Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

My use cases are mainly limited to databases. I'm also involved in other ETL tools; I worked on migrations from older vendors, like Windows, and transitioning to RedHat Linux.

The most valuable features are security, performance tuning, storage management, and OS-level automation. If you wanted to automate while adapting with different vendor scripts or your own development because it's Linux, it's not like an operating system itself. It is always going to perform how you expect it to. IAQt's not like other operating systems. It is based on Linux. 

These are the main features. Storage management is another valuable feature that is very critical in an operating system. It works along hardware and software.

The most valuable features are security, performance tuning, storage management, and OS-level automation. If you wanted to automate while adapting with different vendor scripts or your own development because it's Linux, it's not like an operating system itself. It is always going to perform how you expect it to. IAQt's not like other operating systems. It is based on Linux.

Compared to other OS', Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the best from my 20-plus years of experience. It is well-suited for production environments. In 2003 and 2006 I worked with one of the vendors in another country. We were able to run a database instance on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for two years without restarting it. The database was located in a remote location, and the team could not be on-site to provide support. We installed it ourselves and it worked for two years. We restarted the database instance. We didn't need to touch it internally. It works like a charm.

If it works, it works. You don't need to attach anything at all. You just monitor them remotely. Nobody was there on-site. That's the beauty of it. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is great. I love it.

The GUI has room for improvement. It needs to be managed by many administrators. It has basic command lines. They could improve it with better automation. We'd like to be able to create a script, and then have the ability to deploy it where we don't need to write everything manually. That part can be useful for automating. 

We'd like it so that a coder wouldn't need to go through it, read it, go to GUI, and then generate a script. If they want to modify it, they could modify it. If Red Hat Enterprise Linux is going to build something, the REST API can be helpful instead of writing their own, starting from scratch. That would make it easier.

For future releases, there could be more integration. Regarding security, we used a different tool for scanning, but having a tool within Red Hat could enhance it. 

Support is essential for open-source software. If they improve aspects like prevention against hacking, it would be beneficial. 

Before, with a surge in hacking incidents, companies lost data, and once lost, it remains lost forever. You never know when it might be used. Improving security, especially in terms of prevention, is crucial. I would like to see ongoing improvement in this aspect.

I've worked with different companies. In my over 20 years of experience, in the last five or six companies I've worked for, all of them have been using Red Hat. They use it mostly for databases. 

I'm in the database sector, primarily working as a senior technical architect. End-to-end, we always find that Red Hat is best suited for Linux, especially for Oracle and other NoSQL databases. It's reliable, first and foremost, and it offers stability and performance. Performance tuning is crucial, and once it's set up, you can rely on it. 

With the cloud, it's moving into containerization, and most of them support the cloud. 

The customer service and support are really good. 

Positive

I have worked with many different operating systems in the past, including Windows, Linux, and RedHat Linux.

We switched to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it is a reliable and well-supported enterprise operating system. It is easy to manage, use, and upgrade.

We have seen a return on investment. 

As a consultant, I handle sizing, design, and optimization for new infrastructures and I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux to anybody considering it.  

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten 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.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the operating system for our databases and application servers. We also use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to create some of our applications, such as the Online Challenge system. I work for a telecommunications company, and we have a few other operating systems in use, such as Unix and AIX, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is our primary operating system.

We deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-premises and in the cloud. For the cloud, we use Azure and Huawei.

We work with virtual servers, so we have the image ready to deploy. It's great because the patch is always updated and we have no problems.

Red Hat Insights has helped us avoid emergencies in unpatched systems by identifying bugs so that we can fix them.

Red Hat Insights provides us with vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, which helps prevent downtime and increases our uptime to 99 percent. 

The most valuable feature is the security insight and the internal firewall, which are common in all the machine tests that we use a lot. The terminal framework and security are all Linux.

I believe this is because we don't have access to package management software. As a developer, I would like to have access to this software so that I can install the tools that I need. Currently, we are restricted to installing software only with permission from the system administrator. This is time-consuming and inefficient, as we have to follow a process to request permission. I believe that having access to package management software would improve our productivity and efficiency.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is extremely stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's scalability is good because of virtualization. With virtualization, we can request more space or memory processing without having to make any changes to our system. This makes the process of scaling up or down very straightforward.

The technical support is great but nothing is perfect.

Positive

I previously used Ubuntu Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise. I switched to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it has better support. I haven't tried the others, but Red Hat looks like it has better support. However, Ubuntu is more compatible with desktop development, making it more user-friendly.

As a developer, I find the initial setup to be easy. Deployment takes a few hours, but I understand the server, so it is not a problem. I do not actually do the deployment; the infrastructure team handles that. They made the process easier and faster, and on average, deployment now takes around four to six hours.

We purchased our license from ITM, our local provider.

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

I make the applications compatible with the cloud so we can migrate the data.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux is good, but I don't use it much because the infrastructure team manages issues with the OS. I only check the documentation when an application is not working as expected. 

Currently, we're running our web servers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 

It improves our security posture, especially around patching. It has built-in security features for risk reduction and maintaining compliance. SELinux, which is basically the default firewall provided by Red Hat, allows me to secure myself in terms of the network ports that are exposed or enabled, which reduces the risk. When you have a web server, you have a public IP, and for the public, it's easy to do a port scan on that particular public IP, but when you do implement proper security controls in terms of firewalls, you're able to enable only those ports that you need for communication. For example, for a web server, you'll enable port 443 for HTTPS and one or two extras for a particular requirement for Tomcat or something else. The setup and configuration are quite easy. OS-level patching is a big deal for us for maintaining compliance. With the enterprise subscription, you do get patches as soon as they're released by Red Hat.

It helps with portability. I can take a snapshot of my Red Hat virtual machine and restore it anywhere regardless of the virtualization platform, as long as the processor architecture stays the same. For example, if you're doing a backup and restore from a RISC-based processor, you can always restore it to any other RISC-based processor. Similarly, if you're taking a backup or a snapshot on any X86-based processor, you can restore it on the same processor architecture, regardless of the platform you're running. It could be Dell, IBM, or something else. Portability is a huge but often understated feature. It means that if a server has gone down, regardless of the issue, when I have the backup, I can get my services back online in a matter of minutes by just doing a snapshot restore from one server to another, or from one container platform to another. It enables me to have the highest levels of uptime for my applications. Of course, it's also impacted by the hardware I'm running. I'd rate it a nine out of ten in that aspect.

Standardizing our web applications with Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to take advantage of automating some of the workflows. For example, previously when I had a mixture of different distributions, if I wanted to deploy a particular setting across all of them, I had to do configurations on each distribution separately, whereas now, all my web servers are running on Red Hat, so I can create a simple YAML script and apply the same configuration across all of them. 

In terms of development also, configurations have been evened, and when you're taking advantage of open-source tools, it even becomes easier. We've integrated some of the native tools, such as YAML, into our CI/CD pipelines, and it's easy for our developers to deploy the same source code across different servers. For example, if you have Application A that is clustered across three or four servers, you can easily use that one single pipeline and do the same configuration across all three clustered servers. It saves us time. We are also getting a bit of quality control because we are sure that the same configuration has been applied to all three clustered servers. It has enabled us to centralize the process of DevOps in our organization.

The first one is security. Initially, the reason for going for Red Hat was mostly around security because our web servers are normally public-facing, but now, all the other distributions have probably also caught up in terms of security settings. 

Aside from security, the advantage of Red Hat as compared to the other distributions is the availability of support and patching. When you have an enterprise subscription with Red Hat, you get support and patching. If you're deploying a new product in the market and you're not sure of its compatibility with Red Hat, you can easily reach out to their support team, and they'll be able to guide you about whether they support that particular product and how far have they gone in terms of testing how Red Hat works with that particular product. For example, we were deploying a new Nginx server a few months ago, and we were not sure whether the latest version was supported by Red Hat. We had a support call and got one of the engineers into a session, who was able to take us through the level of support provided by the Red Hat operating system for the latest Nginx application. Support is very crucial in such cases. Patching is also crucial. In the case of any common vulnerability exposure that has been or can be exploited, you can rely on Red Hat to quickly patch that vulnerability.

One of the reasons for preferring Red Hat is that you can run it on X86-based hardware from Intel or AMD, or you can run it on RISC processors, such as IBM or Sun Microsystems. In terms of portability, it's supported by all the virtualization platforms out there, such as Hyper-V, VMware, and OpenShift for containers. For portability, I'd rate it a nine out of ten.

Deploying clusters on Red Hat, as well as on Oracle Linux, is a bit involving. I'd like them to simplify the setup or at least give meaningful log files to be able to see what's happening at the cluster level. 

It has been close to 10 years since we have been using it in our organization, but personally, I've dealt with Red Hat in production for two years.

It's quite stable. I haven't had any issues in terms of performance and stability with my Red Hat servers. If I have an issue, it's normally a hardware-related issue or a storage-related issue. It's rarely at the OS level.

It's quite scalable. I personally haven't had any issues in terms of scaling Red Hat, be it in a virtual machine or be it through a container. I haven't had any issues in terms of scaling. I do know one limitation they have, but it applies to very few people. For example, the amount of RAM they support does not reach one terabyte. However, I've not had a use case where I needed to have one terabyte of RAM on one particular server.

We have around 20 Red Hat servers. They're distributed across Azure and on-premise. They're normally running web services. Most of the applications they run are accessed by everyone in the organization, and there are 3,000 to 5,000 users.

So far, I've not had an incident for which I needed to take their support. I have not yet contacted Red Hat support.

We were mainly running CentOS, but then Red Hat dropped their support for CentOS. For us, our security posture is highly important. Our major pain point was around patching. Whenever we had any vulnerable web servers exposed to the public internet, we were not able to get patching for any CVEs that were found. That's why we switched our web servers to Red Hat. Patching was Red Hat's main advantage. In terms of security features and control, such as user management and permissions, Red Hat is quite similar to other distributions. I don't see any difference in terms of other aspects. The switch wasn't because of a lack of features, but after switching to Red Hat, we are now exposed to their enterprise features or tools, such as OpenShift. So, our investment in Red Hat was because of their support and patching.

We have deployed Red Hat on-prem on Hyper-V. We've also deployed Red Hat on-prem on VMware, and we also have Red Hat on Azure Cloud. In terms of version, we have everything from 7.2 and all the way to 7.6. We currently don't have any real deployment of version 8 or version 9.

I'm the person who does most of the deployments. The deployment is quite easy. I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of the ease of deployment. Deploying Red Hat would be quite easy even for a beginner system administrator because it guides you during the deployment. It asks you whether you want to use a feature or what features you want to install alongside the operating system. Do you want a file server, or do you want a web server? The installation is quite straightforward and simple.

For me, normally the complete configuration from deploying the OS and managing storage, users, and security takes less than 30 minutes. In less than 30 minutes, I'm usually up and running.

We do everything in-house. We don't use any third-party help. Usually, I do all the deployments myself, but I also have an assistant. So, we currently have two people: me and my assistant.

It doesn't really require any maintenance. It just requires occasional patches. That's also handled by me and my assistant.

There is definitely an ROI. Automation definitely reduces the time taken to implement a particular task and the number of employees needed to do the same task. For me, it's majorly in terms of automation, uptime, and availability. The fact that Red Hat is quite portable means that whenever one of my systems goes down, I can easily just take a snapshot and get my services back online. 

Their licensing is quite okay. It isn't expensive, and it's slightly cheaper than Microsoft. Taking into account its features, its price is okay.

Support is something that serious enterprises would want to have. The advantage of running an open-source tool is that you do not have to pay for the tool in terms of licensing, but you don't have support. In certain situations, you might need support. For example, when one of your systems goes down, but you do not have the expertise internally to recover it. Depending on the industry you're working with, having downtime might not be optimal or might be costly. It might even be costlier than paying for the support or licensing of Red Hat.

Apart from support, for organizations that have some of their services exposed to the public internet, security is very important. They would want the patches for the latest common vulnerability exposures found to be affecting the particular systems they are running. So, support and security are the key features why any serious organization should choose Red Hat as opposed to an open-source tool.

We evaluated other options, but they were probably inadequate. We had the option of using AIX, but it wasn't portable for our use case. 

It's normally an issue of balancing the cost of support and the features that you are looking to achieve. If security is number one to any organization, Red Hat is a no-brainer. If support is a key issue, Red Hat again is a no-brainer. If you're facing any security or support issues, I'd recommend going with a distribution that has some sort of licensing tied to it.

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

We use RHEL for high-performance computing. We host most of our production servers in our data center. Red Hat is a great package that helps us customize most of the data and dependent packages we receive from the Red Hat operating system. Most of our server requirements are being managed with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

We mainly use Red Hat for our application deployments, standalone servers, and VMs.

We use this solution in a university. Most of the production servers and applications are required for the students.

We've seen a benefit in hosting servers and email security. RHEL provides excellent results and performance. It helps us achieve our goals for scalability and services.

We normally run crontab to keep our servers up-to-date. It works well with Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it has an advanced suite of features that can be effectively used for production servers. 

It also has RPM Package Manager, which includes most of the tools and utilities that every organization needs to have.

There is portability in the applications and containers built on Red Hat, which keeps our organization agile. Enterprise Linux offers flexibility in terms of dependent packages.

Red Hat Linux definitely enables us to achieve security standard certification. Most enterprise solutions need to comply with security standards. Many Linux-based operating systems fail to provide security because of open-source techniques.

Most of our production servers fail to deploy in Linux. When we deploy in RHEL we don't think about security because it has a lot of features like policy management. We can give specific access to specific users who require SSH or Telnet. It's more flexible because it can be altered easily.

We have used many Linux-based operating systems for production purposes, but this is the only solution that guarantees performance and scalability. When we run industry servers, they demand high performance.

It has great software support because it has a wide range of tools and utility products in the database. It's relatively easy to use enterprise products, and we don't need to add packages from other third-party sources. They definitely have a good database.

Red Hat's built-in security features simplify risk reduction and maintain compliance because Linux is mostly open source. We're running most of the production servers in this operating system, so we don't require a third-party solution because RHEL has a great range of security products with an inbuilt firewall. The inbuilt firewall is highly dependable and we can customize rules for outbound and inbound traffic, and specific accesses can be quickly returned in the script files. It has a great command line.

Red Hat allows us to build with confidence and ensure availability across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructures. It already has a reliable operating system. Most companies rely on it for deployment on cloud and on-premise. With cloud, they prefer Red Hat because of the high-performance computing cluster.

It has great support for VMs and unlimited VM support. It's being deployed in our data centers and other large environments. It allows us to streamline the management of our infrastructure and makes it possible for more than one hundred servers and VMs to run, and it's up to date.

Red Hat Linux enables us to achieve security standards certification.

The graphical user interface should be more user-friendly. It's a concern because the command line is perfectly fine.

I have used this solution for five years.

It's very stable.

It's definitely scalable because we're deploying it in our VMs.

Technical support is satisfactory. There are forums that are also useful.

Positive

We used CentOS. It's a different setup than Red Hat. CentOS is also a Linux-based distribution. CentOS is open-source, so we don't need to pay for it. Compared to CentOS, Red Hat has advanced features but the cost is still high, so it's problematic for medium-level customers.

We switched to Red Hat because the service providers like high-performance computing. We mostly have high-performance computing deployed in our data center. We needed Enterprise Linux as a minimum requirement. Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports high-performance computing solutions, and packages have to be installed from their repositories. That's a must for any IT enterprise organization now.

CentOS is an open-source solution and provides 70% of the features that Red Hat provides. We pay Red Hat for the repository and application support.

It has a great set of dependable packages, software, and a collection of utilities embedded in that operating system. We don't need to get apps from the repositories. There aren't a lot of errors in the Red Hat operating system, which makes it useful for our system administrator.

The initial setup is very easy. It took about four or five hours.

The solution requires maintenance and constant updates.

Implementation was done in-house by a team of three people.

The pricing and licensing are a bit higher for Red Hat Enterprise because we're able to get 70% of its features with the CentOS version. For the 30% of features that Red Hat provides, I think they need to reduce the licensing fee.

I would rate this solution as nine out of ten.

My advice is if you're actually testing, you don't need to go with this solution. If you're an advanced Linux user or server administrator, you will definitely require Red Hat because many of the latest solutions require dependency-based repositories. It will be very easy if you're active with this operating system.

This has a set of repositories built into the database. We don't need to go anywhere to set up all of the databases and repositories. Everything is embedded into the solution.

If you're looking for HPC and NVIDIA clusters, most of the supercomputers need to have the solution, so it's better to have it equipped with that.