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reviewer1006923 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Architect at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
It's easier to maintain and more agile than our previous solution
Pros and Cons
  • "RHEL been stable, and we could do anything we wanted with it. OpenShift is a concise environment, and RHEL is one of the most stable Linux distros on the market."
  • "The only issue for us was the cost. RHEL is expensive."

What is our primary use case?

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. 

How has it helped my organization?

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

What is most valuable?

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. 

What needs improvement?

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

Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
August 2025
Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

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.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable and mature.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux can scale to fit our needs. 

How are customer service and support?

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. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

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

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive.

What other advice do I have?

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. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2399241 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
A stable, secure, and well-supported OS for our golden image
Pros and Cons
  • "Security, packages, and updates are valuable. There is also the possibility to do unattended installations. This way you can define how you want the installation to behave and be configured whenever you do the deployment."
  • "The only area would be in regards to being capable of running on other architectures like ARM. They are about to release a new version that is available to be executed on ARM architecture."

What is our primary use case?

The main use case is generating golden images. All the deployments of operating systems and virtual machines on the servers are based on the golden image. The developers and providers can run all the applications on top of those.

How has it helped my organization?

Whenever we need to remediate any vulnerabilities, patches are available. These patches are not only for current exploits but also for back-porting for bug fixes and security fixes. These patches are available from the most recent versions to the specific version that we are using.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. We have a golden image of the operating system. That golden image sets the standard for all the security policies that we are applying to it. For example, the partition scheme and the best practices that we apply to the golden image are the starting point for all the developers to start working with all the applications and also executing appliances or applications from providers.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Podman for containerization projects. Red Hat offers what is called UBI or Universal Base Image. That image is already configured to be secure and have good performance. To start working with containers, we just have to pull UBI as a base for our images and start working on those. It has impacted our containerization project because instead of using Docker, we can use Podman. There is a common container image that is used by the majority of the customers, but I forgot the name of that one. Instead of using that, which is like a very minimal image, we are using UBI because it is already secure. It has the majority of the benefits of our Red Hat Enterprise Linux image but in a container image.

There is portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for keeping our organization agile. That is a very good option to have because you do not have to worry about the underlying system. You just have to worry about your application and have the application running on top of your image based on UBI. It is going to be so easy to have the application running either on a machine with Podman or have the same application running just on top of OpenShift. It is so easy to move a container-based application that can be executed on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Podman or on top of OpenShift. 

What is most valuable?

Security, packages, and updates are valuable. There is also the possibility to do unattended installations. This way you can define how you want the installation to behave and be configured whenever you do the deployment.

One of the best features is having a tool called OSCAP, which is a tool that is going to allow us to apply security profiles to the golden image. This way, all the security features or policies can be applied in real time. This way, we can follow all the policies that are defined by our security teams.

What needs improvement?

There are not a lot of areas to improve because the majority of the time, Red Hat is constantly improving it. The only area would be in regards to being capable of running on other architectures like ARM. They are about to release a new version that is available to be executed on ARM architecture.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for about a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. We have plans to increase its usage.

How are customer service and support?

It used to be better. It is still good as long as you can get in touch with a level 3 support engineer. If you have a trained engineer who helps you with what you need and who understands how to ask for specific details of what you need, you should be good. But, unfortunately, if you start with a simple detail of what you are experiencing and what kind of help you need, you will receive the same response. For example, you are pointed to a knowledge base article, and that is it. The support engineer is supposed to help you with your issue or request, but unfortunately, that is not happening anymore. It used to, but I understand.

We are looking for a support engineer to go all the way. The only way for you to contact support is via the support case system or page. After that, you interact through the ticket or email. You do not have a chance to have a call. If we have escalated a case, it is usually better if you have a person for a proper understanding and proper advice on what you have to do and how to resolve the issue. It could be that you need a new product, subscription, or service, but you do not know that.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

When I got into the company, they were already using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but back in the day, I used to have HP-UX. That was a very ancient system. It was Unix-based. It was a proprietary solution. HP-UX was a platform licensed based on the old Unix code that was tightly integrated into hardware built only by Hewlett-Packard. You could not run HP-UX in any other place. You could only run it on hardware created by Hewlett-Packard. The intention with that was to run only on the Itanium architecture, whereas Red Hat Enterprise Linux can run on x86 architecture. It is also open-source.

How was the initial setup?

We have it on-premises. It is in different locations. We are following a strategy to publish the images of the operating system. This way, multiple teams can grab the images and have their own procedures to deploy within each separate environment. We have multiple teams working on developments and they need a base image to start working on all the development stuff. Because they are all independent teams, they have access to a single source of image. This way, they can start working on further customizations and whatever they need.

What about the implementation team?

We implement it in-house.

What was our ROI?

The ROI is in terms of the time that I have to invest in doing customizations, applying security policies, and fixing the supply to the system, wherever I need those.

The reason for going for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is to improve the time to market. It is so easy to just generate a new image. We can configure it with all the security features and all the libraries and packages we need. We can also configure it with the ones requested by developers. We can do all of that. It is so much easier than what we can do with Windows, for example.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is very straightforward. We do not have to think much about having to get all the subscriptions related to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux fleet that we have because all the subscriptions came in pairs of CPUs or even for an entire bare-metal server. That way you can partition your bare-metal server into multiple virtual machines, and then you are covered. As long as your bare-metal server is covered, you can roll out any number of virtual machines on top of it. It is very easy to get subscriptions for your bare-metal server, and you can utilize whatever you want.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated operating systems or Linux distributions created by the community or run by the community only. We evaluated them mainly because of costs.

What other advice do I have?

To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would say that they would not have the same team supporting all the operations and all the critical features and patches that they receive with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They can go with one of the clones, but unfortunately, at the end of the day, the clones are going to deviate from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you can also create support cases to receive back-ported bug fixes and security fixes, and you get very cool features such as Insights, Satellite, or system roles provided along with Ansible. 

We are currently not using Red Hat Insights but that is an awesome tool.

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. It is an enterprise Linux distribution. It was one of the first distributions to focus on the enterprise. There are others, but Red Hat is the main contributor to the Linux ecosystem. Because of that, it is so stable. It has proper support. It also provides the Linux ecosystem with new features and enhancements.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
August 2025
Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer2399145 - PeerSpot reviewer
Ansible Specialist at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
An enterprise solution for standardization, compliance, and great support
Pros and Cons
  • "The enterprise aspect of it is valuable. There is security patching, security scanning, and compliance. There are all kinds of features around managing and keeping it up-to-date and secure. Everything is in a box for us from Red Hat which makes it very easy to manage them."
  • "It is constantly improving. It is important to continue to improve."

What is our primary use case?

When we are looking for Linux servers or developers need Linux, we have standardized around Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We do not use Ubuntu or any random flavors of the day. If it is a Linux deployment, it is Red Hat.

How has it helped my organization?

It helps with standardization. If someone comes to us and requests a Linux server, we have one product offering. We have a couple of different flavors of it, but people know what they are getting from us. The consistency, reproducibility, and standardization of it have been fantastic.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-prem and on the cloud. We have it in Azure, VMware, and on-prem. We have it on bare metal. It is all over the place. Our operations are simpler, more efficient, and easier to handle. Our Linux team now supports one OS rather than a whole bunch of flavors that everyone has brought in. It has just made things more efficient and simplified.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. Those developers are now developing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Previously, we had people who were developing on Ubuntu and trying to push Ubuntu to production, but we did not necessarily support it. Red Hat Enterprise Linux gave us a clear path to production. Our developers also get an easier experience. They know which OS to use and what they are using from day to day. There is less confusion for developers.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. It has helped with simplification. We do not have to create too many of our own custom container definitions and do our own thing. We use minimal images and whatever is provided is supported under our subscription. It simplifies things and puts guidelines around things.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features are good when it comes to risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance. We use Red Hat Satellite to manage our Linux. That makes it all very simple. There is a feature called OpenSCAP. We use it for security scanning. All the features that they provide on top of the base OS make it very easy to manage.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is great for keeping our organization agile. We know we can rely on that middle layer. We can start with the container and then build on top of that. Having a solid and standard foundation makes it all easy to do.

What is most valuable?

The enterprise aspect of it is valuable. There is security patching, security scanning, and compliance. There are all kinds of features around managing and keeping it up-to-date and secure. Everything is in a box for us from Red Hat which makes it very easy to manage them.

What needs improvement?

It is constantly improving. It is important to continue to improve. That is another reason I like it. They are using newer kernels, which gives us access to newer hardware. They are already doing that. I cannot pretend to tell them what to do better. They can just keep on doing what they are doing.

For how long have I used the solution?

Personally, I have been using it for about 12 years. I have only been with my company for about four months, but I know they also have been using it for years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. They define scalability. I am a basic user. I just deploy more VMs if I need to. It is easy to do. Its scalability is great.

How are customer service and support?

They are great. I would rate them a ten out of ten. A big selling point is that when you submit a support ticket, you know you are reaching out to experts. That is great, and that is one of the primary reasons we went with Red Hat.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

In my company, they were using AWX for automation, and we moved them to AAP. For Linux, I was a part of a project to migrate some of the other operating systems over to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I am on the tail end of the move or standardization to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

There were a lot of Ubuntu operating systems in the environment, but they had challenges standardizing around it. There were different versions. There was also CentOS, but it was old CentOS. They are naturally moving that to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The support and the standardization around it were the main reasons for going for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. CentOS is more of a community thing now, whereas we can call Red Hat and they help us with everything. The support and the enterprise features we needed pointed at Red Hat Enterprise Linux rather than CentOS. It is a better choice for production.

How was the initial setup?

We deploy them from AAP and then we deploy them into VMware. We deploy them into Azure, which is our main provider. We do that all orchestrated through Ansible and Satellite.

What about the implementation team?

We have outsourced support. TCS is a general contractor, but for Red Hat deployments, we generally go with Red Hat Consulting. We just finished a consulting engagement with them for that. I know they have used them in the past prior to me being here. We generally just use Red Hat Consulting.

What was our ROI?

We have standardization. I know what I am walking into every day. I know there is support behind it. There is the support of Red Hat and the community behind it. I feel confident using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I might use other Linux operating systems at home, but a lot of the time, there is no documentation for them. There might be three guys in a forum from ten years ago who may have talked about my problem. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, when I am going to work, I know what I am walking into. I can feel safe and assured using something industry standard that works, and I can get help with it very easily. It makes life a lot easier.

Our total cost of ownership across our enterprise landscape has gone up because we were using a lot of mixed and free open-source solutions. However, there was an extra cost of operations and extra cost of hiring for specialized skills and things like that. With the Red Hat portfolio, I feel that we spend more on subscriptions, and we save in terms of efficiency and operations. I feel that we spent some money to save money on the backend, and I hope that is how it ended up.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I do node counts for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux system. I am gathering data for our decision-makers about how many nodes we need and how many things we need. Once or twice a year, they ask us to true up and find out how many nodes we are using and what the actual consumption is. I then report that, and then the account team usually works on the money part of it. I just work on the count.

What other advice do I have?

We use Red Hat Insights a little bit. I am more of an Ansible guy, and we use Red Hat Insights for our licensing and a few other things. We have not been using Red Hat Insights as much as we wanted to. I know that on the Linux side, they are using it a lot for license count, monitoring, and other things.

I feel we are underutilizing Red Hat Insights. Our account executive has shown how it works and where it is, but we have not committed to it yet. That is coming soon. As we gain more Red Hat products and standardize more, we will have to rely on a single pane like that, so we will be using it more. I know that Red Hat Insights provides vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, but we are not utilizing it right now.

To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would say to go for whatever they find to be the best. My standard for an enterprise solution is Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It works very well, but they have to make sure that it fits their use case. Fortunately, Red Hat Enterprise Linux fits most use cases. They might end up there, but if there are licensing or cost restrictions, there are other free options, such as CentOS. The ecosystem of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is healthy, so I would recommend it, but if they want to use something else, they need to come up with all the standards around that.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. It is my preferred enterprise operating system. Everywhere I go, they are using it. It has been great. There are no complaints.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
DevOps Engineer at CipherTV Corp.
Real User
Top 5
Offers role-based access and the ability to seamlessly connect multiple systems with ease
Pros and Cons
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

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. 

How has it helped my organization?

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. 

What is most valuable?

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. 

What needs improvement?

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. 

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

How are customer service and support?

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

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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. 

How was the initial setup?

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.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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. 

What other advice do I have?

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. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. partner
PeerSpot user
reviewer2298825 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
I like the speed of the OS data and the ease of Ansible automation
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the speed of the OS data and the ease of Ansible automation. I don't need to spend much time managing everything."
  • "I use Linux on Satellite with Ansible infrastructure. It would be great if there were a universal interface to control RHEL's policy from Satellite. It could be a dashboard showing which policies were enabled on what system and allow you to apply them from the dashboard."

What is our primary use case?

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to run quite a few pieces of software. It's mostly for jPOS, but we also run some Apache solutions and some security applications.

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has streamlined a lot of the support issues. When we've had problems, Red Hat has been proactive about solving the problem with us. Support is always an issue with open-source platforms. By providing this support, Red Hat makes it much easier to adopt Linux.  

I love Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security. You can see who is trying to do what and who isn't allowed. You get an alert for that. We also use a product from Symantec on the Linux system for real-time threat detection, but I think we probably don't need that. Red Hat already has these capabilities, but the security team needs something they can centrally manage. They need to know whether the system is protected and the agent is running. 

We use it on VMware, and we have a multi-site deployment, so it's very easy to patch and keep the servers up. We use Ansible automation for patching, which has really helped with the service uptime.

What is most valuable?

I like the speed of the OS data and the ease of Ansible automation. I don't need to spend much time managing everything. The provisioning and patching using Ansible is seamless. Ansible automation gives you almost a cloud-like capability on-premise. Most of my group doesn't have cloud skills. I learned it on my own and got my Kubernetes certification. I'm familiar with the automation infrastructure, how to build the execution environment and implement the private automation hub. Others still need training.

I've used Red Hat Enterprise Linux Image Builder for testing and development, but I haven't put it into production. We have a VMware template, and we've been doing training on VMware, but we are not there yet. I think they might move from VMware to another product. They are looking at other options, such as OpenShift, but we don't have training for OpenShift yet. They should try to have a salesman come and get OpenShift training for customers. If they make training free for the customers, more would switch to OpenShift from VMware.

What needs improvement?

I use Linux on Satellite with Ansible infrastructure. It would be great if there were a universal interface to control Red Hat Enterprise Linux's policy from Satellite. It could be a dashboard showing which policies were enabled on what system and allow you to apply them from the dashboard. 

I think Red Hat training could be cheaper. A company can move fast technologically with enough training. They will be stagnant without training and remain unable to fully leverage the technology. I have been encouraging the group to get a subscription to the training course for five years, but we haven't been able to take advantage of it because of the cost. They should make it cheaper for clients and offer big discounts at scale. 

When people lacked training for the technology we use, we migrated away from it. I worry that if we don't have enough training available to the client, they will eventually migrate away from Red Hat. More affordable training on key technologies like Satellite and Ansible automation will help us retain customers on those products. Downstream it will help them migrate to the latest and greatest Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as well. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux since 2005.

How are customer service and support?

I rate Red Hat support 10 out of 10. I've been very impressed with the knowledge base and the support from Red Hat. When I create a ticket, they respond and resolve the issue quickly or they point us to the correct resources. For example, we had an NFS issue with ISO, so they helped us with the mounting options. We also had an issue with IBM AIX and Red Hat integration. Red Hat referred us to the IBM support stack, and we were able to get IBM to help us out.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Initially, I used Solaris because I liked it the best, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux has improved so much that it has overtaken Solaris. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is easier to use and has better documentation. I also like having the ability to use Satellite and Ansible automation to manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 

How was the initial setup?

The deployment is straightforward because we use Ansible automation to spin up a new system and install applications directly from the Ansible workflow. We were planning to have Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 online last year, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 came out, so we decided to wait for a bit, and we're almost ready to upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.  The application folks still haven't had enough time and money to migrate everything over, and we need a project manager. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 out of 10. It comes with all of these nice tools like the Satellite automation web console. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Principal Infrastructure Engineer at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Has good security, management, stability, and hardening features
Pros and Cons
  • "For us, its security, management, stability, and hardening are most valuable."

    What is our primary use case?

    My organization has different departments. In my department, we mostly work with containerization. I am using Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a part of OpenShift. I use the basic package and base image of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

    For scale-up in our platform, we use CoreOS as the master, and for the workers, we use the Red Hat Enterprise Linux service. From OpenShift version 4.10 onwards, we cannot use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 worker nodes. We were using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 worker nodes, so we upgraded to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. 

    For OpenShift, there are some recommendations from Red Hat in terms of what needs to be used for the control plane and what needs to be used for the worker nodes. When you are using CoreOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux worker nodes, there are some difficulties in managing them. For example, when you upgrade OpenShift, you need to upgrade two times. The control plane is upgraded separately because it uses CoreOS. The control plane has a lot of certificate updates that will in turn be updated on the worker nodes, so you have one restart of all worker nodes, and then when you need to upgrade your worker nodes, there will be one more restart. 

    Overall, you have two reboots in your production environment, which is an issue, but it is related to your choice of product in your environment. We have this issue because we opted to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 worker machines, whereas Red Hat recommends using CoreOS because it is pretty fast in terms of rebooting and functionality. When you upgrade the control plane, that itself will update the worker nodes, so you are done in one shot. When you need to upgrade your Red Hat Enterprise Linux machines, you need to use the Ansible Playbook. You can then upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, 8, or any other version. Regardless of the versions, you can upgrade the operating system and the OpenShift version. For this purpose and for some ad-hoc activities, we are using Ansible Playbooks.

    What is most valuable?

    For us, its security, management, stability, and hardening are most valuable. All of these features are better in Red Hat Enterprise Linux as compared to Microsoft Windows.

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very good in terms of risk assessment. It is also good for maintaining compliance. It is better than Microsoft Windows.

    What needs improvement?

    From the administration perspective, I do not have any issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For me, it is more convenient than Microsoft Windows.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    My organization has been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a long time. They have been using it before I joined the organization.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It is pretty good in terms of stability. It is a stable product. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of stability because sometimes the packages can have bugs.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Its scalability is good. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of scalability.

    How are customer service and support?

    We never encountered any issues while using OpenShift.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    I have mostly been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 

    How was the initial setup?

    I have been involved in the deployment of OpenShift. It is pretty straightforward. We just need to get the licensing, and we just need to create a pool for our containers session in Red Hat Satellite. We can do the configuration from there. It does not take long because we are adding the nodes to OpenShift. During the scale-up process, we only need to subscribe to the nodes with the Red Hat subscription. It does not take much time. If we have a good spec, the scale-up would not take much time. It would take less than twenty minutes. It is pretty fast.

    In terms of maintenance, when we have the bug report, we need to do the security assessments. Over time, there might be some bugs related to some packages. At that time, if it is critical, we will be scheduling a maintenance activity on our platform. 

    Red Hat provides high availability from the application perspective. You get high availability when you are using OpenShift, so when you are doing a maintenance activity on the OpenShift side, there would not be any downtime. The high availability is very good. For the end-users, there would not be any application outages if you configure your application with proper replicas. They would not even realize that there is a maintenance activity happening to the underlying workers.

    What about the implementation team?

    It was implemented in-house.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We did not evaluate other solutions. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the choice of most of the companies.

    What other advice do I have?

    If you want to integrate with OpenShift or build an OpenShift cluster with the master Red Hat Enterprise Linux and worker Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you can do that, but you need to plan your upgrade or maintenance activities. It would be better if you choose CoreOS for both. CoreOS would be a better choice in terms of maintenance activities or upgrade activities in the future. If you cannot afford that, you can go with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, but you need to do two upgrades. You first need to upgrade the control plane and then you need to separately update your worker nodes. That is the only thing you need to keep in mind.

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

    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    Russell Burgos - PeerSpot reviewer
    Compute And Storage Associate Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    We can dynamically expand volumes and easily scale, and the solution offers excellent support
    Pros and Cons
    • "Logical volumes allow us to dynamically expand volumes, which is valuable from an operational perspective."
    • "The price has room for improvement."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are currently using Red Hat Enterprise Linux's versions 6, 7, and 8. We run the OS both on-prem and in the cloud.

    We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for web applications, containers, Kubernetes, and simple scripting servers. The scripting servers are used to run scripts on run drops and so on. However, the biggest use cases are containers and web app workloads.

    The cloud providers are AWS and Alibaba.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Red Hat helps our organization avoid cloud vendor lock-in because we can run Kubernetes and a few different workloads directly on Red Hat across different cloud providers. Since Red Hat is an operating system, we can migrate our workloads to any cloud provider that supports Red Hat.

    Avoiding vendor lock-in and being able to move workflows between cloud providers has saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux is easy to recover, especially from a backup. I believe this is because of its resilience. If I use an instance, I can go to my backups and restore it without much trouble. I was going to compare it to Windows for a moment, where there might be some additional steps required to clean things up after recovery. However, I haven't had many issues where I needed to do any cleanup afterward.

    It is easy to move workloads between the cloud and our data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The ease of migration depends on the cloud provider and what they allow us to do. However, for the most part, replication-based migration between cloud providers or on-premises works well. 

    What is most valuable?

    Linux is good for hardening the operating system. Logical volumes allow us to dynamically expand volumes, which is valuable from an operational perspective. This is especially true in cloud environments, where we pay for every kilobyte of storage. By using logical volumes, we can expand the disk on demand without downtime, which can help us keep costs down.

    What needs improvement?

    The price has room for improvement.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for three years, but I have known about the OS since version four.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux is definitely resilient and easy to recover, especially when compared to Windows. I enjoyed working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux more than Microsoft Windows, especially because of its resilience.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux's scalability is easy to manage. We can simply spin up more instances as needed, and then turn them off when we no longer need them. This means that Red Hat Enterprise Linux's scalability is not as much of an issue with the cloud provider.

    We have around 2,500 instances of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in our environment.

    How are customer service and support?

    Red Hat support is generally good, but it can sometimes take a little longer than we would like to get a response, especially when the issue is through a web-based chat.

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Positive

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The on-premises deployments are subscription based, and the cloud instances are from the providers which are AWS and Alibaba.

    We can always ask for Red Hat Enterprise Linux to be less expensive but when we compare it to other options, there are savings in the long run.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux was our first choice because of its enterprise support. That was the key factor. We do also run other Linux distributions, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is our primary choice because of the enterprise support. 

    The big difference between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Linux-based operating systems is the support. There isn't much difference other than the syntax, where the command is "at, get" versus Red Hat using YUM or DNF for installation. So outside of that, the support is the main difference.

    What other advice do I have?

    I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. No solution is perfect, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very close.

    Our engineering team probably used the image-building tool. I am on the operations side, so I do not see that part of the process. I take the images that are already built and deploy them.

    I think it's just a workflow issue. We need to improve our own workflows to be able to manage them better. Red Hat support is already good when we encounter something we're unfamiliar with. So, we need to get Enterprise CoreOS from Red Hat for those cases. I think as we encounter more of our own workloads, we'll need to improve our workflows even further.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer2585547 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Senior Systems Reliability Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Real User
    Top 20
    Helps reduce our total cost of ownership due to its security, stability, and enterprise support
    Pros and Cons
    • "The most valuable aspects of Red Hat Enterprise Linux are the security and stability it provides."
    • "I encountered an issue updating the time zone for one of my assigned countries due to a daylight-saving time change."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to provide a Platform as a Service for our customers in the cloud, upon which we have built additional software. This encompasses Red Hat and Synthos, including all Red Hat derivatives.

    We also use it for our security-related applications primarily due to the robust enterprise support and comprehensive security features it offers.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerized workloads has increased security, stability, and trust, ultimately simplifying our work.

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux enhances the reliability and security of our hybrid cloud environment.

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux performs well for our business critical applications.

    We chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux for our environment due to its robust built-in security features, including proactive security fixes and an enterprise-class operating system with reliable support services that enhance security and reduce risk. Furthermore, the secure base OS Docker image strengthens our environment's overall security posture.

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps reduce our total cost of ownership due to its security, stability, and enterprise support. The tightly integrated Red Hat portfolio simplifies working with their products and achieving the desired return on investment.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable aspects of Red Hat Enterprise Linux are the security and stability it provides.

    What needs improvement?

    I encountered an issue updating the time zone for one of my assigned countries due to a daylight-saving time change. Although we collaborated with Red Hat to build a package that addressed the issue, it wasn't delivered promptly, necessitating manual workarounds to resolve the problem.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for almost 15 years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux is exceptionally stable, minimizing the risk of outages or issues stemming from the operating system itself. This reliability allows it to run seamlessly in the background, freeing administrators from constantly addressing kernel bugs or faults in core system applications, ultimately saving significant time and manpower.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers flexibility to scale as required.

    How are customer service and support?

    My experiences with Red Hat technical support have been mostly positive, though I've encountered some issues occasionally.

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Positive

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux is suitably priced with various support tiers to match organizational needs and environments.

    What other advice do I have?

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

    When considering a Linux operating system, the choice depends on the intended use. For enterprise environments requiring dedicated support, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is recommended. Smaller projects or testing environments may start with a similar option and transition to Red Hat as the business grows.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Hybrid Cloud
    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: August 2025
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.