS, so I am aware in that sense. I am very familiar with the YAM and DNF. I have even played a bit with Rocky which is not specific to the solution. 

My work in systems and software supports one of our teams. 

Technical support staff are personable and quick to get to problems. Support is better than other vendors and I rate it a ten out of ten. 

Positive

I used to work for a government organization that was heavily into AWS. One of the reasons they embraced open source was because Oracle was too expensive. They put everything into AWS rather than open source, so they will soon be in the exact same position where everything is proprietary. 

The solution is easy to set up but sometimes there are issues with custom software deployments. For example, we want to use Ansible in RHEL 8 but the software is only supported in RHEL 7. We question whether we should install an old version of Python to get things to run. 

The solution is pretty easy to troubleshoot. 

Our organization is huge but I handle the setup for instances in our small data center.

I do not deal with money, but I see an ROI in terms of the engineers' skills because they can reapply them to multiple RHELs and incidents. 

The solution is moving away from its open source roots and licensing is a little bit of an issue. 

We use Ubuntu, but not much. 

Primarily, we are dedicated to RHEL and CentOS to the point that we do not see Windows as a viable server option. Microsoft's cloud is getting traction but it only makes sense if you have a solution meant for Windows. 

We also use Redshift and Cockpit. There is consistency across products so they are backward compatible with familiar operations. For example, you could use RHEL 8, YUM, or DNF because the syntaxes are identical.  

The solution is very into Ansible and we are trying to drive everything to it.

Look at the security features of the solution and compare them with other options. Open source is great, but at the end of the day, you need someone supporting the product. Another option is to just listen to groups that write on the internet, but you have to decide if you trust that along with their adversaries. 

Government offices have to worry about adversaries from other countries because the code they use is unclear. The idea of open source is to be able to evaluate the code but it is not clear if anyone actually reviews it. 

I rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to create directories and files and configure security settings for the Red Hat Certified System Administrator exam.

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.

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.

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.

I am currently using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I would rate the stability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux seven out of ten because of the lagging.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable.

The support team was helpful in addressing the lag in the cloud.

Neutral

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.

Installing Red Hat is easy. We download the file and run it in our labs.

One Red Hat license costs USD 131, which I find reasonable.

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.