Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

One of the valuable features is that it's convenient. 

The rest of its features are really nice.

Red Hat enables us to achieve security standards certification. We have been certified for the PPI certification last year. 

Red Hat has been good when it comes to building with confidence and ensuring availability across our infrastructure. We are really confident about the security process.

It is implemented across multiple physical and virtual infrastructures. We have applied it on most production servers. They are integrated quite well. 

We use the Red Hat system roles feature. We have been using this for automation purposes and to find some tests. 

The response could be better for urgent issues. If there's an issue with live services, they need to be faster. 

It would be nice to have antivirus services.

There should be more upgrades to the security features. 

I've used the solution for a long time. My organization has used it for more than three years. 

The stability is good. I'd rate it eight out of ten. 

The scalability is decent. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. Different teams and departments, including application and development teams. 

We do not have plans to increase usage in the future.

I'm very happy with the technical support.

We have got some other open systems like CentOS. We just have most of our production services to ReadyX from CentOS and Oracle. Red Hat is more secure. The support is very nice as well.

I joined the organization after deployment and wasn't involved in the implementation. 

I'm not sure if the solution requires any maintenance. 

I'm not really involved in the pricing or the licensing. However, it may be expensive. We have different licenses. 

We evaluated different options.

I'm a customer and end-user.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We have over a thousand VMs or physical machines running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We have various applications, and we also run the OpenShift Container Platform on-prem, so we have a lot of containers. They are migrating a lot of apps from the mainframe over to Spring Boot type of app. It fits well in the container.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux gave us stability. There is somebody to call when we have issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has affected our system's uptime or security.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not yet enabled us to achieve security standards certification because we do not go after any of those. There are some products that we will have to do once we get there, but so far, we have not had to certify anything.

Red Hat Insights gives a lot of insights into known issues that we do not think about unless we call support. It tells us to proactively fix something.

I have used Image Builder and System Roles mainly for Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge. It builds out the OS tree build for us, which is very helpful. I do not like to do that myself.

I use the Red Hat console every now and then, but I do not use it heavily. I am old school.

The security updates and the support that comes along with it for applications are valuable.

Red Hat Insights was a nice feature to discover. I did not know about Ansible until probably eight years ago. I learned that language, and that was a void or something that was missing for over 25 years.

I like the SCAP Workbench interface that I can use to build some security around. I use Ansible to go out and do configuration management checks as well. Overall, I feel it is very easy to get the data I need.

We finally started doing Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge. That one definitely is an improvement. One piece that is missing is that we are required to use moby-engine, but currently, Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge forces Podman, so we have to work around it.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a decade in my current organization, but overall, I have been using Red Hat for over 25 years.

Early on, support was closer to a six, but now, it is a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have used them all back from the early nineties. I have used CentOS and others. The reasons for companies switching from those to Red Hat Enterprise Linux are that most of it is open source, and they get more product features. There is a market. If other companies are doing it, they tend to switch over. Containerization is a major reason as well.

I was involved in the OpenShift deployments. We are also directly involved in every version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are involved in the proof of concept. Its deployment is straightforward.

We used Red Hat with the OpenShift deployments to make sure we were doing it right, and then a lot of other things, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, we just did ourselves.

In terms of our upgrade and/or migration plans to stay current, we are upgrading everything to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, and we are going to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 already. We are making that a product feature. We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge for our remote deployments.

In terms of provisioning and patching, we deploy the base image, and then we use Ansible for the configuration behind it. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge, we use the OS builders to build out that same image. I use Kickstart to build the base image before the configuration.

I do not track that in the company, but I am sure we have seen an ROI.

It seems to be fair. It is not overpriced. I went to the simple model, and that makes it easier for us to deploy.

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

We have an older environment with a lot of servers. They are development servers for a lot of in-house development. We have a lot of things. We have Ruby on Rails, Java, and a lot of Oracle applications

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is mostly on-prem in my current job. In my previous jobs, we have had it on AWS or Azure.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features are good when it comes to simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance. It is something that they do very well. It is one of the reasons why we like running it. It is rock solid in all areas. Red Hat does a really good job of keeping on top of vulnerabilities and making the patching process easy.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has impacted our uptime and security. We have had no breaches, and our systems are usually up.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not yet enabled us to achieve security standards certification because that is not a requirement for where we are, but I am pretty confident that we would meet those standards. Our security teams are usually chasing problems on the other side of the house.

I like most of the features. I like its stability. I like its views. It provides a very stable environment. There is not a lot of downtime. There are not a lot of issues. Primarily, we are deploying things and configuring things, and occasionally, we add new things for developers as needed, but it does not require much troubleshooting or break fixing. That is rare.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux is another thing I like about it. It is particularly easy to find an answer to your problem online. There is very good documentation, very good user communities, and good support when you need it.

The upgrade procedures are a little bit cumbersome. It would be nice if they are not because every three or four years we have to update, and I find that to be a bit on the cumbersome side. We have been able to automate most of it, but we still run into things where the job does not finish. There are things that require additional steps. There are things that need to be removed and that always require manual intervention. I do not know how they can get rid of that, but it is cumbersome in an environment where you have hundreds or thousands of servers.

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

I would rate their support a nine out of ten. I just do not give tens. I am sure there are some areas where they can improve, but they are good. They are responsive.

Positive

I have got experience with Windows and Solaris before that. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is my favorite. With Solaris, that stream stopped a long time ago, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux has all of the nice things about it, and they have continued to develop and build many new things. For instance, when you had to patch on a Solaris box, you had to take the server down into single-user mode and apply the patching. I like it better than Windows in every way. It is more intuitive to me. I like that I can do more things from the command line. It is easier to automate things.

I have been involved in the upgrades and some migrations for migrating things from Solaris. We also had CentOS, which was converted to DevStream, so we have had to change those to Red Hat. The upgrades and migrations were not terribly difficult. Usually, the tools were there. We called support when we ran into problems, but for the most part, it worked.

I have used Convert2RHEL. It was a bit helpful. It did the job.

We mostly use Ansible for deployment, patching, and managing the system in general. Our experience has been good. I am looking at some of the newer things they have at the conference that we have not had a chance to play with, but it meets our needs.

We have seen a return on our investment. We are able to do what we need to do without any problems or interruptions, and we are able to do it quickly.

For me, it is not too bad, but my company pays the bill, so I do not worry too much about it. 

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

We host Red Hat Enterprise Linux on our VMware Cloud and manage our customers' machines.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux machines are more stable than Windows machines.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a reliable operating system that can run for long periods of time without any issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux should modernize its UI to make navigating the screens easier.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be easily scaled on a virtual machine.

The technical support is good.

Positive

I was not involved in the initial deployment but it was straightforward. The deployment took around 15 minutes per machine.

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

I recommend using Red Hat Enterprise Linux over an open-source OS because it offers better support.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux requires minimal maintenance.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a reliable solution and I recommend it to others.

I use the product mostly for Red Hat OpenShift. We use the solution mainly for stability and to have a fallback within the Red Hat community.

There was a worldwide security breach, and everybody needed to patch their servers. Since we were running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the product patched a lot of it. It took a lot of effort out of our hands.

It is a complete ecosystem. That is its main feature. If you take all the latest products, it just works together.

The tool is very, very close. It makes some things difficult. On the other hand, that is what makes the product so stable. The product lags a bit behind in the market. The things we are running are pretty old. Yet again, that is why it is stable. The solution doesn’t switch with every new thing there is. The solution does not need to change that because that's what makes it good.

The product could run more recent tools and packages in the repositories. However, it might bring instability because they are new and less tested. I looked at CentOS, which was close to Red Hat. It had a system working, but a few months later, it didn't work again because the packages and contracts had changed. We couldn’t communicate anymore. It’s not desirable with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We want stability. The price we pay for it is that we run on some older features.

I have been using the solution on and off for the last 15 years.

I have no complaints regarding the tool’s stability.

The product is scalable. We use the solution all the time. We use it in multiple locations. We have two physical data centers where we run it. We run it on a few 100 machines.

The technical support is very helpful.

Positive

I have used CentOS and Debian.

The deployment is straightforward. However, there’s a learning curve to understand it. The deployment would be difficult for a newcomer, but it’s normal. We use automation tools. The deployment takes us a few minutes because we use scripts.

The solution is deployed on the cloud. However, it’s an on-premise solution from the Dutch government. We do not have control over the physical servers. We just work on virtual machines. The license fees are paid by another government agency. We take machines, and then they bill us for it.

We used some integration for the deployment. That's why it was so fast. We use a base image as the setup, and then, on top of that, we install some extra things. It’s just about cloning an image and starting it.

The solution does require maintenance, but nothing more than the usual. We need a team of four people with Linux knowledge to maintain the solution.

The product is on the expensive side.

Very early in my career, we had evaluated SUSE Linux as an alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. SUSE has its own niche market now.

We are not working in a hybrid environment. I work with the Dutch government, and the regular cloud solutions are not sufficient because of data safety.

Moving workloads between the cloud and our data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not really an issue. The network connectivity is good. The data storage is fast enough. Cloud vendor lock-in is always a debatable discussion. Whatever we do, we always get vendor lock-in. We just choose what works for us at the moment.

The cost savings are mainly in time. We don't have to figure out everything if there's a priority-one issue. We can raise a ticket with the vendor and ask them to help us. It saves us costs. The savings are mostly in time because the product is not cheap. If you compare it to a free Linux OS, the total cost savings will be about the same. Our level of stress and effort is far lower. It's the real saving.

When my Red Hat Knowledgebase account works, it works fine. However, there are some issues at my company. I cannot log in sometimes. It's not Red Hat’s fault.

Look at what your priorities are. Do you want to switch fast, run the latest stuff, and be agile? Then, use open-source tools and contribute to that community. If you work for a big enterprise and mainly want stability, choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I’m very happy with the solution. If someone is a technical person, they must get some training and an in-depth technical course on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It will help them a lot. Although it is Linux, it is very different from other open-source Linux packages.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight 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.

When I worked for an MSP, we had a lot of requirements for Linux servers. Any customer services that were deemed to be on Linux were on Red Hat 6 or 7. In fact, a good forty percent of our estate was on Red Hat 6 or 7.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features simplify risk management. The operating system is very secure, and we used tools like Puppet to further limit and lock down access with configuration files from a central location. This made Red Hat Enterprise Linux both more secure and easier to configure. The fact that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is open source means that there are a wide variety of tools available to help with security, and the lack of a user interface for some of these tools makes them even more secure.

Maintaining compliance is easy. We used another tool called Spacewalk to deploy patches and update RPMs. It was very easy to connect to a repository. We didn't have any problems with that either.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is beneficial for keeping our organization agile. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a lightweight operating system that can be deployed on a variety of hardware platforms, from small clusters to large industrial servers. This allows us to easily move applications and containers between different environments, which makes it easier to scale our infrastructure and respond to changing business needs.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has helped improve our organization's efficiency by allowing employees to use a leave service to work remotely. One of the benefits of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Linux distributions is that they are more stable and less likely to break than Windows. This makes it possible to automate many tasks, such as patching, which can save time and money. In contrast, Windows is more prone to errors and requires more manual intervention. As a result, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been a valuable tool for our organization.

The time to value with Red Hat Enterprise Linux was quick. It took us only a few months to half a year to realize that we didn't have to do so much tweaking with it. We could just let it run and do its own thing, configuring it once at most, and then leave it alone.

Red Hat enables us to achieve security standards and certifications.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps us build with confidence and ensures availability across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructures. We use PuTTY to connect to them. All of our SSH connectivity was locked down to be only from jump servers, so none of it was public-facing. This was a clustered approach, where users had to first connect to a Windows server and then use SSH or PuTTY to connect to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux server.

The ability to automate security configurations is very beneficial. Once we set it up, it can do its job very well without any further input from us. We found it easy to set up and configure, and it has made our lives a lot easier.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps to implement and manage security best practices with reduced overhead.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has made our lives a lot easier. It is one of those tools like Terraform that takes a lot of the time constraints away from us. This is because we can leave it to do its own thing, and we know that it will do what it is meant to do properly. I think this is because Red Hat Enterprise Linux is lightweight and has a single purpose. As a result, it only needs to be concerned with that purpose. For example, we only have one role for that server, and we are happy and content knowing that it will perform that role.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is lightweight and can be run on almost anything. It is a valuable product because it can do its job almost perfectly even with limited resources.

Although the price is reasonable, there is room for improvement in order to stand out from other open source solutions.

I am currently using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The stability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is extremely good. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is lightweight, so it does not consume a lot of resources. It can handle a variety of workloads, and we have never had any problems with servers crashing or other issues. The software is also easy to set up and configure, and it runs smoothly once it is up and running.

The system's scalability is good. We deployed it across multiple locations, departments, and other areas. I give scalability a nine out of ten.

The support team is very helpful and knowledgeable about the product. They knew what they were doing and were able to resolve any issues I had very quickly.

Positive

We previously used CentOS. We still have Windows servers, and they can be a bit of a headache. However, we have since moved from CentOS to Route 6 and 7, and we found that this improved things a bit.

We switched because we had a better partnership with Red Hat themselves.

The initial setup is straightforward. We used Terraform to make it even simpler, but I don't think it was complex, to begin with. Deployment for one server takes a couple of hours. If we're just looking at a single server, or if we're building out a small cluster, deployment may take a day or two.

From a technical user perspective, we have seen a return on investment in terms of efficiency. This is because we can now set up a server and let it do what it needs to do without having to babysit it with patching, updates, and upgrades. This frees up time for engineers to work on other tasks, such as developing new features or fixing bugs.

The price is reasonable. I think it's a good value for what it is. It's not overpriced or extortionate. If it's something that's right for our environment, our infrastructure, and other factors, I think it's definitely worth considering. I don't think the price is a major concern.

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten.

I think open source software is generally cheaper than Red Hat. However, I don't think that cheaper software is always better. And I don't think that Red Hat is necessarily better than open source just because it costs more. It really depends on our specific needs. If we're comparing Red Hat to an open source equivalent, I would say that Red Hat would probably be a better fit for us. This is because Red Hat offers support, a back-end, and a team of experts who can help us if we need it. With open-source software, we're often on our own and have to figure issues out on our own. With Red Hat, we have the peace of mind of knowing that we can get help if we need it.

We have Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployed across multiple contracts and multiple data centers. It was not on the cloud; it was all on-premises. However, we were able to deploy it across multiple data centers, multiple customers, and multiple departments. This flexibility was a major advantage.

We used Red Hat Enterprise Linux to patch and update the system, including drivers, the OS itself, and security updates. We also monitored disk space usage and swap usage, but this was not too time-consuming. We had a team of three or four people to rotate tasks, so no one person was stuck on the same thing all the time.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a good product. It has a good ecosystem and support. It is lightweight and does what we need it to do. It is a good alternative to Windows for lightweight containers or servers. It is also good for specific roles.

The operating system is a great way to learn about Linux. While some people will always choose Windows, it is not always the best answer. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is more stable and less resource-intensive than Windows, and it is also more trustworthy. This makes it a good choice for environments where reliability and security are important.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as an infrastructure support operating system across both x86 and s390 platforms. Specifically, we are running it on x86 Intel and Linux s390 mainframe on Zynq.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a stable operating system. We recently upgraded the majority of our systems from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. We were able to automate most of the upgrade process and did not encounter any major issues. As a result, we were able to bring our systems up to date quickly and easily. This is a major advantage of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

From an automation standpoint, we have been able to automate some of our patching workflows. This has definitely saved us time and money.

From a security and compliance standpoint, it is easy to maintain compliance. This is mostly accomplished by patching Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a frequent basis. The availability of security patches is also quick, which allows us to keep up with our client requirements quickly. Red Hat usually does a good job of making fixes available in a timely fashion, so we can remediate high-priority issues when they arise.

From a containerization standpoint, Docker and Podman now give us the ability to move workloads and structures around with little effort. It is very flexible and consistent, and the results also provide us with a stepping stone as we move towards an orchestration platform like OpenShift. Our ability to run Podman on servers and then migrate those Podman deployments to OpenShift is very beneficial.

The most valuable features are ease of support and the ability to run a read-only course on the operating system.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is easy to maintain. We currently use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 with Docker for containerization. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, we are moving to Podman, which is a native container runtime that is part of the operating system. 

I suggest that Red Hat move to a continuous delivery model instead of major releases. I know that this is a trend for many middleware products. We do not have a major release network. We only have monthly or quarterly roll-on releases on our continuous delivery model, which reduces the impact of a major version. This would probably be the easiest change to make.

The technical support has room for improvement.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

Since we run a number of hypervisors for all of our real systems, I believe that a lot of the scalability comes from a level higher than the operating system. However, Red Hat Enterprise Linux can accommodate these tools.

Red Hat support could be improved, and they should have a better relationship with IBM and VMware. This is because a lot of what we do involves working with IBM, both from a hardware standpoint and from a hypervisor standpoint. We have a long history with IBM, and we are now starting to work more with Red Hat on OpenShift private cloud solutions and other tooling. However, Red Hat and IBM are not on the same page. They are still very different companies, and they don't always know what the other one is doing. This can lead to contradictory information, inaccurate information, and frustration for customers. I think there is a relationship between Red Hat and IBM that could be improved. If Red Hat and IBM could work together more effectively, it would put customers at ease and make them more confident that they could get the work done. It would also help IBM and Red Hat to better understand each other's products and services, which would lead to better customer support.

For example, we recently had an incident that started as a severity two on the scaling. A number of our account representatives called and emailed us, saying, "Hey, we wanted to let you know that you have an open case. We need some help with this." The incident was not a production outage, but it was preventing us from doing something, so there was an indirect production impact. After about ninety minutes of back-and-forth communication, we were told, "Okay, go ahead and bump it up to severity one. That should get traction." We did not hear from anyone for four hours. This does not happen every time, but in this case, it needed to be dealt with well before four hours. It made things more difficult than they needed to be. Sometimes the support is an eight out of ten, and sometimes it is a four.

The end result was still good because they acknowledged what happened and got everyone together to resolve it but it was not done in an efficient way.

Neutral

The initial setup of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very straightforward. It is not much different from any other Linux operating system. Most of the things we need to consider when deploying Linux are relatively standard. Therefore, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is easy to deploy and maintain. If we know how to administer Linux operationally, then Red Hat Enterprise Linux should be easy to deploy.

I do not know enough to give a comprehensive answer, but other operating systems are in use at my company because they have more favorable licensing terms. This is a major factor in why we do not use Red Hat Enterprise Linux everywhere.

We evaluated SUSE Linux Enterprise and a few others. Depending on the computing platform, it is sometimes better and sometimes not. For some of our environments that are running on s390, SUSE Linux Enterprise gives us a better price point. However, for some of our other environments, such as x86 on VMware, it is more valuable. It is a better financial move for us in those cases. Therefore, the value of SUSE Linux Enterprise changes depending on the computing architecture.

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

We have a requirement to have a Linux operating system.

I'm not sure how our developers are building their images. I believe they use some desk start products.

We use SUSE Linux Enterprise for Linux on the mainframe. In a particular enclave, we have some government contracts where we use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a number of reasons, including licensing for hosts. These hosts are hosted with OpenShift. We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for all our Bastion hosts and OLS for our other hosts.

The Red Hat knowledge base is generally an eight or nine out of ten, but it can be difficult to get the information we need. The initial level of support is a six or seven, but it improves as we escalate the issue.

We are part of the State Department and use the solution to achieve operational excellence and readiness for the cloud. We think about what the next 20 to 30 years of consular systems infrastructure might look like to build and design for the next 40 years. Not many other companies think beyond a decade. 

The solution was implemented in our environment in 2014. The initial mission is still the same but how we go about it is different. For now, the solution is more for application support and making sure we are following State mandates or executive orders. 

For example, one use case involved planning, designing the implementation, and executing a launch of online passport renewals.

Our environment is moving toward tools that provide automation to remove human error. These are tactical operations and use cases. We currently use SaaS, OpenShift, and Ansible to a limited degree.

We had many issues with staff turnover during COVID. Working from home and trying to maintain databases was not ideal. During this time, the solution would have been rated a five out of ten.

Sometimes, vendors provide the government or bigger organizations with band-aids but not solutions. Everything seems to be a problem so many fixes are provided. A fix for this or a fix for that is equivalent to putting a band-aid on a large cut which will not work. Vendors tend to look at the money game because larger companies are their bread and butter. There should be an appreciation for the needs of bigger organizations.

It took some time to get us in a good position with the solution. There is definitely some growth and appreciation. We are at a place now where we can grow our environment. Today, the solution is rated a seven out of ten.

The solution is useful for application support and automations. 

A completely new setup should not be required when upgrading to a new version of the solution. For example, moving from RHEL 7.7 to RHEL 9 requires us to go through every minor version upgrade as well as RHEL 8. We do not have the ability to patch as quickly as we would like, but there are pathways. We got on 6.8 this year and migrated to 6.11 where we are trying to work on the automation portions of deployment. Before, we had variations of versions 7.2, 7.3, and 7.5 in our environment. We have not yet been able to use the supported versions that we are accustomed to with our applications. We are now on 7.9.1 and are trying to implement the minor upgrade versions in our environment. We have not yet experienced a healthy environment or the joy of using RHEL because we keep encountering issues and problems.

There are issues when upgrading or integrating with previous applications or systems such as Satellite, vRA, SaaS, or OpenShift. This is extremely, extremely important because a lot of our infrastructure is on RHEL. We need to have someone onsite to adjudicate our infrastructure's most important applications, when we would rather be able to patch them in a timely manner without having the whole world assist us. 

The solution should be more user-friendly so we better understand how to scale. It is not that we shun professional services, but there is a major knowledge gap in our understanding of the solution. 

I have been using the solution for four years. 

With anything, when you nurture it things work. Now that we are finally on 7.9 and migrated 6.11 we are actively trying to automate. This puts us in a better and more stable position. 

We rely primarily on our contracting staff or professional services for support. We receive onsite support from account engineers who apply critical patches or troubleshoot code that is not cohesive. For the most part, turnaround time is moderate but certain legacy applications are harder to troubleshoot, so they take more time.

Technical support steps in for big issues and provides good help. For example, support assisted with decommissioning 6.2 and 6.5 because they were at end of life with no option for purchasing ongoing support. We had professional services and many different products, so technical support made an exception to help with migrations and that was appreciated. 

Technical support is rated a nine out of ten. 

Positive

I do not know the setup details. The solution was implemented in 2014 and I joined the team in 2018.

We are currently experiencing issues when upgrading or integrating with previous applications and are looking for solutions. We push out patches and look at Tower. We already tried Puppet and it integrates with Satellite, but we prefer to use home-grown products. 

Because we use Satellite, it would be nice if the automation portions come from Tower or others. We have explained this to an account manager but solutions are being presented to us from a sales perspective. For example, we are told that we should ramp up, get other applications, or purchase more licenses.  

Decommissioning is one of our biggest issues. We upgrade and spin it up, but then have problems decommissioning some applications so more user licenses are required. For example, we have an unused server but cannot remove the license because we are either unable to get assistance or do not know how to perform the action.

We used vRA with the solution but it did not work for us.

We also used CloudForm but are attempting without success to decommission because it was not a useful case.

It is important to ensure there is a level of training for implementation. You need to understand compliance for your organization to determine whether vendors can provide appropriate tools. 

Do not be afraid to ask questions once the solution is implemented in your environment to ensure you are where you need to be. 

Stay on top of version or patch releases to prevent bugs or security vulnerabilities to your ISSO or agency. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

I worked with different organizations. So, the use case varies from organization to organization. Right now, some of the teams are using it for applications like BI, and then there are a few others that are using it for Websphere, middleware, etc.

In terms of the version, most of them are on 7.9, but there are a few on 8.2 and 8.4 as well.

It enables us to achieve security compliance. Our security team is quite happy, especially in terms of patching up our servers, etc. It's compliant with our security requirements. With Windows updates, sometimes, there could be errors and the blue screen issue, and it could become hectic for the applications as well. Our security teams struggled a bit to update Windows, but when it comes to Linux, they are quite comfortable because they know that things will go smoothly.

I'm quite new to this organization, but I know that there has been improvement in terms of performance. We're using Red Hat Linux on Power Systems, which is quite different from the Intel platform. So, admins are much happier, and they are using it quite well now. Previously, we were using Windows for our applications, but now, we have made Linux mandatory for being open source and not bound to Windows. Things can be complicated on Windows. Especially when we're installing it, there are a lot of things, such as registries, but Linux is easier for admins. There is DVS as well.

When I worked in the banking sector, the most important part was user administration where you need to keep things under control for a specific user. The auditor usually looks for an agent or something like that, and it has been quite easy to manage things from that perspective. Things are more manageable now than in the past.

Windows operating system is used everywhere. You will find it everywhere, and every user is able to use Windows. If a user is using an operating system from the start, it becomes easier for them to use it when they come to a professional environment. That's an area in which I believe they need to put in extra effort, especially for the students. Currently, for their final projects, most students use Windows, and this is an area where Red Hat needs to put in an effort. They need to give some training to the students so that when they come to the professional environment, they're already used to it. It would then become easier for them to use it in a professional environment.

I'm also using IBM AIX, which supports a tool called Smitty. You just put Smitty, and you can do anything. At the backend, the command will run automatically. It is not exactly like a GUI, but you just give the input and it will give you the output. That is something that Red Hat should work on. That would be an added advantage with Red Hat.

It has been 12 or 13 years.

It is very stable.

We are mostly using VMware and Power Systems. Scalability-wise, they are always the best. We can upgrade to get all the resources on the fly. We never faced any issues. However, if you didn't add the required parameters on your profile on VMware or the Power System, then there is an issue, but that's not related to the OS. That's related to virtualization.

Application-wise, there are multiple teams that are using these systems. We have the database team, the middleware team, the MQ team, etc. There are also system admins. The system admins are the ones who are deploying it, but the owners of the system are different.

We have plans to increase its usage. Two years ago, we had only 60 or 70 servers of Red Hat, but now, we have 400 to 500 servers. Its usage is always increasing. After a year or two, we might end up with about 1000 servers.

We have contacted them a few times. We did ask the support team to get in when the cluster got stuck and let us know what's the issue and what's the solution. Whenever I have asked for support, they have provided the best support. I always count them as the best. We have never faced an issue with them. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

We had Windows. The stability was the reason for switching to Red Hat. The stability of Windows varies, but Linux is quite stable now. That was the main part they were looking for.

We are very comfortable with using Linux. We have been using it for 10 to 15 years, and we can't switch to Windows. We can't use Windows even on our laptops. We are not used to using a mouse and GUI. The command prompt is much better for us.

We also use AIX because we have AIX infrastructure, but a few of the applications don't work on AIX, whereas they work with Red Hat Linux. That gives Linux an advantage. So, we use Linux on Power Systems, rather than AIX.

We have been working with different operating systems, and we also know most of the technical requirements, so it is easy for us. Usually, the OS installation takes a maximum of 25 minutes. If you are making extra file systems, such as for Oracle, it takes 10 to 15 minutes extra. A desktop or a single file system doesn't require much time. We already have scripts. We just run the scripts and everything is done by the scripts. Previously, it used to take two or three hours, but now, things have changed, and we're making life easier.

We deploy it ourselves. We don't ask other vendors to deploy it for us. In terms of maintenance, we have already been updating our maintenance contracts, especially the support contract. There are some old systems running in our environment, and we are in the process of upgrading those from version 6.9. We already have the required support.

There are four people on the team, but for Linux especially, there are only two people. We're easily managing 500 to 600 servers for Red Hat.

When you are running your infrastructure on this, you can always find some discounts with local support, etc. There are always some discounts to match your budget. It is definitely affordable. 

When it comes to virtualization, there are different factors. There is not only Red Hat. There is also IBM, VMware, etc. The third-party vendors always manage to come up with a good offer. Our company can't say no to that, and it works out fine.

We also have IBM AIX, and when you compare these two, there's a huge difference because IBM AIX's support is quite higher than Red Hat's.

To anyone interested in using Red Hat for the first time, I would definitely advise starting with the GUI because now, the GUI option is quite good, and you can do all the things. After that, you can slowly start moving to CMD. For learning, there are a lot of resources available online, such as YouTube and LinkedIn Learning, whereas Red Hat Academy is quite expensive.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using this solution is that when you're using the command line, you need to be extra careful. That's because when using the command line, a single slash can make a huge difference. That's what I learned at the start of my career.

I started with Red Hat Version 5. Now they have version 9, which I haven't used, but if I just consider the evolution from version 5 to 8, 8.2, or 8.4, there has been a huge difference because, at that time, people were scared of using Linux, but now, things are different. There has been a revolution in terms of OS. A lot of things are being changed, but in terms of the things that we do, for us, it is the same because we are doing system administration. As a system admin, there is nothing different for us. We are doing the same things again and again because the applications require the addition of storage.

There is also a change in terms of security features. If I compare the old versions with the new versions, in old versions, adding any exception in the host firewall was a real task, but now, things have either become smooth, or we have gotten used to it. Overall, for me, things have become easier. They are getting more and more secure, but with the vulnerabilities and the assessments that have been done, we need to keep updating. Now, everything has caught up with the latest security required in the market.

In our environment, we're using virtual servers. There are no physical ones. We are shifting to containers in my current organization. Most of the applications we are using are containerized, and it has been easy for us to manage those applications. However, we also require some in-built applications, and for that, a change in people's mindset is required. It's not about the OS; it's about the people who do the development. It is becoming a bit hard for them because they were using a different platform previously, and now, they need to move to the Linux platform. It is a little bit different for them.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. When comparing it with AIX, AIX is a bit easier in terms of use and it also has the Smitty tool.