Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are server virtualization.

It allows us to stay more in line with our mandates.

What I value the most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are the patching capacity and the patching capacity with Ansible. The patching capacity of RHEL has improved my company significantly. It allows us to stay more in line with our mandates for our infrastructure. I assess the knowledge base offered by RHEL as fantastic.

Security requirements were a consideration when choosing the solution. We liked that the patching rules were straightforward. We've had good experiences with provisioning and patching.

It helps support risk reduction and maintain compliance. The user interface is very intuitive.

We'll be migrating more to RHEL 10. Some in our environment are still in RHEL 7.

It's helped us mitigate risk. Any time we've had to do a patch update, the patch time is minimal. The risk reduction has been significant.

The knowledge base offered by RHEL is excellent. 

Even though I don't have complaints, I would like them to focus even more on what they're doing with Lightspeed and the AI assistance, so they could look more into that.

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

I have never had any problems with the stability and reliability of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) platform.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points by being more scalable.

I have not yet had any experience with customer service and technical support.

We have not used another solution before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), nor are we considering another solution; we've been staying a RHEL shop.

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that it's very easy to scale up with regards to patching and updating.

I really dont have much to do with the licensing aspects. 

The advice I would give to other companies considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is to seriously look into it and really not be too stuck or hung up on one single platform, and explore your options. 

I rate RHEL a nine out of ten.

It depends on the company environment and client environment. Currently, we are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for application deployment and server management, and sometimes we use it for DB deployment also.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for learning purposes for new things in Red Hat technology.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers a very easy-to-use experience in the Linux environment apart from any other flavors, and it's a very easy, systematic structure that provides easy support from Red Hat if any complex issue arises, which is the best point of RHEL, along with its affordable subscription model.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) saves time, saves money, and it's very easy for automation purposes; we support third-party tools for automation, so it's very beneficial.

I see a return on investment from using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) because patching is very easy; it supports third-party tools such as BMC or BigFix, so it's very time-saving for patching and performing any operation to fetch data from multiple servers.

To improve Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), they have to provide a playground for their OS for free or for some time, or they have to provide OpenShift multitenant clusters for improving skills in Red Hat technologies and in RHEL also, which will be very easy for a growing career in technology and providing support in an organization.

They have to make it easier to raise a ticket for Red Hat. Currently, when we raise a ticket, they show multiple options, so they should provide a direct option for raising the support cases.

They should provide patches on a quarterly basis instead of monthly, as patching every month makes it a burden on us.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since my career started in 2020.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is stable. In my last five years of experience, I haven't encountered any stability issues when everything is done properly.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has good scalability, and with the RHEL OpenShift tool, we use the scale up and scale down features.

Customer support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very quick and provides support on call. It's easier to get support from RHEL compared to other enterprises such as IBM.

Positive

We did everything manually before Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but since working with RHEL, we use automation, which saves time and costs.

I am not aware of billing, but for the setup of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), it's very easy because we directly get a golden image and replicate to make a new machine, so it can be set up in very little time.

Before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I evaluated other options such as CentOS, Rocky Linux, and Ubuntu. However, RHEL is an enterprise OS that provides multiple features and support, with a very systematic structure.

The Ansible tool is very nice, and currently, they have released OpenShift, which is also a very nice product provided by Red Hat.

I would advise others looking into using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that if they don't have budget issues, they should go for RHEL; otherwise, they can consider AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux, which are also open-source products.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a very nice Linux distribution that provides quick support, and in my last five years in the corporate world, I found it to be a very good OS, but they should lower their charges for mid-scale and startup companies in countries such as India, Bhutan, and Nepal, as they can't afford that much amount in dollars.

On a scale from one to ten, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a ten.

My main use cases for it are servers, such as web servers, database servers, and any type of server that we need.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps us solve pain points related to security, CVEs, and patching. 

The benefit for my company is that it saves time on compatibility issues. I don't have any metrics of roughly how much time has been saved, but I just know we don't have the combat. I've done Ubuntu, and Ubuntu doesn't compare to Red Hat, so I just know when I need to install something, it works. There are very few times when I've had issues.

Security requirements were a major consideration when choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in the cloud because they have secure patching. We review all RPMs and stuff that we import, and that's the major reason.

The feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the DNF, yum updates, and RPM, which make it easy to install applications and customize it.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved by making the licensing easier for Amazon EC2 instances. When we try to do auto-scaling, the licensing is hard to automate.

I have been using it since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, so probably 2005.

It's very stable. I haven't had any issues. We don't have to worry about it crashing.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales very well with the growing needs of my company. I've done from one or two to thousands, so it's not a problem.

Their knowledge base is great. Anytime we have patching issues or anything else, we reach out to support, and they always have an answer.

Their technical support has been great. I haven't had any issues with that as they respond right away.

Positive

It has been very good. I've done from one or two to thousands, and I've never had a problem. The only issues were hardware-related. They've been able to support drivers and things like that.

We have a hybrid environment with both on-premises and cloud deployments. I specialize in AWS.  Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) supports our hybrid cloud strategy. When we have things that can't go into AWS, we can spin up a Red Hat Enterprise Linux EC2 instance in AWS to run legacy stuff or stuff that's not compatible with AWS.

We usually use Ansible for provisioning and patching. I am 100% satisfied with the management experience of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems when it comes to provisioning and patching, and I have no issues.

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is probably stability, as I don't have to worry about it crashing. I've had issues with other forms of Linux, so it's been pretty stable.

It's been good, but I don't really get involved with that.

We did consider other solutions, such as Ubuntu, Amazon Linux, and Rocky Linux. but Red Hat Enterprise Linux was the one we went with. The biggest reason Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) leads the way is support and security.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a 10 out of 10 because of the stability and security. That's the main reason I use it.

My use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include doing OpenShift tasks and general Linux use cases.

The feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I value the most is automation. Automation saves time for me as I don't have to keep doing the same tasks repeatedly. My company benefits from automation in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since we use Ansible to deploy numerous operating systems. 

We can initiate 20 deployments, and they get configured automatically, which is efficient.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) might have helped to mitigate downtime and lower risk, though I cannot think of a specific example.

Improving Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a challenging question. Regarding SELinux, they could make that clearer or make it easier to use.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for about a year.

The stability and reliability of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) platform are really amazing. There are many instances where I'll have an Active Directory server go down, and I go into the remote consoles because Windows is doing forced updates, and it drops, which is extremely annoying. I haven't experienced any similar issues using RHEL.

Evaluating how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales with the growing needs of my company is challenging because much of what I do is lab work, so most projects are not scaling out. They remain at a set scale, then get torn down, and we create another one at that same scale.

I've had limited experience working with Red Hat support. 

I submitted a ticket because I was trying to access training material since we were a partner and were supposed to get it free, however, I had an issue with my account. 

I opened a ticket, and the person who took it responded in 20 seconds and fixed it immediately, which was excellent. I would rate the customer service and technical support of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) at a ten out of ten. It was extremely fast.

Positive

I'm not certain if Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the first solution of its kind that our company is using.

Most of my management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems for provisioning and patching is done in labs, so I don't see many persistent workloads. Most systems get torn down. I haven't done much patching, but I'm familiar with Cockpit, and I have personal VMs that I manage that way.

When upgrading from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9, we encountered some issues and had to use a leap utility for jumping between releases. Once we found the documentation, the process was straightforward.

Since we operate in a lab environment, instead of upgrading Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we typically download the newest release.

The biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) from my technical perspective is automation. I use automation daily to provision VMs and other systems. You can initiate the process and focus on other tasks while it runs, which increases efficiency.

I get our licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) through our account team, so I don't handle that aspect.

We did not consider other solutions to my knowledge before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since Ansible is ubiquitous in our environment.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) overall as a nine. There are some inconsistencies with commands, since it's built upon years of development, some legacy commands remain with opposite rules compared to newer commands. If it were more consistent, it would merit a ten.

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are that it has been part of our core delivery solutions for many industries, mostly for telecom.

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I find most valuable include all of the features since system V. 

In my organization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) provides an agnostic interface for many storage vendors that we deal with, which helps us to have a wider spectrum of offerings in our consultancy offerings.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved by adopting a feature similar to YaST from a big European competitor, which would significantly enhance Red Hat technologies.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since 2005 when it was in release four, which makes it 20 years.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as favorable, noting that during the last five years, we've experienced fewer crashes and downtimes compared to other commercial Unix and Linux distributions in the market.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales excellently with the growing needs of my organization, and I would rate it ten out of ten.

I evaluate customer service and tech support as excellent; with either the partner portal or customer portal, we receive very good RCAs and analyses for any case we submit to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). On a scale of one to ten, I would rate customer service and technical support as ten out of ten.

Positive

Prior to adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I was using Commercial Unix, Oracle Solaris. The factor that led me to change was that during the last decades, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has absorbed many features straight from Solaris, enabling us to perform effective migrations from Commercial Unix to RHEL.

At the very beginning, at the earliest versions of Red Hat since version six, there was a kernel that was not compatible with many cluster vendors, and that's why we were adopting another vendor of Linux. However, we've seen that during these past years, Red Hat has been experiencing a lot of enhancements overcoming these kinds of barriers. And now Red Hat has become more versatile in accepting more hardware that allows us to standardize our Red Hat offerings in our consultancy services.

I have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). For data points, in one of the key industries I handle, which is telecom, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been one of the key strategic providers offering a good price to implement automation and containerization across all of the network elements we manage with several vendors, and in the latest five years, we have observed a good investment return in terms of ROI.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that I strongly believe Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers a good relationship between value and price, and despite it being quite pricey, it's definitely worth it.

Before selecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I considered SLES, which is a competitor of Red Hat.

My advice to other organizations considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is to have a good plan and to establish the relationship as a key strategic reference for any upcoming migration. The partnership and customer support provided is a high-value option. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped mitigate downtime and lower risk through high availability solutions and key features that enable network redundancy, allowing us to achieve this. 

I would assess the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as excellent because it has become one of the key standards in the industry for following guidelines according to any topic in the RHEL environment. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution an eight.

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are mostly as our platform, control plane, and for VMs.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped me mitigate downtime and lower risks. Anyone coming from security will tell you that more patches in a timely manner will save you a lot of time.

What I appreciate the most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the DNF feature. DNF benefits our company since it's my personal preference; that package manager makes sense to me. I've also used it longer than other ones, which contributes to my familiarity.

Package managers in general are a core component of our operations, keeping our platform clean and running smoothly, and it's essential.

Insights is nice since I get information on my background and security matters, and it's been helpful to have it there as well.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved regarding security-side integrations that can be tightened with the releasing of images compliant with CIS controls or DISA STIGs, so they're built in and not an extra step.

To make Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a ten out of ten, the best Linux OS solution in the market, the only immediate change that comes to mind is security-related; releasing images available at different security levels would be helpful. If something is locked down to DISA STIG Level two or whatever environment, having that as a baked image to pull down and deploy would save a lot of time for many companies since building that pipeline is difficult and time-consuming.

There's also a limited number of those they'll have to deal with for Red Hat, so it's a lot of work. If they're doing those images for each level for STIG and then CIS, there will be a finite number to go through, and if anyone else needs to tailor them beyond that, then that's on them. It should be pretty small changes; it's kind of locked in.

I've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for seven months.

My thoughts on the stability and reliability of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) platform are that it has been excellent. When I consider reliability problems we have had and how much relates to RHEL, most of the issues aren't Red Hat-related; something else fails, and the Red Hat side has been consistently reliable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales with the growing needs of my company very effectively. My specific team is not on a huge scale right now, however, it's growing quickly, and we haven't had any issues with RHEL so far.

My experience with customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) so far has been really good. I haven't encountered just a create-ticket-get-a-response type of interaction yet since we still have a consultancy going on for different pieces identity management and AAP. That remains to be seen in terms of what it will be when we don't have somebody readily available. So far, the response times and helpful responses have been good.

Positive

I've used other solutions. The main difference between Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and the other Linux solutions we use is a level of comfort. I sleep better knowing I have official support and can call someone, or there's probably a consultant or somebody on Red Hat's side ready to help me figure things out. If I'm running a Debian system, I'm really relying on the community, which can take time, and if I'm running something at work on that, then that can hurt.

Regarding usability, I've gravitated towards RPM-based Linux systems in general as I find them more intuitive.

The deployment is super straightforward. We do some environmental stuff, and that gets a little bit trickier based on the core running on top of it. 

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the number of things tied together in a somewhat neat package. There's something to be said for setting up Satellite or the other pieces of the infrastructure, AAP, or whatever it is I'm going to be using, however, all the tie-ins are there, and once I've done some initial footwork, having those things work in tandem and reliably with support on hand when they don't is really helpful.

We consider different solutions while using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Actually, we use a few different Linux OS solutions. There's some Canonical in our environment through VMs, and there are tools particularly suited for deploying on bare metal that we use. So, we have a bit of a mixed environment within Linux.

My upgrade or migration plans to stay current depend on where it's at or the platform team; our stuff is going to be separate, and I'm unsure exactly what the cadence is for release and into the patching cycle. That'll be a pretty quick turnaround. We have situations where it needs to stay on older systems since the team using it needs that to prove out or test whatever they're working on. 

On a scale from one to ten, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a nine out of ten.

Our main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are for our centralized O&M platform, while on the edge we use CoreOS.

My company benefits from RHEL features by avoiding drifts in our solution. If it gets out of engineering, we don't exactly know if the solution is going to drift if someone implemented manual configuration.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points such as security, upgrades, patching, and all that is related to long-term support. 

The feature I appreciate the most in the newest version is the image mode and the upgrade in an immutable way. 

Security requirements are a consideration when choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It's the platform that really allows for longer-term support in terms of security patches, which is also one of the requirements from our customers; this is why we are on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for those services. 

When it comes to managing my Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems for provisioning and patching, I start from zero. We provide a golden image scenario, and we install based on that golden image while customizing the product through our software itself, providing new bundles and everything around there. Patching is very similar; we provide additional packages and everything around the upgrades, and I'm looking forward to the image mode so that we can provide steps and immutable AB upgrades.

They should try to converge all the different product lines, in both Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and CoreOS and OCP based on CoreOS, to get to a single point where it would be easier to move from one to the other. 

Sometimes we build products for one specific application or product, and it would be beneficial to move to CoreOS due to further requirements, however, it's not always straightforward. All the different teams working on the different Red Hat products are pretty much self-contained, which is understandable, but if there were more of a common baseline, it would be much easier to consider moving from one license to another, from one product to another.

In the company, I've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) directly for three years. Before then, we have been partners and have also been using CentOS and Fedora for a longer time, approximately ten years.

The stability and reliability of the platform are top class.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales pretty transparently with the growing needs of my company. It scales effectively when we need to add additional resources or knowledge, and it's straightforward for people to gain those and for our structure to implement even more servers around these others. Both technically and knowledge-wise, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales effectively.

The customer service and technical support are excellent, especially through the partner program. It's easier to get support over specific issues, and I have noticed when we had bigger issues that could have prevented market problems, there was a good escalation path towards the right people to get answers.

Neutral

I have considered other solutions rather than Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

When we were considering getting out of CentOS, we were evaluating everything, including other open solutions such as Rocky, as cutting-edge solutions such as Fedora. 

I personally pushed for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since it was the best solution for us at that specific moment. I understand there are other solutions such as SUSE and Ubuntu that are all in the same market, however, with different approaches. I prefer the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) approach.

The deployment is generally very easy.

The biggest return on investment while using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) from my technical point of view is the continuous patching and security fixes that are constantly being added and the support around it. If we are having an issue, we can directly reach the right people for support.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as a product today at a solid eight out of ten, considering improvements already in place for the roadmap. With the features coming in RHEL 10, I could provide it an overall nine out of ten.

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are mostly development at first, and then after that, it's actually running full production loads on it.

One of the nice pain points that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) addresses compared to other distributions is the polished applications within it. 

Their repository tends to be more foolproof. The SELinux feature in RHEL is pretty strong. 

SELinux is not something that I was ever using before in the open source community, and it was very confusing at first; however, after a while, it made sense why that layer exists. The SELinux feature and other features of RHEL benefit my company by allowing us to lock in the server more traditionally than we would be able to with special permissions. 

It's about getting very granular versus just putting an umbrella on some things, and security-wise, it's very effective.

The security features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), including SELinux and its features, make it easier to be aware of compromises.

The Insights tool is very good at providing CVEs to alert us about vulnerabilities quickly. I can't quantify the impact in percentage terms since I haven't faced specific situations. However, the outlook compared to other distributions looks good.

To improve Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), it would be helpful to have a step-by-step process to make setup easier. Cockpit needs more features to manage complex tasks such as RAID configurations, as most of that is reserved for the command line.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for about a year and a half.

I find Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to be super stable and super reliable.

I have not scaled Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) outside of using templates and cloning features. I haven't scaled it out with OpenShift yet; it's something I want to explore, as I now understand what tools OpenShift can offer to scale out RHEL machines effectively.

My experience with customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is mixed. On a professional level, they are very responsive, which is part of the contract, but on a personal level, responses can take forever, and I often get pointed to community posts.

Positive

We did not consider any other OS solutions while using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), although there have been discussions about using Ubuntu. I don't think it will go that way because we are very satisfied with what RHEL offers overall.

The biggest return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that every time I put an application or tool in there, it's going to work. I don't have to second-guess it or go back; I know it will be a polished application.

Regarding the experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I would say it's beyond my pay grade. That said, it's not cheap at all. While it could always be cheaper, they provide substantial value for the money, and they consistently introduce new features that add value.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as a ten out of ten overall. 

It's a great OS that has grown on me over time, and the more I use it, the more I understand its value and why it costs what it does.