Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We are running our critical applications on it. We are using versions 7, 8, and 9, and we are running our workload on private clouds. We are currently testing Azure, but we don't have the production workload on it. 

By implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we wanted to solve some of the reboot problems of Windows. Every patch on Windows affected our applications because the system had to be rebooted. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has improved the uptime of the applications.

For our company, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a very secure operating system. It's much better than the Windows system. It's great for us. SELinux is a great tool to protect us from attackers. SELinux is the most important for us.

We have been Agile for two years, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been a part of it.

Its stability is most valuable. I'm a technical guy, and I love Linux. For me, it's the best platform.

Writing SELinux policies is sometimes very hard if you want to deploy a new application on it.

I started working in 2006, and my first job was administering the Red Hat Enterprise Linux system. 

It's very stable.

Its scalability is extremely good. You can scale it everywhere if you want. We have 600 to 700 Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. 

The support from Red Hat is very good. The response time is rather low. We have premium support, and we sometimes get an answer to our questions in one hour. If you explain to the support guy your problem, you will get the current answer. Overall, I'd rate them a nine out of ten because you sometimes get someone who doesn't understand your question.

I don't know about the knowledge base of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but I know the knowledge base of OpenShift is very good now. In the past, it was updated in one single version, whereas now, the change is there for each major and minor version. There is separate documentation, and that's much better than in the past.

Positive

It's getting better and better. In the past, versions 3 and 4 were very complex, but now, it's very easy to do it. We are now creating images and deploying it on our VMware farms, and it's much easier than making a PXE boot from our bare metal systems. 

We evaluated other solutions. We went for Red Hat Enterprise Linux because of better handling. It might also have been cheaper, but I'm not sure. My company decided to go with Red Hat.

As an operating system, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.

I use the solution to develop OS for our internal use. I deliver it to our internal clients, so they can use it for whatever applications they may need to use it for.

The product is very stable. The knowledge base is excellent.

The solution should improve its documentation.

I have been using the solution for 16 years.

The solution scales well.

The support is good. I would rate support an eight or nine out of ten. The documentation should be improved to make it a ten.

Positive

The deployment is very easy for me because my organization has been doing it for a long time.

The product’s resiliency is pretty good. It responds fast to security updates compared to some other closed-source vendors. 

We moved from other priority operating systems to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it saves us costs on the commodity hardware. Overall, I rate the solution an eight or 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.

The primary purpose of any operating system is to run all sorts of applications and databases on servers. We use RHEL to run applications and host containers but not much else. We don't use it for databases, and none of our clients use Red Hat virtualization, so no KBM. We install them onto VMware and use them like Red Hat virtual machines.

I primarily work for banks that tend to have a proper on-premise cloud because the data can't leave the premises. We also work for insurance companies, government, and law enforcement organizations. Most of them use it on a virtualized platform like VMware. Some are hardware installations, and other clients are experimenting with cloud infrastructure. One of the banks we work for has started to build its own cloud to get experience and move specific applications to the cloud.

One client has RHEL deployed across two data centers, which is usually a mirrored setup. In other words, two hardware servers are doing the same thing. It can be active-active or active-passive. The VMs also stretch across two data centers, but it's a Metro cluster, so it's in the same city. I've been working with my current client for a couple of years. Our three-person team manages 250 hardware services and about 400 VMs.

We are still migrating a couple of solutions to Red Hat, so the user base is getting bigger. 

We decided to use Red Hat Linux instead of Solaris or something else because it's widely used and accessible. It's easier to find people who know RHEL. It has also made the automation through Satellite and Puppet easier, which are built into Enterprise Linux. 

RHEL is stable, mature, and relatively easy to handle. I'm pretty confident in it. We haven't had to raise a serious support ticket for any server in I don't know how many years. It has built-in high availability solutions for VMware on top of the hardware.  

Red Hat Linux is also useful for keeping applications from misbehaving. I like the fact that it has firewall controls.

Red Hat can be tricky at times, but all operating systems are. The moves to systemd and NetworkManager haven't made the product more user-friendly. The network management they had before was easier and somewhat more reliable than NetworkManager, which Red Hat forces us to use now.

That may just be my personal preference because I've been working on Red Hat for so long. It's something new that doesn't do exactly what it used to do, so it's probably more of an old person's complaint.

The firewall controls can also be somewhat challenging in terms of automation. An application may use a different setup, so you need to consider that if you want to automate installations. 

You can't easily port an application to another operating system unless it's CentOS or Fedora. It's not portable if you want to port it to something like Windows except for Java and containers. Unless it's another Red Hat, CentOS, or Fedora, the application itself isn't portable if it's installed on a thick virtual or physical machine even. It's not easily portable because you must recompile the application or make changes.

I have been using Red Hat for more than 15 years.

There are bugs, but you can usually find a workaround quickly. When somebody discovers a bug, it's fixed pretty quickly in the next release.

The services run well, and it can handle pretty much anything provided you have enough hardware resources. That's something you always have to watch out for.

RHEL is so stable in the environments I've been working on that I have never had to call Red Hat. Any issues we've had were either hardware or application problems. It's never an issue with the operating system. 

The community resources are helpful. You can find answers to most questions you have in terms of setup or troubleshooting. There are issues now and again, but you can go to the website or a discussion board to find the solution, and it works. When I say we've never had a problem, it's not exactly true. Sometimes it doesn't do what you expect, but you can usually find the solution, so we have never had to call support to ask.

A lot of my clients used to use Oracle Solaris, but many of them switched to Red Hat due to hardware costs. Oracle hardware is expensive, but it is good stuff. We had systems that ran for three years without any issues, but it gets expensive if something breaks or you need to replace hardware due to the lifecycle. 

You can install RHEL on any x86 hardware and deploy it on several Dell servers, which is much cheaper than a single Oracle server. For example, we needed to replace a system because the hardware got sold. We were quoted a price for Solaris running on an Oracle T5. It was four times the price of replacing it with HP hardware. So that's the main reason many clients have shifted to RHEL. 

It's a vicious cycle. As more companies switch, other clients say, "Oh, but there's not much user base left. How long will this run? Let's follow the mainstream trend." That said, I love Solaris. It's unbelievably stable and easy to use, but just the hardware underneath it is too expensive.

I've been involved in deployment, but it depends on the client. I've done everything from architectural design to installation and administration for specific clients. Setting up RHEL is pretty straightforward if you know what you need to know. Of course, you have to do your homework before. For example, if you are deploying it on a VM, you need to see the size you need and what else you have to install. 

When someone orders a server, we typically tell them the deployment will take half a day, but the installation takes around an hour. You may need to install other things, but the out-of-the-box operating system takes about an hour.

We're just one team who manages the infrastructure for one department. It's highly specific. There's a specialized market team that does stock exchanges and financial services. The demands for hardware and availability are particular to that segment. We have three people responsible for installation, maintenance, and administration.

RHEL is stable and relatively cheap, so you get much more out of it than other Linux flavors. I mostly work as a consulting system engineer and am usually not involved in any of this financial stuff.

I can suggest how many subscriptions they need and how much it will cost, but I can't say if it's worth it to the client. I don't know, but we have never had any complaints. People never say, "Oh, but this is expensive, and it doesn't fit into what we had planned."

RHEL has a decent pricing model. It's a subscription, which makes sense. The OS itself is free, but you pay for the support. I have never heard any complaints about the pricing.

You can also purchase a virtual data center license that allows you to set up a hundred virtual servers. You can also add a Satellite license subscription to your standard server. There are several different add-ons that will increase the price of the subscription, depending on the functionality you need.

It's hard for me to compare Red Hat with other open-source solutions because we only have clients who work with Red Hat Linux. Of course, there are entirely free ones you could use. Fedora is the most extensive free version of Red Hat. You could use Ubuntu or any other Linux flavor, which is mostly free. However, I have no idea what additional cost you'd pay if you want to support.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten. I would recommend it, but I need to qualify that by pointing out that I don't have enough experience with other Linux flavors to say that it's better than the others. I've mostly used RHEL because it's so ubiquitous.

Our primary use case is that we use it for transaction servers.

We have it on-premises, mostly virtualized.

RHEL helps speed up our deployments. We don't use things like Kickstart and Satellite for deployments, because we usually just clone systems. But the ability to script customizations during deployments is particularly useful for us. It enables us to tailor each machine the way it needs to be.

We use RHEL to run multiple versions of the same application or database on a specific operating system and its features for managing them, things like Satellite and Insights, make management of multiple versions of an application server much simpler.

We use Red Hat Insights to monitor the systems and it is a godsend. It's like having an extra person on staff. Insights is a constantly updated database of CVEs and configuration best practices. It checks everything in the environment to make sure that it is patched, up-to-date, configured properly, and using industry best practices. When you look at the Insights control panel, you know either that everything is good or, if you have an issue, you know exactly where to look and how to fix it. Nine times out of ten, it even gives you an automation script to fix it automatically.

Other than Satellite, we also use Red Hat Ansible, but not Ansible Tower. They integrate very well with RHEL. They're tooled for integrating with it and they do that well. That integrated approach makes my life much easier. The primary function we use Satellite for is patching. Having something that's built to manage application environments and make sure that everything is patched correctly to use Ansible, plugs into everything else, including Satellite. You can use it to manage RHEL, Satellite, and other things, such as Windows and networking equipment. The tightest integration is with Red Hat.

RHEL enables us to deploy applications and emerging workloads across bare-metal and virtualized environments and I find those workloads to be extremely reliable. The reliability is so good that I rarely find myself calling Red Hat support any longer. Support is the first benefit of using RHEL, but the second thing is that the platform is so stable that the need to use support is negligible.

There is potential for improvement when it comes to ease of use. It has become easier to use over the years but could be better still. Linux, in general, has never been a simple solution. It's usually a more complex solution than something like Windows. If there is a downside, it's that it is more complex than some of the other solutions.

I've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for about 10 years.

One of its most valuable features is its stability and reliability.

We have applications that we've scaled quite significantly, with over a dozen servers running the same application, load-balanced, and RHEL scales quite well.

We have an installation of about 200 servers and about another 800 servers in our SaaS environment. We're looking to grow the environment where it makes sense. I like to take the approach of considering the appropriate tool for the job. We are primarily a Windows shop, but often the right tool for the job is Red Hat. That's where we would grow our environment, where it's appropriate and the right tool for the job.

Our engagements with RHEL support are usually good. It's been a while since I've had to contact them, but they're good even when it's a significant issue that takes time. They don't even have any problems moving issues around through time zones and having support work on them around the world.

Positive

The initial setup of RHEL is very straightforward. It's all menu-driven and most of the time there are only a few answers that need to be given during the setup procedure to get a system up and fully running in a few minutes.

We can get a system up and running in about 15 or 20 minutes if we need to. We can do a custom build and use the full build process, or sometimes we do virtual cloning and then just run scripts to individualize the machines.

RHEL's single subscription and install repository for all types of systems may be a bit of a stumbling point. It seems that the descriptions of the subscriptions change every year or two and it gets a little complicated. And the naming conventions they use in the subscriptions can be a little complicated.

As for maintenance and administration of RHEL, there are just two people in our organization who handle that, me and another engineer.

The prices are comparable, and good for what is being provided.

RHEL is certainly more difficult to use than Windows, but it requires fewer hardware resources than Windows and, in my experience, it has also been more robust.

The fact that RHEL is an open-source solution isn't a concern, directly. Where it might be a factor would be when we're looking at using a tool for a particular need and we're looking for the best platform for it. That's the biggest factor.

Make sure that you have well-trained engineers who are familiar with RHEL. If you are looking for a solution that runs in a mission-critical environment, you always want a supported solution. If you're looking for Linux, I don't think that there's a better-supported solution than RHEL.

In our particular scenario, our underlying infrastructure is either VMware virtualized or bare metal, although the latter was mostly in the past. Rolling out to a virtualized solution or rolling out to bare metal with RHEL—with the exception of the bits that are unique to those platforms—the operating system installation and the like are going to be very similar.

Overall, RHEL is a very solid solution.

It's the operating system for different applications we have that are related to telecommunications such as VoIP, DNS, and many others including identity management.

We are using it based on virtualization, including VMware, Red Hat Virtualization, and we have some OpenShift Virtualization.

RHEL has improved things a lot when it comes to automation. Creating a virtual machine was not an issue, but when it comes to the post-configuration of the workload, the solution has made life way easier. For instance, we created an automation chain that creates a virtual machine from scratch right through until the post-configuration is done. We managed to group different applications in this one chain.

In terms of speeding deployment, we have playbooks that are supported by Red Hat, where we can automate deployment and configuration. That helps a lot, making things much faster. It has accelerated our deployment of cloud-based workloads because of the availability of the modules that help us to create playbooks for post-configuration. It's not only creating a VM but, after that, we still have to do the post-configuration manually; rather that's all automated now. Where post-configuration used to take one or two days, it now takes a couple of hours.

In addition, so far the applications are consistent, regardless of the infrastructure. That's especially true when you automate it. Even if you have an issue, the consistency of deployment helps a lot.

In addition to Red Hat Virtualization and Red Hat OpenShift, we use Red Hat Satellite. We decided to base our entire stack on Red Hat because most of the vendors we use want us to have our applications on the Red Hat operating system. With our whole stack on Red Hat, it makes communication easier because we aren't ping-ponged between different vendors. In addition, there is a good knowledge base for different Red Hat products. The integrated approach among Red Hat products has helped us in that when it comes to identity management, for instance, because we don't need to wonder if Microsoft will support this or not. It has also helped to automate patching as well.

The most valuable feature is the Identity Management. You pay almost the same subscription cost for normal RHEL and you get the central Identity Management. You would need to pay much more if you were using other applications or products like Active Directory from Microsoft.

It also enables you to deploy current applications and emerging workloads across bare-metal and private cloud, which are the only environments we have. The applications are very reliable, across these environments, with RHEL.

In addition, we use the solution for monitoring using the features like PCP and that is helpful indeed.

An area for improvement in RHEL has to do with security policies. I know they are doing something about this in RHEL 9, but I haven't worked with that version yet. When it comes to security policies in RHEL 8, it is a bit behind. It would be better if we could just enforce a certain security policy such as CIS Level 1. That was not available, out-of-the-box, in RHEL 8.

We have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since mid-2010.

If it works the first time, usually it will work forever. It's only when you patch that you need to do some regression testing to make sure that it's working.

We haven't had any issues with scalability at the OS level for years.

I'm very satisfied with the technical support for RHEL. They are helpful and knowledgeable. I don't have any complaints.

Positive

I used to have Ubuntu, but I didn't like it. The beauty of RHEL is that you can easily find support, unlike Ubuntu. While Ubuntu has free subscriptions, unlike RHEL, you cannot get support for Ubuntu easily.

With Ubuntu, when I had an issue, I would have to go to Stack Overflow and check the internet. With RHEL, I like that I can go to IRC and post my question and they answer me.

We are using Satellite, which is considered to be a subscription manager, in a way. In the beginning, it was complicated. Now, they have created something called Simple Content Access  (SCA). We buy a subscription for audit purposes and for legality to have a legitimate copy. On the other hand, Satellite itself issues subscriptions once you have a new OS system. That has made things way easier.

We used professional services back in 2009 or 2010. But once we found that every vendor was looking for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we added that skill in our department and now we are doing everything ourselves.

Because it's a very stable solution, if you have the knowledge in-house, go for a regular subscription. Otherwise, buy the Premium Support.

We had some AppStream versions for different OSs, such as CentOS, but we decided to go for RHEL because it would make life easier in terms of lifecycle management. If we had RHEL and CentOS, it would make patching more complicated.

The biggest lesson I have learned with RHEL is don't complicate your design. You can always find an easier way to do things. Sometimes you'll think, "Oh, we can do this," and you start thinking about very complicated processes. It's better to think and start simple.

With RHEL, we have patching in place, automation in place, and we already know the support. We are very satisfied. We have done a lot of work on it and now it's easy to deploy VMs immediately. We are not looking to implement any other version of Linux.

Our primary use case is to develop the servers and production. It's pretty standard usage. We have some Docker running but I haven't been involved in those environments very often. It's a standard server on minimal load and we're not using a full load with our GUI interface.

We have multiple applications running on both Windows and RHEL. The database systems are mostly MySQL. There's some Oracle but most of it is MySQL. Dealing with Red Hat is pretty straightforward. I haven't run into issues with it. 

When we were running multiple versions of Java, if patches came out for both versions, we would apply the patches for both versions and usually, that could be downloaded. It was pretty simple to update those. Those are systems-supported patches. With the specific application patches, it's a little different. Normally the application administrators take care of those themselves.

If Red Hat's system is set up right, it improves the speed and performance reliability of our hardware because it doesn't use as many resources as a Windows system.

I like the fact that most of the system configuration is Namespace so it's easy to get to and easy to configure, and most of it still uses text documents. Not all of it's a menu-driven-type entry. I also like the fact that it's a very standard file system layout so it's easy to navigate.

In some instances, it provides features that help speed development. In other instances, it's standard amongst most Linux groups. You can download the main features. The file system is always a big difference. You go from a Debian-based system to Red Hat, so the file system layout is a little bit different. User-based files are located versus system-based files. RHEL keeps everything in one area and segregates it. It makes it easier to go between different organizations and still have the same policies and structure. I do like the new package manager.

It's all text-based, all command line, whereas the minimal load does not have a GUI on it. If you're used to using Windows core servers, it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but going from a Windows GUI-based system to an RHEL command-line-based system is a learning curve for most Windows administrators. A lot of strictly Windows administrators don't even want to look at a command line from Red Hat because the commands are so different from what they're used to. There is a learning curve between the two major platforms.

The application and user experience are usually pretty consistent, but that really depends on the application developer. If they're developing an application, it'll be consistent costs on infrastructure. That's not an issue between the different platforms. User experience is based on how the application developer built it. They're not all in-house and so they developed across a consistent platform. They keep everything pretty simple from the user perspective.

It enables us to deploy current applications and merging workloads across physical hardware and VMs. Virtualization and physical hardware stay consistent. Going to the cloud depends on the platform we use but it'll mostly be consistent as well. The RHEL distribution has been implemented pretty well amongst most of our cloud providers. It's pretty standard now, whether we go to Rackspace, Amazon, Azure, or even Microsoft supporting RHEL distribution. You can go to a Microsoft Azure cloud and have a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system running there. The user would probably never notice it.

For Red Hat, the bare metal and virtualized environments are pretty reliable. The only thing I don't like about Red Hat is that every time you do an update, there are patches every month and you have to reboot the system. Fortunately, it's a single reboot versus Microsoft, which likes multiple reboots, but still, you have to reboot the system. You have to reboot the server. The newer updates have kernel patches involved in them. To implement that new kernel, you have to reboot the system, and Red Hat's best policy and best practices are to reboot the system after patching.

I used the AppStream feature a couple of times. Not a whole lot because a lot of our environment is specific to what we deploy. Normally I would just deploy the bare system, adding features requested by the application administrator, and they'll download the rest of the things that they need.

We have used the tracing and monitoring tools in certain instances but not consistently. We use them for troubleshooting but not every day. We use other third-party software to monitor the system logs and alert on the issues. They will run tracing analysis of the systems. The reason we don't always use it is because of the number of servers I have to deal with and the low band power.

Automation is however you set it up. As for running a cloud-based solution, a lot of it would be automated. Going from prior experience, dealing with it before coming to this company, we did a lot of cloud deployment and it's pretty consistent and reliable and you could automate it pretty easily. 

RHEL accelerated the deployment of cloud-based workloads in my previous experiences. Compared to no other solution at all, it's obviously a vast improvement. You have to worry about Windows. As soon as you bring the server up, it requires numerous patches and it'll take several reboots unless you have an image that is very patched and deployable there. Even then, every month you get new patches. Red Hat patches a lot faster than Windows and requires a single reboot. The speed of deployment is a hazard. It's almost twice as fast deploying an RHEL solution as it is a Windows solution.

I'd like to see more of NCurses type menu systems in some instances. We're dealing with SUSE Enterprise Linux, they have an NCurses menu system. It's a menu system. Even some of the higher-end Unix systems like AIX have some inner menu system where all the configuration tools are right there so your administrator doesn't have to jump through multiple directories to configure files if needed. I like the simplicity of Red Hat because it's pretty easy but having an NCurses menu when you have to get something done quickly would be nice.

I started using Red Hat back in 1996. I've been using it for at least 20 years, off and on. I was hired as a Linux administrator for RHEL 6, 7, and 8, and then I changed my job positions. I'm not actively using RHEL right now.

Unfortunately, we're moving away from RHEL to Oracle Enterprise Linux in the next couple of months.

RHEL is a very stable product. It's been around for a long time now. It's been stable since they brought it out as an enterprise environment. It's usually not the bleeding edge of Linux. That just means it has more stability in the packaging and the repositories. They keep the bleeding edge updates and things out of it most of the time, which means if you have new features that you want to implement, you have to do some finagling to get those features in place. But it does mean the system's more stable, for the most part.

It's very scalable. I haven't seen any issues with the scalability of Red Hat. I've used it in environments where we have a few hundred people to a couple of thousand people. I've never seen any issues with scalability. It's one of the big sell points of RHEL. It's as scalable as Unix.

There are around 500 developers who use it. Web-facing interfaces, it's in the thousands.

If you're using a small environment with no more than around 100 to 200 servers, one or two people can handle most of the RHEL stuff pretty quickly.

If it's a larger environment, then you're looking at staff upwards from six to 15, depending on the environment the product's being used for.

There is a system administrator to perform the initial deployment of a server to the maintenance of the server. Then there are the application developers who develop the application, write the applications, and just manage applications. In our environment, we currently have sysadmins who manage the systems. My job is to manage the actual operating system itself. Then, you have application developers, who develop applications for user-facing systems. The application managers manage those applications, not only the developed applications.

It's being used pretty extensively. It's 1,100 to 1,200 servers on one site. 

We're using at least 85-90% of the features of RHEL but we don't really use Ansible that extensively. Red Hat Satellite server we're using as a primary repository in one site. Based on RHEL, we use most of these features.

We are switching to another solution mainly because a number of databases in use are based on that system. They want to expand that database and some other products that come with switching from RHEL to LEL. That's the main reason. As I understand it, the licensing isn't that different with a more centralized approach, so convenience is a large factor.

We switched to RHEL from AIX because of the developer and the cost. AIX is usually implemented on specific hardware. IBM owned the hardware. So the cost for running AIX is a lot more expensive than running an RHEL solution, which can be run on virtual systems as well as physical systems. And x86 servers are a lot cheaper than a power system.

Open-source was also a factor in our decision to switch to RHEL. Open-source has allowed a lot of development in areas, more ingenuity, innovation, and products than other constricted OSs. My opinion is that when you're dealing with open-source, you have people who are more likely to innovate and create new things. It's easier to develop an open-source platform than it is to use a closed source platform because then you can't get to the APIs, you can't do anything in the system if you want to change things in the system to make your product more available to people.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. I've even set servers up at home on a pretty regular basis. I have my own lab, so I've deployed it and it's pretty straightforward. With RHEL, the setup is nice because you get a GUI, so any Windows-based user is going to be familiar with the GUI and know what to look at. They can deploy software as needed, right there from the menu. From a TextBase, you can script it to where all you have to do is run a script and it'll deploy the server quickly. It's pretty straightforward.

Personally, I wouldn't be able to speak to the installation. Having a single point is always a benefit because then you don't have to jump around multiple points to download software and to deploy your solution. The only thing about it is with Docker, a lot of times you have to go out to the Docker site to download the newest versions.

If you're running Satellite, it's even easier because all your current patches are downloaded. The iOS is already there and a lot of time is it's a straight script that you can deploy quickly. The single-point install is a good thing.

Depending on what you're running it on and what kind of equipment you're running, it can take anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour. That depends on the equipment.

They had Unix admins on site. They were implemented to bring in the Red Hat environment because of the similarity between Unix and Red Hat.

If you implement Ansible, that's an additional cost. If you implement Satellite, that's an additional cost to your licensing. However, the amount of licensing if you license 100 servers is actually cheaper per server than licensing 50 or 25.

The first one that comes to mind as a real competitor would be SUSE. It's built-in Germany. Ubuntu is a commendable product but I don't find it as reliable or as easy to administer as I do RHEL. A lot of developers like it because it's really easy. It's more geared towards a home-user environment than it is a corporate environment. The support factor for RHEL is good. If you need to call tech support, it's there.

I have used Satellite and Ansible in other environments. Satellite integrates very well. It's built by Red Hat, so it integrates thoroughly and it allows a single point of download for all patches and any software deployments you have. You can automate server builds, if you do it right, and make things a lot easier.

Ansible can tie into Satellite and RHEL fairly easily. It allows you to build multiple types of deployments for multiple solutions, and allows a playbook-type deal. You develop a playbook and send it out and it builds a server for the user. Done.

It would speed up deployment and make it easier to manage. If you had a developer who needed to throw up a box real quick to check something, he could run a playbook, throw up a server and rather quickly do what he needed to do. Then dismiss the server and all resource reviews return back to the YUM. If it was hardware, it would be a little bit different, but if we run a virtualization environment, they return all resources back to the host. So it made matching servers and deployment a lot simpler and less work on the operations environment.

The best advice I could give is if you're going from a Windows environment to an RHEL environment, there's a learning curve that is going to be a factor during implementation management and basic administration. Your company would probably need to hire new people just to support an RHEL environment. Between SUSE and RHEL, the number of people who know SUSE very well in the US is not as high as it is in Europe. RHEL has become more of a global OS than SUSE, though they're both comparable. I would advise looking at what you need it to do and then make sure you have the infrastructure, people, and manpower to support it.

There's a huge number of resources out there. You have sites geared specifically for RHEL administration. I believe IT Central Station has some resources on its site as well. There are Usenet groups and different forums. TechRepublic has a large number of resources as well. There are numerous resources out there to ease the learning curve.

There are a lot of things I've learned over the years using RHEL. Running it as a virtual design environment where you can run multiple servers on a single hardware piece makes it a lot more cost-effective and you don't have the resource depletion as you would have with Windows. Unfortunately, Windows is a resource hog. RHEL can be set up to run very minimally, with virtually no overhead other than the applications you're using to service users. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten.