Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We are part of the State Department and use the solution to achieve operational excellence and readiness for the cloud. We think about what the next 20 to 30 years of consular systems infrastructure might look like to build and design for the next 40 years. Not many other companies think beyond a decade. 

The solution was implemented in our environment in 2014. The initial mission is still the same but how we go about it is different. For now, the solution is more for application support and making sure we are following State mandates or executive orders. 

For example, one use case involved planning, designing the implementation, and executing a launch of online passport renewals.

Our environment is moving toward tools that provide automation to remove human error. These are tactical operations and use cases. We currently use SaaS, OpenShift, and Ansible to a limited degree.

We had many issues with staff turnover during COVID. Working from home and trying to maintain databases was not ideal. During this time, the solution would have been rated a five out of ten.

Sometimes, vendors provide the government or bigger organizations with band-aids but not solutions. Everything seems to be a problem so many fixes are provided. A fix for this or a fix for that is equivalent to putting a band-aid on a large cut which will not work. Vendors tend to look at the money game because larger companies are their bread and butter. There should be an appreciation for the needs of bigger organizations.

It took some time to get us in a good position with the solution. There is definitely some growth and appreciation. We are at a place now where we can grow our environment. Today, the solution is rated a seven out of ten.

The solution is useful for application support and automations. 

A completely new setup should not be required when upgrading to a new version of the solution. For example, moving from RHEL 7.7 to RHEL 9 requires us to go through every minor version upgrade as well as RHEL 8. We do not have the ability to patch as quickly as we would like, but there are pathways. We got on 6.8 this year and migrated to 6.11 where we are trying to work on the automation portions of deployment. Before, we had variations of versions 7.2, 7.3, and 7.5 in our environment. We have not yet been able to use the supported versions that we are accustomed to with our applications. We are now on 7.9.1 and are trying to implement the minor upgrade versions in our environment. We have not yet experienced a healthy environment or the joy of using RHEL because we keep encountering issues and problems.

There are issues when upgrading or integrating with previous applications or systems such as Satellite, vRA, SaaS, or OpenShift. This is extremely, extremely important because a lot of our infrastructure is on RHEL. We need to have someone onsite to adjudicate our infrastructure's most important applications, when we would rather be able to patch them in a timely manner without having the whole world assist us. 

The solution should be more user-friendly so we better understand how to scale. It is not that we shun professional services, but there is a major knowledge gap in our understanding of the solution. 

I have been using the solution for four years. 

With anything, when you nurture it things work. Now that we are finally on 7.9 and migrated 6.11 we are actively trying to automate. This puts us in a better and more stable position. 

We rely primarily on our contracting staff or professional services for support. We receive onsite support from account engineers who apply critical patches or troubleshoot code that is not cohesive. For the most part, turnaround time is moderate but certain legacy applications are harder to troubleshoot, so they take more time.

Technical support steps in for big issues and provides good help. For example, support assisted with decommissioning 6.2 and 6.5 because they were at end of life with no option for purchasing ongoing support. We had professional services and many different products, so technical support made an exception to help with migrations and that was appreciated. 

Technical support is rated a nine out of ten. 

I do not know the setup details. The solution was implemented in 2014 and I joined the team in 2018.

We are currently experiencing issues when upgrading or integrating with previous applications and are looking for solutions. We push out patches and look at Tower. We already tried Puppet and it integrates with Satellite, but we prefer to use home-grown products. 

Because we use Satellite, it would be nice if the automation portions come from Tower or others. We have explained this to an account manager but solutions are being presented to us from a sales perspective. For example, we are told that we should ramp up, get other applications, or purchase more licenses.  

Decommissioning is one of our biggest issues. We upgrade and spin it up, but then have problems decommissioning some applications so more user licenses are required. For example, we have an unused server but cannot remove the license because we are either unable to get assistance or do not know how to perform the action.

We used vRA with the solution but it did not work for us.

We also used CloudForm but are attempting without success to decommission because it was not a useful case.

It is important to ensure there is a level of training for implementation. You need to understand compliance for your organization to determine whether vendors can provide appropriate tools. 

Do not be afraid to ask questions once the solution is implemented in your environment to ensure you are where you need to be. 

Stay on top of version or patch releases to prevent bugs or security vulnerabilities to your ISSO or agency. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

I worked with different organizations. So, the use case varies from organization to organization. Right now, some of the teams are using it for applications like BI, and then there are a few others that are using it for Websphere, middleware, etc.

In terms of the version, most of them are on 7.9, but there are a few on 8.2 and 8.4 as well.

It enables us to achieve security compliance. Our security team is quite happy, especially in terms of patching up our servers, etc. It's compliant with our security requirements. With Windows updates, sometimes, there could be errors and the blue screen issue, and it could become hectic for the applications as well. Our security teams struggled a bit to update Windows, but when it comes to Linux, they are quite comfortable because they know that things will go smoothly.

I'm quite new to this organization, but I know that there has been improvement in terms of performance. We're using Red Hat Linux on Power Systems, which is quite different from the Intel platform. So, admins are much happier, and they are using it quite well now. Previously, we were using Windows for our applications, but now, we have made Linux mandatory for being open source and not bound to Windows. Things can be complicated on Windows. Especially when we're installing it, there are a lot of things, such as registries, but Linux is easier for admins. There is DVS as well.

When I worked in the banking sector, the most important part was user administration where you need to keep things under control for a specific user. The auditor usually looks for an agent or something like that, and it has been quite easy to manage things from that perspective. Things are more manageable now than in the past.

Windows operating system is used everywhere. You will find it everywhere, and every user is able to use Windows. If a user is using an operating system from the start, it becomes easier for them to use it when they come to a professional environment. That's an area in which I believe they need to put in extra effort, especially for the students. Currently, for their final projects, most students use Windows, and this is an area where Red Hat needs to put in an effort. They need to give some training to the students so that when they come to the professional environment, they're already used to it. It would then become easier for them to use it in a professional environment.

I'm also using IBM AIX, which supports a tool called Smitty. You just put Smitty, and you can do anything. At the backend, the command will run automatically. It is not exactly like a GUI, but you just give the input and it will give you the output. That is something that Red Hat should work on. That would be an added advantage with Red Hat.

It has been 12 or 13 years.

It is very stable.

We are mostly using VMware and Power Systems. Scalability-wise, they are always the best. We can upgrade to get all the resources on the fly. We never faced any issues. However, if you didn't add the required parameters on your profile on VMware or the Power System, then there is an issue, but that's not related to the OS. That's related to virtualization.

Application-wise, there are multiple teams that are using these systems. We have the database team, the middleware team, the MQ team, etc. There are also system admins. The system admins are the ones who are deploying it, but the owners of the system are different.

We have plans to increase its usage. Two years ago, we had only 60 or 70 servers of Red Hat, but now, we have 400 to 500 servers. Its usage is always increasing. After a year or two, we might end up with about 1000 servers.

We have contacted them a few times. We did ask the support team to get in when the cluster got stuck and let us know what's the issue and what's the solution. Whenever I have asked for support, they have provided the best support. I always count them as the best. We have never faced an issue with them. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

We had Windows. The stability was the reason for switching to Red Hat. The stability of Windows varies, but Linux is quite stable now. That was the main part they were looking for.

We are very comfortable with using Linux. We have been using it for 10 to 15 years, and we can't switch to Windows. We can't use Windows even on our laptops. We are not used to using a mouse and GUI. The command prompt is much better for us.

We also use AIX because we have AIX infrastructure, but a few of the applications don't work on AIX, whereas they work with Red Hat Linux. That gives Linux an advantage. So, we use Linux on Power Systems, rather than AIX.

We have been working with different operating systems, and we also know most of the technical requirements, so it is easy for us. Usually, the OS installation takes a maximum of 25 minutes. If you are making extra file systems, such as for Oracle, it takes 10 to 15 minutes extra. A desktop or a single file system doesn't require much time. We already have scripts. We just run the scripts and everything is done by the scripts. Previously, it used to take two or three hours, but now, things have changed, and we're making life easier.

We deploy it ourselves. We don't ask other vendors to deploy it for us. In terms of maintenance, we have already been updating our maintenance contracts, especially the support contract. There are some old systems running in our environment, and we are in the process of upgrading those from version 6.9. We already have the required support.

There are four people on the team, but for Linux especially, there are only two people. We're easily managing 500 to 600 servers for Red Hat.

When you are running your infrastructure on this, you can always find some discounts with local support, etc. There are always some discounts to match your budget. It is definitely affordable. 

When it comes to virtualization, there are different factors. There is not only Red Hat. There is also IBM, VMware, etc. The third-party vendors always manage to come up with a good offer. Our company can't say no to that, and it works out fine.

We also have IBM AIX, and when you compare these two, there's a huge difference because IBM AIX's support is quite higher than Red Hat's.

To anyone interested in using Red Hat for the first time, I would definitely advise starting with the GUI because now, the GUI option is quite good, and you can do all the things. After that, you can slowly start moving to CMD. For learning, there are a lot of resources available online, such as YouTube and LinkedIn Learning, whereas Red Hat Academy is quite expensive.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using this solution is that when you're using the command line, you need to be extra careful. That's because when using the command line, a single slash can make a huge difference. That's what I learned at the start of my career.

I started with Red Hat Version 5. Now they have version 9, which I haven't used, but if I just consider the evolution from version 5 to 8, 8.2, or 8.4, there has been a huge difference because, at that time, people were scared of using Linux, but now, things are different. There has been a revolution in terms of OS. A lot of things are being changed, but in terms of the things that we do, for us, it is the same because we are doing system administration. As a system admin, there is nothing different for us. We are doing the same things again and again because the applications require the addition of storage.

There is also a change in terms of security features. If I compare the old versions with the new versions, in old versions, adding any exception in the host firewall was a real task, but now, things have either become smooth, or we have gotten used to it. Overall, for me, things have become easier. They are getting more and more secure, but with the vulnerabilities and the assessments that have been done, we need to keep updating. Now, everything has caught up with the latest security required in the market.

In our environment, we're using virtual servers. There are no physical ones. We are shifting to containers in my current organization. Most of the applications we are using are containerized, and it has been easy for us to manage those applications. However, we also require some in-built applications, and for that, a change in people's mindset is required. It's not about the OS; it's about the people who do the development. It is becoming a bit hard for them because they were using a different platform previously, and now, they need to move to the Linux platform. It is a little bit different for them.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. When comparing it with AIX, AIX is a bit easier in terms of use and it also has the Smitty tool.

I use it for almost everything. I run a company in South Texas and Mexico. We are a cloud service provider, and we have implementations for almost everything. We are using it for websites, virtualization, orchestration, and containers, and we are also using it a lot for telecommunications. We use almost all of its features.

We have many versions. We have versions 8, 9, 9, 9.1, 9.2, etc. 

When we implemented all the security frameworks with RHEL three years ago, that was the first time we had a non-issue audit. It was a great implementation.

It helps with the headcount. With the kind of orchestration and automation that we have, we don't need a lot of engineers. We can have fewer engineers on site.

There is reliability. We can rely not only on their operating system but also on their server. Red Hat not only has operating systems; it also has many different servers.

It helps to achieve security standards certification. It is one of the most important things that I do every single day. We need to comply with a lot of frameworks of security, such as ISO2701, ISO2717, ISO2721, PCI compliance, and HIPAA for the health sector. We also have some local compliance requirements. For example, in Texas, there is one for financial entities, and in Mexico, there are several based on GDPR. It is very important for us.

It is helpful when it comes to building with confidence and ensuring availability across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructures. There are many features to ensure or enforce high availability.

It helps us to centralize development with OpenShift. We don't do a lot of DevOps, but we have a supply chain where everything goes to the on-premises cloud, and then it is pulled to the public cloud.

The Red Hat support is most valuable. My team and I are really good at Linux, and we can do almost everything in any kind of Linux solution, but sometimes, we have a really nasty problem, and the Red Hat engineering support at the third level has been fantastic. They know how to fix almost everything. The reason why I pay so much money to them is to have this kind of service and assurance.

Containers are the strongest feature that they have. In terms of the quality, between VMs and containers, Red Hat with OpenShift is fantastic. I have more than a million containers right now in my cloud, and it works fantastically.

Network virtualization resources could be better. When you have any kind of trouble with network virtualization, such as with OVS, which is like a switch in a virtual environment, it takes many hours to find what is happening. Other vendors, such as VMware, and even other Linux implementations for network virtualization have better resources. It is much easier to escalate, and there is better documentation.

I don't use Ceph, which is their software-defined storage, because they don't have the best price. It doesn't make sense when you compare it in terms of the hardware cost, better performance, and better capabilities. That's my main complaint at any meeting with Red Hat. I want to use Red Hat Ceph, but it costs so much money.

I have been using it for about 20 years.

If you have the correct hardware, it is stable, but if you do not, you will have a problem any time soon.

It is reliable. If you don't know how to secure your Linux implementation, Red Hat can do it for you with two or three simple clicks, and you will be very secure without any kind of knowledge.

It is scalable. It is not the most scalable in the Linux area, but for 99% of the companies, it is scalable enough for any kind of workload.

We have plenty of clusters, and we probably have more than 400 servers. We are a private cloud solution provider. We don't have anything in the hyper-scale, such as AWS, Azure, etc. We own everything: the data center servers, racks, networking, and storage. That's our competency, and this way, we can provide a better solution to the kind of customers we are focused on.

We have three different locations: one in the states and two in Mexico. At each location, we have at least three different clusters for three different market verticals. We have one for the financial, one for the healthcare system, which has a lot of compliance requirements, and one for the general public, which doesn't have too much sophistication.

We plan to increase its usage, but it is not my decision. If I sell more, I will buy more.

They are exceptional. We have a lot of experience in these matters. Usually, when we have any kind of issue, it is a really difficult one, and I need to talk to somebody at level two or three in the support area. They skip the line for us because we send everything perfectly documented to open the PR. They put us in touch with the best engineer to solve the issue. If the engineer isn't able to understand what is happening, usually, he calls the RHEL developer or engineer that handles that part of the code. They are usually able to fix a complex problem in less than eight hours.

Their support is fantastic. I have dealt with many different vendors, but Red Hat is the only one that does it in this way. They do it in a simple and fast way. They understand you, and they are willing to help you and fix everything. If you have a problem or situation that is causing downtime for the customer, they understand that it has an impact on your business, and they are affecting the revenue of the company. They are really committed to fixing it as soon as possible. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

We use RHEL and Canonical. We have some SUSE implementation in the Linux area. In hypervisors, we use VMware and Hyper-V. So, we are in many different technologies, and we are not always on RHEL. RHEL has almost 45% of all our hardware. It is the biggest one, but we use almost all the solutions. In terms of security, Red Hat and Canonical have almost the same level of security.

I am no longer involved in its deployment. I last deployed it about four years ago.

In terms of maintenance, every server requires some kind of maintenance, but we have everything automated. We don't put any effort into it. 

We have 8 to 12 people for deployment and maintenance. They handle the deployment and change of the environment in the data center. For DevOps, I have another team of probably 30 people. They develop solutions for customers.

We have definitely seen an ROI. The return on investments comes in the 14th or 15th month.

For the basic operating system, its price is fair. It is not cheap, and it is also not expensive. For the OpenShift or OpenStack implementation, the cost is a little higher than what I would expect, but it is doable. For a storage solution, it is almost impossible to pay.

In comparison to open-source competitors, RHEL has the most cost-effective open-source subscription model. The way I pay for everything, such as Ubuntu or RHEL, is very similar. When you compare how much money I put in for a customer, in terms of licensing, or even support, my margins with RHEL are really good. If I compare it with VMware or Hyper-V, which are not open source, the difference is totally insane.

I am a vendor-agnostic solution provider. If my customer needs something with RHEL or something that's specifically with another vendor, I use that. If they don't know, or there is a new implementation, I surely send everything to the RHEL implementation. In the end, this is not my decision. It is a market decision. If my customer is telling me that they should be on RHEL, I will bring in RHEL for them.

I would advise paying for the enterprise-level support at least for the first year.
For sure, it is expensive, but it would be helpful. With experience, you can downgrade to the second level.

We have had some issues with container compression that broke everything. So, I don't recommend using it if you don't know how to fix everything.

The biggest lesson that I've learned from using this solution is to read before starting the implementation.

I would rate it a 9 out of 10 because there is nothing perfect.

We have warehouse management systems (WMSs) where we run Oracle as our database. The app tier is basically Java. We are using a vendor-supplied Java, and the application itself is managed by the vendor. There are just one-offs here and there, such as utility boxes, but the majority is Oracle and the application that connects to Oracle.

On larger systems, like HANA, we have it deployed physically. On everything else, we have deployed it in a VMware environment. It is all on-premises. While there is some cloud, that is being done by contractors. 

We are on versions 6 through 8. As soon as version 9 gets released to GA, I am going to start working on getting that image ready. Currently, about half our images are on version 8, two-fifths are on version 6, and then version 7 is squeezed in-between.

The solution provides features that help me tweak or configure the operating system for optimal use, such as Insights Client, which I have used quite a bit to help me.

Our users are removed from the environment. They don't really know that they are running on RHEL. There have been very few complaints about speeds, application, or stability on RHEL platforms. Whereas, on Windows platforms, there are a lot of complaints.

Satellite 6.10 and RHEL integrate with each other perfectly. This integrated approach enables me to be a single person managing my images since it does a lot of the manual labor that I used to do, such as building patches, doing system maintenance, and keeping systems consistent. It does all that stuff for me. So, it has offloaded those responsibilities, giving me more work-life balance.

It is a bit on the pricier side. However, due to the stability and support that they provide to my management and me, we really don't see a reason to choose another way to go. Red Hat offers excellent support in a sphere where it is difficult to find good support.

I have been using RHEL since 2013.

It is a good operating system. It is very stable. It does not take a lot of maintenance. You set it up well and it runs. To give some perspective, we also have Windows admins. That team is about six people and growing. They manage twice as many servers as I manage, keeping them busy all the time. Whereas, I pretty much have a life; the work-life balance is very good.

RHEL is very stable. You build an image and deploy it, then it runs.

As far as the operating system contributing to reliability, it is very stable and has low maintenance. It keeps running.

We found that two of our outages in the past eight years were related to the operating system. All our other outages were related to the application and the use of the application.

I don't find the solution’s tracing and monitoring tools impact performance at all.

We can scale out. When we need more machines, we just build more machines. That is not a problem. We don't do the scale ups or any of the other scaling that is out there. That is partially because of the way our applications work. You need to scale according to the application. If the application requires new nodes, we just spin up another node and it is no problem. I could run 10,000 images, and it is not a problem.

Because we buy companies, we will probably continue to increase the usage of RHEL. I don't think that will be a problem because it is so stable. We are running about 200 images right now and about 60% of those are in production. I can't see it shrinking, but I can see it growing.

I like the fact that they really dig into things and then provide answers. As the single Linux guy, I kind of need that second admin next to me sometimes to say, "Hey, what about this?" and I am able to do that through the portal. I get my questions answered and trouble tickets resolved.

The technical support is superior to many vendors with whom we interact. They pay attention. Rarely will I run into a support person who doesn't seem to know what they are doing, then it doesn't take very long to get the issue escalated to somebody else. Out of a hundred cases, I have probably escalated three times. I would rate the support as 10 out of 10.

Positive

I came from a Unix background. I was on HP-UX on OSS and AIX. So, the transition to Linux was very simple. I am a command line person, so I wasn't scared. I just moved into it and found it to be very attractive. In fact, I don't run GUIs on any of my Linux boxes.

The biggest benefit for me, coming out of the Unix arena, was that it matched Unix very closely. So, I am able to draw on my Unix experience and use that in the RHEL environment. There is almost a non-existent learning curve in my situation.

The initial setup of RHEL is about 10 times easier than Windows. It is literally just click, click, bang. It just installs. If you have a problem with the install, you just reinstall it. It takes very little time to install, about 10 minutes. As a base image, it is very easy to set up. Then, you have post tweaks that you need to do, and I have scripts for that. Since I can script it all, I just run another command, then boom and it is all done.

For my implementation strategy, I build the gold image, which is basically just going through the CD and making my selections for a base image. Then, I freeze that image, which is on VMware, and run my scripts. My scripts basically set up logs for auditing. Whether we are going to ship logs or keep logs locally, it sets up the basic users. For instance, it will set up my account with pseudo access so I can do the remainder of the work using my account with pseudo access. It sets up tracing, the host name, IP addresses, and ESXi host files. It sets up the basic fundamentals of an operating system and gets it ready for deploying the application. 

There are also different kinds of file systems that need to be deployed and additional users that need to be added. Those are all manual processes.

We have one admin who manages all the images. That is the return on investment. The company hasn't had to hire a second admin (FTE) to keep things running.

We have moved to the Simple Content Access (SCA) model. It is much easier to do renewals and see how I am using my licenses. I used to have to do it all by hand. It would take me a good couple of hours every few months to make sure that we were up to snuff on everything. However, with the new model that they have, this is very easy. I just go to cloud.redhat.com to look and see how I am utilizing my licenses. If I am running out of bounds, I can find out why. If it is simply that we have images that need to be removed, we remove those images. If we need to buy more licenses, then we can start the process of purchasing more licenses.

I think it is worth the price. I wish the pricing was a little bit more friendly, so when I go to my boss, he tells me, "That's too much money." I can say, "It's not too much money."

Especially if you are a newbie, buy the support and use the support. Get a couple of images going and really play around with them: crash them, burn them, and figure out how support functions when you have a really gnarly situation. Otherwise, it is just inserting the CD and booting the machine. It is very easy to set up and run.

I have looked at SUSE or Ubuntu. They are so radically different in their total management, e.g., everything from getting packages to configuration and in how that is all done. Therefore, it would be a learning curve to go to another solution. So, there is benefit in staying with RHEL. 

I do not have a lot of experience with Ubuntu or SUSE. Those would be the bigger contenders. The thing that I keep coming back to though as I'm talking to vendors and VARs is that though SUSE is a contender out there in the SAP landscape, RHEL has the stability. SUSE appears to function more like a desktop operating system ported to a server environment, whereas RHEL is built from the server hub. The management tools show that. It is a mature management infrastructure.

There are some things that are nice about SUSE. People talk about their app configuration wizards, but if you're coming from a Unix background overall, RHEL feels like a real operating system.

My interaction with Ubuntu has been as a desktop. It is very GUI-oriented. In my estimation, it is more like a toy. It is deployed in server environments, but it is more because admins are familiar with the desktop version of it. They just port that over as opposed to having grown up on Unix and moved into Ubuntu.

A Unix admin will prefer to go into something like Red Hat, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, or even Oracle Enterprise Linux because they will simply feel much more like a data center operating system than some of these other solutions.

RHEL provides features that help speed deployment. I am currently learning how to take advantage of those features.

As far as deployment goes, I build a golden image VM and just deploy the images themselves. I don't really use any RHEL tools specifically for the deployment portion.

The solution is constantly expanding and moving into new areas, like jumping into the cloud.

I need more experience with their self-monitoring tools. That is the one area where I feel like I am lacking. I am still using a lot of the stuff that I learned in the Unix realm. I haven't really matured into using the specifics that are being supplied. I am a member of the accelerators team and have been exposed to some of these tools through their lectures. I am starting to play with them a little bit, but I have not fully gone into that arena. So, there is improvement needed on my access to RHEL.

I would rate the solution as 10 out of 10.

Our containerized workloads utilize Docker and Kubernetes and run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux to support Final Shell operations.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps to partially centralize our development.

The primary advantage of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerized workloads is the robust support it offers in case of any issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has worked well for our business critical applications.

The built-in security features are great.

One of the most significant advantages is having Red Hat behind us. If we encounter problems, we can always call them for assistance, so we are not alone with our problems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps reduce our TCO.

The support from Red Hat is valuable. Having Red Hat behind us provides reassurance, and they deny unauthorized applications the ability to perform actions they shouldn't.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's SELinux can be challenging to manage and troubleshoot, often causing frustration. While we've resolved these issues, improvements to SELinux would be greatly appreciated. Though not yet explored, Red Hat Insights could potentially aid in resolving broader Linux problems.

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

We have yet to encounter problems related to Red Hat.

We install a new server if needed, and it works seamlessly.

Red Hat provides proactive support, including monthly check-ins and arranging calls to address any issues that may arise.

Positive

We do not have any other realistic options besides Red Hat.

The greatest return on investment lies in the platform's user-friendliness. Red Hat seamlessly manages all aspects of versioning and security, eliminating the need for my intervention.

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

If your budget allows, I recommend testing Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's quite easy to install, with Red Hat providing a comprehensive setup that eliminates configuration concerns.

In the past, we ran almost everything on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but now we use it for applications that are only supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, LDAP servers, and other stuff that runs better on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We've migrated the rest to Ubuntu. We don't use it for containerization yet, but I'm learning about OpenShift. 

We are considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux for some AI projects at the university, some for researchers and research groups, and others for administration or student enrollment. There are many opportunities to use AI. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has made us more agile, and more applications were ready-made for Linux. It was also easier to maintain the environment. 

It enabled us to centralize development, but we had some issues with cost, so we migrated off. We use the Linux security heavily.  I'm unfamiliar with the new security stuff incorporated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but SELinux and all the security features are good. It doesn't particularly reduce risks, but there are some added layers of security for internet-facing applications we like

Red Hat Enterprise Linux been stable, and we could do anything we wanted with it. OpenShift is a concise environment, and it is one of the most stable Linux distros on the market. 

The only issue for us was the cost. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive.

We have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a long time. We started using it on version 4, and now we are on 7, but we migrated most of our environment to Ubuntu a few years ago.

It is stable and mature.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux can scale to fit our needs. 

I rate Red Hat support nine out of 10. I was happy with it. Their expertise and technical knowledge were good. It was one of the best support experiences I've had. 

Positive

When Oracle acquired Sun, we migrated from Sun Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It wasn't easy, but it was a light effort.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10. If you're purchasing commercial Linux, I would look into Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it's highly stable and mature overall. It's a true enterprise OS. 

We are using the full setup in Linux and use the enterprise edition. We're migrating a lot of things over. 

We like that it's open-source and fully secure. We've fully migrated to Linux, and we were able to move everything over from the Red Hat database.

Compared to earlier tools, we get more options, and it's very user-friendly. The patching, for example, is easier. It can also support many things. It took us about six months to realize the solution's full benefits.  

The solution is very user-friendly. 

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux scripting is very good. It is easy for us to access those parts in the Linux portion. 

The security is very good. It helps us to maintain overall security.

I have a Linux certification, however, they do have good documentation in order for users to get information about the product.

The management experience for patching is very good. We can do the patching through the portal. We can use it based on our own timing. If there isn't something in production, we can do the patching. The patching experience is very nice compared to what we had to deal with previously. For example, with Windows, the patching would happen whenever. We can control it via the portal, and it is very user-friendly now.

We only use the command line. We do not use the GUI. The graphical user interface is useful. However, we prefer to use the command line as we can do many more things. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has positively affected our uptime. It's very fast. If you have to do patching, and need to reboot, it doesn't take too much time to do that. It might only take one to two minutes. 

For the most part, everything looks fine. Everything is going smoothly. 

Right now, we need to get memory and CPU via the console. If it was available in the console so that we could adjust these two things, that would be ideal. 

I've used the solution for the last four years. 

The stability of the solution is fine. I'd rate it nine out of ten for stability. It's user-friendly and the downtime is low. It won't impact business.

The solution is not deployed across multiple locations. We have around 300 end users.

It is scalable. We can immigrate to servers and it won't impact the business. 

We know there are some issues, and if we come across some vulnerabilities, we'll work with support. If we get an error, we'll go to them and discuss the issues. We take advice from them on how to work through problems. 

Sometimes, we'll get some errors and we'll send them an email. Sometimes it takes too much time for them to respond. The support time could be better.

Neutral

We did previously use a different solution. 

I was not involved in the installation. I have not worked on the OS level and I'm not involved in the migration to the cloud.

We have eight to nine people on our team that may handle some maintenance tasks. If there are any issues, we can patch and fix them. We go through the portal to handle patching and maintenance. We'll check the system pre and post patching.

I'm not aware of the exact pricing of the solution. 

We did not evaluate other options. We've fully moved to Linux and used Red Hat Enterprise Linux to do this. 

I'm an end-user. 

We will be moving to the cloud only. I'm not directly involved in that. The main thing will be that soon everything will be in the cloud only. Currently, I work with the on-premises version only. It's on a VM right now. 

This is a good solution if you are handling migrations or your internal environment. It's user-friendly and you can connect with technical support easily. It's also very secure. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

I work as a consultant for a bank. They were using another type of Linux and facing some scripting issues. We are using Ansible for infrastructure, but they depend on different languages. In this fintech use case, the bank performs transactions between two banks. The transactions were getting stuck, but they detected that the money had been transferred. 

The money comes from the bank. They transport it from the cloud and deliver it to the channels like Visa, MasterCard, etc. The national bank is also involved at that stage, so there is a pause. When we are using auto-scaling, it requires a small amount of time, so your application will have an error. This is a millisecond process. That is the duration. We were looking for issues like bank fraud. You need to conduct an analysis and restart the service. The data is on Red Hat Linux, and we use EKS for containerization. 

We have a hybrid solution combining AWS with an on-premise environment. Moving data to the cloud requires a stable connection because we have multiple systems on-premises and on the cloud. This platform helped us communicate among multiple clouds and our private cloud network. 

Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to subscribe to other Red Hat services from our portal. We can connect to Satellite with single sign-on logins. We can use the Spring CLI call and the Docker hub. We have a direct subscription.  

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has helped us avoid cloud vendor lock-in. We could easily migrate between cloud services from AWS to Azure if we wanted to. Everything is an SCL, so we could deploy the same thing on another cloud. It's highly useful. We can make a script and move the entire infrastructure. 

The Red Hat Linux comes with Anaconda, a fascinating tool that is useful if I need to connect multiple systems. I also like role-based access. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a little expensive for some customers who don't have the budget. It depends on the client. They can save money by not purchasing some of the added packages and services.  If the client has a budget of $10 million, we can go for the whole bundle. 

I have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux for four or five years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable, but it depends on the deployment. 

I rate Red Hat support 10 out of 10. I'm a big fan. 

Positive

I have used Ubuntu, which has its own cloud service. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a better option if the client has a budget. Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be certified and meet compliance requirements. 

Deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux is straightforward, but the complexity and time required depend on whether we are deploying on a virtual machine or a desktop. If we have the correct documentation, the total process can be completed in three to five days.

I have used the Image Builder Tool, but in the latest deployment, I pulled down the repository from the Docker hub. We use our own XML file and create the repository. It's a two or three-day design process for Red Hat Linux. We need one data resource for that process and a second engineer on the support side if we want to set up more servers from their on-site services.

It's affordable, but everything costs money. At the same time, everything adds value for our clients.  For example, I was working on a machine-learning project, and they needed more team resources, and all the projects used computing power. By running multiple clusters, the client exceeded the rate for that data. We buy services from AWS, the Azure Marketplace, or directly from Red Hat. 

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10. I recommend buying the services in a package if you can afford it. If the client doesn't have the budget, we can find alternatives. It depends on the client's needs.