Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

Our primary use case for RHEL is running our front-end web servers. When you visit our site, all of the front-end servers are Red Hat. The databases that are hosted are Oracle and they predominantly sit on Red Hat 7. We're trying to migrate those to version 8.

We also use it for BI.

We have a digital footprint in Azure and AWS, as well as on-premises. Things for us are very fluid. We're always changing and adapting to our environment, based on what the needs of our faculty and students are.

The experience depends on the user and what it is that they are doing. If somebody is a Windows user, they're not comfortable with Linux, even if it has a GUI. The graphic user interface can be off-putting to users that are familiar with Mac or Windows. It's not as fast, snappy, and showy as the Windows or Apple graphical user interface. So, those types of users for office production, probably, will not be happy with the Red Hat product line.

If on the other hand, you're a developer or you're a database administrator (DBA), it is different. My experience with my developers and my DBA is that they love Linux. It's easy for them to use. It's easy for them to deploy things like Oracle databases and web servers. Continuous development integration tools like Maven or Tomcat or any of those frameworks are already put in place.

For all of the backend tools that do the work to build the infrastructure, Red Hat really does a good job to make it easy to deploy those consistently, securely, and upgrade them in the same way. There are a lot of pluses for the developers, the DBAs, and the like. But, if you're a regular office user, Red Hat is probably not the tool or the OS that you want to use.

When using RHEL for tracking or monitoring, they do a very good job with respect to the impact on the performance of existing applications. The nice thing about Red Hat is you can get very granular with your logging. We do log aggregation, we use Elasticsearch, and we use Filebeat. These things are part of our log aggregation applications and services that run on the backend of our Red Hat boxes, and it does a very good job of that. We also add bash logging into our hardened Linux deployments, so we see everything. We want to monitor everything, and Red Hat does a really good job with that.

RHEL has given us the opportunity to accelerate the deployment of our cloud-based workloads, although because my organization is a very small college, and we don't have a lot of funds, we can't afford to have all of our workloads in the cloud. It's actually cheaper for us to run most of our applications and servers on-premises.

The workloads that we have in the cloud are typically mission-critical, like student transcripts and stuff like that. These are the types of things that we need to have backups of, which is something that Azure does with Red Hat very well. We are moving in the direction of using Red Hat in the cloud, with the caveat that we deploy only as we can afford it.

With respect to disaster recovery, Azure and Red Hat are probably one of the best pairings that you can get. It provides a lot of redundancy, it's easy to deploy, and the server support is excellent with Azure. There is also good logging, so if you do have an issue you can troubleshoot rather quickly and resolve the problem.

The integration with other Red Hat products, such as Satellite, is excellent and I haven't had any issues with it at all. Everything works very well together with all of the products that we use. For example, Ansible works very well with Satellite. We also used Salt at one time, and we used Puppet. We've moved away from those and just focused on using Ansible. All of the tools that we've used work very well with Rad Hat. The product is mature enough that there's enough support for it from all of the other vendors that run on the Red Hat platform.

There are lots of good features in this product. Because I am a system admin, I don't tend to use the GUI or end-user features. Everything that I do is executed from the command line, and this includes features like monitoring tools, such as netstat or iostat. These are the tools that are built into RHEL. Their toolboxes are good but I wouldn't consider them a great feature because there are things that they still need to work on.

The feature that I like the most is that we can integrate it easily with our existing infrastructure. We found that it is much easier to deploy RHEL in our environment compared to a competing distribution like Ubuntu. This is because we also use RHEL Satellite, which is the patching and lifecycle management application that binds all of our RHELs and allows us to push out new stuff.

Satellite is an important feature because it helps to speed up deployment. Satellite is Red Hat's solution to Windows, where the Windows equivalent would be Server Center Control Manager (SCCM), which is now Intune. Satellite is the lifecycle management application for deploying, maintaining, and upgrading your Red Hat systems, and it does a very good job of that. Satellite works in tandem with Red Hat, as you use it to deploy your server.

The main point is that Satellite makes it quick and easy to deploy, and it is also easy to automate the process. I'm the only Linux person at my organization, with the rest of the people working with Windows. Using Satellite, a Windows end-user can deploy a Red Hat server without any Linux experience.

The security updates are done very well, so I feel confident that I'm not going to get hit with ransomware or a similar problem. Their security patches are pretty up to date. Also, it's rather easy to harden a Red Hat deployment because they provide tools to help you do that.

Red Hat gives us the ability to run multiple versions of applications on a single operating system, although we only use this functionality for Java. Even then, it's specific to the underlying applications. For example, Oracle uses Java on the backend. Also, we have multiple versions of Java on some of our web servers and it does a good job.

The biggest thing that is crushing RHEL is documentation. Their documentation is haphazard at best. The man pages that you can use locally are pretty good, they've been fleshed out pretty well, but the documentation from Red Hat itself really needs somebody to go through it and review it.

The only real negative that I have with Red Hat is that you can tell that when you look at the documentation, they cut and paste documentation from the previous version. Because they update it that way, what happens is that there's nobody doing Q&A. For example, in Red Hat 7 and Red Hat 8, they changed the way they do deployments. Instead of using YUM, you use DNF but when you read the documentation for Red Hat 8, they intermix the two. This means that if you're a new Linux user, it's very difficult to distinguish between the two commands. The fact of the matter is that one is built on top of the other. DNF is backward compatible on top of YUM, and that can cause confusion with users and system administrators. However, it wouldn't be an issue if there was good documentation.

My job is pretty easy, but the documentation would really help me be able to communicate the things that I do to the rest of my team. They're all Windows people and when I go to the Red Hat documentation and tell them that we're migrating to this and we're using this tool, but the documentation is horrible, I get laughed at.

By comparison, Microsoft has its own problems with documentation, but it's a little bit more organized and it's definitely fleshed out a lot better. I commend Microsoft for its documentation. Red Hat may be the better product for the things that we do in our environment, but Microsoft has better documentation.

I have been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the past four years.

This is a very stable product.

In terms of scalability, you can't beat it. It's easy for me to scale up and down, especially with Satellite. I can push out 10, 100, of the same servers for the same configuration and set up with the push of a button.

On the cloud side, Azure also allows us to scale very nicely. This means that we can scale locally if we need to because we use Hyper-V for our VM management and we can spin up 10, 15, or however many servers we need, relatively easy with the push of a button, and you can do the same thing in Azure. We haven't done that in AWS.

Most of the servers that we spin up are proxies. We use a product called HAProxy, and we can deploy those proxies as needed. There are also busy periods where we need to scale. For example, when it's the time of year for students to register for classes, we'll see an increase. 

Another thing that is nice is that Azure will scale as we see more users come online. It will automatically spin up Red Hat boxes to accommodate, and then it'll bring them back down when that surge is over.

Overall, scalability is very nice, either in the cloud or on-premises. As far as setup and configuration, you can make sure that it's consistent across the board, no matter where it is deployed.

I would rate their frontline support, where I submit a ticket, a seven or eight out of ten.

In terms of support that is available through their documentation, I would rate it a three out of ten.

Before I started working for the organization I work for now, I used a product called the FOG Project. At the time, we used Ubuntu Linux. FOG was the equivalent to Satellite and Ubuntu is the equivalent to standard Red Hat.

Comparing the two are apples and oranges. The FOG Project is not as mature as Satellite; it doesn't have the bells and whistles that Satellite does. In general, their lifecycle management tools cannot be compared. Satellite outperforms the FOG project, it's easier to deploy and easier to use.

When comparing Ubuntu and Red Hat, the big difference is that the releases for Red Hat are more stable. They do lag a little behind Ubuntu, as Ubuntu is more bleeding edge. This means that they're pushing out updates a little bit faster, but they're not clean in the sense that they may push out a patch, but then five days later, they have to push out a patch to patch the patch. This is in contrast to Red Hat, which is a little bit more consistent and a little bit more stable. What it comes down to is that Red Hat is much more stable than Ubuntu in terms of patches, updates, and upgrades.

Those are the key differences for somebody who manages that infrastructure. You want something that's easy to diagnose, troubleshoot, and put out solutions. Ubuntu may push out a patch or an update that's so bleeding edge or so out there that vendors haven't had time to come up with solutions on their own, so if it's a driver issue or something like that, with Ubuntu, you may have to wait around as a user for those kinds of solutions.

With Red Hat, they make sure that when the product goes out, that there is some Q&A, and they've done some testing. They make sure that there's compatibility with other products that depend on that particular feature, functionality, or service.

RHEL is very easy to configure and deploy.

When we're talking about RHEL in the cloud, Azure is probably the better platform for RHEL. AWS has some licensing issues. The business end of using RHEL on AWS is not as mature or fleshed out as it is on Azure.

Incidentally, I'm not a big fan of Azure. Rather, I have most of my experience in AWS, but Azure deploys Red Hat without issue. We don't have to worry about licensing and connecting things. Everything is already bound to Azure AD, and that makes it really nice because on-premises, we have to do that manually.

For the on-premises deployment, part of the deployment package requires that we add our Red Hat servers to our local AD. But in Azure, it just does everything for you all within one PowerShell command. Ultimately, deploying Red Hat in Azure is much easier than deploying it either on-premises or on AWS.

We have seen a return on our investment. Our organization is probably going to stick with Red Hat because the licensing fees are low enough to offset the maintenance and support cost of that OS.

Pricing is always a critical factor for all IT departments. The cost of doing business is part of the nature of the job. If you're going to buy a bunch of Dell servers, for example, you have to take into consideration not just the licensing, but the hardware support and other things. The licensing with Red Hat is on par with other organizations like Microsoft.

We buy our licensing in bulk, meaning we buy perhaps 1,500 licenses at a time. They changed their licensing structure over the last couple of years. It used to be per system, whereas now, it's all or nothing. We don't have a subscription, as they used to offer, because they moved away from that. We have a site license, which gives us a certain number of servers, perhaps 25,000, for the type of license that we have. That works really well for us.

The way our structure is set up is that we just buy it by the tier system that they have, so if you have so many servers then you buy that tier and then you get so many licenses as part of that tier or enterprise package.

There are additional fees for using other Red Hat tools, such as Ansible Tower. We use Satellite, and it uses Ansible on the backend. However, we use the vanilla Ansible out of the box, rather than the official Red Hat Ansible Tower, simply because we can't afford the licensing for it. Satellite bundles everything together nicely in their suite of tools but we have moved away from that because of the additional cost.

This is one of the downsides to any operating system, not just Red Hat. Windows, for example, is the same way. They try to bill every organization for every license that they can by adding on different suites of tools that they charge for. A lot of organizations, especially the smaller ones, simply can't afford it, so they create workarounds instead. In our case, Ansible is freely available and we can use it without having to pay the fees for Red Hat's Ansible.

The nice thing though, is that they give you the choice. Red Hat doesn't force you to buy the entire product. They still have Ansible entwined with their Satellite product. The point is that if you want the additional features and functionality then you have to buy their Ansible Tower product, but you can still use the basic product regardless.

The fact that RHEL is open-source was a factor in us implementing it. This is an interesting time for Red Hat. The great thing about Red Hat for us was that we could use Red Hat and then we could use their free, commercial version, which is CentOS. It stands for Community Enterprise OS. Unfortunately, they are no longer going to push out CentOS and I think that 8.4 is the latest version of their free Red Hat distribution.

When we first went to Red Hat, in all the organizations I've ever worked at, being able to test things was one of the key factors. We could spin up a CentOS, implement a proof of concept and do some testing before we actually went to use RHEL, which is a licensed version. The real plus was that we could do testing and we could do all these things on the free version without having to eat up a license to do a proof of concept before we actually invested money moving in that direction, using that particular product or service.

Now that this ability has gone away, we are going to see how that pans out. I think Rocky Linux, they're hoping that that's going to be the next CentOS or free Red Hat. We'll see if that pans out or not but right now, it's a scary time for people that are dependent on CentOS for their free development environments, where we can just spin that up and play around. Right now, we're looking at how we're going to resolve that.

It may be that we have to eat up a license so that we can spin up a machine that we just want to do a proof of concept. This is something that we don't know yet. I don't have an answer because we simply don't have enough data to make an assessment on that.

Everything considered, having a free commercial version available, in addition to the paid product, is a big lure for us. They worked really well in tandem.

We have approximately 14 servers running Red Hat 6 but we used Red Hat 6 all the way to Red Hat 8.

The AppStream feature is something that we have tried but on a very limited scale. We have had mixed results with it, although it looks promising. At this point, I can't say whether it is a good feature or not.

My advice for anybody considering Red Hat depends on the role of the person that is making the decision. If they're an end-user or their organization is using office productivity software, then they're probably not going to want to use it for the backend. This is because there are not a lot of users that are using Red Hat as their office productivity operating system.

If on the other hand, you're somebody that's looking for servers that just need what they call five nines or high availability, Red Hat is your solution for that. That's what I would say to anybody, any technical person that I've talked to, if you can afford it, definitely get Red Hat for your web development. Your web servers should be either Apache, or NGINX, which is their web server stuff.

Red Hat should also be used to host an Oracle database. We found that that works really well and is very competitive with Microsoft's SQL server. It's about the same cost; the Red Hat product is actually a little cheaper than Microsoft's SQL product.

Considering the cost, ease of deployment, and ease of use, Red Hat is the better product for your main infrastructure. For things that just have to be up and running, Red Hat is the product that you want to use.

I can't be strong enough in my opinion that Red Hat does what it does very well for the mundane tasks of infrastructure. For instance, when it comes to web servers, no other OS does a better job than Red Hat for web servers or databases. Similarly, it does a very good job for proxies. For things that just need to run and have very little human interaction, Red Hat's your solution. If you're looking for something that's for an office, such as for accounting, then Red Hat is not the solution to choose.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use the solution internally for developing our software, including running databases and banking applications. These are the kinds of services we provide to customers, as well as our own internal software products.

The solution has helped enormously in terms of development and infrastructure. It enables us to centralize development and improve productivity significantly by providing a stable platform with documentation and best practices for deploying robust solutions.

One of the most valuable features is the ease of consumption and the extensive community-driven resources. The documentation is extensive, allowing users to get started without difficulty. 

Additionally, the support and stability provided by Red Hat Enterprise Linux contribute significantly to its value.

The solution requires a lot of prerequisites and understanding of the Red Hat ecosystem before one can get started. This complexity could be improved. 

More comprehensive support for OpenShift integrations and a less customized, Red Hat-specific setup process would be beneficial.

We have been using the solution for more than ten years.

The solution has been stable. We partner closely with Red Hat, and the operating system has been reliable for a long time.

I am not directly involved with scaling aspects, so I can't provide specific insights on this.

We have been very happy with customer service and support. Red Hat offers prompt support with a good turnaround time, effectively addressing any issues.

Positive

The pricing is competitive. It is not cheap. That said, it provides value considering what it offers.

I would suggest that anyone starting to develop should consider starting with a community-based version, however, for production workloads, it is important to have the support model from Red Hat as it provides stability and quick issue resolution.

I used Red Hat Enterprise Linux to construct systems according to the application team's requirements. I build and support these systems through the development, testing, pre-production, and production phases, fulfilling both developer and operational roles. To ensure the systems can handle the application's demands and meet our cybersecurity standards, I implement all security measures outlined by our cybersecurity team.

The extensive knowledge base offers a full path from beginner to advanced levels. We can access everything needed to study, pass exams, and apply knowledge immediately. The information is presented clearly, without any abstract concepts.

Red Hat offers built-in security features that simplify risk management. Unlike Oracle Linux, which overlooks critical security features like C Linux, Red Hat actively develops and maintains robust security measures. As a result, Red Hat prioritizes system security, consistently providing updates to fortify its machines against potential threats.

Red Hat helps us maintain compliance by enabling us to create and modify firewall rules as needed, allowing for strong security measures that can be adjusted.

The security reports generated every three months are valuable for provisioning and patching as they identify vulnerabilities requiring remediation. I find all the necessary information to address these vulnerabilities and implement patches through the Red Hat Enterprise portal and community resources.

When I started using Red Hat Enterprise Linux five years ago, I noticed the benefits incrementally over time.

Red Hat's greatest asset is its extensive community, which provides valuable support and advice when issues arise. Due to the robust nature of this community, I have never required direct assistance from Red Hat Enterprise.

Red Hat offers customizable tools, such as Assemble, that enhance flexibility within enterprise products. Assemble is a platform capable of managing multiple systems from a single console.

While Red Hat offers essential starting and security documentation, I would like to see it officially recognize the more detailed and customized documents available in the community and make them accessible on its website.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the most stable system I have ever worked with.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable.

I changed jobs five months ago, and my new company uses Oracle Linux instead of Red Hat, so Oracle provides support rather than Red Hat.

I find Red Hat Enterprise Linux more flexible, with a larger community and numerous security advisors.

We found it less complex to build a new system on the newer version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and migrate data rather than upgrading the existing system from, for example, version seven to eight. A simple upgrade risks data loss.

One person can do the upgrades and migrations.

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

The system requires immediate maintenance due to necessary security patches, unresolved vulnerabilities, and a constant influx of operational tasks from other teams. These daily demands include critical adjustments such as modifying service ports and implementing local firewall rules.

I recommend new users visit the official Red Hat Enterprise Linux website to review the guides, explore the community, and research information related to their Red Hat Enterprise Linux tasks. 

I use the solution to manage Atlassian applications. In our company, we initially deployed Atlassian applications on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). For most of the products my company uses, we create Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)-based servers because we have Red Hat Satellite, so we just bring them up and make them supportive for us.

The most valuable benefit of the product for my organization revolves around standardization, which is why we have all the same types of machines and operating systems. It makes it very easy and familiar across the board. The tool is also very reliable.

My company does have a hybrid cloud environment. Running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as the foundation for the hybrid cloud deployment strangely impacted our operations. I think that when my company moved off from the tool's on-premises version for certain applications, we had to leave Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Everything in my company is based on whatever AWS provides, specifically when Linux is on AWS, and I guess it negatively affected my company.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped my company centralize developments because we know what we are going to use in the product, and so we don't have to make any decisions. Owing to the aforementioned area, I would say it offers a good standard.

In terms of the tool's built-in security features when it comes to risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance, I would say it is very easy to patch, which helps our company to keep it up to date and avoid all downfalls.

Speaking about the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to keep our organization agile, I would say that we don't tend to move that much with applications. The tool has helped to weave a path for an upgrade while creating a new application server, after which one can transfer it over. Considering the aforementioned details, the tool is portable. In short, whenever I try to use the product's portability feature, it does work.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that the upgrade in the patching area is really easy.

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

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution since it is easy to make changes in the tool.

If the product is deployed on an on-premises model, it will be deployed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system.

I haven't had a reason to use the support services of the product for a long time. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

In the past, my company used CentOS for a while. There were some other products which were also used in my company. My company started to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as it provided standardization, and we required something nice and uniform in nature.

The product was already up and running when I joined the organization.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. If my company opts to have the product deployed on cloud, then we would opt for the cloud services offered by AWS.

I am sure my company did not seek help from many integrators, resellers, or consultants to deploy the product.

The biggest ROI I experienced using the product stemmed from the fact that it was really fast to deploy right from the beginning when we were building our company's new systems. The product works fine.

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 offers Red Hat Satellite, so everything is just so encapsulated and there in the tool.

I can't speak of whether the Red Hat portfolio has affected our total cost of ownership across our enterprise landscape since I don't know the cost.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

We have general use cases.

It's a well-supported OS. I don't know what we'd use if we didn't have it.

Moreover, the last time I had an issue flagged with the vulnerability, I was able to go to the Red Hat website and find a patch. It worked pretty well.

The built-in security worked well when it came to solidifying risk production and maintaining compliance. The uptime or security of our systems has been pretty solid.

It helps us maintain our security standards and keeps us up to date on security. 

One of the most valuable features is the package manager because it makes it easier to keep everything up to date.

The package compatibility between different releases is a little confusing sometimes.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 10 years. 

We've also used Ubuntu. 

It's a matter of certain servers that need to be kept secure, so we chose Red Hat. 

When I order a server in our organization, it comes installed, and then they spin it up.

I am involved in the upgrade processes. The upgrades weren't complex but required some downtime. We don't normally upgrade until a particular OS version becomes end-of-life and the new one starts.

Our in-house IT department did the deployment. We have a separate IT department that leverages the training provided by Red Hat.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten because most of the information I need I could find on the Red Hat website.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as an operating system for hosting Oracle databases.

Compared to Windows as a server operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux seems more secure, and we've had fewer intrusions onto our systems. That one, for us, is the single most important thing. In a few instances where we've had intrusions, we've been able to detect them very quickly and get patches that fix those security holes very quickly, thus preventing further intrusions.

In the cases of clients I've worked for, I've never been involved in a ransomware attack or a significant reportable data loss. That is why we continue using either Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Oracle Linux.

The most valuable features are its stability and resilience in that we rarely have to take down the systems completely to patch them.

The operating system configuration and function selection could be improved. Configuring the operating system and selection of options takes a lot of expertise. I'm now going to retire, and I've been doing this for many years. Trying to train people to make those choices is proving to be difficult. However, to get applications to run efficiently in those environments, those selections are absolutely crucial.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux should include simpler storage management.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 20 years.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten for stability.

No system is infinitely scalable in a linear manner. As you scale up anything, the fact that you're scaling adds overheads. If I were to compare Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Windows, I would give Windows a seven because you run out of scalability much faster on the Windows side.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten for scalability.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's technical support team is not that great.

Negative

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive, but it's hard to quantify. Oracle doesn't have a license. You just download Oracle software and use it, but their support is way more expensive. So they're about the same. With these types of operating systems, you need to have some support. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you need to pay a massive upfront licensing fee in order to get support. You don't have to pay a licensing fee for Oracle, but then you pay a massive support fee to get the support.

They're about the same overall. I don't really make that choice for my clients. I ask them to ensure that they do have some support from someplace. If they suffer a breach and need someone to help fix the problem, they should have something up and running when it happens instead of running around trying to arrange it.

Most of my clients have particularly sensitive information. We tend to run on-premises rather than the cloud because of security issues for those highly sensitive databases. We disconnect those databases from the internet so they are ultimately secure. That is something that you cannot do in the cloud.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux doesn't have any particular standout security features, which the other Linux tools don't have. I've also used the Oracle version of Linux, which seems very similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Both seem to be as secure as the other. If I have to give a score in relation to stability, Oracle's version of Linux might be slightly more stable than Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

All the customers I've worked for have been using those operating systems for a long time. For instance, one of our customers has been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since it was first available over 20 years ago. A return from that is difficult. They were using Unix rather than Linux. The applications they ran were ported from those environments, and migrating them to Red Hat Enterprise Linux was relatively painless. We did those migrations back in 1995 to 1997.

We tend to use the environment for running databases. So, we have very few real users directly connecting to the system. The people who connect to the system do so by applications.

We haven't needed any maintenance for a long time. My last company was a large organization, and we had the internal expertise to provide support. Some net contributors have fixed bugs themselves and contributed those bug fixes back into the Linux open-source community. It was a huge organization, and its IT department was as big as some software consultancies.

Overall, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a six 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 use the product mostly for Red Hat OpenShift. We use the solution mainly for stability and to have a fallback within the Red Hat community.

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

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

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

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

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

I have no complaints regarding the tool’s stability.

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

The technical support is very helpful.

Positive

I have used CentOS and Debian.

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

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

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

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

The product is on the expensive side.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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