Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We are a brokerage firm. We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for trading purposes. We develop our applications on it.

By implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we wanted a stable server and OS.

There is an in-built feature for shell scripting, so we can automate things that have to run on time in production. We created a script for the setup and configuration of certain things, such as disabling the firewall, network manager, and other things.

I am able to handle some of the daily issues automatically by using batch scripting and cron scheduler. I have also been able to debug some of the issues with the help of logs.

It is open source. We can customize it as per our requirements. We can change or optimize it as per our requirements.

Their support needs improvement. It should be faster for priority tickets.

Some of the tools can be improved and made user-friendly. The OpenStack and OpenShift tools can be better.

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

It is stable. I would rate it a 9 out of 10 for stability.

It is scalable. I would rate it a 9 out of 10 for scalability.

We have about 100 servers, and we have about four people working in the IT department.

Their support needs to improve. If we create a priority ticket for Red Hat, they revert within four hours. They should respond within half an hour so that the issue can be resolved as soon as possible in the real or live environment, and the company has less downtime.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows operating systems.

Upgrades and migrations are easy with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are currently working on upgrades from RHEL 7 to RHEL 9.

We use open source. We only have a subscription for support.

For security purposes, we use the SSH key algorithm, MD5, and SHA256. We have set up a firewall in our network, and all servers are password-based. We also block some common ports that are open when we install the OS. We also have monitoring tools to ensure uptime.

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a 9 out of 10.

We have almost thirteen servers. There are SaaS applications installed on this server. We leverage Java and the functionality during installation. We install it on the platform and configure it there. Some are custom applications. Our database is also in the Red Hat Linux environment. 

The solution offers users easy access. It's very simple to have and use, from an admin perspective. 

The offering provides me with all I need to serve the operation in terms of usage and capabilities. 

The general user commands are good. They are helpful for starting and stopping applications and restarting and editing files. The maintenance of user-level processes is easy. 

We're not using it in a graphical environment, we're only using command line mode. There may be a lot of features, however, I don't use everything since I don't need to. 

There are millions of commands you can use, although we use only five or ten.

Likely the solution has helped our organization save on costs. I'm not sure by how much, as I don't have visibility into that aspect.

It's very easy to use across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. Specifically, on the cloud side, I have noted it's quite easy. Also, on a virtual machine, you can create a cloud version of your infrastructure in a minute. 

For my work, the solution is not missing any features. We;re only using the command line and that is enough for us. 

Maybe they need to make it easier to apply patches from different resources. That said, at my level of usage, I never have to apply patches. 

I've used the solution for almost ten years. 

It's a stable product.

While I'm maintaining 30 servers, there are hundreds of servers in use. 

The scalability is good. We are able to increase capacity and functionality based on our demands. 

I'm not sure if the company has plans to increase usage in the future.

I don't directly deal with technical support. I might send a ticket to my side, and if they have to, they would be the ones to reach out to Red Hat. 

We used Oracle Linux before we moved over to Red Hat Linux. We likely switched due to costs and licensing. We also use Windows extensively. Since we used the same architecture, we didn't need to use any third-party applications.

As an admin, I was not involved in the setup process. 

If there is any maintenance needed, we get support from the Red Hat team.  If anything comes up on the operating side, our team will take care of it. 

I'm only using this solution as an admin and, therefore, have no visibility on costs. 

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution.

I'm an end-user of the solution. I had admin-level access to the product.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux does not enable us to achieve security standard certification.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

My primary use case is for web applications and database applications. I've come across quite a few use cases at different companies.

The most valuable feature is the package management. It helps a lot. I also like the support. 

Red Hat is a Linux-supportive and well-managed offering. It helps a lot in terms of when we're working in production, it gives us the confidence that our packages are legitimate and genuine and we always have support available. It helps a lot. Red Hat Enterprise Linux gives peace of mind compared to other unsupported Linux distributions. 

I also like Red Hat Satellite. 

I haven't used Insights yet but it seems interesting. 

The ability to patch Red Hat Enterprise Linux through Satellite is a huge contributor to mitigating all of the compliance requirements.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has absolutely affected our security's uptime. None of the other distributions are nearly close to what you can get with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is something that helps a lot in ensuring that your secure application is up all the time and that you're not getting hit by vulnerabilities. It is an easier way for you to mitigate vulnerabilities when they're around.

The knowledge base is very useful. The only thing is that you need to have an account to get access. In terms of the content, the relevance, and being able to use the knowledge base to address things I've needed to deal with, it's awesome. For example, I was trying to add proxy configuration to the package manager once and if it wasn't for the knowledge base, I wouldn't have been able to do it.

I like it the way it is. 

It's getting easier for the community to use it free of charge. If you have an account, you get to use it. It would be better if the community could use it on their own for lab projects.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since 2011. It's been 12 years. 

On the few occasions I needed to reach out to support, I was very satisfied.  

Positive

I have used Linux distributions but when it comes to the work I'm doing at my company, we always use Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 

The biggest differences between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the other OS' are the support, Satellite, Insights, and the fact that Ansible was acquired by Red Hat so you can use all its automation and toolings. The entire ecosystem works very well together.

Red Hat has not personally enabled me to achieve security standard certifications in the projects I've worked on but I could see how it would help. 

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. I really like it. 

We do a lot of patching and upgrading with Ansible and we keep the host up to date all the time.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux in different application servers. 

The tool's most valuable feature is simplicity. There is value in having a fully CLI-based operating system instead of a GUI-based one. It is lightweight and can be leveraged without resource constraints. 

I want Red Hat Enterprise Linux to stick to the open-source routes. As a company, we experience challenges in managing the budget. 

I have been using the product for three years. 

From a licensing perspective, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is flexible. We leverage our licenses based on the VMware cluster. 

Accessing the knowledge base from the public perspective is challenging. You can get much more from the documentation if you are a supported organization. If Red Hat Enterprise Linux continues to keep the documentation open-source, it will benefit us. 

We leverage Ansible to help with the upgrades. It makes upgrades easier. We rely on a reseller for Ansible AWS upgrades. 

We are shifting our Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers from version 7 to version 8. 

I rate the product a seven out of ten. 

We are an Azure shop that runs middleware applications like Java and JBoss, running on the Azure back end. We have to redeploy everything via ARM templates. Anytime we do an upgrade of the application itself, it's a redeployment. We have custom images that we set up through Azure pipelines. We use Ansible for code changes and server changes.

The solution's stability is great, and patching it with Ansible is very easy.

The solution's licensing sometimes could be a little bit confusing for someone who's not a full-blown system admin and doesn't have a lot of experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It took a while for me to understand the licensing.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s built-in security features for simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance are pretty good. My only exposure is just packet management, but packet management gives me everything that I need.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to achieve security standards certification. We have to stay on top of things because we work with the Ontario District School Board. There's a big emphasis on keeping everything secure, and the solution has helped us to do that.

Right now, our company is migrating to 8.8, and I think we will stay on 8 for a few years. We're doing everything through the images, and we keep everything updated with Ansible. I don't think we have any plans to use any of the automation tools other than Ansible.

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

All of our application services, application databases, and web services run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Everything is on there.  

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is certainly more secure than AIX, which is what we had. It's also better than Solaris. It has improved from that perspective. We can handle the vulnerabilities better. It's more secure.

Other than that, some of the products that we are using, we are migrating out of very costly license items. For example, we're using Fusion because we wanted to migrate, and then we started using Vision Manager. We did a POC a few years ago. We started using PAM because we wanted an engine in our workflow management system from that perspective. 

We are still exploring a lot of items, but it's been a decent journey. It has helped to set up modern technologies.

We use a lot of Red Hat products. We use Red Hat PAM, Red Hat Session Manager, and the operating system. 

We use the operating system the most because all our servers are on it.

The support is good. Red Hat provides use with a degree of training.

The adoption was slightly slow because the knowledge in the market is slightly less available. It's hard to find resources to actually support the product.

Some kind of training that can upskill the resource into this technology could certainly help.

I started using Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 6 in 2019. We have our own data center.

We used different solutions. We moved from AIX 7.1 to RHEL 6. Then we moved to 7. Now we're going to 8.

We chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux because we wanted to adopt newer technologies and we wanted to secure our systems. Red Hat Enterprise Linux was a good available option. 

It's on-prem right now. The deployment was straightforward. 

I manage the infrastructure team so all of these things are under my purview. 

We did hit some hiccups, but then RHEL's emergency support was available, and we were able to resolve it. 

We have an engineering team that analyzes different products. During the analysis phase, we look for all vulnerabilities.

Once it passes all of those things, it becomes available in our internal protocol. We have different names where it becomes available in our source space to get deployed.

Migrations and upgrades have been straightforward. For example, OpenSSL has different versions that are not supported on RHEL 7, which we have right now. There is a version that comes built-in. 

We faced some issues, but we worked it out with Red Hat. They gave us a patch. 

We're moving to RHEL 8 now. We moved to RHEL 7 last year; we're going to RHEL 8 now. Next year, in 2024, we plan to move to RHEL 8.

We saw a return on investment. It is helping the business. 

The pricing is competitive. It's not low, but it is in the market. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

All our infrastructure uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Every service we run is all Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Even containerization is on it.

It has improved our organization. It has standardized processes. Everyone uses it. 

The upgrades are straightforward which helps when you want to move a major version of an upgrade. It's done in a standard way.

Everything we do is all Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat Enterprise Linux's security has been good because I have never seen any application going down due to security reasons. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to achieve security standard certification. For example, we have a very tightly SCC-regulated company so there are many rules that we are to follow and we are able to achieve this using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I have been using it for six years. 

We are all on-prem, but we also have some footprints in AWS but those images are also on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has supported our hybrid cloud strategy. We have a few things running on AWS. We have a few things on OpenShift. We are able to get all the basic images. It is easy to start and deploy anywhere.

One thing I like is the updates because when we patch it and upgrade it, we save a lot of time doing those upgrades and migrations.

Moreover, upgrades or migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux have been straightforward in some ways. For example, we are currently migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and we have all our servers running on RHEL 7. We have scripts that are very easy to migrate.

For our implementation strategy, we go environment by environment. We start with our development environment. Once we are done with it, we test it. We have some automation test suites, test them, and we go to the upper environment.  

We worked directly with Red Hat for the deployment. We are already working on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 migration. Every year, whenever there is a major version release, we migrate to the major version.  

We see a return on investment in terms of saving time. One thing I like is the updates because when we patch it and upgrade it, we save a lot of time doing those upgrades and migrations.

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

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 solution offers stable distribution and is very focused on security. It's very committed to delivering security fixes. That way, we don't have to keep moving forward with new versions. 

They are very focused on security and their products are well-designed in that regard. Their delivery of fixes for all products is great. It helps us maintain compliance and helps with risk reduction.

They provide satellites as an account management solution to deliver fixes. It helps us figure out where there are security gaps in our system. They offer good compliance out of the box.

We are starting to roll out container approaches for delivering new solutions. It's still early. We are using a very simple setup and we're beginning to test OpenShift. 

The product enables us to achieve security standards certification.

We can build with confidence and ensure availability across physical infrastructures. From the OS perspective, they do have a lot of reliability features. The virtualization is being phased out (their previous solution) and now they are moving to OpenShift. We're just starting to adopt it. 

We can automate security configurations. We're using the Red Hat security ecosystem to manage logical access and security. It delivers a lot of information with regard to security and hardening and how to use its products properly with regard to security, and we try to follow those guidelines. 

Overall, they are doing a good job. We're hoping that they continue to onboard open-source products into their operating system.

I've been using the solution for about seven years.

Technical support is pretty good. It's one of the main reasons we chose Red Hat over competitors. 

Positive

We've been working with CentOS. It was used in a very limited scope. We've also used Oracle Enterprise Linux for a limited scope. Red Hat has a more solid community and certifies its products more effectively. 

We're quite experienced with the initial setup at this point. For us, the process is a standard procedure.

The product does require some maintenance. There are about four people dedicated to the technology at this time.  

They are becoming very competitive. There has been more pressure based on competition, which is healthy. They could continue to work on their pricing model. The subscription model for some products needs improvement. The automation shouldn't be combined with managed hosts. Pricing should be based on socket and not endpoints. 

We evaluated Oracle Enterprise Linux. 

I'm a customer and end-user. 

We do not use Red Hat Insights just yet due to some restrictions around sending sensitive information off-premises. We're quite limited in terms of using that feature at the moment.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

I provide consultation to clients for their mission-critical applications. Its primary use case is running containers and microservices on Springboard.

My customers use versions 7.2 or 7.3. I have used versions 8.2 and 8.4. I have tried version 9, but I use version 8.4 specifically because it supports HighPoint RAID for storing the data, whereas the client applications run on the much lower version.

There are benefits in terms of price, security, and stability to reduce the risk of applications going down or something like that. A vast majority of systems are on Red Hat Enterprise Linux than on other distributions, which is another benefit.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps to achieve security standards certification. They use it in the PCI DSS segment, so it enables the applications to be compliant with all these security aspects.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very stable. It has been in the market for many years, and it is used by large organizations.

Their documentation and knowledge base are valuable. As an individual developer, whenever I have problems, it is easy to find the information. Their knowledge base is seamlessly integrated with the software. Whenever I have a question, it directly takes me to the knowledge base. It is well documented.

It supports scripting very well. Everything is scripted. A snapshot is taken in the VM, and the script is applied. It lends itself to better security and governance processes.

Its installation on a RAID or cluster system is something difficult. There are specific teams working on that. The GRUB configuration is also a little different from the other Linux distributions. 

In terms of additional features, as technology keeps evolving, the product will also have to evolve. For example, Microsoft Windows has come a long way. In Windows 11, there are so many features that are fundamentally the same as the oldest version, but there are other aspects or processes that have improved. macOS has also evolved over time. Similarly, in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux that I used in 2003 and the one that I am using now, some things are the same and some things have changed. Red Hat can continue to engage clients, understand the use cases, and update them.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since 2002 or 2003. Red Hat has a vast variety of products. I have only been using Red Hat's operating system. I have not used Red Hat's other products.

It is very stable.

It is scalable, but I do not have experience in building hundreds of systems on a VM.

I have not used their technical support at all. I only use their documentation portal for self-support. Our production support team interacts with Red Hat's support team.

As a developer, I use both SUSE as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. My personal preference is Gentoo, but no one runs Gentoo on a production system. Gentoo is better in terms of customization. You can choose what you want.

I am not directly involved in its deployment, but I am planning to build an application. At that time, I will be deploying it myself. In the organization where I work as a consultant, there is a segregation of roles. There is a production support team, there is a development team, and there is a DevOps team. I am a part of the development team.

Its initial setup is straightforward. It is not complex. It also depends on the architecture, high availability, etc.

In terms of deployment, earlier, it was on-prem, but now, it is on the cloud. My client runs about 150 VMs on the cloud in the production, staging, and QA environments. Most of the things have been consolidated into VMs. The migration is complete. It was not that complex.

I have not measured that, but it should pay back for itself easily. The ROI should be reasonable. The cost over a period of time should be minuscule. As compared to other OSs, it is better to go with a big, known, and trusted vendor.

As a developer, I pay around 10,000 Yen, which is around $100 per annum for support. SUSE and Red Hat are typically the same without standard support. The pricing is not a big deal. Enterprise customers will pay for the support. Enterprises have the money for one or two products like this that are reliable and supported.

As a consultant, I advise customers to go for support. You mitigate risks by having support. For your personal usage, you can manage without support, but when it comes to the enterprise level, you need to delegate things to people, and it should be through the proper channel. You need a proper point of contact.

I would advise following the best practices recommended by Red Hat. It will minimize the downtime of the application or system. Partner with the vendor and get that support. Know the business case and build a strong relationship with the vendor. Trust them and tell them your use case, and they will come up with the best solution possible.

I am not a big authority on Red Hat or other Linux or Unix products. Only recently, I have been exposed to the concept called hardening and penetration testing. I do not know whether Red Hat provides a hardened version of the OS. My basic distribution is Gentoo which provides a hardened version of Linux. On the client side, the organizations we work with have different departments, such as the security department and the compliance department. For security, they work with various options that are available. For penetration testing, we engage a penetration testing consultancy company once a year.

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