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Mukesh Kumar S - PeerSpot reviewer
Openshift Administrator at Value Point Systems Pvt Ltd
Real User
Top 20
Jul 23, 2025
User-friendly platform has enabled quick support and efficient subscription management
Pros and Cons
  • "We are saving more costs because we are getting immediate support; if any issue arises, we do not have to wait for someone to respond and can get immediate quick responses from the support team."
  • "The main disadvantage is that you may find the price is too high."

What is our primary use case?

According to the price and if your use case is more worth saving, you can go with that. I can help determine what use case you want to pursue. If it is a small scale operation, you do not need to choose that option. If it is a huge business, you can definitely invest in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

What is most valuable?

The system is user-friendly and they have a cloud console for managing all the subscriptions you have purchased. From that perspective, it is very user-friendly to manage your subscription, and you can list out all the systems where you have installed this Linux, managing them from a single console.

We are saving more costs because we are getting immediate support. If any issue arises, we do not have to wait for someone to respond. We can get immediate quick responses from the support team. We are saving lots of time and from the customer side, we have heard that they are achieving significant cost savings from this.

What needs improvement?

The main disadvantage is that you may find the price is too high.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have two years of experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and I am currently doing projects with it.

Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
September 2026
Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate the customer service nine out of ten.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is basically from Fedora. I worked with Fedora and CentOS. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Fedora, and CentOS are all from the same Linux family. I have also used Ubuntu.

What about the implementation team?

We are a service-based company delivering services. We provide subscriptions to customers, implement them, and then complete our work.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

You definitely need to consider the cost and determine if it is worth the investment. If your use case is larger and you need immediate solutions, then you should consider the cost. Technology-wise, it is very good and reliable.

What other advice do I have?

I am working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and am certified with the OpenShift platform, which is a Kubernetes platform. The company I currently work for operates both on-premise and in cloud environments.

Regarding patching, if any issues arise or security issues such as hacking or vulnerability issues occur, they will first address it through engineering and provide patch support to customers as the first priority. After that, they release it to the open source part. This patching process makes it more secure.

The immediate support and response time are good reasons to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). My overall rating for this solution is 9 out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Implementer
PeerSpot user
System administrators at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
Oct 30, 2024
The long lifecycles, updates, support, and documentation help with business continuity and compliance
Pros and Cons
  • "Stability, support, and life cycle management are valuable."
  • "Red Hat could offer a containerized version of the operating system, potentially moving towards a more containerized ecosystem."

What is our primary use case?

Our business is primarily focused on software development. We are doing development and deployment using containers. We are mainly using Docker, but we might also adopt Podman later.

Our business logic is mainly for our own software development. We mainly have Java applications, Java containers, Tomcat, and Java frameworks. These solutions cater primarily to our business-level operations.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-premises.

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux gives us a standardized way of handling various tasks. Everything is the same in our environment.

It gives a standard procedure to do everything. It also gives standard APIs and a stable environment.

It works very well for our business-critical applications because of its stability and support. We have some kind of support in terms of the life cycle of the operating system.

Its long lifecycles, updates, support, and documentation help with business continuity and compliance. With reference architectures, we can straightaway get working solutions.

We can rely on security features like SELinux and run several workloads for WordPress and so on. We can rely on Red Hat.

We have used Red Hat Insights for certain things, and it has been helpful.

What is most valuable?

Stability, support, and life cycle management are valuable. We get fixes quickly. We can rely on them for features and so on. We can rely on their support. In the case of an issue, we can get somebody on the phone.

What needs improvement?

Red Hat could offer a containerized version of the operating system, potentially moving towards a more containerized ecosystem. 

More flexible tools for dealing with complex things like SELinux would also be beneficial. Its built-in security features are good, but they are quite complex to manage at an atomic level.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 25 years. We are mainly using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, but we also have Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and 8.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very stable. However, sometimes, there might be some load balancing issues leading to performance issues, so we have to figure out all those. Usually, Red Hat tools are helpful for that.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

With automation, we have been able to handle scaling efficiently. We are using an internal cloud, which suits our needs without relying on OpenShift or VMware.

How are customer service and support?

The support from Red Hat is very good. We have collaborated with Red Hat remotely and have been satisfied with the assistance provided for our customers' cases.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is suitable for midsize to large companies, though small enterprises might struggle. It is comparable to Windows licensing.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise considering the lifecycle and support that Red Hat offers. They provide long-term support and have best practices for addressing vulnerabilities and attack vectors.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
September 2026
Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Afrin O M - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Developer | Red Hat Certified Engineering | Red Hat Certified System Administrator at Francis Xavier Engineering College
Real User
Sep 3, 2024
The cloud platform provides a real-time experience, enabling us to practice for exams easily and enhance our Linux knowledge
Pros and Cons
  • "The cloud platform provides a real-time experience, enabling us to practice for exams easily and enhance our Linux knowledge."
  • "Sometimes, the platform would be very slow, making it difficult to open labs."

What is our primary use case?

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

How has it helped my organization?

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux comprehensively covers the fundamental knowledge required for the Red Hat Certified System Administrator and Red Hat Certified Engineer certifications. My experience taking the Red Hat examination was positive, and I am satisfied with their product.

I can easily work with Red Hat OS because it is user-friendly, even for manual tasks. While it may be as expensive as Windows, they offer a four-month trial and provide cloud access. This is valuable for understanding Linux concepts and working within the Linux environment. Overall, it's a great learning experience.

What is most valuable?

We prefer not to install the Linux OS manually, so we opt to work in the cloud instead. The cloud platform provides a real-time experience, enabling us to practice for exams easily and enhance our Linux knowledge. This proves highly beneficial for students pursuing Red Hat certification.

What needs improvement?

While preparing for the Red Hat administrator examination, I worked with the cloud platform, which was generally good but occasionally experienced some lag. Sometimes, the platform would be very slow, making it difficult to open labs. It could take around 30 minutes to start a lab, and there were limitations on data persistence. Any work or files created would only be available for one week before disappearing, requiring recreation. This lack of long-term storage is a disadvantage of the Red Hat Cloud platform.

For how long have I used the solution?

I am currently using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

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

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I used UNIX before switching to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. UNIX did not provide adequate support for developers, making it challenging to work with. Though it's open source, UNIX lacked the features that we needed. So, I transitioned to Red Hat. Red Hat offers developers extensive support and access to technologies like OpenShift and Kubernetes. This makes it easier for developers and large companies to manage workloads and adopt new technologies.

I installed UNIX on my laptop and experienced no lag, unlike the lag I've encountered in the cloud with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

How was the initial setup?

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

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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

What other advice do I have?

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

We have 15 members in our group that use Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's much faster than UNIX and offers extensive management support, making it valuable for startups and engineering developers.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1233624 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Oracle DBA at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Jul 8, 2024
It makes patching and scripting much easier
Pros and Cons
  • "RHEL makes patching and scripting much easier, and it provides all the features I need for patching and VM updates."
  • "For phone support, we had to buy a license for all our servers, and it was a bit pricey for us."

What is our primary use case?

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to run Oracle Databases for CC&B and JDM. All the RHEL stuff is on-prem. The CC&B team manages the customer care and billing stuff, but we take care of the operating systems, and the application users manage the applications. We have 200 to 300 users on RHEL. 

How has it helped my organization?

We are missing random devices for patching and everything, and we don't have the Linux data license for that. If we had that, life would be much easier. Right now, we patch using Yum updates and we manually do configuration changes from our end.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux improves our security. On our end, we only use the console to reboot the server and apply security. We patch it completely if we have any security updates. Every quarter, we run a report using quality and whatever it was pulling. That's what we are patching. 

What is most valuable?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux makes patching and scripting much easier, and it provides all the features I need for patching and VM updates. It's easy to apply Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features when it comes to simplifying risk reduction or maintaining compliance.

What needs improvement?

For phone support, we had to buy a license for all our servers, and it was a bit pricey for us. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used RHEL for 21 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is highly stable. We've never had any problems or crashes. It's very smooth from our end.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's easy to scale Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Right now, we're discussing what will happen a year from now, when we plan to increase our usage. 

How are customer service and support?

I rate Red Hat customer service eight out of 10. Their knowledge base is fantastic. You can easily find whatever you need. Their support responds immediately, whereas we struggled with support from Oracle. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using Oracle Linux, and I don't see much difference except the support. We were not getting good support from Oracle because it took too long whenever we opened a ticket. Oracle was also too expensive, and patching is much easier with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We were not looking for more features. Oracle Linux has a lot more packages than we need.

How was the initial setup?

Setting up Red Hat Enterprise Linux was straightforward. You need at least two system admins to do so. Migrations and upgrades are also easy. Our main products are CC&B and JDM, with an Oracle database on the back end. We were highly satisfied with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for migrating all of those. We also have other solutions like SQL Server, which is on the Windows operating system.

What was our ROI?

Performance-wise, this Linux is better because you can ignore some packages if you don't need them. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Oracle Linux is free, but we were having many other issues with it.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very easy to install and manage. 

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2398785 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Jun 4, 2024
They make solutions for challenges that we do not even think about but we may consume later
Pros and Cons
  • "It is open source. Most of the features are already there for you."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

How are customer service and support?

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.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

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

What was our ROI?

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.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2399202 - PeerSpot reviewer
Providers coordination at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Jun 3, 2024
The built-in features for risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance are very important
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of the solution are in the areas of stability and scalability."
  • "Though the product has many features, the tool's virtualization area has certain shortcomings that require improvement."

What is our primary use case?

I use the solution in my company mainly for the operation system of the core business applications.

How has it helped my organization?

My company has experienced benefits from the use of the product, especially considering the agility that the tool offers in terms of the time to market in different areas of business and because of its compatibility with most of the applications in the market.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of the solution are the stability and scalability.

I run Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on a hybrid cloud deployment, and it has impacted our company's operations, but I would say that it has been quite simple to implement, especially considering the security, which has been a considerable piece of the infrastructure.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped centralize development in our company. The applications run with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and it became the standard for the operating system for the applications.

My company uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for containerization projects with OpenShift. This use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has had an important impact on containerization, as it is a simple process. Owing to the simplicity, we always involve the solution's experts and get faster solutions.

The built-in features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance are very important because our company is always aware of all these security issues that constantly happen.

What needs improvement?

Though the product has many features, the tool's virtualization area has certain shortcomings that require improvement. The product should also offer more containers and probably some financial services.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a very stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a quite easily scalable solution.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support for the solution is very good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), my company used to use Windows. My company started to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) after we found that it offers more stability, sophistication, and security and serves as a standard for many products.

How was the initial setup?

The product's initial deployment phase was easy and quick.

My company did follow some strategy to deploy the product, and we also had the support from the vendor.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on-premises models.

What about the implementation team?

My company sought the help of a system integrator during the implementation phase of the solution.

What was our ROI?

In terms of ROI, I see that the tool offers stability, performance, agility, and resilience.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

If I describe my experience with the product's price, I would say that we have to live with it for now.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

My company evaluated other Linux products, such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), against Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to a colleague who is looking at open-source cloud-based operating systems for Linux since it is a tool with more market experience and offers more documentation and support from the vendor, which is not easy to acquire when it comes to open-source software.

Red Hat's portfolio has affected the total cost of ownership across our enterprise landscape by around 10 to 20 percent.

My company has the product in two data centers, but the production happens only in one. Mostly, my company uses the cloud services offered by Azure.

I rate the tool a nine or ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2399223 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
Real User
Jun 3, 2024
Has made it easier to automate a lot of our tasks
Pros and Cons
  • "The product is easy to use, and you can get support whenever you want."
  • "Some problems may occur with the product if you don't patch it after a year or two."

What is our primary use case?

I use the solution in my company for regular servers with databases, load balancers, Apache, and so on.

How has it helped my organization?

The benefits of using the product revolve around the fact that it has made it easier to automate everything on it, which includes automating servers and so on.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is an upcoming, more stable product, like Oracle OS. The tool has everything that IBM Red Hat Redbooks has.

In terms of how I would assess the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for keeping our organization agile and flexible, I would say that since my company is a service provider, we get the containers from the customers, which we don't use for our own selves, but we use Red Hat Universal Base Images (UBI) 9 for some things like to to get our own containers and so on.

What needs improvement?

My company has not tried to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 since we are still using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8. In the future, I am expecting to see Podman 5.0 released for RHEL 9.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a nice and stable solution. Some problems may occur with the product if you don't patch it after a year or two.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There are no problems with the scalability of the product, as it works fine.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, my company used to use a simple version of RHEL and other tools depending on the needs of our company's customers.

How was the initial setup?

Regarding my experience related to the deployment process, I would say that everything is automated now. You just fill out the survey, and then you just deploy the tool. The product's deployment phase is easy.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

What about the implementation team?

The team members can deploy the solution in my company.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

If the customer wants to pay for the support and so on, then we can go for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Otherwise, one can go for any other open-source platform. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), you get the latest on everything. If you are running Oracle Linux, it gets hard to find some patches. It is easy to find new things like Podman or Red Hat Subscription-Manager, especially if you want to run something on Oracle OS, then you need to compile the patches yourself.

What other advice do I have?

The product has helped centralize development in our company. In our company, we are mostly automating all the server installations on Red Hat template by filling in IP addresses with Postman.

We don't use the built-in features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance since they are only available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.

To a colleague who is looking at open-source cloud-based operating systems for Linux other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I would say that previously people preferred CentOS until Red Hat stripped it apart. At the moment, it is like, if you want an RHEL-based tool, it is either Rocky Linux or Oracle OS because I think Fedora is too lenient, while CentOS is somewhere in the middle.

I would be spending the same amount of time on some other solution if I was not using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since everything is automated now, and in such a case, it will just be another image you use on some other product.

My company uses Ansible as a part of the deployment model.

The product is easy to use, and you can get support whenever you want. The solution also   the latest packages, which include Red Hat Subscription-Manager, Podman, Linux, and other such functionalities.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Systems Engineer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
May 29, 2024
The portability of applications and containers built is very good for keeping our organization agile
Pros and Cons
  • "It is the most lightweight platform to use. It is very flexible. It is not very difficult to manage, configure, and deal with."
  • "I know for our purpose and what we have been using it for, it has been working well. Their support, however, can be better."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for running SQL servers, Oracle databases, Java applications, Apache, and data store types of things.

We use it for all sorts of functions. We have different levels. I am primarily an SE building and configuring the servers. The application-related work is for everyone else.

In terms of our environment, we might have some cloud. We have different engineering teams working on different parts of the technologies. My team and I do not touch that, so we have a basic cloud-based and non-cloud-based setup.

How has it helped my organization?

We are primarily able to standardize on the platform. By keeping everything standard, you know what might break or should not break. That is the true benefit. It seems to help keep a better level of standard across all groups, business standards, and application types.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to centralize development. That goes with platform uniformity. The development team has a common toolset and expectations from the toolset and what they are working with. It just makes things easier for each developer.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very good for keeping our organization agile.

What is most valuable?

It is the most lightweight platform to use. It is very flexible. It is not very difficult to manage, configure, and deal with. That is a plus point.

Migrating people from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to 8 has been good so far. Irrespective of whether we are doing an in-place upgrade or a full rebuild, most people are able to convert over. There is no problem.

What needs improvement?

For our use case, it seems to be working well, so I cannot think of what it could do better. I know for our purpose and what we have been using it for, it has been working well. Their support, however, can be better.

For how long have I used the solution?

I came on board when they bought our company. At the time, I was using CentOS. From what I know, they have been only using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I started using it from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. It has been about 13 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It seems stable, but developers might have a different response. When you have a problem with a Windows server, you typically reboot it, but you do not have to reboot a Linux server to get it to work better.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable platform.

How are customer service and support?

It is pretty good. It varies based on the support person that you get. They might understand what you are talking about right away or not.

For one of the cases that I opened, I laid out every single detail possible. The first thing they said was that it was not that. It was something else. They kept going back and forth with different support teams on the same ticket. Finally, it clicked with somebody and they figured out what caused the issue. Somehow an RPM of a different version was installed on one server versus another one, and no one caught that. Some people were going down the wrong path saying it was networking and not some sort of binary that was installed which changed something. They went back and forth with different troubleshooting paths. Eventually, someone saw and understood what I meant.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have always been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux at our workplace.

How was the initial setup?

Deployment for our builds is typically PXE. I do not have insights into that because the build is built and configured by another team. I deploy and provide the server for the development team. I understand how Kickstart and other things work, but I do not install and configure it. It seems relatively easy. From what I have done in the past, it does not seem that difficult.

What about the implementation team?

I am not aware of taking any external help for deployment.

What was our ROI?

The biggest ROI is in terms of consistency. We know how it works which makes going forward a lot easier.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We are coming from CentOS, so technically, our total cost of ownership has gone up, but it is still cheaper than Windows for a database server and things like that.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I was not a part of the evaluation. I came on board and began working with what was there.

What other advice do I have?

In terms of security features, we do not use anything too advanced other than what is out of the box. We do not manage the compliance piece and things like that. There is a different group that manages that piece.

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

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2398638 - PeerSpot reviewer
Stf Full Stack Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
May 21, 2024
Helps with centralized development, infrastructure management, and compliance
Pros and Cons
  • "In Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I am a big fan of the command line."

    What is our primary use case?

    I utilize Ansible to harden Red Hat devices across a multitude of disconnected environments.

    How has it helped my organization?

    One benefit of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux is that a lot of backend applications run natively on Red Hat Enterprise Linux as opposed to a Windows-based option. We are a partner with Red Hat. It essentially allows us to do a lot of our infrastructure stand-up and development.

    It has enabled our team to centralize development. We have been able to centralize our automation, playbooks, and different collections we use within Ansible to create a centralized code base. We can use that to configure different types of systems with different requirements from different customers. Having a common platform across the entire enterprise has been very helpful.

    We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux very limitedly for containerization projects. It makes things very seamless. If we get a new developer, we can set up a brand new instance of a container for a dev environment or a test environment. It allows different developers to always have the same starting points with containers.

    In terms of security features for risk reduction, there are SELinux and FIPS. Also, when you build a Red Hat Enterprise Linux machine, you can stick it right out of the box. It is very helpful. It is very good, especially for programmers and users who do not know anything about cybersecurity. It takes you 85% to 90% of the way. It has been very helpful and good.

    The right commonality across the business or enterprise is always very hard to do, especially when different networks and different customers have different requirements. Being able to at least have continuity between those different environments has been helpful. If you have a system admin at a location and you put him or her at a different location, they at least can expect the same type of infrastructure.

    When it comes to compliance, it takes you 85% to 90% of the way there. Different networks require different things. Some cannot implement specific standards for whatever reasons, but being able to utilize and leverage Red Hat Ansible to configure that and make sure those changes are made across the entire network has been very helpful.

    Portability depends on the circumstances. Some things are more portable than others, such as containers. We utilize Ansible Core very extensively, but other things, such as AAP, are not necessarily as portable because some of our smaller environments do not have the bandwidth or the actual resources to support a big product like that.

    What is most valuable?

    In Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I am a big fan of the command line. I like the data manipulation and different commands that we can use. I use Ansible extensively to configure systems.

    For how long have I used the solution?

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

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It is very stable.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It is easily scalable with the solutions and the options they have.

    How are customer service and support?

    Their support is very good. They are very helpful. Some of them are more experienced in handling the niche problems that we have.

    I would rate their customer support a nine out of ten because there is always room for improvement, but it has always been very good.

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Positive

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We have used Ubuntu and other Linux operating systems in the past. However, since I have been with the company, we have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux almost exclusively.

    How was the initial setup?

    The deployment model depends on the environment. Some are using VMs. Some use containers, and some use bare-metal installations. It depends on what a particular program needs. I support small environments that are on-prem.

    It is fairly straightforward to deploy different Red Hat boxes. I was just helping out a sysadmin the other day who had not done it before. It was super straightforward and super easy to deploy.

    What about the implementation team?

    We deploy it on our own. 

    What was our ROI?

    The return on investment for us and our team is specifically automation. We are able to invest time on the frontend to create different automation playbooks, and we are able to push that out to not only a singular network but also to multiple networks and multiple different configurations. It takes a little bit in the beginning, but there are huge time savings in the end.

    What other advice do I have?

    If a security colleague is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would be interested to understand what that colleague's objectives are and why they would consider something other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux. If it is something that fits their particular use case more, they can obviously go with that. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a standard solution for Linux. If any colleague wants to go for another solution, I have to understand why. I would have to understand what Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not able to provide. However, this has not happened to me.

    I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a full ten out of ten.

    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    May 21, 2024
    Provides a reliable base to deploy applications and has a lot of features
    Pros and Cons
    • "The repository ecosystem is valuable."
    • "I would probably focus more on a rolling release schedule. Instead of a long-term operating support of ten years, I would just have one release and keep rolling it."

    What is our primary use case?

    We primarily use it for enterprise software, databases, and some custom applications.

    How has it helped my organization?

    We have a stable base to deploy applications. We need a minimal amount of effort to troubleshoot problems with the applications that are related to the OS.

    We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud, in the on-prem data center, and at the edge. We are also using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a hybrid cloud environment. It has had a positive impact. It is straightforward to deploy. There was no bottleneck.

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. The stable base that each developer can rely on is great. The consistent ecosystem of the repository makes it easy to rely on.

    We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is quick to containerize, so when it started becoming mainstream, it was easier for us to sell to upper management to start doing more containerization.

    There has been a positive impact in terms of the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for keeping our organization agile. It is very portable. I do not have any issues with different ecosystems in relation to how Red Hat Enterprise Linux runs containers.

    Our cost of ownership is not high. They are not very expensive. We are never surprised.

    What is most valuable?

    The repository ecosystem is valuable. 

    What needs improvement?

    I would probably focus more on a rolling release schedule. Instead of a long-term operating support of ten years, I would just have one release and keep rolling it.

    In terms of security features, overall, it is lacking cohesion. There are a lot of different options, and it is hard to choose the ones that best fit our business needs without a lot of investigative work.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 11 years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It is very stable.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It is scalable.

    How are customer service and support?

    It takes a little bit to get to the true answer. I know there is a lot of triaging. I am sure we can improve on our end. When we open tickets, we can provide more information. There could be a way to get faster answers from Red Hat support, and we might not be providing the most upfront information needed for the ticket. I would rate their support a ten out of ten.

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Positive

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We were not using any other solution previously.

    I know of only one other player, and that is Ubuntu. There is also OpenSUSE, but I have not yet seen that personally in my career.

    How was the initial setup?

    We have cloud and on-prem deployments. We have the AWS cloud.

    On AWS, we had an EC2 instance. I clicked, and it was online. For the initial deployment, we just used the Amazon Web UI, and now, we use Ansible for deployment.

    What was our ROI?

    We have seen an ROI. It is fairly easy to deploy. We do not have too many issues with setting up a new environment in relation to the operating system. The bottlenecks are more related to the hardware or even setting up the cloud.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    When I came in, Red Hat Enterprise Linux was already being used. It has always been there.

    What other advice do I have?

    We have not yet fully leveraged Red Hat Insights. We are working on that. It might help with cohesion and security.

    I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. It is reliable for deploying applications. It has a lot of different features. I can find solutions to all my problems, and the industry support is there.

    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: September 2026
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.