Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We have over a thousand VMs or physical machines running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We have various applications, and we also run the OpenShift Container Platform on-prem, so we have a lot of containers. They are migrating a lot of apps from the mainframe over to Spring Boot type of app. It fits well in the container.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux gave us stability. There is somebody to call when we have issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has affected our system's uptime or security.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not yet enabled us to achieve security standards certification because we do not go after any of those. There are some products that we will have to do once we get there, but so far, we have not had to certify anything.

Red Hat Insights gives a lot of insights into known issues that we do not think about unless we call support. It tells us to proactively fix something.

I have used Image Builder and System Roles mainly for Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge. It builds out the OS tree build for us, which is very helpful. I do not like to do that myself.

I use the Red Hat console every now and then, but I do not use it heavily. I am old school.

The security updates and the support that comes along with it for applications are valuable.

Red Hat Insights was a nice feature to discover. I did not know about Ansible until probably eight years ago. I learned that language, and that was a void or something that was missing for over 25 years.

I like the SCAP Workbench interface that I can use to build some security around. I use Ansible to go out and do configuration management checks as well. Overall, I feel it is very easy to get the data I need.

We finally started doing Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge. That one definitely is an improvement. One piece that is missing is that we are required to use moby-engine, but currently, Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge forces Podman, so we have to work around it.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a decade in my current organization, but overall, I have been using Red Hat for over 25 years.

Early on, support was closer to a six, but now, it is a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have used them all back from the early nineties. I have used CentOS and others. The reasons for companies switching from those to Red Hat Enterprise Linux are that most of it is open source, and they get more product features. There is a market. If other companies are doing it, they tend to switch over. Containerization is a major reason as well.

I was involved in the OpenShift deployments. We are also directly involved in every version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are involved in the proof of concept. Its deployment is straightforward.

We used Red Hat with the OpenShift deployments to make sure we were doing it right, and then a lot of other things, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, we just did ourselves.

In terms of our upgrade and/or migration plans to stay current, we are upgrading everything to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, and we are going to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 already. We are making that a product feature. We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge for our remote deployments.

In terms of provisioning and patching, we deploy the base image, and then we use Ansible for the configuration behind it. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge, we use the OS builders to build out that same image. I use Kickstart to build the base image before the configuration.

I do not track that in the company, but I am sure we have seen an ROI.

It seems to be fair. It is not overpriced. I went to the simple model, and that makes it easier for us to deploy.

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.

We host Red Hat Enterprise Linux on our VMware Cloud and manage our customers' machines.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux machines are more stable than Windows machines.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps to avoid cloud vendor lock-in.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a reliable operating system that can run for long periods of time without any issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux should modernize its UI to make navigating the screens easier.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for around four years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be easily scaled on a virtual machine.

The technical support is good.

Positive

I was not involved in the initial deployment but it was straightforward. The deployment took around 15 minutes per machine.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten.

I recommend using Red Hat Enterprise Linux over an open-source OS because it offers better support.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux requires minimal maintenance.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a reliable solution and I recommend it to others.

I use the product mostly for Red Hat OpenShift. We use the solution mainly for stability and to have a fallback within the Red Hat community.

There was a worldwide security breach, and everybody needed to patch their servers. Since we were running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the product patched a lot of it. It took a lot of effort out of our hands.

It is a complete ecosystem. That is its main feature. If you take all the latest products, it just works together.

The tool is very, very close. It makes some things difficult. On the other hand, that is what makes the product so stable. The product lags a bit behind in the market. The things we are running are pretty old. Yet again, that is why it is stable. The solution doesn’t switch with every new thing there is. The solution does not need to change that because that's what makes it good.

The product could run more recent tools and packages in the repositories. However, it might bring instability because they are new and less tested. I looked at CentOS, which was close to Red Hat. It had a system working, but a few months later, it didn't work again because the packages and contracts had changed. We couldn’t communicate anymore. It’s not desirable with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We want stability. The price we pay for it is that we run on some older features.

I have been using the solution on and off for the last 15 years.

I have no complaints regarding the tool’s stability.

The product is scalable. We use the solution all the time. We use it in multiple locations. We have two physical data centers where we run it. We run it on a few 100 machines.

The technical support is very helpful.

Positive

I have used CentOS and Debian.

The deployment is straightforward. However, there’s a learning curve to understand it. The deployment would be difficult for a newcomer, but it’s normal. We use automation tools. The deployment takes us a few minutes because we use scripts.

The solution is deployed on the cloud. However, it’s an on-premise solution from the Dutch government. We do not have control over the physical servers. We just work on virtual machines. The license fees are paid by another government agency. We take machines, and then they bill us for it.

We used some integration for the deployment. That's why it was so fast. We use a base image as the setup, and then, on top of that, we install some extra things. It’s just about cloning an image and starting it.

The solution does require maintenance, but nothing more than the usual. We need a team of four people with Linux knowledge to maintain the solution.

The product is on the expensive side.

Very early in my career, we had evaluated SUSE Linux as an alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. SUSE has its own niche market now.

We are not working in a hybrid environment. I work with the Dutch government, and the regular cloud solutions are not sufficient because of data safety.

Moving workloads between the cloud and our data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not really an issue. The network connectivity is good. The data storage is fast enough. Cloud vendor lock-in is always a debatable discussion. Whatever we do, we always get vendor lock-in. We just choose what works for us at the moment.

The cost savings are mainly in time. We don't have to figure out everything if there's a priority-one issue. We can raise a ticket with the vendor and ask them to help us. It saves us costs. The savings are mostly in time because the product is not cheap. If you compare it to a free Linux OS, the total cost savings will be about the same. Our level of stress and effort is far lower. It's the real saving.

When my Red Hat Knowledgebase account works, it works fine. However, there are some issues at my company. I cannot log in sometimes. It's not Red Hat’s fault.

Look at what your priorities are. Do you want to switch fast, run the latest stuff, and be agile? Then, use open-source tools and contribute to that community. If you work for a big enterprise and mainly want stability, choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I’m very happy with the solution. If someone is a technical person, they must get some training and an in-depth technical course on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It will help them a lot. Although it is Linux, it is very different from other open-source Linux packages.

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

When I worked for an MSP, we had a lot of requirements for Linux servers. Any customer services that were deemed to be on Linux were on Red Hat 6 or 7. In fact, a good forty percent of our estate was on Red Hat 6 or 7.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features simplify risk management. The operating system is very secure, and we used tools like Puppet to further limit and lock down access with configuration files from a central location. This made Red Hat Enterprise Linux both more secure and easier to configure. The fact that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is open source means that there are a wide variety of tools available to help with security, and the lack of a user interface for some of these tools makes them even more secure.

Maintaining compliance is easy. We used another tool called Spacewalk to deploy patches and update RPMs. It was very easy to connect to a repository. We didn't have any problems with that either.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is beneficial for keeping our organization agile. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a lightweight operating system that can be deployed on a variety of hardware platforms, from small clusters to large industrial servers. This allows us to easily move applications and containers between different environments, which makes it easier to scale our infrastructure and respond to changing business needs.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has helped improve our organization's efficiency by allowing employees to use a leave service to work remotely. One of the benefits of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Linux distributions is that they are more stable and less likely to break than Windows. This makes it possible to automate many tasks, such as patching, which can save time and money. In contrast, Windows is more prone to errors and requires more manual intervention. As a result, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been a valuable tool for our organization.

The time to value with Red Hat Enterprise Linux was quick. It took us only a few months to half a year to realize that we didn't have to do so much tweaking with it. We could just let it run and do its own thing, configuring it once at most, and then leave it alone.

Red Hat enables us to achieve security standards and certifications.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps us build with confidence and ensures availability across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructures. We use PuTTY to connect to them. All of our SSH connectivity was locked down to be only from jump servers, so none of it was public-facing. This was a clustered approach, where users had to first connect to a Windows server and then use SSH or PuTTY to connect to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux server.

The ability to automate security configurations is very beneficial. Once we set it up, it can do its job very well without any further input from us. We found it easy to set up and configure, and it has made our lives a lot easier.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps to implement and manage security best practices with reduced overhead.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has made our lives a lot easier. It is one of those tools like Terraform that takes a lot of the time constraints away from us. This is because we can leave it to do its own thing, and we know that it will do what it is meant to do properly. I think this is because Red Hat Enterprise Linux is lightweight and has a single purpose. As a result, it only needs to be concerned with that purpose. For example, we only have one role for that server, and we are happy and content knowing that it will perform that role.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is lightweight and can be run on almost anything. It is a valuable product because it can do its job almost perfectly even with limited resources.

Although the price is reasonable, there is room for improvement in order to stand out from other open source solutions.

I am currently using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The stability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is extremely good. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is lightweight, so it does not consume a lot of resources. It can handle a variety of workloads, and we have never had any problems with servers crashing or other issues. The software is also easy to set up and configure, and it runs smoothly once it is up and running.

The system's scalability is good. We deployed it across multiple locations, departments, and other areas. I give scalability a nine out of ten.

The support team is very helpful and knowledgeable about the product. They knew what they were doing and were able to resolve any issues I had very quickly.

Positive

We previously used CentOS. We still have Windows servers, and they can be a bit of a headache. However, we have since moved from CentOS to Route 6 and 7, and we found that this improved things a bit.

We switched because we had a better partnership with Red Hat themselves.

The initial setup is straightforward. We used Terraform to make it even simpler, but I don't think it was complex, to begin with. Deployment for one server takes a couple of hours. If we're just looking at a single server, or if we're building out a small cluster, deployment may take a day or two.

From a technical user perspective, we have seen a return on investment in terms of efficiency. This is because we can now set up a server and let it do what it needs to do without having to babysit it with patching, updates, and upgrades. This frees up time for engineers to work on other tasks, such as developing new features or fixing bugs.

The price is reasonable. I think it's a good value for what it is. It's not overpriced or extortionate. If it's something that's right for our environment, our infrastructure, and other factors, I think it's definitely worth considering. I don't think the price is a major concern.

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten.

I think open source software is generally cheaper than Red Hat. However, I don't think that cheaper software is always better. And I don't think that Red Hat is necessarily better than open source just because it costs more. It really depends on our specific needs. If we're comparing Red Hat to an open source equivalent, I would say that Red Hat would probably be a better fit for us. This is because Red Hat offers support, a back-end, and a team of experts who can help us if we need it. With open-source software, we're often on our own and have to figure issues out on our own. With Red Hat, we have the peace of mind of knowing that we can get help if we need it.

We have Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployed across multiple contracts and multiple data centers. It was not on the cloud; it was all on-premises. However, we were able to deploy it across multiple data centers, multiple customers, and multiple departments. This flexibility was a major advantage.

We used Red Hat Enterprise Linux to patch and update the system, including drivers, the OS itself, and security updates. We also monitored disk space usage and swap usage, but this was not too time-consuming. We had a team of three or four people to rotate tasks, so no one person was stuck on the same thing all the time.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a good product. It has a good ecosystem and support. It is lightweight and does what we need it to do. It is a good alternative to Windows for lightweight containers or servers. It is also good for specific roles.

The operating system is a great way to learn about Linux. While some people will always choose Windows, it is not always the best answer. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is more stable and less resource-intensive than Windows, and it is also more trustworthy. This makes it a good choice for environments where reliability and security are important.

I worked with different organizations. So, the use case varies from organization to organization. Right now, some of the teams are using it for applications like BI, and then there are a few others that are using it for Websphere, middleware, etc.

In terms of the version, most of them are on 7.9, but there are a few on 8.2 and 8.4 as well.

It enables us to achieve security compliance. Our security team is quite happy, especially in terms of patching up our servers, etc. It's compliant with our security requirements. With Windows updates, sometimes, there could be errors and the blue screen issue, and it could become hectic for the applications as well. Our security teams struggled a bit to update Windows, but when it comes to Linux, they are quite comfortable because they know that things will go smoothly.

I'm quite new to this organization, but I know that there has been improvement in terms of performance. We're using Red Hat Linux on Power Systems, which is quite different from the Intel platform. So, admins are much happier, and they are using it quite well now. Previously, we were using Windows for our applications, but now, we have made Linux mandatory for being open source and not bound to Windows. Things can be complicated on Windows. Especially when we're installing it, there are a lot of things, such as registries, but Linux is easier for admins. There is DVS as well.

When I worked in the banking sector, the most important part was user administration where you need to keep things under control for a specific user. The auditor usually looks for an agent or something like that, and it has been quite easy to manage things from that perspective. Things are more manageable now than in the past.

Windows operating system is used everywhere. You will find it everywhere, and every user is able to use Windows. If a user is using an operating system from the start, it becomes easier for them to use it when they come to a professional environment. That's an area in which I believe they need to put in extra effort, especially for the students. Currently, for their final projects, most students use Windows, and this is an area where Red Hat needs to put in an effort. They need to give some training to the students so that when they come to the professional environment, they're already used to it. It would then become easier for them to use it in a professional environment.

I'm also using IBM AIX, which supports a tool called Smitty. You just put Smitty, and you can do anything. At the backend, the command will run automatically. It is not exactly like a GUI, but you just give the input and it will give you the output. That is something that Red Hat should work on. That would be an added advantage with Red Hat.

It has been 12 or 13 years.

It is very stable.

We are mostly using VMware and Power Systems. Scalability-wise, they are always the best. We can upgrade to get all the resources on the fly. We never faced any issues. However, if you didn't add the required parameters on your profile on VMware or the Power System, then there is an issue, but that's not related to the OS. That's related to virtualization.

Application-wise, there are multiple teams that are using these systems. We have the database team, the middleware team, the MQ team, etc. There are also system admins. The system admins are the ones who are deploying it, but the owners of the system are different.

We have plans to increase its usage. Two years ago, we had only 60 or 70 servers of Red Hat, but now, we have 400 to 500 servers. Its usage is always increasing. After a year or two, we might end up with about 1000 servers.

We have contacted them a few times. We did ask the support team to get in when the cluster got stuck and let us know what's the issue and what's the solution. Whenever I have asked for support, they have provided the best support. I always count them as the best. We have never faced an issue with them. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

We had Windows. The stability was the reason for switching to Red Hat. The stability of Windows varies, but Linux is quite stable now. That was the main part they were looking for.

We are very comfortable with using Linux. We have been using it for 10 to 15 years, and we can't switch to Windows. We can't use Windows even on our laptops. We are not used to using a mouse and GUI. The command prompt is much better for us.

We also use AIX because we have AIX infrastructure, but a few of the applications don't work on AIX, whereas they work with Red Hat Linux. That gives Linux an advantage. So, we use Linux on Power Systems, rather than AIX.

We have been working with different operating systems, and we also know most of the technical requirements, so it is easy for us. Usually, the OS installation takes a maximum of 25 minutes. If you are making extra file systems, such as for Oracle, it takes 10 to 15 minutes extra. A desktop or a single file system doesn't require much time. We already have scripts. We just run the scripts and everything is done by the scripts. Previously, it used to take two or three hours, but now, things have changed, and we're making life easier.

We deploy it ourselves. We don't ask other vendors to deploy it for us. In terms of maintenance, we have already been updating our maintenance contracts, especially the support contract. There are some old systems running in our environment, and we are in the process of upgrading those from version 6.9. We already have the required support.

There are four people on the team, but for Linux especially, there are only two people. We're easily managing 500 to 600 servers for Red Hat.

When you are running your infrastructure on this, you can always find some discounts with local support, etc. There are always some discounts to match your budget. It is definitely affordable. 

When it comes to virtualization, there are different factors. There is not only Red Hat. There is also IBM, VMware, etc. The third-party vendors always manage to come up with a good offer. Our company can't say no to that, and it works out fine.

We also have IBM AIX, and when you compare these two, there's a huge difference because IBM AIX's support is quite higher than Red Hat's.

To anyone interested in using Red Hat for the first time, I would definitely advise starting with the GUI because now, the GUI option is quite good, and you can do all the things. After that, you can slowly start moving to CMD. For learning, there are a lot of resources available online, such as YouTube and LinkedIn Learning, whereas Red Hat Academy is quite expensive.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using this solution is that when you're using the command line, you need to be extra careful. That's because when using the command line, a single slash can make a huge difference. That's what I learned at the start of my career.

I started with Red Hat Version 5. Now they have version 9, which I haven't used, but if I just consider the evolution from version 5 to 8, 8.2, or 8.4, there has been a huge difference because, at that time, people were scared of using Linux, but now, things are different. There has been a revolution in terms of OS. A lot of things are being changed, but in terms of the things that we do, for us, it is the same because we are doing system administration. As a system admin, there is nothing different for us. We are doing the same things again and again because the applications require the addition of storage.

There is also a change in terms of security features. If I compare the old versions with the new versions, in old versions, adding any exception in the host firewall was a real task, but now, things have either become smooth, or we have gotten used to it. Overall, for me, things have become easier. They are getting more and more secure, but with the vulnerabilities and the assessments that have been done, we need to keep updating. Now, everything has caught up with the latest security required in the market.

In our environment, we're using virtual servers. There are no physical ones. We are shifting to containers in my current organization. Most of the applications we are using are containerized, and it has been easy for us to manage those applications. However, we also require some in-built applications, and for that, a change in people's mindset is required. It's not about the OS; it's about the people who do the development. It is becoming a bit hard for them because they were using a different platform previously, and now, they need to move to the Linux platform. It is a little bit different for them.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. When comparing it with AIX, AIX is a bit easier in terms of use and it also has the Smitty tool.

I am still working with Red Hat. I work with other Red Hat products as well, mainly with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and OpenShift, and I also use Red Hat JBoss, but JBoss is now deprecated. We are moving our applications to OpenShift. I would not improve anything because we are using RHEL mainly for system functions, virtualization of system virtual machines, some system parts of OpenShift for control plane and infrastructure nodes, and some technical virtual machines such as HAProxy, and we are satisfied with it.

I find the most valuable feature to be stability, as it is important for me, and we have all the functionality that we need because we are using mainly the KVM for running the virtual machines, along with other packages that are part of the operating system, such as HAProxy, Nginx, or other modules.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very good; not only is the knowledge base excellent, but also the documents and the reported issues along with solutions on their website are very helpful.

The technical support could be improved to be quicker and of higher quality. For me, it is better when I can speak in my language, in Czech, and sometimes I need to discuss it with someone who does not speak Czech. However, I understand this is difficult; to have the support only in Czech for such a company as Red Hat is challenging.

I have been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for several years, maybe longer than 15 years.

We are using mainly the command line interface, and we do not see any issues regarding the interface or scalability.

I am satisfied with the technical support provided by Red Hat. I would rate their technical support as nine out of ten.

I think it is easy to deploy it in our system; however, it might be difficult for me to answer all of the questions because I am not the only one who works with it. We are a team of several technical people, and I am the team leader, so maybe they would have more information.

I have not seen any return on investment.

I find the pricing reasonable.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as a product a 10 because I do not know about any issues or problems.

Our containerized workloads utilize Docker and Kubernetes and run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux to support Final Shell operations.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps to partially centralize our development.

The primary advantage of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerized workloads is the robust support it offers in case of any issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has worked well for our business critical applications.

The built-in security features are great.

One of the most significant advantages is having Red Hat behind us. If we encounter problems, we can always call them for assistance, so we are not alone with our problems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps reduce our TCO.

The support from Red Hat is valuable. Having Red Hat behind us provides reassurance, and they deny unauthorized applications the ability to perform actions they shouldn't.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's SELinux can be challenging to manage and troubleshoot, often causing frustration. While we've resolved these issues, improvements to SELinux would be greatly appreciated. Though not yet explored, Red Hat Insights could potentially aid in resolving broader Linux problems.

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

We have yet to encounter problems related to Red Hat.

We install a new server if needed, and it works seamlessly.

Red Hat provides proactive support, including monthly check-ins and arranging calls to address any issues that may arise.

Positive

We do not have any other realistic options besides Red Hat.

The greatest return on investment lies in the platform's user-friendliness. Red Hat seamlessly manages all aspects of versioning and security, eliminating the need for my intervention.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten.

If your budget allows, I recommend testing Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's quite easy to install, with Red Hat providing a comprehensive setup that eliminates configuration concerns.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for just about everything in my company. Our use cases stem from three-tier applications up through cloud deployments, Kubernetes, containers, etc. Prior to this, I worked in an enterprise as a Linux engineer.

Being able to onboard faster is definitely an advantage to other Linux systems. In the enterprise, we had an onshore and offshore model. Our offshore model was hard to get onboarded into Linux, even if they said they had Linux experience. There is a big difference between managing one or two systems in your basement to managing a fleet of Linux systems, and that does not always translate over. Having a Linux system that has a cockpit with it where you can give someone a GUI, even though the engineers do not really use it, helps onboard new people into the enterprise, into their jobs, and into their roles a lot faster.

We have a lot of really smart people. They are constantly figuring out ways to do things better and faster with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The openness of it and the ability to create whatever we want to create or have to create to make our actual job easier has given our operations people more time to focus on the things they need to focus on, and not the nitty-gritty of the operating system. Tuning becomes super easy. It is scriptable. It is easy to automate. That gives them all the time back in their day to be able to go solve cool problems and not infrastructure problems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. All of our developers get their own developer environment, and that is all based on containers and some version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It depends on what they are at and what they are doing. So, we build and give it to them. They are up and running, and they just go. We have some legacy guys who are still helping our customers with older versions. Those people exist. I talked to someone earlier who still has a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 deployment out there.

When it comes to security and compliance, I like firewalld to do things at the host level and to complement what we are doing out in the enterprise with next-gen firewalls and things like that. I have had SELinux enabled on my systems and in my enterprises since it was available. It was a little bit of a learning curve, but it has helped to keep our systems as secure as possible. It complements well with what security groups are doing for the rest of the enterprise.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is great for keeping our organization agile. It is fantastic. We can run them on-prem. We can run them in the cloud. We can move them wherever we need them at the time. If something has to go to the edge for any reason, such as a bandwidth issue or an on-prem issue in the data center, we can push those workloads out. We could push all those containers to where they need to run and when we need to run them. It is super easy to do.

I have not used Red Hat Insights for long, but when I was a Red Hat Insights user, it was the first place I stopped to see what was going on and be able to quickly address and fix issues that Red Hat Insights found.

Red Hat Insights provided us with vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance. In terms of their effect on our uptime, we were able to plan our maintenance windows around what we were seeing in Red Hat Insights. We had the visibility and the ability to go in and plan things out. We could plan what needs to be done and then make that change and say, "This is what we are doing. Here is the playbook for it. We are going to run this in tonight's maintenance window." That prevented us from having to take machines down during the day because we found something critical at that time.

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that are most valuable to me, both in the enterprise and now as a partner, are the enterprise features. We are able to have a Linux system that is open-source and that allows us to do domain trust IBM and all that fun stuff. We have a good solid enterprise Linux.

It is not broken. Linux is Linux. It has been since Torvalds created the kernel back in version one of the kernel. We have added more features. More things have come to Linux and kernel. All the AI stuff is a bunch of buzzwords. In the keynote today at the Red Hat summit, Chris Wright talked about lightspeed coming to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. What do we need that for? What are we doing with AI? Just the stability of it is fine. If anything cool comes out, I will be the first to check it out. It is a stable platform. It is a workhorse, and that is how we use it.

However, there should be training materials for new enterprises that do not cost an arm and a leg. Red Hat training is phenomenal, but it is expensive. There has to be a better way to onboard new engineers into Linux to really and truly compete with Microsoft. Microsoft is just easy. Everyone uses it. You have to use it in school, and you have to use it everywhere. From an onboarding perspective, we can improve and have an affordable training solution for someone who might not want to be an RHCE or an RHCA but still needs to do their job. It is not Linux's fault. It is what it is. It is a workhorse. It does its thing, but we can do better to enable customers to utilize Linux better.

I have been using it since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. It has been about 20 years.

It is super stable. When Red Hat comes out with lightspeed or integrates SELinux, there are no huge rollbacks. Once it makes it downstream in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you know that is going to work. Everything has bugs, and we get that, but we know it is going to work. We know that nothing terrible is going to happen to our production environment, so stability is fantastic.

We can roll out more machines if we need more machines. We pull machines back if we do not need them anymore. One of the things that is lacking is that currently, there is no way to have ephemeral Linux instances for compliance month or your audit month. If you have to bring up a hundred machines, you have to pay for that upfront. That might be changing now, but in terms of scalability, that is a detriment to how smaller organizations can operate. Not everyone can absorb that cost. It is very scalable, but the pricing is a little prohibitive for scalability.

Their support is awesome. Their TAMs are awesome. The technical support that you get is awesome. There is the ability to attach yourself to bigger customers. When you are a small enterprise and you have an issue, you sometimes filter to the bottom of that list because there are other way-bigger customers who are way louder than some of the smaller ones. Being able to talk to your team and ask how to get a problem fixed is phenomenal. They are able to look at the backend and go, "Oh, there is a large telco that is having the same problem. I am going to add you to that one." From a customer service standpoint and tech support specifically, engineering has been fantastic.

The ability to talk to the people out in the community who work for Red Hat and maintain all of that, from the open-source side and the closed-source side, is amazing. A lot of people do not realize that they can jump on Slack or other platforms, and they can talk to the guys who are responsible for it and figure out what is going on. Sometimes, they ask to open a case, and other times, they say that they know and they are fixing it. Having that accessibility is amazing. You cannot call Microsoft and ask them to let you talk to the engineer who made X, Y, or Z.

Positive

I have been using Red Hat for 25 years.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux everywhere. We are using it on-prem. We call it the fourth cloud, so we have our own cloud like every enterprise does. They might realize that or not. We are using it everywhere. We have it at the edge, in the cloud, on-prem, and hybrid. It is the whole nine yards.

Our deployment strategy is to make it work and get it out there fast. We use all three cloud providers: GCP, Azure, and AWS.

Its deployment is super easy. Once you know what you need, rolling out Red Hat Enterprise Linux is super simple. You just go and repeat until you need to change something and then you change it.

We are using OpenShift to deploy Linux containers for a virtualization competitor migration. We are using it to migrate workloads from that vendor to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so we have Linux running in containers to do their virtualization. We are running Red Hat Enterprise Linux containers as well for some workloads, but for the bootable container aspects of it, we essentially have a VM. This is how we use it there, and then everything else is pure containerization. It is not Red Hat Enterprise Linux-specific.

We take care of the deployment for customers. 

When I was in the enterprise, we did not take external help. We did all of that in-house.

We have seen an ROI but not specifically with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the workhorse. Everything else that supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux is where you get your ROI. When you take Ansible, you start automating all of your configurations. You take Insights, and you are getting those playbooks to remediate security issues and all that fun stuff. That is where you get a return on your investment. That is where you see your engineering dollars go down and they can focus on other aspects of the business. That is not specific to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is the whole ecosystem.

I have had sales folks who have been transparent with the pricing, and then I have had other ones who were not as great. Most of those ones that were not as great are not working for Red Hat anymore.

From a pricing perspective, there is supportability. What you get with that support is the ability to open a case before you do something. You can tell them that you are going to be upgrading your Satellite system or all Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems and that you need a case open. They open a case, and then when the day comes, they are there. They are ready, and they know what is going on. The price point for that is phenomenal because you are paying for support. From a pricing perspective, it is on point. It is definitely a value-add, and it is extremely transparent from a customer standpoint.

I have evaluated other solutions. Manageability is the main difference. I have successfully ripped out other solutions in enterprises that I went to and replaced them with Red Hat. They had large fleets and no centralized management. When you come to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you have the Red Hat Satellite server. You have Red Hat Insights. You have all of those things that help you manage large fleets and a large number of Linux machines. When you evaluate other solutions, they have some centralized management now, but that was not common previously. It is kind of a hodgepodge. They are stitched together with all these other solutions, but it does not make sense. In one case, they jammed Linux into their management platform used to manage databases, and it did not work. How do you manage a thousand machines on some busted piece of management software?

If a colleague is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, they should go for something based on the use case. They have to look at what they are trying to do and what they want to do. They can get away with Fedora, for instance, but the question for me always comes down to supportability. Do they want to be able to call someone and say, "This is broken. Help. Hurry," or do they have the skills in-house to do that? Most companies do not have those skills. They have one or two very good engineers, but they cannot fix everything at the same time. If they want portability, then they should not look somewhere else. They should go to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because they have the Red Hat name behind it.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. There is always room for improvement in a product. Tens are unicorns. No one gets a ten. Maybe if Jesus made an operating system, he would get a ten.