Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

I utilize Ansible to harden Red Hat devices across a multitude of disconnected environments.

One benefit of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux is that a lot of backend applications run natively on Red Hat Enterprise Linux as opposed to a Windows-based option. We are a partner with Red Hat. It essentially allows us to do a lot of our infrastructure stand-up and development.

It has enabled our team to centralize development. We have been able to centralize our automation, playbooks, and different collections we use within Ansible to create a centralized code base. We can use that to configure different types of systems with different requirements from different customers. Having a common platform across the entire enterprise has been very helpful.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux very limitedly for containerization projects. It makes things very seamless. If we get a new developer, we can set up a brand new instance of a container for a dev environment or a test environment. It allows different developers to always have the same starting points with containers.

In terms of security features for risk reduction, there are SELinux and FIPS. Also, when you build a Red Hat Enterprise Linux machine, you can stick it right out of the box. It is very helpful. It is very good, especially for programmers and users who do not know anything about cybersecurity. It takes you 85% to 90% of the way. It has been very helpful and good.

The right commonality across the business or enterprise is always very hard to do, especially when different networks and different customers have different requirements. Being able to at least have continuity between those different environments has been helpful. If you have a system admin at a location and you put him or her at a different location, they at least can expect the same type of infrastructure.

When it comes to compliance, it takes you 85% to 90% of the way there. Different networks require different things. Some cannot implement specific standards for whatever reasons, but being able to utilize and leverage Red Hat Ansible to configure that and make sure those changes are made across the entire network has been very helpful.

Portability depends on the circumstances. Some things are more portable than others, such as containers. We utilize Ansible Core very extensively, but other things, such as AAP, are not necessarily as portable because some of our smaller environments do not have the bandwidth or the actual resources to support a big product like that.

In Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I am a big fan of the command line. I like the data manipulation and different commands that we can use. I use Ansible extensively to configure systems.

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

It is very stable.

It is easily scalable with the solutions and the options they have.

Their support is very good. They are very helpful. Some of them are more experienced in handling the niche problems that we have.

I would rate their customer support a nine out of ten because there is always room for improvement, but it has always been very good.

Positive

We have used Ubuntu and other Linux operating systems in the past. However, since I have been with the company, we have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux almost exclusively.

The deployment model depends on the environment. Some are using VMs. Some use containers, and some use bare-metal installations. It depends on what a particular program needs. I support small environments that are on-prem.

It is fairly straightforward to deploy different Red Hat boxes. I was just helping out a sysadmin the other day who had not done it before. It was super straightforward and super easy to deploy.

We deploy it on our own. 

The return on investment for us and our team is specifically automation. We are able to invest time on the frontend to create different automation playbooks, and we are able to push that out to not only a singular network but also to multiple networks and multiple different configurations. It takes a little bit in the beginning, but there are huge time savings in the end.

If a security colleague is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would be interested to understand what that colleague's objectives are and why they would consider something other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux. If it is something that fits their particular use case more, they can obviously go with that. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a standard solution for Linux. If any colleague wants to go for another solution, I have to understand why. I would have to understand what Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not able to provide. However, this has not happened to me.

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

We primarily use it for enterprise software, databases, and some custom applications.

We have a stable base to deploy applications. We need a minimal amount of effort to troubleshoot problems with the applications that are related to the OS.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud, in the on-prem data center, and at the edge. We are also using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a hybrid cloud environment. It has had a positive impact. It is straightforward to deploy. There was no bottleneck.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. The stable base that each developer can rely on is great. The consistent ecosystem of the repository makes it easy to rely on.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is quick to containerize, so when it started becoming mainstream, it was easier for us to sell to upper management to start doing more containerization.

There has been a positive impact in terms of the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for keeping our organization agile. It is very portable. I do not have any issues with different ecosystems in relation to how Red Hat Enterprise Linux runs containers.

Our cost of ownership is not high. They are not very expensive. We are never surprised.

The repository ecosystem is valuable. 

I would probably focus more on a rolling release schedule. Instead of a long-term operating support of ten years, I would just have one release and keep rolling it.

In terms of security features, overall, it is lacking cohesion. There are a lot of different options, and it is hard to choose the ones that best fit our business needs without a lot of investigative work.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 11 years.

It is very stable.

It is scalable.

It takes a little bit to get to the true answer. I know there is a lot of triaging. I am sure we can improve on our end. When we open tickets, we can provide more information. There could be a way to get faster answers from Red Hat support, and we might not be providing the most upfront information needed for the ticket. I would rate their support a ten out of ten.

Positive

We were not using any other solution previously.

I know of only one other player, and that is Ubuntu. There is also OpenSUSE, but I have not yet seen that personally in my career.

We have cloud and on-prem deployments. We have the AWS cloud.

On AWS, we had an EC2 instance. I clicked, and it was online. For the initial deployment, we just used the Amazon Web UI, and now, we use Ansible for deployment.

We have seen an ROI. It is fairly easy to deploy. We do not have too many issues with setting up a new environment in relation to the operating system. The bottlenecks are more related to the hardware or even setting up the cloud.

When I came in, Red Hat Enterprise Linux was already being used. It has always been there.

We have not yet fully leveraged Red Hat Insights. We are working on that. It might help with cohesion and security.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. It is reliable for deploying applications. It has a lot of different features. I can find solutions to all my problems, and the industry support is there.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux in different application servers. 

The tool's most valuable feature is simplicity. There is value in having a fully CLI-based operating system instead of a GUI-based one. It is lightweight and can be leveraged without resource constraints. 

I want Red Hat Enterprise Linux to stick to the open-source routes. As a company, we experience challenges in managing the budget. 

I have been using the product for three years. 

From a licensing perspective, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is flexible. We leverage our licenses based on the VMware cluster. 

Accessing the knowledge base from the public perspective is challenging. You can get much more from the documentation if you are a supported organization. If Red Hat Enterprise Linux continues to keep the documentation open-source, it will benefit us. 

We leverage Ansible to help with the upgrades. It makes upgrades easier. We rely on a reseller for Ansible AWS upgrades. 

We are shifting our Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers from version 7 to version 8. 

I rate the product a seven out of ten. 

All our infrastructure uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Every service we run is all Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Even containerization is on it.

It has improved our organization. It has standardized processes. Everyone uses it. 

The upgrades are straightforward which helps when you want to move a major version of an upgrade. It's done in a standard way.

Everything we do is all Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat Enterprise Linux's security has been good because I have never seen any application going down due to security reasons. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to achieve security standard certification. For example, we have a very tightly SCC-regulated company so there are many rules that we are to follow and we are able to achieve this using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I have been using it for six years. 

We are all on-prem, but we also have some footprints in AWS but those images are also on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has supported our hybrid cloud strategy. We have a few things running on AWS. We have a few things on OpenShift. We are able to get all the basic images. It is easy to start and deploy anywhere.

One thing I like is the updates because when we patch it and upgrade it, we save a lot of time doing those upgrades and migrations.

Moreover, upgrades or migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux have been straightforward in some ways. For example, we are currently migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and we have all our servers running on RHEL 7. We have scripts that are very easy to migrate.

For our implementation strategy, we go environment by environment. We start with our development environment. Once we are done with it, we test it. We have some automation test suites, test them, and we go to the upper environment.  

We worked directly with Red Hat for the deployment. We are already working on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 migration. Every year, whenever there is a major version release, we migrate to the major version.  

We see a return on investment in terms of saving time. One thing I like is the updates because when we patch it and upgrade it, we save a lot of time doing those upgrades and migrations.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for our on-prem VM infrastructure. Recently, we got the OpenShift platform to help with containerization on-prem.

Moreover, containerization is one way we're trying to get rid of any legacy. We don't patch. We try to have a fresh build with the newer version of the patch. We try to use those Red Glue deployment strategies and remove whatever we find in misconfiguration or vulnerability instances rather than fixing them. We redeploy it.

In terms of improvement within the Linux environment, especially for a non-IT company like ours, where we have a limited number of Linux administrators and specialists in Linux hardening and security, Red Hat Enterprise Linux plays a significant role. 

It eases the burden by restricting the use of open-source Linux and preventing the development community from obtaining their own images. This is crucial for maintaining a secure supply chain and ensuring the lockdown of live Linux packages.

However, when it comes to security compliance, I have not been exposed to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux security; we got the advanced cluster security from OpenShift, which has some vulnerability tracking within the cluster. Within Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I have not experienced the security console yet.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has affected our systems and our security. It helps us achieve security standards. It's one of the hardening requirements so, it helps with that compliance requirement.

With standardization across the environment, we don't have to generate multiple artifacts for compliance, and having a single Linux platform management like Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps to satisfy auditors a little faster.

From a security perspective, the overall hardening of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is good. It has been effective in enhancing security.

Image management and hardening are essential, so we don't have to procure open-source Linux images that developers can get themselves. It adds a layer of security with signed images.

The knowledge base is pretty good.

From a cloud perspective, I'm looking for more integrations with native cloud services. For example, the ability to use native Azure Key Vault instead of Ansible Key Vault or Red Hat Key Vault. 

Additionally, integrating image services from Red Hat into native image repositories such as Azure, Google, or third-party image repositories like JFrog is crucial. The key focus is on integration. 

Red Hat should not become Microsoft and lock down functionalities within Red Hat. 

We have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for two years.

We have premium support, so it is pretty good.

Positive

We are a mix of some other cloud virtualization technologies. The overall cloud information will define how we look down the road.

With Linux management, the pros are that it makes management a little easier. Overall, it is just a single view of the images we deploy in the organization. 

The cons are that the integrations are a little tricky sometimes, and then we have to make exceptions to our policies. Better integration, more native service using more credentialless authentication, and authorization like using service principles or managing these over-store credentials would make it better.

Currently, the emphasis is on on-premises solutions.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten because it needs more integrations.

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.

It is for binding servers. It is for web servers, such as Apache and NGINX, and KVM virtualization.

We have servers running all time. We have not had any issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We have had issues with Microsoft products over time. Because of the updates, we had downtime, but that is not the case with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

It has been very productive for our organization. We have an online client buying or purchasing products from our website, which is available 24 hours.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is good when it comes to building with confidence and ensuring availability across the infrastructure. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of stability and reliability. In the case of our web server, I have had availability issues with Microsoft, whereas, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we have not had many such issues. There has been only 1% downtime, whereas, with Microsoft, we have had a lot more downtime.

We have support. If we have any issues with the distro, we can call their support team. We have reliable packages from Red Hat.

Network management can be easier. It is getting more complex. They can also give more customization for the CLI.

I have been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for six years.

It is very stable. We have three websites running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

It works fine. We have had servers running for ten years. We have been just updating them, and we have not had any issues or downtime.

It is scalable. We can upgrade it, and the upgrades do not impact the product.

We have a team of five people who are using this solution.

We have premium support. It is excellent. We have not interacted a lot with their support. We have almost five engineers working in the team, so we did not have to contact them a lot. We did have any major issues with the hardware or software. 

Neutral

I also use CentOS for educational purposes. Support and regular updates are advantages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux over others. 

For directory servers, we always use Microsoft because it is easy to manage and easy to control. Implementing and managing domain controllers on Microsoft is easy, and we can apply policies by groups (GPO).

Its deployment is very easy. It does not take long. Its maintenance is also easy. We can expand the storage for the operating system or the web server.

To those looking into implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would advise making use of Red Hat's community. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has had some impact in terms of security, but we have other security measures and procedures. We have not used SELinux and other embedded security features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

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

The users utilize Red Hat Enterprise Linux for building, installing, and automating platforms. Additionally, we employ it as an installer for OpenShift clusters. Furthermore, there is a product called Red Hat High Availability Clustering and also JBoss. Occasionally, we also use it to build an Oracle RAC database.  

Red Hat Enterprise Linux simplifies risk reduction and compliance maintenance by utilizing bash scripts or Ansible to automate and streamline our tasks. Red Hat also offers a tool called Convert2RHEL, which simplifies the process of maintaining our products from Oracle, CentOS, and other vendors to Red Hat. This feature is truly remarkable.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is perfect for keeping our organization agile, especially when considering rootless containers or utilizing BotMan containers for enhanced security and performance. 

The Red Hat ecosystem enables the seamless integration of our products such as Ansible, Red Hat Virtualization, Red Hat Satellite, and OpenShift platform to fulfill tasks, thereby enhancing the efficiency of our organization.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps us reduce the time we spend on tedious tasks, and the large Red Hat community provides an easy way for us to maintain or fix errors and bugs. We were able to realize the benefits quickly.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to achieve security standard certification. I am a certified Red Hat System Administrator and Red Hat Engineer. The content of the certificate includes topics such as C Linux. This helps to make our organization more secure and stable and has an impact on our personnel sourcing.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux assists us in building with confidence and ensures availability across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. While there is a higher level of risk associated with using a public cloud for any product, private or virtualized environments offer greater security.

Red Hat Insights helps us prevent emergencies caused by security issues, noncompliant settings, and unpatched systems by enabling us to be more proactive in detecting and avoiding errors before they occur.

Red Hat Insights provides us with vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, especially when we register our host directly with Red Hat. It works perfectly because it utilizes machine learning, allowing us to monitor our logs and prevent unnecessary downtime.

Errata is the most valuable feature, which is supported by Red Hat. Errata is a list of corrected errors appended to a document in Red Hat, used for provisioning or batching our hosts. Moreover, its stability and security are noteworthy.

Ever since Red Hat acquired CentOS, the connection between the new CentOS Upstream and Red Hat Enterprise Linux has become unstable and requires improvement.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's ability to run containerized applications is not optimized and has room for improvement.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is extremely stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux can scale horizontally because it is in a virtualized environment. Vertical scaling depends on the deployment of the solution.

We have plans to increase our utilization of the solution.

The Red Hat technical support is excellent; critical issues are resolved promptly.

Positive

We also utilize other Linux operating systems depending on the use case. SUSE Linux Enterprise is more optimized for SAP products. When working with an Oracle database, it is preferable to use Oracle Linux.

The initial deployment was straightforward. The deployment time depends on two factors: the first factor is the infrastructure specs, and the second factor is what we are deploying with the operating system. For a minimal server, deployment takes five minutes. For a server with a graphical user interface, it can take up to 20 minutes.

The implementations are all completed in-house.

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is deployed in multiple environments, including pre-production, user acceptance testing, and system integration testing. Our Red Hat team, the development team, and another team utilize Red Hat Enterprise Linux within our organization.

Each processor architecture has a distinct version of the software.

The Red Hat exams are not solely based on security but also on performance. It is a challenging skill to grasp, but once learned, Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be flawless.

I highly recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux, particularly for production environments, due to its stability and enhanced security features.

The most valuable lesson I have learned using Red Hat Enterprise Linux is that the entire Red Hat ecosystem is perfect. All the open-source projects can work together, especially for DevOps or when implementing valid automation or containerized applications. If we need to deploy a centralized application, we will use OpenShift. And if we want to perform tasks on OpenShift, we will use Ansible as an automation platform. If we want to upgrade or manage our environment hosts in batches, we will use Red Hat Satellite. If we have applications and want to create an environment for them, we will use Red Hat JBoss. If we want to run high-availability clusters or high-performance computing clusters, we will turn to Red Hat High Availability Clustering. Working within the Red Hat ecosystem is perfect.