Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

I primarily support servers in general, including a lot of virtual machines that support everything from telemetry to software development and business applications. I work in a small corporate IT environment, so I mainly focus on supporting the developers and the applications they create to keep the business running.

Our infrastructure is mostly on-premises, but we are starting to explore cloud solutions in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and are currently in the early stages of that transition.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) compared to other distributions helps me trust it more because of the security and the name behind it. Red Hat has maintained a good reputation for customer support and providing security patches, and it is a vendor we can point to when there is a vulnerability or issue, knowing they will take our needs seriously and support us.

I appreciate the philosophy behind Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in that it is slow-moving and stable. The newer features have been valuable, especially Podman for containers and the package manager, which is simple and just works.

I use Satellite a great deal. We use Satellite to have a comprehensive view of all systems and their vulnerability states, as well as using the OpenSCAP scanning that is built into Red Hat Satellite. This gives my security team insight into how well we are performing in terms of security.

I started using system roles back with Red Hat 7, and I have found them and the image builder to be really beneficial. We run Nutanix for our virtualization infrastructure, and it is valuable to be able to build a new template image from a trusted source and know that it is minimal and easy to manage.

Recently, we have started using the STIG security settings that are built into the Red Hat installer as a good starting point. I have found it is much easier to build a system that is secure from the ground up than to add security after the fact.

The OpenSCAP system profiler allows us to audit the state of those systems and ensure everything is locked down. Using Ansible to apply security controls across our systems gives us something we can point to and demonstrate that the systems are actually secure.

I am confident that installing an update will not break anything, and it will make our systems more reliable than other distributions.

It seems the engineers are on top of improvements. I am not sure how I would improve it at this point other than reducing service interruptions, however that could be accomplished.

I have been using this solution for approximately sixteen years.

The stability is the main benefit, and it is one less thing to worry about. Knowing that the supply chain as far as updates is trusted helps prevent our developers from adding random repositories and untrusted sources. Overall stability is the main thing that stands out.

Scalability has been better than ever, especially with image mode and the image generation tool that allows me to create a good template to scale easily and then use Ansible to configure everything. The scalability is definitely present, and all you need is the compute resources to allocate to it.

I would give Red Hat customer service a solid nine. I usually only reach out to customer service when I am facing a very complex problem and I am at my wit's end. Red Hat does a good job escalating to people who really know their materials. I do not feel stuck on the lower tier of customer service or with someone following a script. The person I speak with is experienced and knows the product, so it has been a good experience.

In my career, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has always been the solution used at the company since I arrived.

The installation experience is easier and more pleasant than installing Windows. I appreciate that when I install Windows on a device, I am bombarded with advertisements and calls to action to buy additional products, whereas Red Hat does not do any of that.

We do not have significant setup costs. We have a relatively small environment, and I believe we are covered pretty much by the Red Hat Satellite subscription, which also gives us enough entitlements to run all of our virtual machines. The pricing seems good from my perspective.

There has been talk of going with an open-source alternative, either a Red Hat fork or something like Debian or Ubuntu. However, the lack of a good support path is the main reason for not pursuing that.

We have looked at a couple of systems that we are using for artificial intelligence inference, but it is nothing I would call production. At this point, the cost of hardware is holding us back, and the company is probably going to end up using more cloud inference or Software-as-a-Service products for our artificial intelligence needs rather than investing in an on-premises solution, though that may change in the future.

The ability to ensure all systems have uniform updates and seeing the view of the status of CVEs or bugs on the system is invaluable. Using Satellite for this purpose provides a lot of value.

The knowledge base is excellent, and I appreciate the work they are doing with artificial intelligence, which makes it easier to navigate and surface relevant information. Red Hat's knowledge base has always been very valuable for solving any issues I encounter, and it is usually the first place I look.

I have heard people discussing artificial intelligence-driven upgrades, and that is certainly of interest to me. We have a lot of Red Hat 8 systems that will eventually need to be upgraded, so it is something I would be curious about pursuing.

I would rate this review as a ten out of ten.

On-premises

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Our main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include having servers all around for storage and processing, specifically for compute processing.

The best feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I appreciate is that it provides consistent configuration setups with step-by-step configuration, which is easier. When configuring a server, what previously took at least a 24-hour turnaround time now takes only 30 minutes to one hour.

I am satisfied with the management experience and normally choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) when there is an option between it and other solutions. I have been involved in RHEL upgrades or migrations from many years ago, approximately 14 to 18 years back. Currently, everything is easier as upgrades and patches come as a package.

Regarding built-in security features, maintaining compliance is handled at the architect's level during configuration setups. While the service provider handles access level security, configuration compliances need to be managed by the architect.

The upgrade and migration process in AWS is straightforward - I can easily increase the number of processors through hot migration, which can be done while the system is running without requiring shutdown. RHEL has helped mitigate downtime and lower risk with negligible system interruptions.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) could be improved with more shared storage capabilities. For example, I have multiple RHEL instances, and enhanced storage sharing would be helpful for transferring data between servers.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for almost 12 years.

I assess the stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as very stable, with negligible downtime, crashes, or performance issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales efficiently with the growing needs of my organization as it is one of the managed shared services. When we check the scalability option while configuring, it manages everything automatically without requiring separate actions. I have expanded usage, and the process has been smooth with zero downtime.

I haven't had the opportunity to evaluate customer service and technical support because we address any issues through AWS since it's a managed service.

Positive

Prior to adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I was not using another solution to address similar needs.

I manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems for provisioning and patching through AWS, which handles the patching at the service provider level. Provisioning is easy because I can modify configurations, such as the number of processors and other parameters.

The deployment model for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is cloud. Security requirements were a consideration in choosing RHEL in the cloud, as AWS provides most of the security features.

I have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as the prices have been reduced since we implemented a shared environment.

I cannot speak to licensing because we are using managed services from AWS. Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, all costs come from AWS on a pay-as-you-go basis. We get charged when the service is up; otherwise, there is no cost.

Before selecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I considered something similar to VMware. These were the two options I chose between.

My advice to other organizations considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that it's easy to use and a reliable service. It has been consistently at the top in this industry for ages and has its own strengths. I would recommend it as a first choice.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as eight or nine out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) at this point is lab machines for students in the engineering department.

I use RHEL on-premise for the most part; we have some of the server infrastructure that I work on now in ROSA, OpenShift.

I am starting to work my AI workloads with RHEL.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points such as getting students the access they need and supporting all the software they need to use.

The most valuable feature of RHEL that I have found is the dependency resolving; it is nice not having to worry about the programs interacting with each other for the most part, except for when it has the locking problem, but they improved significantly with that.

The feature in RHEL that I use to navigate my security risks is SELinux, which is the big security mechanism we use to make sure that the contexts are right between the different parts. I am mostly removed from that, and then I use yum for the most part or sometimes I end up using Ansible to do the patching.

Red Hat Satellite helps me manage and maintain my cloud environment by locking the packages to known good states, so that we have infrastructure that we know runs.

The features that I think will help my AI workloads in RHEL include using natural language to determine what to get the system to do to get up to date. I just did a lab the other day, and it was impressive.

RHEL plays a role in my company's implementation of the zero-trust model mostly in the systems themselves; the other aspects are usually pushed out into other departments and groups.

My company's process for managing regulatory compliance has shifted most of that responsibility over to the security teams, and RHEL plays a role in our compliance and auditing workflows.

RHEL has helped to mitigate downtime and lower risk; it is nice coming from Linux from Scratch implementations and having the software and package infrastructure we discussed before, allowing the ability to update and do the dependency resolution so they do not conflict with each other.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is doing a good job by drawing back on the dependencies to keep things running smooth, and that is the biggest strength.

I would improve RHEL as a platform by noting that you have significant advantages over the competition that I see; I think being more proactive with emerging issues is important, especially with all the new vulnerabilities that we have been dealing with the past couple of months.

I think they should ensure more security, but if I step back and look, you cannot do anything before you know about it, and there has been a lot of difficulty with all the regulatory requirements that go into that.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for at least 15 years.

I do major version upgrades using RHEL and Ansible Automation Platform all the time.

My experience with major version upgrades using RHEL and Ansible Automation Platform is that it works well, although sometimes there is a need to get the right software set up in Satellite in the backend at the versions when it is changing for the Red Hat-specific upgrade paths.

From time to time, I experience some downtime, but it is not usually the OS; it is usually the user or the underlying hardware.

Regarding scalability, I tried to expand its usage, and we handled scaling up with the hardware and scaling out by multiplying the resources.

I would rate the customer service and technical support a seven because sometimes it takes a bit to reach someone at your level.

Prior to adopting RHEL to address those needs, I was using Linux from Scratch.

I switched to RHEL because we merged with a different part of the university and RHEL came with it.

I would describe the experience of deploying RHEL as it works well for the most part; the kickstarts were quite nice coming from building from source.

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using RHEL is that it works and is supported by all the niche software that they need at the university.

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of RHEL is that from my end I am removed from where I am at, but I know that the site license allows us to use the product.

I have evaluated other solutions instead of RHEL.

I looked into Ubuntu, and the reason I always picked RHEL is that the software is supported on RHEL, which is the determining factor.

I want to look into Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Image Builder or system roles for sure.

I have used Red Hat Satellite or Lightspeed.

Overall, I think Ansible Automation Platform is good; it became too expensive at the scale we are at for how we are utilizing it, but it is an awesome product.

I assess the knowledge base of RHEL as pretty good, and I use it when I need it, although I tend to encounter those unusual edge cases a lot.

My overall review rating for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is eight.

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Azure

My use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is for dockerization; I use it for Docker or Postman. We use it for microservices, for example, to install JBoss and deploy some applications and pipelines for processes such as CI/CD. A summary of what I do includes microservices for applications such as Tomcat or JBoss, or for microservices in Postman, and installing Jenkins and launching pipelines.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped reduce downtime and lower risks for me. There are rarely crashes or errors.

Image Builder or system roles feature is beneficial because it is a feature that allows you to create small images for what you need. With these images, you can go to a registry or whatever with VMware or KVM, and you can deploy them very quickly and efficiently. I tested it because it's better than having to install another machine all over again and losing much time. With Image Builder, you can create a small image tailored to your necessities. It is a good solution; you have to embrace automation, and the Image Builder helps you automate the creation of servers and images.

I appreciate all the Red Hat products available and the support provided when encountering any issues or needing help. You can open a case, and they answer very quickly. 

The other reason is it is a very strong OS for your needs. For example, I work in a banking system and in a financial system, and all kinds of products that you have—the problems may come from development, not from the server or machine.

In the knowledge base of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I can find everything I need. I don't have to go elsewhere. There are some videos with practical advice, all in one place, and all for free. I'm very happy with this kind of resource and knowledge base.

I find Red Hat Insights very helpful and beneficial. In all IT departments worldwide, I find it important because when I call my colleagues or other companies, this is a very significant feature. Insights gives many opportunities, particularly regarding security, and provides more facilities to improve security in your servers. In my opinion, the most important security feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is Red Hat Insights. When you use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), you can install an agent in your Linux, and this agent runs on your Linux and gives you all the CVEs or security issues you have. For me, as an administrator, this is very helpful because with minimal clicks, I have the solutions and instructions on how to solve them. You only need to connect to Red Hat, and they provide a deployment, scan your machine, or all machines with Ansible, and give you a summary of your vulnerabilities, and you apply the solutions they provide.

The areas that have room for improvement in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include having more case bases and possibly more forums or places. A community that is not just informal but rather official could be beneficial. Everything else is good.

I would suggest improving compatibility. Sometimes I find that Red Hat is not aligned with the rest of the world. They create their own solutions, such as Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, and OpenShift, which can be better than what others offer. This can be both good and bad, depending on the situation. On the positive side, their innovations can enhance the overall quality of the company’s offerings. On the downside, when you need certain images or components that deviate from industry standards, it can become confusing. I find it difficult to understand why they choose to differentiate themselves from the rest. 

I have been in IT for 24 years, working with Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for about 10 years.

I would rate the stability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as a nine out of ten.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is scalable for my business. It is very important, and I cannot imagine working without it.

I would rate the technical support of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have worked with Ubuntu and SUSE, but I prefer Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) because the support is better than others. All solutions, how the machine or OS works, and all the other products, for example, OpenShift, I appreciate. I feel very comfortable with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) because it is a solution based on CentOS and Fedora, and since my early career, I studied and learned in this distribution.

The deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very easy.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has saved me about 40% to 50% time.

I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to other users; it depends on the company size. For medium and bigger companies, it is necessary because all the components needed, such as support and stability, are available. I cannot help much with the pricing because I do not work with licenses; this comes from another department. I discuss with my boss about how many machines or servers we need, and they coordinate with the commercials. I do not have information about whether it is cheaper or expensive, but I hear that they are very comfortable depending on how you deal with them. 

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight out of ten.

On-premises

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include workflow development. We are running the workflow in that.

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I appreciate the most include OpenShift. These features have benefited my organization through working on on-premise cloud migration. 

Some of the high sensitive data cannot go to the public cloud, so we are trying to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for the internal migration. We got rid of the VM maintenance and related tasks.

Security requirements were a key consideration in choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in the cloud. We are from the financial industry, so customer data is one of our big responsibilities. When it comes to managing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems for provisioning and patching, we currently work with our middleware team for upgrades, however, the plan is to work with AWS or the Red Hat team for future upgrades.

My assessment of the built-in security features is limited as I'm from the development side. Our upgrade and migration plans to stay current involve recommendations from our vendors.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped to mitigate downtime and lower risk. Our restart used to take considerable time initially, but through optimization, it now takes significantly less time. I would assess the knowledge base as good. We received dedicated training this summer from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), with trainers coming to our office for two days, which was very beneficial.

The pain points that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve include the transition from a Microsoft background, where I had a habit of everything with a GUI. I see very few GUI elements in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and many command lines. I'm not proficient in that, which makes me struggle sometimes. Overall, we have the tools, however, there should be drag-and-drop, window-type functionality.

I've used the solution for 11 years. 

I would assess the stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as very good. As a developer, I have never seen any downtime, so it is working perfectly fine from the middleware side.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales efficiently with the growing needs of my organization. They consistently release new versions. The scalability has been going well. 

We have expanded usage, and the process was smooth. In the beginning, we had very few applications, and now I can see many applications running on that side. It is definitely expanding.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support as very proactive.

Positive

Prior to adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I was using Microsoft Windows Server. Now our focus is more on this area. The factors that made us want to change include transitioning from Microsoft technology, moving to Pega and Java side. This technology is much more supported on this platform.

The initial deployment was very good. 

I have been involved in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) upgrades or migrations, and due to our many internal dependencies, it takes time, however, we successfully completed it.

I have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) because we have many critical applications running without any issues. There is significant ROI on that.

The other solutions I considered before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include using three or four vendors as a business continuity plan. We have Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), AWS, Windows and others. We cannot rely on one vendor; we have to work with multiple vendors to maintain business continuity.

The advice I would give to other organizations considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that it's a really good tool to use if they have applications in Java, Pega, or IBM workflow or Lombardi. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a nine out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include it being the operating system that runs all our servers that have applications running on them, and it is installed on our VMs as well.

I appreciate several features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), such as Red Hat Insights, which provides updates on vulnerabilities and CVEs. Red Hat subscription is easy to register for each operating system, the support is good, and Bootc is innovative with its new way to install the operating system with a container file.

To navigate our security risks, we use Red Hat Insights, as we have the complete Red Hat Insights portal where we register all our servers and operating systems installed on physical servers. It provides us with updates on security vulnerabilities found and automatic updates that help us maintain our servers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps us solve pain points by running our operating system that supports our SaaS application.

For the next release of the operating system, I would prefer a comprehensive suite package that combines the operating system and support rather than having to purchase individual packages for KVM, Satellite, and others.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for 10 years.

I have not experienced downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), thanks to the support available for debugging and crash logs, making it significantly better than Windows.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales exceptionally well with the growing needs of my company, and we use it on everything.

I would rate the customer service and technical support an eight, as they act promptly and provide good feedback, though I have found them quick to detach from application-related issues without comprehensive engagement.

Before adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we were using CentOS until its upstream support ceased.

We switched because CentOS transitioned into a stream with limited support, prompting a necessary move to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

I would describe the deployment experience of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as straightforward.

I have seen major version upgrades in the class related to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Ansible Automation Platform, and we regularly deploy Ansible playbooks through a GitLab pipeline using our own runners and Docker images for Ansible controllers. We regularly release upgrades, including going from RHEL 8 to 10 while we skipped 9, after having completed a significant upgrade from RHEL 7 to 8 a couple of years ago without using Ansible.

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is its status as the industrial standard, which makes it very reliable and dependable.

I am not involved in the actual pricing; however, I know it has influenced our decision on not pursuing Ansible Tower as we did not find the pricing justified for a significant change.

I have not evaluated switching to another Linux distribution. We have experimented with Ubuntu and Fedora, but we would not switch away from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as it remains the enterprise solution.

I do not currently use Red Hat Satellite or LightSpeed, but I have used them in the past. Red Hat Satellite is similar to Splunk, enabling server management through the UI to automatically update, which we have not actually done because we have our own patch management cycle built in-house.

In our company's implementation of the Zero Trust model, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) plays a crucial role, as we register many things with it and depend on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to function properly for us to manage our operations.

We used to use AWX and considered implementing Ansible Tower; however, we decided against it probably due to the paid subscription costs and opted for a different deployment method.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped mitigate downtime and lower risk by allowing us to patch sooner and faster, which we base on the vulnerabilities found.

I would assess the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as good, as it provides substantial feedback when creating tickets and often allows for direct knowledge base access that avoids the need to open a ticket.

I rate this product an overall eight out of ten.

On-premises

Other

We provide a hosting platform on which internal business applications will want to host their applications. Depending on what our internal app teams want to use to host their applications, some may want to host on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). These are the main use cases that we deal with - app teams hosting their applications in our hosting platform for internal use.

From a consumer preference perspective, we have folks who prefer options for teams to host their environments in the cloud. It feels there is more security with the product and more configuration customization that app teams appreciate. Certain vendors require that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) specifically be used, which helps in those cases.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) provides a certain base set of security features and capabilities that we have found other flavors of Linux do not provide or are required by governmental agencies to meet CMMC controls. The security controls that go above and beyond other types of Linux, along with the manageability from an enterprise perspective, make it valuable.

One of the pain points we have found is that for Windows systems, it is pretty easy to domain join those in a federated model. It seems we have to either have a third-party product or it is not quite as straightforward to domain join Linux OSs. This would be something that could potentially be smoother in the future.

The knowledge base would be more helpful if it was more easily searchable. There might be opportunities to leverage AI for being able to search the knowledge base and articles more effectively.

We have been using the solution for about 12 years now.

Compared to other OSs, stability has been solid.

It has scaled very well. We have not experienced any scaling issues from our perspective.

I have not had to directly engage customer support. Mmy team has not provided any issues or complaints when they have had to reach out to support.

Positive

We tried using CentOS type Linux or Amazon Linux. However, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) checked the compliance and security features much better than those product offerings.

We have been actively moving systems from on-premises into the cloud since 2017, including moving Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) versions to newer versions in the cloud.

It is pretty easy to deploy. The main challenge is domain joining it at the end, however, we have not had many issues with getting things STIG hardened, which is welcome when it comes to the OS itself.

We are deploying everything via automation using the Ansible product. Everything is deployed leveraging Ansible, and we have a desired state config post-deployment that provides post-permission hardening.

Based on our latest agreement, we are seeing cost savings and optimizations.

I wasn't too involved in those discussions. For the most part, our sourcing team carried the heavy burden of negotiating the licensing agreements and similar matters.

Depending on your use case and compliance requirements, take a good look at all the different flavors of Linux and you will probably recognize that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is going to check the boxes much smoother and easier than some of the other versions or implementations. It will save time. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution a nine.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I use OpenShift as part of my system because most clients require it. I work as a forward engineer. For ten years, I've worked for companies where I'm deployed to their site to do one-day to six-month projects, similar to Geek Squad for coding. My specialty is architecture, so I've used Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), mostly Ansible and OpenShift. In instances where I'm working with a VPC directly and everything runs Linux and I'm running RHEL, I'll have some workloads. However, I don't manipulate the OS itself. I use the tools built on top of it.

My specialty is finance and medical, so with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), it's all hybrid. Those two sectors have significant compliance requirements, especially medical. I do many hybrid clouds and must build two or three redundancies. That's why all of the nuances of the Red Hat platform stand out to me in a way it wouldn't for someone else. For example, in a hospital system, they have emergency generators for power. The same concept applies to data, HIPAA, and transferring. I notice things that others may not. It means I'm always concurrently running two or three clouds for disaster recovery for compliance. All of the clouds have nine nines, 11 nines, whatever they're marketing now for reliability, but the time from start to production, the shorter that is, and the better it plays with the rest of my tools and system, the better. Red Hat really excels at that.

The main benefit is time savings, which is something that can't be easily quantified. By not breaking or causing problems, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) saves time, headaches, money, anguish, fees, violations, and penalties. This becomes apparent when teams are happy to use a tool that doesn't slow them down. For high producers, having a reliable system that doesn't require extra steps or workarounds is crucial.

There are two big pain points that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve. First, Red Hat being interoperable and not taking a side is humongous. Every other platform has tricks and questionable behaviors for lock-in. RHEL is the only platform I don't have issues connecting. Everyone is running hybrid multi-cloud environments, so the fact that others make their products purposely not work with others is obnoxious. As a professional who has made money making APIs and connectors, those companies being stubborn benefits me financially. However, from an efficiency or executing on an idea standpoint, it's frustrating. The fact that Red Hat isn't that way is excellent.

The second aspect I really appreciate, and I don't think they get credit for this, is how Red Hat's interfaces, design choices, and options work very well for producers. For example, Amazon Web Services' approach is to add 200 features a year. They throw everything at the wall to see what sticks, resulting in a confusing experience when logging in, using CLI, or setting up a bastion host into VPC with PEM keys. On the other side of the spectrum, some clouds are too simple. Red Hat hits the perfect balance.

The only thing I can think of is the RHEL AI, which has only been announced for a couple of months, so I'm still sorting it out. The way that gets implemented will be very key to the future of the company and the stack. Until I listened to the seminar, I wasn't even sure what RHEL AI meant. What I understand now is that RHEL AI is the regular RHEL with pre-installed, AI-specific tools and tooling. That's fine, but as a company, they should make that more obvious. Additionally, it seems to only save a few minutes of typing in the terminal. It sounds similar to how people took Ubuntu and made flavors, where they changed two apps and called it a distro. Red Hat should make something actually different because they have that capability, and users would definitely use it. The AI implementation is the future, and it's just a matter of how that gets used.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for production for approximately five to six years.

I have extensive experience with stability issues in Linux systems. Since 2017, I have run Debian derivatives on my personal machines. However, for work, it's always RHEL. The built-in security, secure groups, and overall architecture make it a more robust and stable system. Linux did not become stable for home users until after COVID, when everyone was at home fixing issues. RHEL's advantage lies in its architecture - it's harder to break the system due to its notifications, invisible files, and pre-reboot checks.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) solves stability problems in two ways: the architecture of the software stack is exceptionally stable, minimizing downtime and risk, and when issues occur, the recovery time is minimal. Using OpenShift, I can spin up new instances quickly and seamlessly.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales effectively. An OS by itself doesn't determine a company's success or failure; it's about the usage. While Windows, Linux, and Mac have their differences, they share basic components such as a kernel and a user interface. RHEL excels in stability, preventing system crashes even when inexperienced users interact with files, which saves time, money, equipment replacement costs, and prevents employee downtime.

I have had limited experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) customer service and technical support. I've used email support, which is efficient and quick. I once needed phone support while working in a data center basement without internet access. I called RHEL for assistance, and the service was excellent. I've had no issues with Red Hat or IBM service, whether it's resolving login issues via email or getting help with critical situations in front of clients.

My experience with the deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) tends to work well. Due to the nature of my work, I rarely build from scratch. I typically join existing projects to iterate upon or fix something. I'm not usually the decision-maker, though I can influence clients through my expertise and trust. The migration path is relatively smooth, even when jumping two versions, and it doesn't break everything.

The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of RHEL are reasonable. While some people complain about the subscription model, I understand and accept it.

The main difference between other solutions and RHEL is configuration and security, which helps maintain stability. Since RHEL is used on web servers, both public-facing and internal, security is crucial. While any modern OS can run without crashing, RHEL's advantage is its resilience against external threats and operations that might compromise other systems.

RHEL is a reliable solution that saves users from numerous technical headaches, though these savings aren't easily quantifiable. The system's reliability speaks for itself.

My advice is to dive in and use it. There are no gotchas with RHEL. There's a large ecosystem, many knowledgeable users, and a strong community.

My review rating for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is nine out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

Other

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include virtualization, day-to-day computing, general use cases, desktop use cases, and server use cases, treating RHEL primarily as a server system.

RHEL helps us solve tremendous pain points because we are a cloud service provider, and we do a lot of virtualization and networking. As a cloud provider, we basically rely on virtualization, networking, storage, and a lot of other things, so RHEL is a core platform for us that enables us to combine all these components together and provide a comprehensive solution.

Since we are a cloud service provider, we rely on RHEL's virtualization feature and sell these virtual machines to customers, making a significant profit from it.

RHEL supports our hybrid cloud strategy as we offer private and public clouds to customers and can burst into other public clouds. RHEL as an operating system provides in-built support that helps us burst into hybrid and other cloud ecosystems with our expertise.

The features I appreciate most in RHEL include virtualization, networking, and storage, and there is not a single feature that stands out for me because I appreciate pretty much everything RHEL offers.

RHEL acts as an enabler for running AI workloads, offering in-built security, particularly with features such as Podman that help secure the environment. With RHEL AI, there are many integrations, including Instacloud, providing significant security benefits.

RHEL plays a core role in our implementation of the Zero Trust model, operating many OpenStack clouds and utilizing systems for regulated industries such as financial services and government sectors. The good ecosystem of RHEL supports authentication, authorization, and zero trust, enhanced by features from OpenShift as well.

RHEL should cover more hardware, particularly since we face challenges with some hardware components, such as Intel VROC as a RAID controller, which RHEL has compatibility issues with. I acknowledge that it is difficult for RHEL engineers to cover all hardware, but collaboration with manufacturers such as Intel or Lenovo might alleviate some drawbacks.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since my university days, and it has been almost eight years.

I have not experienced any downtime or performance issues with RHEL; it is a very stable operating system.

We have been able to scale well with RHEL; we run a lot of distributed storage, and scaling up is just a matter of adding resources without limitations, as the platform supports scalability indefinitely.

The customer service and technical support from Red Hat are perfect; they know what to do when we reach out, even when it is on behalf of customers.

We have also worked with SUSE and Ubuntu Pro, but our customers often prefer RHEL for general-purpose server workloads, while they go to SUSE for SAP workloads, indicating that RHEL has a strong customer preference for its compatibility and support.

My experience deploying RHEL has been straightforward; the deployment methods are easy, utilizing PXE boot and cloud-init within our OpenStack environment, which makes maintenance and deployment very efficient.

From our perspective as a cloud service provider, the biggest return on investment with RHEL comes from the margins we make after selling licenses to customers. We operate clouds with RHEL as the core, and we see a good amount of margin through virtualization services provided to customers.

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing of RHEL work out for us as a cloud service provider, so we are satisfied with them.

We sell other products such as OpenShift that do similar work to RHEL.

When it comes to navigating security risks with RHEL, we rely on SELinux as the main security feature, and we are also looking at Lightspeed, which provides a nice command line assistant. We also utilize PQC for core cryptography in RHEL as well as its TLS functionality, and container sandboxing is another major feature we leverage.

I tried the Image Builder in RHEL, and my experience with it was quite good. The image mode is beneficial because it allows us to create many portable images, which I find really good for our needs. I use the Image Builder in the cloud for internal purposes as well as for our customers.

I have used Satellite. Satellite helps manage and maintain my hybrid cloud environment, although not to a very good extent because we operate a single environment that we consider an on-premises or private cloud. Some customers use it to manage a fleet of systems across various instances, but for me, it is more focused on on-premises.

We have tried out RHEL AI, using Instacloud and other tools as well as OpenShift, which is outside of RHEL. We are not using the Ansible Automation Platform for major version upgrades, but we do use Leapp upgrades because the Leapp tool is necessary for our upgrades, although it requires manual oversight to ensure there are no compatibility issues.

We use both open-source Ansible and the Ansible Automation Platform, and it has been good for managing our fleet of servers as we run virtualization. The Ansible Automation Platform is particularly useful for managing many CVE patchings.

I believe RHEL effectively mitigates downtime, and I do not see any significant problems regarding this issue. The knowledge base offered by RHEL is pretty good; the documentation is top-notch and very helpful, and the support portal, including the AI features, is also excellent.

We have been able to scale well with RHEL; we run a lot of distributed storage, and scaling up is just a matter of adding resources without limitations, as the platform supports scalability indefinitely. Overall, I would rate RHEL as a top-notch, superior product, and it is a very stable operating system.

I would recommend RHEL to other companies, emphasizing that stability is key, especially for running enterprise-grade workloads or server workloads because everything is tested and reliable, which minimizes the risk of breaking things during upgrades. I would rate this review as 9 out of 10.

Hybrid Cloud

Other

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include using it with VMs, particularly my company's SAP environment that runs with RHEL, and leveraging it into OpenShift.

To navigate our security risks, I use Satellite in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to mitigate CVEs, so all our environments are managed by content views, and each month, I create another version. That is how I keep things updated for packages, and for security standards, I use Ansible, which is pretty much an Argo CD thing with AAP.

In my company's implementation of the Zero Trust model, every application runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and while we are not using it much outside of that, approximately 90% of the application runs there.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps maintain my environment overall by acting as a repository manager where I set up everything, ensuring our servers are not directly connected to the internet to receive updates, thus keeping it safe.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me feel very comfortable knowing that I have vendor support for whatever happens. I can open a ticket and someone will be there with me figuring out what happened. I feel very safe using RHEL.

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I like the most are its reliability and how reliable it is, along with the integration with Ansible and OpenShift. I think it is the same environment, so it is all connected.

I cannot think of a point for improvement for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but perhaps making it lighter in some way could be beneficial.

To be completely honest, I have no idea how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved, as sometimes I think it is just perfect. Every iteration of RHEL seems to fix issues that were not a problem for me.

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

Regarding stability and reliability, I have not experienced any significant downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). As with any systems, they crash from time to time, but there is nothing to complain about.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales great to the growing needs of my company, as I can just spawn whatever I need. I virtualize pretty much everything, so in a matter of minutes, I have a bunch of servers running RHEL, and I license the hypervisors too.

The customer service and technical support of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is great, as I can create a case with priority one, and someone will call me 10 to 20 minutes after that.

I think the reason I switched to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is primarily about pricing, as I needed to buy new hardware, and Oracle was bumping up prices little by little until it became unpayable.

In terms of the deployment process, I find it straightforward. Either spinning up a VM with a template gets it there, or using the installation wizard is also straightforward. I just click next, next, next, put my name, and that is it.

I have considered switching to OpenShift, which is the natural step for me from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped to mitigate downtime and lower risks.

The combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Satellite has been beneficial, as they work together to mitigate any risks that come into Satellite first. I have all the tools to mitigate directly into the host or do it manually.

Regarding the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), every time I have a doubt or something, I just search for it, and Red Hat articles pop up. Someone asked the same question one year ago, and there is the answer.

The advice I would give to other companies considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that while I have heard of some companies running open-source free alternatives such as Ubuntu or even Fedora from Red Hat, they are doing so to bypass the payment of a license. I think it is worth the price, so if someone is thinking about it, there is nothing to think about. I would rate my overall experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a 10 out of 10.

On-premises