Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

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.

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.

Our containerized workloads utilize Docker and Kubernetes and run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux to support Final Shell operations.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps to partially centralize our development.

The primary advantage of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerized workloads is the robust support it offers in case of any issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has worked well for our business critical applications.

The built-in security features are great.

One of the most significant advantages is having Red Hat behind us. If we encounter problems, we can always call them for assistance, so we are not alone with our problems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps reduce our TCO.

The support from Red Hat is valuable. Having Red Hat behind us provides reassurance, and they deny unauthorized applications the ability to perform actions they shouldn't.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's SELinux can be challenging to manage and troubleshoot, often causing frustration. While we've resolved these issues, improvements to SELinux would be greatly appreciated. Though not yet explored, Red Hat Insights could potentially aid in resolving broader Linux problems.

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

We have yet to encounter problems related to Red Hat.

We install a new server if needed, and it works seamlessly.

Red Hat provides proactive support, including monthly check-ins and arranging calls to address any issues that may arise.

Positive

We do not have any other realistic options besides Red Hat.

The greatest return on investment lies in the platform's user-friendliness. Red Hat seamlessly manages all aspects of versioning and security, eliminating the need for my intervention.

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

If your budget allows, I recommend testing Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's quite easy to install, with Red Hat providing a comprehensive setup that eliminates configuration concerns.

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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is very stable.

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

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

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

Neutral

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

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

We implement it in-house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I use the solution to manage Atlassian applications. In our company, we initially deployed Atlassian applications on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). For most of the products my company uses, we create Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)-based servers because we have Red Hat Satellite, so we just bring them up and make them supportive for us.

The most valuable benefit of the product for my organization revolves around standardization, which is why we have all the same types of machines and operating systems. It makes it very easy and familiar across the board. The tool is also very reliable.

My company does have a hybrid cloud environment. Running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as the foundation for the hybrid cloud deployment strangely impacted our operations. I think that when my company moved off from the tool's on-premises version for certain applications, we had to leave Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Everything in my company is based on whatever AWS provides, specifically when Linux is on AWS, and I guess it negatively affected my company.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped my company centralize developments because we know what we are going to use in the product, and so we don't have to make any decisions. Owing to the aforementioned area, I would say it offers a good standard.

In terms of the tool's built-in security features when it comes to risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance, I would say it is very easy to patch, which helps our company to keep it up to date and avoid all downfalls.

Speaking about the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to keep our organization agile, I would say that we don't tend to move that much with applications. The tool has helped to weave a path for an upgrade while creating a new application server, after which one can transfer it over. Considering the aforementioned details, the tool is portable. In short, whenever I try to use the product's portability feature, it does work.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that the upgrade in the patching area is really easy.

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

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution since it is easy to make changes in the tool.

If the product is deployed on an on-premises model, it will be deployed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system.

I haven't had a reason to use the support services of the product for a long time. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

In the past, my company used CentOS for a while. There were some other products which were also used in my company. My company started to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as it provided standardization, and we required something nice and uniform in nature.

The product was already up and running when I joined the organization.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. If my company opts to have the product deployed on cloud, then we would opt for the cloud services offered by AWS.

I am sure my company did not seek help from many integrators, resellers, or consultants to deploy the product.

The biggest ROI I experienced using the product stemmed from the fact that it was really fast to deploy right from the beginning when we were building our company's new systems. The product works fine.

I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)to a colleague who is looking at open-source cloud-based operating systems for Linux since it offers Red Hat Satellite, so everything is just so encapsulated and there in the tool.

I can't speak of whether the Red Hat portfolio has affected our total cost of ownership across our enterprise landscape since I don't know the cost.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

We use the solution for server operating systems and to automate other systems. We use the tool for Windows automation and Linux automation.

The support we get from Red Hat is really good. When we have questions, there's always somebody we can approach and get an answer from. In my experience, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is more stable than Windows. The solution's ease of management is better, and it's much more powerful when you know the command line.

The most valuable feature of the solution is its stability.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features do a really good job of risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora are the main Linux systems. Ubuntu is the only enterprise-level OS with paid support because a lot of the work we do requires paid support contracts.

The solution's front-end GUI is not great and could be improved. It needs to be more intuitive if it's meant to be used as a desktop operating system replacement. I don't know how to describe it better, but OS X and Windows feel a lot more polished than Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in my current organization for two years. However, I have been using the solution in general for ten years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is an extremely stable solution.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a scalable solution.

The solution’s technical support is very good.

Positive

The solution's initial setup is seamless and easy. We tried different things, but the easiest way we found to deploy the solution was to use VMware. We had scripts to download and install the tool.

We implemented the solution through an in-house team.

Once everything is set up, the solution is generally very stable. While other operating systems require a lot of maintenance, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is pretty hands-off once you properly set up and configure it.

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

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for running SQL servers, Oracle databases, Java applications, Apache, and data store types of things.

We use it for all sorts of functions. We have different levels. I am primarily an SE building and configuring the servers. The application-related work is for everyone else.

In terms of our environment, we might have some cloud. We have different engineering teams working on different parts of the technologies. My team and I do not touch that, so we have a basic cloud-based and non-cloud-based setup.

We are primarily able to standardize on the platform. By keeping everything standard, you know what might break or should not break. That is the true benefit. It seems to help keep a better level of standard across all groups, business standards, and application types.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to centralize development. That goes with platform uniformity. The development team has a common toolset and expectations from the toolset and what they are working with. It just makes things easier for each developer.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very good for keeping our organization agile.

It is the most lightweight platform to use. It is very flexible. It is not very difficult to manage, configure, and deal with. That is a plus point.

Migrating people from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to 8 has been good so far. Irrespective of whether we are doing an in-place upgrade or a full rebuild, most people are able to convert over. There is no problem.

For our use case, it seems to be working well, so I cannot think of what it could do better. I know for our purpose and what we have been using it for, it has been working well. Their support, however, can be better.

I came on board when they bought our company. At the time, I was using CentOS. From what I know, they have been only using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I started using it from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. It has been about 13 years.

It seems stable, but developers might have a different response. When you have a problem with a Windows server, you typically reboot it, but you do not have to reboot a Linux server to get it to work better.

It is a scalable platform.

It is pretty good. It varies based on the support person that you get. They might understand what you are talking about right away or not.

For one of the cases that I opened, I laid out every single detail possible. The first thing they said was that it was not that. It was something else. They kept going back and forth with different support teams on the same ticket. Finally, it clicked with somebody and they figured out what caused the issue. Somehow an RPM of a different version was installed on one server versus another one, and no one caught that. Some people were going down the wrong path saying it was networking and not some sort of binary that was installed which changed something. They went back and forth with different troubleshooting paths. Eventually, someone saw and understood what I meant.

Positive

We have always been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux at our workplace.

Deployment for our builds is typically PXE. I do not have insights into that because the build is built and configured by another team. I deploy and provide the server for the development team. I understand how Kickstart and other things work, but I do not install and configure it. It seems relatively easy. From what I have done in the past, it does not seem that difficult.

I am not aware of taking any external help for deployment.

The biggest ROI is in terms of consistency. We know how it works which makes going forward a lot easier.

We are coming from CentOS, so technically, our total cost of ownership has gone up, but it is still cheaper than Windows for a database server and things like that.

I was not a part of the evaluation. I came on board and began working with what was there.

In terms of security features, we do not use anything too advanced other than what is out of the box. We do not manage the compliance piece and things like that. There is a different group that manages that piece.

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

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.

We are deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux as our primary Linux OS, and we are using Ansible for some automation initiatives. Our use cases are around centralization.

We have a supported product. We are at the beginning of building a relationship with Red Hat similar to the one we have with Microsoft, Cisco, and others. It is to standardize the quality, supported version, and company. I am leading this project, and I believe Red Hat is the one.

We have built a hybrid environment. Most of it is on-prem, but we also have Azure, so we have both cloud and on-prem environments. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is helpful for patch and vulnerability management. There have been a lot of security initiatives around Windows and tightening it up, but our Linux environment was not standardized. Red Hat Enterprise Linux standardizes it. With the combination of Insights, it aligns with Windows and other security initiatives.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not yet enabled us to centralize development. It is too early for that. I am not very familiar with OpenShift, but with OpenShift, Kubernetes containers, and some of those capabilities, DevOps will become more integrated with Red Hat and its products in the future.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s built-in security features seem very good when it comes to risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance. One thing that helps is the catalog of preexisting playbooks provided by Red Hat around security. It helps you ramp up on security. It aligns it with what an IT person on the Windows side already knows to look for, such as firewalls, setting up permissions, etc. They have playbooks for Active Directory integration, security initiatives, and limiting the firewall. Building out some of the playbooks that Red Hat has in those areas was helpful in getting a good security posture for those systems.

Ansible is going to make the portability of applications and containers happen for us. The OS is important, but our ability to use Ansible and deploy via a cloud or automate via a cloud or on-prem would accomplish that.

Red Hat Insights is valuable. There is patch and vulnerability management. It is similar to what you would see with SCCM. I have a single pane of glass interface. I can approve the patches and vulnerabilities, and hopefully, between Satellite and Ansible, we can automate that process.

I am looking for training. I am a Windows guy who accidentally became a Linux guy. You volunteer a few times, and you are the guy. Right now, I am looking for training and ramping up to be able to support their products, so professional services are key. There are things like Lightspeed with IBM Watson. I do not know YAML very well, so it is going to be integral for me to create playbooks at the very beginning and be able to use the AI tools. If I say, "How do I open a port on this Cisco router?", the AI tools are going to give me the YAML code. In spite of not being a Linux guy or a great coder, I can use those tools to ramp up very quickly. Making Lightspeed a part of Red Hat deployment initiatives tremendously helps with customers' success. It gives them that extra tool. Right now, it is being sold separately as a subscription. If they could integrate that capability, people would not have to go use ChatGPT and other tools. They could use that as a part of it. It would just align things with Red Hat, so one area they can improve on is the approach to customer success for new deployments.

Red Hat Insights are instrumental in identifying vulnerabilities. I am still learning, but my understanding is that it is not directly connected to your environment to deploy a patch or vulnerability fix. It is going to give a YAML playbook to do that. It does not actually execute it. On the Windows side, I have an approval process on the server where I can say, "Deploy this patch." I thought of Insights along the same lines where I can just approve things, and then based on some backend configuration, it will implement them using Ansible, Satellite, and on-premises Ansible. It seems disconnected right now. It might not be, but to me, there seems to be a gap there. I love Insights, and I want to fully automate that approval process. This could be a point for improvement if it does not already do that.

Another area of improvement is Red Hat expressing a return on investment better. I do not know if they have determined a lot of that. I have always assumed that I could go with an open-source OS in a less expensive manner than Windows or something else. My impression is that there would be less cost, but I do not know that for certain. Red Hat building out some of that ROI on different products would be beneficial to their sales effort.

We are a brand new customer.

It is more stable than the wild west environment that I have been in. There is standardization. It is stable by standardizing.

So far, its scalability has been good. Once I get a good image built, I will get some workflows built into Ansible. I will have that process all the way down to the help desk. We will be entering variables and kicking out systems all day.

We have been using it minimally. We have about 15% Linux environment with lots of flavors. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is what we are centralizing on from now on, so we are going to do a conversion of all those. We have a new standard going forward. We have about 15% Linux systems, which would amount to about 150 systems throughout North America. It is a small footprint.

I have not had to call them much, so I do not have a good handle on support from Red Hat. Everybody gets at least a C or a five, but I am optimistic. It is going to be good. I would give them at least a seven out of ten.

Neutral

Prior to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, it was CentOS and others. CentOS was free. It was whatever was available or the developers or applications guys were familiar with.

We switched to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for centralization, to be supported, and for patching and vulnerabilities.

Most of the things that I am deploying or replacing are on-prem and on Azure cloud. It is 50/50.

The deployment was very easy. They have a great and user-friendly installation process with 9.x and above. However, just being new to it and having a security hat on, I still struggle with what should and should not be installed on the base image. It is a learning curve for me, but using the interface has been great. I was able to join Active Directory and all those things.

CDW is handling our professional services and our training, which is a separate purchase. Its initial rollout is with CDW.

We have not yet seen an ROI.

It is expensive. Everything is. I was happy to get a three-year Red Hat Enterprise Linux contract for our initial rollout. 

It is less expensive than other solutions. It is a growing company.

It is called Microsoft ARC. It now facilitates patches for Linux, but it did not include certain things. For me, there was much more benefit outside of just patching by going with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ansible.

I am not yet certain about Red Hat Insights' vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance. We are at the beginning. We are just adding systems. I have not set those alerts up if they exist. I assume there are some. I am also going to evaluate how accurate the vulnerability and patching information is because we have other security products that are looking at the same things on the Windows side, and they have already identified many of the vulnerabilities. As a new customer, I want to make sure that if our other system says something is a vulnerability, Red Hat Insights also says that it is a vulnerability. I want to feel confident in the vulnerabilities that I am getting from Red Hat Insights. I want to make sure that other products are also scanning for the same thing. I suspect it is.

To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would recommend going for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I cannot think of another OS that can match this.

I will start off with an optimistic ten, and I will rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.

We are using the full setup in Linux and use the enterprise edition. We're migrating a lot of things over. 

We like that it's open-source and fully secure. We've fully migrated to Linux, and we were able to move everything over from the Red Hat database.

Compared to earlier tools, we get more options, and it's very user-friendly. The patching, for example, is easier. It can also support many things. It took us about six months to realize the solution's full benefits.  

The solution is very user-friendly. 

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux scripting is very good. It is easy for us to access those parts in the Linux portion. 

The security is very good. It helps us to maintain overall security.

I have a Linux certification, however, they do have good documentation in order for users to get information about the product.

The management experience for patching is very good. We can do the patching through the portal. We can use it based on our own timing. If there isn't something in production, we can do the patching. The patching experience is very nice compared to what we had to deal with previously. For example, with Windows, the patching would happen whenever. We can control it via the portal, and it is very user-friendly now.

We only use the command line. We do not use the GUI. The graphical user interface is useful. However, we prefer to use the command line as we can do many more things. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has positively affected our uptime. It's very fast. If you have to do patching, and need to reboot, it doesn't take too much time to do that. It might only take one to two minutes. 

For the most part, everything looks fine. Everything is going smoothly. 

Right now, we need to get memory and CPU via the console. If it was available in the console so that we could adjust these two things, that would be ideal. 

I've used the solution for the last four years. 

The stability of the solution is fine. I'd rate it nine out of ten for stability. It's user-friendly and the downtime is low. It won't impact business.

The solution is not deployed across multiple locations. We have around 300 end users.

It is scalable. We can immigrate to servers and it won't impact the business. 

We know there are some issues, and if we come across some vulnerabilities, we'll work with support. If we get an error, we'll go to them and discuss the issues. We take advice from them on how to work through problems. 

Sometimes, we'll get some errors and we'll send them an email. Sometimes it takes too much time for them to respond. The support time could be better.

Neutral

We did previously use a different solution. 

I was not involved in the installation. I have not worked on the OS level and I'm not involved in the migration to the cloud.

We have eight to nine people on our team that may handle some maintenance tasks. If there are any issues, we can patch and fix them. We go through the portal to handle patching and maintenance. We'll check the system pre and post patching.

I'm not aware of the exact pricing of the solution. 

We did not evaluate other options. We've fully moved to Linux and used Red Hat Enterprise Linux to do this. 

I'm an end-user. 

We will be moving to the cloud only. I'm not directly involved in that. The main thing will be that soon everything will be in the cloud only. Currently, I work with the on-premises version only. It's on a VM right now. 

This is a good solution if you are handling migrations or your internal environment. It's user-friendly and you can connect with technical support easily. It's also very secure. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.