Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

Our use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is for production applications. 

We are a Managed Service Provider. Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us not to be worried about vulnerabilities, security, and patching.

The most valuable features are the subscriptions and upgrades. 

We need to have more flexibility on the developed versions. Not everybody is ready to subscribe to enterprise versions. They would like to test the tool without subscriptions. 

We chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux because of its security. 

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux with AWS. We started our practice with AWS, and most customers use it instead of GCP or Azure. We use the product in a hybrid environment, mostly when shifting the containers or existing workloads from legacy systems. 

Most of the customers use Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it is the only approved OS. The tool's knowledge base is good but is limited to subscriptions. 

The upgrade migration is straightforward. For the initial projects, we used to execute CLI scripts. We plan to upgrade the system if everything works well in the lower environment. 

I have used the image builder feature. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. 

We are running databases and applications on it. We are also using the Squid proxy server, NGINX, and Apache, so we are running multiple services on the servers.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux eight and nine. We also use Red Hat Satellite and Red Hat Ansible Tower.

I've mostly worked with the telcos and banking sectors, and they mostly have on-prem setups. We do have a hybrid environment where we have multiple machines running on AWS. I am based in Saudi, where they are using another cloud called Din. They are running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Din as well.

Their trainings should be free.

It's more stable than the other operating systems. That's why everyone is using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform instead of Windows on the server side.

They regularly send us updates regarding patches and security vulnerabilities. We patch our servers quarterly. Mostly, we do patching every three months. They always send us updates on our official email, so it's quite good.

It would be very good if we can easily migrate from CentOS to Red Hat. We are about to move from CentOS to Red Hat. It would be great if they can give us a free version. Otherwise, we need to purchase licenses, which are quite expensive.

I've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for five to six years. I have only been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux over these years.

Its stability is quite good. I'd rate it a nine out of ten.

I'd rate it a nine out of ten in terms of scalability. It's being used in the banking center, and they are running their applications and databases on it. 

We have LVM configurations, so according to the application, we can increase the disk size. The environment is quite good for my use.

Their support is quite good, and they're responsive, but they first send us to the platform to check the issues. They don't provide direct support immediately. For a new engineer, it can be quite difficult. It would be good if they put us directly on the call in case of an emergency.

Some of the newer engineers require support in a quick manner. Those of us who have experience of six to seven years don't require the support, but in the beginning, we required support, and their support was quite good.

Positive

The product selection depends on the company. Telco companies have the budget, and they are using licensed products, whereas small companies usually use the free versions of Linux. They go for Oracle Linux, CentOS, etc.

We are using CentOS and Ubuntu on some of the machines. The company wanted to go for a free product, but I told them that for any support in the future, we need a licensed product, and they are now migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

It's best in terms of security features. We configure the templates and then we implement the CIS controls, security features, and complete patching of the server.

In terms of maintenance, Red Hat provides us with the details about the security vulnerabilities, and the engineer needs to implement all the security on the servers.

We did it on our own.

We haven't seen an ROI.

From a management point of view, it's quite good, but everyone is complaining that it's more expensive than the other operating systems.

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

We use the product for application hosting, availability, and CI/CD pipelines.

The solution has good availability and is easy to use. It saves money and resources like support staff.

The product should provide a portal to manage licenses.

I have been using the solution for more than five years.

The solution’s stability is fine.

The product’s scalability is fine.

The support is good.

Neutral

We have seen an ROI on maintenance. As long as our servers run, our company makes money.

We evaluated SLES and Windows.

We purchased the solution via a cloud provider. We use AWS, Google, and Azure. The resiliency of the product is the same as other products. 

The solution helped us reduce costs. We use SLES and Windows alongside Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Application support and vendor support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux are better than other products. 

Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Absolutely rock solid performance, security, stability and reliability, essential features for a business that needs to mission critical applications in a 24 x 7 environment.

Plethora of useful tools and services that just make getting the job done a lot less time consuming.

RedHat Enterprise Linux has been running mission critical systems in my organization now for nearly 8 years, in a 24 x 7 environment.

During this time we have never, ever had any of our servers fail to function as needed.

Red Hat Linux has given us five nines (99.999%) uptime for years.

I have been using Linux in various forms for 10+ years

Mainly just the usual issues one will encounter whilst learning the platform, working out the best way to deploy and configure the servers, other than that though, the actual deployments were very straight-forward.

None, our RHEL servers have been rock solid.

No, we have RHEL servers of varying capacities and workloads, so far it's taken everything we can throw at it.

The technical support subscription is absolutely worth while if you need to use RHEL in production, knowing you can get support if you need it is comforting.

I've lodged a few support tickets over the years and always had prompt, informative responses, I would rate their support as being excellent.

We were using an earlier version of HP UX running on PA-RISC architecture, however we became concerned about the cost of remaining on the PA-RISC HP UX platform and possible future issues at virtualization.

When setting up any Linux environment, make sure you understand how the LVM works. Other than that it was all fairly straight-forward.

It was implemented in-house.

The uptime and reliability are the main ROI's, the product is also very competitively priced RE: Licensing, so many thousands of dollars in licensing costs alone.

The ROI on 10 years of rock solid reliability is almost impossible to calculate.

In Australia, you need to go through a channel partner, shop around and find a good partner that understands the licensing model well.

We evaluated HP UX 11.23, which we had been using before hand. However HP (at the time) had not delivered an x86 port of HP UX at the time when we were going to virtualization, so we needed an alternative to HP UX as we could not move into onto VMWare.

RHEL ticked all the boxes and was support by our technology provider.

Well worth a look if you want supported enterprise Linux.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to host website content. 

The tool's most valuable features are stability and maturity. Linux offers cost efficiency. Red Hat comes at the top of other Linux vendors. I am very satisfied with Red Hat Enterprise Linux's maturity. 

We had issues migrating from the old to the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux version in the virtual environment. It forced us to spin up a new virtual environment to have the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux version. 

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

My experience with Red Hat's support team is positive. They are a lot better than our cloud CMS vendor. 

Positive

We used Sun Microsystems and Unix on on-prem. 

The product supports our hybrid cloud strategy well. 

We move workloads between different clouds and data sandboxes. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's knowledge base is quite extensive. It is free, which helps us to advocate the product. I would like it to continue and rate it positive. 

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux web console was helpful and offered visibility through dashboards. It helped us see what was going on with our system. 

I rate it a nine out of ten. 

We host our applications and database servers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

We mostly have an on-premises setup. We also have Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on a virtual machine.

Compared to our previous Unix distro, it is pretty easy and less time-consuming to do patching and maintenance. It saves a lot of time during maintenance.

I started with Solaris 10, and then we migrated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Apart from local zones and a few other things, its features are similar to Solaris 10. It is getting our job done. It is hardware-independent. We can use Dell, HPE, or any other hardware. It is also more reasonable than the other operating systems.

It integrates closely with other products of Red Hat, such as Ansible, which makes it more efficient.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since 2010.

We are getting all the support that we need on a timely basis. In the case of any issue, we are getting all the support needed to bring the production back online. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

We were using Solaris 10. We moved to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it is cost-efficient and hardware-independent.

I am a part of the team that does the OS deployment. Its initial deployment is straightforward. We use automation for deployment. We have a kickstart to deploy the OS. Once we create that kickstart configuration file, the deployment is straightforward.

In terms of our upgrade and migration plans to stay current, we upgrade it before the OS is end of life. It is pretty straightforward. We are pretty satisfied with Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems when it comes to provisioning and patching.

We deployed it on our own. 

It is cost-effective.

There were not many options available.

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

Its use cases include general system management, setting up service with the web server, setting up a virtual, private wall with OpenVPN and FTP servers, etc. I have been working with all the aspects of the system in general.

The stability and the number of users that can access the servers are some of the valuable features. 

The stability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is most valuable. I have machines running and working for hours, weeks, and months. The servers don't go down. In Windows, too many services hang, but in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the servers continue working for months. I have had to reboot the machine only two times in years. The system keeps on working. So, stability is the best feature. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very secure. There hasn't been any successful attack from hackers in years. It's one of the best features. The iptables command is helpful for setting your firewall policies. Only the machines that have the permissions can access the box.

We have had issues with the identification of new volumes when you add new disks or storage. You need the remove the machine, which can cause problems when you have high availability. If they can resolve the problem of detection of new volumes, it would be good for system administrators.

I've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since version 6.

It's very stable.

I don't have direct contact with their support, but I know that their support is good because I know people who work directly with their technical support.

I've worked with Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, and other companies. In the past, Debian was the better operating system for servers and Red Hat Enterprise Linux was the better system for desktops, but nowadays, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Oracle Linux are the better system for servers in my opinion, and Ubuntu is better for desktops.

This operating system is used by our clients. We don't have it in our organization. We use Windows. I'm not the one who decides about this. My director is the person who take decisions, but I prefer Linux. I like Red Hat Enterprise Linux in servers because there is support, stability, and more users that can access the service. However, in our organization, we use Microsoft Windows because they are partners. 

Most of our clients are institutions or public organizations. They have their own infrastructure for security reasons. Having a cloud environment has its own advantages and having your own infrastructure has its advantages. I prefer having my own infrastructure. When you have your own infrastructure, you have more control over all the processes and data of your organization, but I understand that having a cloud setup has advantages because you can manage and automate several systems or processes in the organization.

It's easy to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's not difficult to install. You have the typical steps of the installation of any Linux-based operating system. Anyone can install this operating system. If you want to install servers such as an Apache server or a web application server, you need certain skills, but the installation of the operating system is easy.

I don't know about the pricing because I am not responsible for taking decisions about products used in the enterprise. Our clients use this product, and we use this product with the clients. In my home office, I use a free operating system. There is no support, but I can use it to practice. Our clients need support because it's used in the production environment. I don't know the price of the product, but I understand that with the support that Red Hat offers, compared to other operating systems, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is cheap.

It's easy to install and secure. You can customize it and manage various aspects. It's a good operating system for servers with security. It can run on machines without a powerful CPU or a lot of memory. It's stable.

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

I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for deploying servers to install Oracle Databases.

The performance that we get is very satisfactory. Usually, when you compare the results against previous databases that were run, you realize, "Oh, this is really good." But the performance depends on the hardware you put it on. If you put it on a very powerful server, the performance will be better. If you put Linux on a server that is not powerful, the performance will not be there.

All of its features are valuable. It's very good when it comes to building with a sense of assurance and for ensuring availability across different infrastructures.

Because most databases run on Linux, that's what makes this solution so important. If you install a Unix system and want to use a database, you won't have trouble finding a database to run on it. But if you are using Windows, other than using a Microsoft database, you're likely going to have problems. For example, if you want to run Oracle Database on Windows, it could be problematic. Linux, on the other hand, is wide open. People use it for development and that's why we have chosen to use it.

Also, it's great to have IP tables for firewalls in open source. That's the way things are supposed to be going. When you create a file system they ask you if you would like to encrypt the data, and that's great for securing things. 

If you download Oracle Linux, it is very easy. And when it comes to updating Oracle Linux, it does not require subscribing to the repo to do the update. When you install Oracle Linux, the repo directory contains all the files needed to run a DNS or VM update. Whereas with Red Hat, if you download the ISO and do the installation, once you finish, they force you to subscribe to their environment to do VM updates.

I understand that Red Hat would like statistics on how many people are implementing certain kinds of servers, so they force them to create an account. I agree that, when first downloading it, it makes sense that I have to provide my information. But when I want to update, it shouldn't be necessary.

Sometimes, I'm just doing a proof of concept and once I'm finished, the server is gone. In that situation, Oracle Linux doesn't ask me to subscribe for that server, because they don't need to know. The server may only be there for a second and, once I finish, I delete it. If Red Hat would remove that requirement, that would be great. If I want to download the OS, I understand that they need to know who I am, but they don't need to know that information when I'm building a server, unless it is a production server. If it's not a production server, they shouldn't force people to register.

Also, it can be difficult to find the RPMs I'm looking for. For example, if you want to recognize a Windows file system in Red Hat, you have to download a package outside of Red Hat. I searched on Google and found the RPM, but I struggled to find it. Once I put it in, everything worked fine. When Red Hat doesn't have something, and others develop it as open source, they should include that RPM in Red Hat's repo so it's not a struggle to find it.

I have been using Red Hat products for more than 20 years.

The product is very good. Very mature.

We intend to increase our use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are using it more for new stuff.

I barely call Red Hat when I run into problems. I Google them and find out the solution and move forward. You can find fixes for most of the issues online.

Positive

I also use Oracle Linux which is the same as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Everywhere that I deploy Oracle Linux, if I deploy Red Hat it works fine.

I was involved in the initial testing. We tested it until we could make it work fine and then we provided documentation for the people who would put it into production. But we only did the testing. We work on how it is deployed and document any problems we run into and how to fix them.

The ease or difficulty of the setup will depend on a number of things. 

The solution is self-explanatory. Most applications run on Red Hat Linux and related products.