Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We are currently in the midst of a POC phase with a standalone cluster. This cluster consists of both coordinator and worker nodes, with a metadata store for storing various metadata. The entire setup is deployed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, and we have established a connection to the OpenShift UI.

While using it, we encountered far fewer complexities, and the entire process is much smoother and streamlined. For patching purposes, we simply need to communicate with our system administrator. They take care of the patching process, so we don't have to get involved and we can easily connect to the artifact repository and download the necessary artifacts to install in our system. 

We have a set of JSON files containing YAML configurations where all the required image details are documented and this setup makes it very straightforward for us.As for the Web Console, if you're talking about the user interface for tasks like creating ports, deploying applications, managing secrets, and other functions, I haven't encountered any significant issues. 

The process is generally straightforward and quick, taking just a few minutes. OpenShift offers two types of interfaces: one where you can edit YAML files for more advanced customization, and the other where you can use forms for faster deployment, though with fewer features.

Continuous improvement is essential to enhance user experiences and address evolving needs.

I have been working with it for approximately six months.

Our experience with its customer support is very good. Whenever we encounter any issues, we receive prompt and comprehensive assistance. There's no need to wait or take any additional steps to get the help we require, which is highly appreciated. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

In the past, our work primarily involved Hadoop, and we also dealt with Solid Cloud for security and other purposes, but we found that this setup was slow and not open source. On the other hand, the DLP solution we're currently using is not only cost-effective but also significantly faster. 

I also used a Linux browser, specifically the KCL browser which required me to go through the process of installing packages and various components, while in the current setup, everything is seamlessly connected. We simply use the OC command with a private key to connect to OpenShift. There are no extra or additional steps required, making the whole process exceptionally fast and efficient. It's quite remarkable and makes the workflow truly hassle-free.

The initial setup was easy.

The deployment process is straightforward. I simply had to deploy the images using OC commands, and the process of connecting to OpenShift was remarkably fast and smooth.

Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

The SAP solution subscriptions have made things a lot easier because it's a standard build. 

The solutions were premium and standard, which were not the same. They've combined those into just one standard version. Only the support hours are different. That is fantastic for us. It makes life easier.

For the standard subscriptions, in the past, updating the OS could increase your downtime. With the production ones, it did not. It got our non-production and production out of sync. Now, they've combined that all into one. It's just the support hours that are different. They're fantastic.

We use the SAP solution subscriptions only for SAP, which are great. 

We also use Ansible. Ansible is a wonderful tool for automation. We use it to automate our patching. We use Ansible to get playbooks to take care of anything that's manual.

We were able to achieve our security standard certifications.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has affected our HA systems in a negative way. We're working through some of those issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 came up with a new feature that's like a MOM API in our cluster. It goes out into the AWS side and it needs to be adjusted. It does a retry that causes a cluster to failover pretty quickly, so we turned that feature off. That's something that could be improved. 

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a long time. It has been at least 10 to 15 years.

Support has been great. We get the right people for what we need.

Positive

The patching has been good, but we scan with Qualys all the time. It comes up with thousands of EIDs all the time, but putting on the patches seems to resolve that.

We're operating right now from 7.9 to 8.6. We have to go with the supported versions. We did qualify for RHEL 9. 

We used Unix in the past. We did have to come up with the SAP side. It was always Unix.

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

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for VMs and physical servers. 

The containerized platform will help us use ROSA. 

The tool's most valuable feature is OpenShift. We plan to move all our applications to microservices. The container platform is integrated into one.

I opened a few cases, and the tool's support responded quickly. 

Positive

Deployment is simple if you have been using the solution for a long time. However, it can be complex if you are new to it. 

We use RHEL 7 and RHEL 8 on on-premises. RHEL 8 is on the AWS. There is a security policy like CIS when deploying the solution. You can embed it on the image. I am not sure if there is HIPAA compliance yet. 

Migration from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9 is easy. Upgrade depends on the application that is running on each instance. You need to check if it is compatible with the kernel. We need to plan things before migrating to the latest version. We need to stay current to ensure compliance. We plan to move from RHEL 7 to RHEL 9 and use RHEL 8 and RHEL 9. 

We use Red Hat insights but do not utilize them. It helps with the remediation. I use Image Builder to build AWS and GCP images. I haven't deployed them. 

I rate the product a 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. 

The users utilize Red Hat Enterprise Linux for building, installing, and automating platforms. Additionally, we employ it as an installer for OpenShift clusters. Furthermore, there is a product called Red Hat High Availability Clustering and also JBoss. Occasionally, we also use it to build an Oracle RAC database.  

Red Hat Enterprise Linux simplifies risk reduction and compliance maintenance by utilizing bash scripts or Ansible to automate and streamline our tasks. Red Hat also offers a tool called Convert2RHEL, which simplifies the process of maintaining our products from Oracle, CentOS, and other vendors to Red Hat. This feature is truly remarkable.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is perfect for keeping our organization agile, especially when considering rootless containers or utilizing BotMan containers for enhanced security and performance. 

The Red Hat ecosystem enables the seamless integration of our products such as Ansible, Red Hat Virtualization, Red Hat Satellite, and OpenShift platform to fulfill tasks, thereby enhancing the efficiency of our organization.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps us reduce the time we spend on tedious tasks, and the large Red Hat community provides an easy way for us to maintain or fix errors and bugs. We were able to realize the benefits quickly.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to achieve security standard certification. I am a certified Red Hat System Administrator and Red Hat Engineer. The content of the certificate includes topics such as C Linux. This helps to make our organization more secure and stable and has an impact on our personnel sourcing.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux assists us in building with confidence and ensures availability across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. While there is a higher level of risk associated with using a public cloud for any product, private or virtualized environments offer greater security.

Red Hat Insights helps us prevent emergencies caused by security issues, noncompliant settings, and unpatched systems by enabling us to be more proactive in detecting and avoiding errors before they occur.

Red Hat Insights provides us with vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, especially when we register our host directly with Red Hat. It works perfectly because it utilizes machine learning, allowing us to monitor our logs and prevent unnecessary downtime.

Errata is the most valuable feature, which is supported by Red Hat. Errata is a list of corrected errors appended to a document in Red Hat, used for provisioning or batching our hosts. Moreover, its stability and security are noteworthy.

Ever since Red Hat acquired CentOS, the connection between the new CentOS Upstream and Red Hat Enterprise Linux has become unstable and requires improvement.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's ability to run containerized applications is not optimized and has room for improvement.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for three years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is extremely stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux can scale horizontally because it is in a virtualized environment. Vertical scaling depends on the deployment of the solution.

We have plans to increase our utilization of the solution.

The Red Hat technical support is excellent; critical issues are resolved promptly.

Positive

We also utilize other Linux operating systems depending on the use case. SUSE Linux Enterprise is more optimized for SAP products. When working with an Oracle database, it is preferable to use Oracle Linux.

The initial deployment was straightforward. The deployment time depends on two factors: the first factor is the infrastructure specs, and the second factor is what we are deploying with the operating system. For a minimal server, deployment takes five minutes. For a server with a graphical user interface, it can take up to 20 minutes.

The implementations are all completed in-house.

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is deployed in multiple environments, including pre-production, user acceptance testing, and system integration testing. Our Red Hat team, the development team, and another team utilize Red Hat Enterprise Linux within our organization.

Each processor architecture has a distinct version of the software.

The Red Hat exams are not solely based on security but also on performance. It is a challenging skill to grasp, but once learned, Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be flawless.

I highly recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux, particularly for production environments, due to its stability and enhanced security features.

The most valuable lesson I have learned using Red Hat Enterprise Linux is that the entire Red Hat ecosystem is perfect. All the open-source projects can work together, especially for DevOps or when implementing valid automation or containerized applications. If we need to deploy a centralized application, we will use OpenShift. And if we want to perform tasks on OpenShift, we will use Ansible as an automation platform. If we want to upgrade or manage our environment hosts in batches, we will use Red Hat Satellite. If we have applications and want to create an environment for them, we will use Red Hat JBoss. If we want to run high-availability clusters or high-performance computing clusters, we will turn to Red Hat High Availability Clustering. Working within the Red Hat ecosystem is perfect.

We're using the product to test operating system stability and verify that it runs on the hardware that Trenton Systems produces. If it passes testing, it becomes a validated operating system that we can sell for the server. We plan to offer Red Hat in the coming months to anyone purchasing systems from our company.

The solution’s security feature is the most valuable feature for my company. We offer OS to military or government agencies. For these sectors, security becomes one of the highest priorities, especially the ability to wipe everything out if anything becomes compromised. Red Hat does a great job at that.

The product should be made more accessible to someone who isn't experienced with Linux.

I have been using the solution for four to five months.

The solution is very stable. Compared to many other OSs we test for our company, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not crashed out on me or given me any problems. Anytime something goes wrong, after some research, I find that it's going wrong because I'm doing it wrong, not because the OS is fighting me in any way.

I haven't used support where I'm emailing or speaking to someone directly, but I've used a lot of the online support just by looking at different user guides, health guides, and things like that. Everything is really well documented. 

Sometimes there are posts about similar issues but with different remediation based on different circumstances. You might have the answer open in a tab, but you've got nine tabs open to find the right answer.

Positive

I have used Ubuntu, CentOS, openSUSE, and Mint. Red Hat Enterprise Linux definitely has an edge in security and the ability to control what the user at the end stage is doing. However, it is difficult to learn.

The licensing makes perfect sense for the number of features you get with the operating system.

We test Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, the latest version. We do backtesting for versions 7 and 8 as well. The product is very secure. It took me a while to wrap my head around the whole Subscription Manager system and understand how that worked. Even at a base level, it provides a much higher level of security and the ability to take remediation steps if things go wrong. You can shut the whole system down and bring it back from the ground up.

From the keynote, it looks like steps are already being taken to make the solution more accessible to any regular user. 

The product does a really fantastic job of reducing the overall risk to the user. If a user is doing something they’re not supposed to be doing, it's very easy for the system administrator to walk them out of doing it. As for maintaining compliance, if a user is only meant to have specific packs and is only meant to perform specific tasks, it's very, very easy to lock it into only being able to do that one specific thing.

Most people in IT enjoy a little learning. Everything I've done so far with Red Hat has been installing, setting up the account, getting everything registered, and then worrying about testing to validate. It is difficult to start with, but the more you learn about it, the easier it gets. The more I use it, the more capabilities I find within the system.

Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

It's pretty much everything that we have. We don't have a lot of Windows in our environment.

I've been using it a lot for several years. In the past, I ran a small web hosting company, and we used it for web servers, mail servers, FTP servers, and other things like that. After that, I was in casinos, and those were mostly Windows, but here, it's a lot of Linux, and it's all Red Hat. In my team, we just build it and make sure it keeps running, and the application teams do what they do.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-premises. We support the in-house server-based things, and we have another team that supports all the cloud-based things, so I don't have a lot of visibility into the cloud.

In terms of the version, we're trying to phase out version 7. We just brought in version 8. Our Satellite is a little bit behind. By the time that gets caught up, our version 8 should be a little bit more solid, and then they can start testing version 9.

I haven't been on this team for a very long time. I've only been on this team for a couple of years, and it was already in place. In the past, we used it to get the stability and the support that we needed because, for a web hosting company, it was either IIS or Apache, and that was back in the NT days, so obviously, we went with Apache. I find it a better server operating system, so that's what we use.

I don't use it in a hybrid cloud environment, but my organization does. I like its built-in security features when it comes to simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance. All the firewall features and iptables have been fine for me. SELinux has been great for me. With the hosting that we used to do, SELinux was great because we had to share files with customers. It made it easy to make sure that files stayed secure and only changed by whoever needed to touch them.

I just use it. I'm strictly into command lines, and they just do what I need them to do, and I know how to use them. Everything is just stable and works well. 

It works fine for me, and it does what I need already. It does everything I needed to do, and it has for so many years. The only change that stumped me was the networking in version 9. I preferred the ifconfig way of doing things, but the system changes of it have grown on me. I preferred the ifconfig way because of familiarity. I knew how to manipulate things. I knew how to get things running and stay running and script ways to keep them running and notify me if the thing went wrong. My only gripe has been the networking change and the inability to use ifconfig anymore. I talked to some people, and they did point out that it's good if you're moving from one environment to another environment—like a laptop, but for servers, I don't need that. I just put my config file where I can find it and make the changes that I need.

I've been in this organization for a couple of years, but I've been using Red Hat since version 3. It has been a long time.

The stability has been pretty great. There are some things that we're still working on, but once we solve them, I know they'll remain solved.

Scalability has been great too because when we need more, we just add more, and we're good.

They've been great. I've worked with them a lot lately. They've been a ten out of ten. They're always there for us, and they answer us quickly.

Positive

I've personally used everything from Slackware to OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Red Hat, Fedora, and Ubuntu. I've used everything.

I like the way that everything is predictable with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You know what you're getting. You know where everything is, and you know that you can find support if you need it. When we're upgrading or if we're adding something, I always know where I could find what I need to find.

I would think that we have seen an ROI. Our licensing has been very fair, but I don't have a lot of visibility into that.

I like my developer account. The free sixteen licenses that they give with the developer account are great because that gives me the ability to keep using it at home instead of trying CentOS or something like that. Once CentOS went away or changed, I had the ability to just make a developer account and spin up my entire lab in Red Hat, which made it better anyway because that's what we use at work, and now I have a one-to-one instead of a clone-to-one.

I've been trying to find a reason to use containers, but I just can't. I know our company uses it a lot, and they love it. They love the ability to shift things around and bring down servers when they want, and all of that, but for my own use cases, I haven't had a reason.

Overall, I'd rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. Everything is great.

I am an administrator for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a hybrid environment running off of on-prem servers and also AWS. 

I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a variety of purposes. For example, we use it in cloud control systems at our factories. We also use it for test systems, data acquisition, databases, and web services.

The biggest problem we were trying to solve by implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux was scalability. I have found that since implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we get a lot more value for our money from our hardware. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has also increased our utilization of Windows as a solution.

I am not the one who moves workflows between the cloud and our data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. However, we have tested it and I believe it is seamless. It just works. This is one of our disaster recovery methods. We will have images, and we use Veeam for this. Veeam actually takes the image we have and moves it to the cloud. We then fired it up and did not have any problems.

The most valuable feature is the reliability of Red Hat's support.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux analytics are cryptic. While it is user-friendly, it is also very picky about who it takes for a user. It is rock solid, but it can be difficult to find things in there. Google is probably the best way to find information, but solving a problem can be difficult if we don't know what flags or permissions we need. We need more transparency or ease of use.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable.

I can always get a hold of someone when I call, and they always resolve my issue. I only have to call them once or twice a year, because things just work.

Positive

I have used Fedora and Oracle Linux. I have some systems that run CentOS. 

Our organization requires us to use different solutions. We have had instances where products were developed on Oracle Linux. These products are medical, and switching to a different platform is not a simple task. I am encouraging the organization to switch everything to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because, although Oracle Linux is a fine platform, it is eight months behind Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The main benefit of CentOS is its cost. Both systems are reliable, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a major advantage: Red Hat support. With Red Hat support, we have access to top-level Linux experts. If we need help with anything related to Linux, we can call Red Hat and they will connect us with an expert who can help us.

The first time I deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I was swapping floppies. It has gotten a lot easier since then. The deployment process is straightforward. I usually map an ISO, and then check a bunch of boxes and let it run. I can have a server up and running in about fifteen minutes. After validating the system and installing the necessary software, I can deliver it to the end user in an hour. I know that if I automate the process, I could probably reduce the time to six minutes.

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten because there is always room to grow.

Someone looking at an open source, cloud-based Linux OS instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux should consider what is being used in their customer base. If they are putting something up there as a proof of concept, then dabbling in open source is fine. However, if they have customers relying on them and they want minimal downtime, then they need Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The knowledge base can be a bit cryptic at times. We can go in there and read the same information that's in the documentation, but sometimes it's not clear enough. So I'll often go to a half dozen other websites that tend to give us examples and other helpful information. The knowledge base is a good place to start, but it's not the end-all-be-all.