Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We use the product to host operating systems, applications, or infrastructure for our customers. Our customers use the product as a long-term solution that they don't have to upgrade every other year. They can get people that know the solution from the get-go.

The biggest feature is the longevity of the distribution. Compared to any other product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a stable backported solution for a long time. It is important because we have moved a lot of software containers. We want to update it but don't want to unless we have to. So it's great to have something stable for a long time.

The biggest thing that the solution could introduce is an even slimmer version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are moving to containers, but we also have a lot of void loads that don't go into containers. It would be nice to have an even thinner operating system. Even if you choose minimally, you still get a lot of useless stuff you don't need.

I have been using the solution for 20 years.

I rate the product’s stability a nine out of ten.

I rate the solution’s scalability a seven out of ten.

It's really difficult to get to someone that knows something. When you get to the right people, support is really good. But there are a lot of people that can only answer first-level questions.

Neutral

We're using a lot of different OSs. We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux because we are a partner.

It's pretty simple to install the product. However, some tools required to install it are missing.

The pricing is great for virtual systems. The pricing for physical systems is way too high.

The overall costs depend on the project and the company.

We continuously evaluate other options. The main difference between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other solutions is the complete ecosystem's longevity and possibility. Other products may present something similar, but they don't have the ecosystem around them.

We probably purchased the solution from a cloud provider. We are using versions 5 to 9 currently.

The solution’s built-in security features are pretty good, but it's not something that I would take as a major selling point. The portability is good because we have a stable baseline for applications and containers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s security posture is pretty good. I don’t know if it's the strongest selling point, but it's up there.

In some ways, Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to centralize development. However, that's not mostly what we focus on. The primary output from Red Hat Insights is targeted guidance. Targeted guidance has not affected our uptime much.

It makes sense to go with a stable distribution compared to others. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Its use cases include general system management, setting up service with the web server, setting up a virtual, private wall with OpenVPN and FTP servers, etc. I have been working with all the aspects of the system in general.

The stability and the number of users that can access the servers are some of the valuable features. 

The stability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is most valuable. I have machines running and working for hours, weeks, and months. The servers don't go down. In Windows, too many services hang, but in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the servers continue working for months. I have had to reboot the machine only two times in years. The system keeps on working. So, stability is the best feature. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very secure. There hasn't been any successful attack from hackers in years. It's one of the best features. The iptables command is helpful for setting your firewall policies. Only the machines that have the permissions can access the box.

We have had issues with the identification of new volumes when you add new disks or storage. You need the remove the machine, which can cause problems when you have high availability. If they can resolve the problem of detection of new volumes, it would be good for system administrators.

I've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since version 6.

It's very stable.

I don't have direct contact with their support, but I know that their support is good because I know people who work directly with their technical support.

I've worked with Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, and other companies. In the past, Debian was the better operating system for servers and Red Hat Enterprise Linux was the better system for desktops, but nowadays, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Oracle Linux are the better system for servers in my opinion, and Ubuntu is better for desktops.

This operating system is used by our clients. We don't have it in our organization. We use Windows. I'm not the one who decides about this. My director is the person who take decisions, but I prefer Linux. I like Red Hat Enterprise Linux in servers because there is support, stability, and more users that can access the service. However, in our organization, we use Microsoft Windows because they are partners. 

Most of our clients are institutions or public organizations. They have their own infrastructure for security reasons. Having a cloud environment has its own advantages and having your own infrastructure has its advantages. I prefer having my own infrastructure. When you have your own infrastructure, you have more control over all the processes and data of your organization, but I understand that having a cloud setup has advantages because you can manage and automate several systems or processes in the organization.

It's easy to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's not difficult to install. You have the typical steps of the installation of any Linux-based operating system. Anyone can install this operating system. If you want to install servers such as an Apache server or a web application server, you need certain skills, but the installation of the operating system is easy.

I don't know about the pricing because I am not responsible for taking decisions about products used in the enterprise. Our clients use this product, and we use this product with the clients. In my home office, I use a free operating system. There is no support, but I can use it to practice. Our clients need support because it's used in the production environment. I don't know the price of the product, but I understand that with the support that Red Hat offers, compared to other operating systems, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is cheap.

It's easy to install and secure. You can customize it and manage various aspects. It's a good operating system for servers with security. It can run on machines without a powerful CPU or a lot of memory. It's stable.

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

We have a very large system with ten application teams. We've got four DevOps squads that support those teams. We use this solution to containerize about 85% of our applications and software. OpenShift 4 maintains our applications and our databases, keeping our system up to date and it integrates with our CI/CD pipelines.

We also use OCS for security compliance.

RHEL runs as the backbone for our applications. We are able to meet our deadlines of becoming the system of record and creating an operational maintenance system, on time and under budget. Our system processes 4.7 million customers' flood insurance policies yearly and processes their claims. It's the backbone for all of our applications and what they do.

RHEL's built-in security features have helped us reduce risk and maintenance compliance. We've been switching over even some of our build pipelines to use OpenShift. We are able to run a GitOps model to be able to track and store changes and then press the button to be able to sync it with OpenShift and this has been great.

The containerization capability has been most valuable. Having our applications and our databases containerized has allowed us to be able to migrate from our on-prem site to the cloud in a much faster timeframe. We don't have to change the applications or databases and there's a lot less rearchitecting. That has been a game-changer for us.

The OCS is built to help monitor and scan OpenShift 4 containers and Core OS. That integration has been seamless for us.

This solution could be improved if it was easier to set up and run in cloud environments. It can also be costly to manage a large OpenShift environment.

We have been using RHEL since 2016. 

This is a stable solution.

We're about to build out and use the elastic capabilities to spin up OpenShift clusters as needed on demand so we're about to find out if it is scalable.

It's been great. We've been having weekly meetings with them as we migrated to Google. They've been a great partner in providing support as needed in helping troubleshoot issues.

I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial deployment and setup of OpenShift were straightforward. We ran into some issues that we were able to work through. The Red Hat team did provide a lot of support to get us there.

We have an O&M contract that helped do the setup, and then we did consult with Red Hat on it. Guidehouse is the contractor that provides support for development in O&M. They've been a great team and partner to us. 

OpenShift being containerized has meant that we've been able to move from the on-prem to the cloud in a much faster time period.

I don't have any issues with the licensing or pricing. In general, OpenShift is a little more expensive. It's a bit expensive to have the number of containers we need and for disaster recovery but it's been worth the money because it's helped us get to the cloud faster.

It is easy to troubleshoot with RHEL. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. If you are in the government space and you're looking to modernize your systems but you're not quite sure about the cloud, using OpenShift to containerize is a good first step. It will give you that cloud-agnostic capability so that you're more readily able to move to the cloud when you're ready.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

The primary purpose of any operating system is to run all sorts of applications and databases on servers. We use RHEL to run applications and host containers but not much else. We don't use it for databases, and none of our clients use Red Hat virtualization, so no KBM. We install them onto VMware and use them like Red Hat virtual machines.

I primarily work for banks that tend to have a proper on-premise cloud because the data can't leave the premises. We also work for insurance companies, government, and law enforcement organizations. Most of them use it on a virtualized platform like VMware. Some are hardware installations, and other clients are experimenting with cloud infrastructure. One of the banks we work for has started to build its own cloud to get experience and move specific applications to the cloud.

One client has RHEL deployed across two data centers, which is usually a mirrored setup. In other words, two hardware servers are doing the same thing. It can be active-active or active-passive. The VMs also stretch across two data centers, but it's a Metro cluster, so it's in the same city. I've been working with my current client for a couple of years. Our three-person team manages 250 hardware services and about 400 VMs.

We are still migrating a couple of solutions to Red Hat, so the user base is getting bigger. 

We decided to use Red Hat Linux instead of Solaris or something else because it's widely used and accessible. It's easier to find people who know RHEL. It has also made the automation through Satellite and Puppet easier, which are built into Enterprise Linux. 

RHEL is stable, mature, and relatively easy to handle. I'm pretty confident in it. We haven't had to raise a serious support ticket for any server in I don't know how many years. It has built-in high availability solutions for VMware on top of the hardware.  

Red Hat Linux is also useful for keeping applications from misbehaving. I like the fact that it has firewall controls.

Red Hat can be tricky at times, but all operating systems are. The moves to systemd and NetworkManager haven't made the product more user-friendly. The network management they had before was easier and somewhat more reliable than NetworkManager, which Red Hat forces us to use now.

That may just be my personal preference because I've been working on Red Hat for so long. It's something new that doesn't do exactly what it used to do, so it's probably more of an old person's complaint.

The firewall controls can also be somewhat challenging in terms of automation. An application may use a different setup, so you need to consider that if you want to automate installations. 

You can't easily port an application to another operating system unless it's CentOS or Fedora. It's not portable if you want to port it to something like Windows except for Java and containers. Unless it's another Red Hat, CentOS, or Fedora, the application itself isn't portable if it's installed on a thick virtual or physical machine even. It's not easily portable because you must recompile the application or make changes.

I have been using Red Hat for more than 15 years.

There are bugs, but you can usually find a workaround quickly. When somebody discovers a bug, it's fixed pretty quickly in the next release.

The services run well, and it can handle pretty much anything provided you have enough hardware resources. That's something you always have to watch out for.

RHEL is so stable in the environments I've been working on that I have never had to call Red Hat. Any issues we've had were either hardware or application problems. It's never an issue with the operating system. 

The community resources are helpful. You can find answers to most questions you have in terms of setup or troubleshooting. There are issues now and again, but you can go to the website or a discussion board to find the solution, and it works. When I say we've never had a problem, it's not exactly true. Sometimes it doesn't do what you expect, but you can usually find the solution, so we have never had to call support to ask.

A lot of my clients used to use Oracle Solaris, but many of them switched to Red Hat due to hardware costs. Oracle hardware is expensive, but it is good stuff. We had systems that ran for three years without any issues, but it gets expensive if something breaks or you need to replace hardware due to the lifecycle. 

You can install RHEL on any x86 hardware and deploy it on several Dell servers, which is much cheaper than a single Oracle server. For example, we needed to replace a system because the hardware got sold. We were quoted a price for Solaris running on an Oracle T5. It was four times the price of replacing it with HP hardware. So that's the main reason many clients have shifted to RHEL. 

It's a vicious cycle. As more companies switch, other clients say, "Oh, but there's not much user base left. How long will this run? Let's follow the mainstream trend." That said, I love Solaris. It's unbelievably stable and easy to use, but just the hardware underneath it is too expensive.

I've been involved in deployment, but it depends on the client. I've done everything from architectural design to installation and administration for specific clients. Setting up RHEL is pretty straightforward if you know what you need to know. Of course, you have to do your homework before. For example, if you are deploying it on a VM, you need to see the size you need and what else you have to install. 

When someone orders a server, we typically tell them the deployment will take half a day, but the installation takes around an hour. You may need to install other things, but the out-of-the-box operating system takes about an hour.

We're just one team who manages the infrastructure for one department. It's highly specific. There's a specialized market team that does stock exchanges and financial services. The demands for hardware and availability are particular to that segment. We have three people responsible for installation, maintenance, and administration.

RHEL is stable and relatively cheap, so you get much more out of it than other Linux flavors. I mostly work as a consulting system engineer and am usually not involved in any of this financial stuff.

I can suggest how many subscriptions they need and how much it will cost, but I can't say if it's worth it to the client. I don't know, but we have never had any complaints. People never say, "Oh, but this is expensive, and it doesn't fit into what we had planned."

RHEL has a decent pricing model. It's a subscription, which makes sense. The OS itself is free, but you pay for the support. I have never heard any complaints about the pricing.

You can also purchase a virtual data center license that allows you to set up a hundred virtual servers. You can also add a Satellite license subscription to your standard server. There are several different add-ons that will increase the price of the subscription, depending on the functionality you need.

It's hard for me to compare Red Hat with other open-source solutions because we only have clients who work with Red Hat Linux. Of course, there are entirely free ones you could use. Fedora is the most extensive free version of Red Hat. You could use Ubuntu or any other Linux flavor, which is mostly free. However, I have no idea what additional cost you'd pay if you want to support.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten. I would recommend it, but I need to qualify that by pointing out that I don't have enough experience with other Linux flavors to say that it's better than the others. I've mostly used RHEL because it's so ubiquitous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for VMs and physical servers. 

The containerized platform will help us use ROSA. 

The tool's most valuable feature is OpenShift. We plan to move all our applications to microservices. The container platform is integrated into one.

I opened a few cases, and the tool's support responded quickly. 

Positive

Deployment is simple if you have been using the solution for a long time. However, it can be complex if you are new to it. 

We use RHEL 7 and RHEL 8 on on-premises. RHEL 8 is on the AWS. There is a security policy like CIS when deploying the solution. You can embed it on the image. I am not sure if there is HIPAA compliance yet. 

Migration from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9 is easy. Upgrade depends on the application that is running on each instance. You need to check if it is compatible with the kernel. We need to plan things before migrating to the latest version. We need to stay current to ensure compliance. We plan to move from RHEL 7 to RHEL 9 and use RHEL 8 and RHEL 9. 

We use Red Hat insights but do not utilize them. It helps with the remediation. I use Image Builder to build AWS and GCP images. I haven't deployed them. 

I rate the product a nine out of ten. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The customer service and support are really good. 

Positive

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

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

We have seen a return on investment. 

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

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

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to run our GS and PSP applications.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps us avoid cloud vendor lock-in.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helped us save on costs. 

The support and the stability are Red Hat Enterprise Linux's most valuable areas.

Upgrading between versions needs to be easier. For example, if we have Red Hat Seven running now and a Java exploit is found on Red Hat Seven, we need to be able to upgrade to Red Hat Nine online without any downtime in the environment. This is because it is not possible to reinstall the environment from Red Hat Seven to Red Hat Nine in production without causing downtime to the applications. Red Hat needs to have tools that ensure that we can upgrade from Red Hat Seven to Nine online without any issues.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is extremely stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable. We have around 1,790 end users.

The technical support is quick to respond.

We previously used Proxmox and switched to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because of the price.

The initial setup is straightforward because it is well-documented. The deployment time depends on the application. A small application can take around 20 minutes.

The implementation was completed in-house.

The cost is based on each organization's budget and infrastructure.

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

The ease of moving workloads between the cloud and our data center depends on the application architecture. If the application has a monolithic infrastructure, it may be easier to move to the cloud. However, if the application is already running mostly in the data center, it may be more difficult because we would need to recreate all of the infrastructure and topology from scratch. This is because there are so many parts to consider when migrating a microservices-based application to the cloud.

For someone who wants to use an open source Linux operating system, I would recommend Rocky Linux. However, they should be aware that open source solutions do not come with the same level of support as Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Four network team members are required to maintain Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The Red Hat knowledge base is good and well-documented.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the only Linux solution that is supported for enterprise-level organizations. I recommend this solution for large organizations that want professional support for their Linux systems.