Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We are a telecommunications operator using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for our technical applications due to its supportability and robust management features.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features aid in simplifying risk reduction. In the past, patches fortified the security features, but now, with playbooks, we can automate and address any findings for any Common Platform Enumeration. When integrated with Red Hat Insights, the solution can identify the CPE and provide the remediation playbook. This expedites detection, remediation, and testing by Red Hat, thanks to the playbooks provided by satellite as well as malware detection.

Maintaining compliance with Red Hat Enterprise Linux is easy because it supports various out-of-the-box compliance policies, such as CIS. Whether we are running OpenSCAP on-premises or Insights, we can perform compliance testing using OpenSCAP to verify adherence to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux security guidelines, as well as other well-known guidelines and framework compliance. I have found that all the compliance policies I required were already included out of the box.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is ready to help keep our organization agile when it comes to the portability of applications and containers because all the applications are developed by the vendor. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the preferred choice in our industry because the applications we use are swiftly certified by the vendor, so we don't have to verify them ourselves.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides enhanced security for our servers, and we are aware of patching requirements in advance. Additionally, the pre-certification of Red Hat Enterprise Linux applications expedites deployment as we no longer need to go through the certification process ourselves. Moreover, Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers excellent support, ensuring that any issues that may arise are promptly addressed, which is crucial for our environment where we must maintain an uptime of 99.99999 percent.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to achieve security standards certification because it is driven by various compliance policies that include everything we need out of the box. This makes it easy to enforce security rules, and security patches are applied regularly. With Insights, we have malware detection, CPE filings, and remediation capabilities. In addition to the reactive approach, we also benefit from a proactive approach, allowing us to stay informed about the events around us, which helps us implement temporary solutions if needed until a permanent fix becomes available.

With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we can build with confidence, knowing that it is available across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructures. The operating system provides certifications, ensuring that we can deploy with 100 percent certainty, knowing that the applications will work. Additionally, it offers identity security and excellent support from the Red Hat team. Without this support, we would have to rely on searching within the community and downloading untested patches, which may function in small environments but not for larger ones with sensitive applications.

Red Hat Insights helps us prevent emerging issues related to security or noncompliance settings. One of the steps we take before going live is using OpenSCAP to ensure compliance with our standards. This is followed by our own security scanning and verification process. If any issues are not known within Red Hat, we can always refer to all the findings. Once the system is in production, regular monitoring allows us to use Insights to identify any new findings and apply necessary patches or workarounds. The knowledge base available on the servers enables us to take proactive measures even before a security patch becomes available. The new malware detection feature in Insights helps protect end-user information.

Insights provide vulnerability alerts and specific guidance. With each system, we can view the detected Common Platform Enumeration and receive advice on how to address it. These features have protected our systems from potential attacks, thereby increasing our uptime.

Red Hat has introduced a fast server, where Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be integrated or connected to via a client. This connection allows us to identify numerous vulnerabilities in malware easily and facilitates simpler patching. Activating the Red Hat addons on this server creates a perfect match when seeking a well-hardened OS using the gold image, as it eliminates the need to address issues from an existing image. Additionally, Red Hat Insights is a valuable and essential tool. In the telecom industry, we rely on basic products that necessitate an OS with robust security support and regular patches. 

We have not succeeded in creating an image from Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, including custom partitioning and custom scripts. This would have been helpful.

Red Hat Insights reporting can be enhanced by incorporating performance components, making it a central tool for vulnerability assessment, compliance monitoring, and much more. The performance component is available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but we need to maintain the dashboard on-premises, which requires us to switch between systems instead of performing all tasks from a single location.

Managing the destination for netting on the Netserver using Red Hat Enterprise Linux could be made more user-friendly.

I would like to have enhancements in the data files to help with deployments.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for over ten years. I started in 2012 using version five.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable, but the scalability is achieved at a different layer compared to adding memory to a virtual machine or container.

Compared to other support departments for Red Hat products, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux support team stands out as one of the fastest, most cooperative, and understanding teams.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. In the past, it was complex when Red Hat acquired Ansible because many of the modules were community resources that lacked full support. As a result, creating a playbook to deploy the OS was a painful process, as there was a chance it would not work, and we would not have the necessary support. However, currently, deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux is easy. We have never deployed only one operating system at a time, but it would take less than one hour to do so.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten due to the complexity of its network boost management issue.

We have Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployed in one location.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is used in our environment to run the application for all of our customers, and only around ten people have access to it.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux requires maintenance for applying new patches, releases, and debugging. 

We use the solution majorly for JBoss, Apache, Java workload, and Comcast. We also use it for Apache Sattelite to do all the patching and database management. We use it for almost everything. We were a pure RHEL shop, up until recently. 

The most valuable feature is Satellite. Its consistency in patch upgradation is great. For the ten-year lifecycle, we have been able to rely on it and not worry if the patch will break. We do not need additional patching features since it covers everything.

The Modules feature is awesome but it could be even better.

We have been using the solution for 25 years.

The solution is stable. I have never remotely questioned its stability. The downtime is rare. It is usually a vendor's application issue unrelated to it. 

My company only has one complaint; we have been using it for more than seven years out of its ten-year lifespan and have yet to receive any version update. The drivers have become stale. We are trying to upgrade them manually. It would be nice if they had updated the drivers. If they do not update them, the solution will end soon. They should prevent it from crashing every time we try to update it. We are still rolling Ansible to automate some of the functions but, it is complicated to process with a vast sync of firmware and drivers.

The solution is scalable. I am a Satellite owner and we've had scaling issues with it. Those issues are mostly because my company didn't make it scalable in the right way.

They have their own expectations of how to make something highly available. And Satellite doesn't fit into that. 

I rate the solution's technical support as nine out of ten, as there is always room for improvement. I never had an issue with the support services. It is good and worth the value. 

I don't usually put up a ticket for every minor error. I am an expert and know the technicalities required to resolve the issues. So, whenever I contact them, I expect it to get somewhere. Because most of the time, the executives put more than one problem in the same ticket unrelated to another. It becomes more complex and confusing.

Positive

Red Hat Enterprise Linux generates a return on investment. We have everything on it. We have Windows servers for SharePoint and multiple cloud providers as well. In addition, we have OpenShift and Docker Enterprise, and some other open-source applications.

The solution is a good value for money. They keep adding up essential features to the specific subscription plan. I am also not a big proponent of top-level open-source applications as they do not provide support services. Whereas, with Red Hat, I can call them for queries and get answers immediately. In comparison, open source doesn't have that facility. Even if you hire a support vendor, they just give their opinions and try to help but they don't own the project.

At the end of the day, we have a 999.99% reliability of only 20 minutes a year of downtime with Red Hat. It is impossible to get that with open-source vendors as sometimes the applications might break if it doesn't notify about the changes on time. Conversely, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a ten-year life cycle assurance, so we don't have to worry much. Also, we are in a TAM program. Thus, we can call the support team immediately for any issue.

Our organization constantly evaluates other options, as Red Hat Enterprise Linux's cloud version doesn't offer new features. Other than that, we go back and forth using Centralized and Rocky Linux. We prefer the ones we don't have to pay for the licenses.

It has a strong security posture. I did a SELinux contract for my current company. Compared with open-source alternatives, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides better support services and reliability. Also, we are rolling out a new Ansible platform for insights. It gathers information about how many jobs we have, how long they take to complete, etc.

We need to manage vulnerabilities for a massive base of clients' systems. We don't use open-source apps for it like Red Hat. We have a third-party tool as we straddle different compliances. However, Red Hat is great about security announcements. I can call them anytime for an update as well. But it is challenging to work with the vendor for scanning machines. It does not know how to work with Red Hat packaging version numbers.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

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.

We run various application servers. We have application servers for Java and Python. We also run Postgres and different applications. We have Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm, etc. We have a wide variety. 

We weren't trying to solve a particular problem by implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We've used Red Hat Enterprise Linux for so long. We used to modify the Kernel in the early versions of Red Hat, but that's not needed anymore. We are currently using versions 7, 8, and 9. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development in our hybrid cloud environment because the containers can be migrated from Red Hat Enterprise Linux to AWS. It's not an issue. There is also a Red Hat-supported programming tool called Skupper, which is a layer seven service. It's an open source product. It's supported by Red Hat, so we could use that to migrate our containers back and forth on the cloud and on-prem, which is very much needed.

Red Hat is pretty good at containing risks. We have a firewall, but we also use iptables and SELinux. SELinux has proved to be very valuable. We have certain tools where when somebody tries to break SELinux, we immediately get alerts.

We don't have a problem with compliance. We also use Red Hat Satellite. Our Red Hat Satellite server is helpful in terms of meeting compliance requirements.

We're able to modify and migrate containers and redeploy containers very easily. We do that on the Red Hat platform. We do it with other tools such as VMware. Red Hat API works very well with other vendors, so that's definitely a plus. In terms of changes, for instance, if we want to connect to ServiceNow to create a ticket in Ansible, we're able to do that without any problems whatsoever. We can create a ticket in ServiceNow. We can remediate it, and we can close the ticket on ServiceNow from Ansible. Ansible is a big part of Red Hat.

It's a rock-solid operating system. We don't need anything fancy from the operating system itself. What we need is something that doesn't crash, stays up to date, and provides the security features that we need to keep external players out.

The CVEs that come out for the vulnerabilities are very fast. We try to do patching in different tiers. Our regular patching happens once every ninety days, and then we have special iterations that need to be done, and those are on demand, or if there's a high-security risk and it's absolutely immediate.

The other thing that we like about Red Hat is the support for open source. That for us is a slam dunk.

They should work more on container documentation. The only issue that we have is that Red Hat specifically promotes OpenStack, and we don't use OpenStack. It's good if you're using OpenStack, but if you're not using OpenStack, and you're using Docker or something else, it isn't that good. Having more support for non-OpenStack would be very helpful, but, of course, as part of their business, we don't expect it.

I've been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for many years.

It's very stable.

It scales very well. We have about a thousand servers, but we could scale to five thousand servers without a problem.

Their support is good overall. It's better than some of the other vendors. The staff is very friendly. The people I've met hear and discuss issues. We're very much interested in open source, so we use a lot of open source. The engineers have been extremely helpful. 

I'd rate them an eight out of ten. I'm not giving them a ten. Some of it has to do with the time cycle, and some of it has to do with different levels of quality with the support. You could get a junior support person, and obviously, that's going to be a very different experience.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat is very good.

Positive

Our environment is hybrid. Most of our Red Hat Enterprise Linux is on-prem. For the cloud, AWS is the cloud provider, but we are using a different distro for AWS. We use AWS Linux for that. For on-prem servers, we're strictly using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For desktops, we use Fedora.

The reason for using AWS Linux is that we only have AWS. If we use multi-cloud, for instance, if we use Azure and AWS clouds together, we would definitely need something other than AWS Linux. AWS Linux is very solid too, and our team likes it. We can download the AWS Linux version for on-premises too. I've done that. I tested it, but we're sticking with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

In the server space, nothing comes close to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I know that Ubuntu is making a big push, and some people have gone ahead and migrated to Ubuntu, but I think those are going to migrate back. There's just no comparability. They're different. They're like cousins. They're very similar in some ways, but they're very different things. You can install SELinux on Ubuntu, but why bother and why go through the whole configuration? Red Hat Enterprise Linux is more suitable for servers.

We use certain tools from HashiCorp, such as Packer, so deploying it is very simple. We have a script that runs every night, and it creates via the CI, goes up to GitLab, gets whatever it needs, such as parameters, and sends it to Packer. Packer grabs the ISO, and it creates a very specific, customized deployment. It's done with a couple of right clicks. That's it.

We've absolutely seen an ROI. It's in terms of reliability, stability, security, and usability. You name it. The use cases are out there.

The licensing structure is very convoluted. It's very confusing. We have a Satellite server, and we license it through the Satellite server, but if we didn't, we'd have to buy individual Red Hat licenses. That would be a nightmare to maintain in terms of renewing it every year and things like that. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been using it for about 20 years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is stable and mature.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux can scale to fit our needs. 

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

Positive

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive.

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

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

It is stable.

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.

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.

Positive

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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