Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

It is used for our production system. We are running multiple web servers and multiple databases on RHEL operating system platform. We are also running some of our OpenShift containers on it. We have a lot of applications that are running on RHEL versions 5, 6, 7, and 8 in our environment, but the maximum number of applications are running on RHEL 7 and 8. 

RHEL provides features that help speed up our deployment. We are using OpenShift to speed up our container implementation and container orchestration.

It is good in terms of consistency of application and user experience. It works consistently regardless of the underlying infrastructure. For the features we are using, we are getting the output according to what they have mentioned in the portfolio. We are not facing any unpredictable issues. It has a predictive analysis feature for troubleshooting. It uses AI and ML algorithms to give us the issues that will eventually come if something prolongs. If we are managing our environment very well and are following the best practices, our end-users also don't face any issues, which improves their user experience.

We use RHEL's tracing and monitoring tools. They have given a lot of metrics, and we do use these tools to trace our application. They provide a lot of benchmarks and metrics if we are planning to do a tech refresh or if we are planning to migrate any solution. So, we use them to calculate, and then we do the documentation.

Its integrations are very reliable. We have a Satellite Server for patching, and we are using Ansible for configuration management. We have a lot of API integrations with the RHEL for third-party integrations. We do a lot of testing before integrating the third-party services into RHEL. We first try them out in the test environment, and then we deploy them on the dev environment, and after that, we move them to the production environment.

It is easy to manage. It is also easy to troubleshoot. The subscription and the support from the RHEL are also good.

It is a well-established operating system. We have tried to implement almost every feature of a version in our environment, and it has been very reliable. We are not facing many production issues on a day-to-day basis. They have well-documented articles on their documentation site and a knowledge base on their website. When we need to implement anything, we are able to find information about the best practices and the solution.

Their support service can be improved. They are able to help us, but in some cases, there is a delay in getting a root cause analysis from their side for Severity One cases.

The vulnerability assessment part should also be improved. We do a lot of patching regularly. They try to fix an issue very quickly, and we also end up facing bugs that are not properly documented. When releasing the general availability for a particular solution, they need to do a lot more work on their side.

We have been using this solution for more than eight years.

Its stability is awesome when compared to other products. We have multiple Unix flavors running in the environment, but we are running production workloads only on RHEL. Previously, we were running the production load on other Unix flavors, but we had a lot of production issues. That's why we migrated the whole production workload to RHEL.

Scalability is according to each product. They have predefined scalability ratios. It works fine according to that ratio. We are able to scale applications and databases. It is easy. Before deploying an application, we check the scalability of each product, and we plan accordingly. So, there are no issues. It is easy.

We have Oracle Databases with 30 to 40 terabytes database size running on RHEL. We also have some HPC systems running on RHEL. We are running a workload of around 250 terabytes on RHEL, and we are planning to extend our environment and increase its usage.

Their support is good, but there are some delays in giving a root cause analysis for critical Severity One or S1 cases. I would rate them an eight out of 10.

It is straightforward. It is not much complex. Previously, we used to do everything manually. Now, we have multiple scripts and multiple tools that make it easy to deploy.

The first deployment took a few months because we were new to RHEL. We had to do a lot of homework from our side as well as on the product side, so it took us a few months to implement it. Now, we are well-familiar with the product. We know how the product works, so we plan accordingly, and we are able to finish according to a deadline.

RHEL has accelerated the deployment of cloud-based workloads. We also work with a local partner of RHEL, and they give us professional services. They do have some customized tools for partner deployment, and their professional services team is able to help us to accelerate all the workloads to the public cloud by using those tools. This acceleration time depends upon the workload size and whether we are going for a normal Infrastructure-as-a-Service or Platform-as-a-Service. It also depends on how we are migrating our monolithic application to the microservices application.

We are a local government organization. We have an account manager from RHEL, and we also have a local system integrator and a local partner. They are providing us local help for our requirements.

For purchases or subscriptions, we don't have any issues. We have multiple subscriptions for multiple products. Our local Red Hat partner takes care of all requirements. We just send the requests to them, and they take care of all subscription-related things for us. The whole process is streamlined.

We have been using it for a lot of years. Our business is happy with its total cost of ownership and its return on investment.

It is more expensive than other vendors in terms of pricing and licensing, but because of its stability, I have to go with it.

In terms of the operating system features, scalability, and stability, RHEL is better than other Unix flavors.

We do a lot of technical evaluation before migrating or implementing a new application or solution. For example, we evaluated Docker, Kubernetes, and OpenShift. We went for OpenShift because RHEL had the support for it. For patch management, we are using Red Hat Satellite Server. We used some other third-party tools such as ManageEngine, and we also did manual patching. As compared to others, Red Hat Satellite Server is much better.

It is very stable, and you can easily run a lot of production workload on RHEL. Red Hat products are well established. They have been around for many years. Red Hat is dealing with multiple products and applications and is constantly doing research to develop new products according to industry trends. With RHEL, you can get an end-to-end solution with their multiple products, which is something not available through other vendors. 

Red Hat's open-source approach was a factor when choosing RHEL. We are utilizing a lot of open-source solutions in our Test and Dev environment before going into production. We are able to get a lot of information in the open-source community, and we also have local community support in our region.

Its newer versions enable us to deploy current applications and emerging workloads across bare-metal, virtualized, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud environments, but the older versions are not supporting these features. They have included more features in the newer versions to integrate and merge with other applications that are on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid cloud setup. In the older versions, we faced some issues in moving some of the applications from on-premises to the cloud, but in the newer versions, it is very easy to move or merge to the cloud. The applications that we have deployed across these environments are very reliable, except for the bare-metal. They are not much reliable if we are using a bare-metal solution on-prem. For virtualization, we are not using the native RHEL virtualization. We have VMware for virtualization, and it is okay in terms of directly deploying some of the applications to the public cloud. It is quite reliable.

It doesn't simplify adoption for non-Linux users. For non-Linux users, it is somewhat difficult to manage this solution or have this solution. However, as compared to other Unix platforms, RHEL is okay.

We are not using RHEL to run multiple versions of the same application or database on a specific operating system. In a specific operating system, we are running an application according to our end-user features requirements. We go through a lot of documentation and do multiple PoCs for deploying an application on the RHEL platform. We have a lot of user acceptance test procedures for each application in terms of how we have to do benchmarking and what are our requirements. So, we are managing with an individual operating system and not using the whole centralized solution.

We use automation tools to move to the cloud. When we are planning to move to the cloud, we do multiple cloud assessments for which we have third-party tools as well as in-built RHEL tools. Each vendor has a different way of migration and automation for moving the on-prem workload to the cloud workload. Each vendor gives you different tools, and we follow the best practices given by them while moving the on-premises workload to the cloud.

I would rate RHEL an eight out of 10.

Our primary use case for RHEL is running our front-end web servers. When you visit our site, all of the front-end servers are Red Hat. The databases that are hosted are Oracle and they predominantly sit on Red Hat 7. We're trying to migrate those to version 8.

We also use it for BI.

We have a digital footprint in Azure and AWS, as well as on-premises. Things for us are very fluid. We're always changing and adapting to our environment, based on what the needs of our faculty and students are.

The experience depends on the user and what it is that they are doing. If somebody is a Windows user, they're not comfortable with Linux, even if it has a GUI. The graphic user interface can be off-putting to users that are familiar with Mac or Windows. It's not as fast, snappy, and showy as the Windows or Apple graphical user interface. So, those types of users for office production, probably, will not be happy with the Red Hat product line.

If on the other hand, you're a developer or you're a database administrator (DBA), it is different. My experience with my developers and my DBA is that they love Linux. It's easy for them to use. It's easy for them to deploy things like Oracle databases and web servers. Continuous development integration tools like Maven or Tomcat or any of those frameworks are already put in place.

For all of the backend tools that do the work to build the infrastructure, Red Hat really does a good job to make it easy to deploy those consistently, securely, and upgrade them in the same way. There are a lot of pluses for the developers, the DBAs, and the like. But, if you're a regular office user, Red Hat is probably not the tool or the OS that you want to use.

When using RHEL for tracking or monitoring, they do a very good job with respect to the impact on the performance of existing applications. The nice thing about Red Hat is you can get very granular with your logging. We do log aggregation, we use Elasticsearch, and we use Filebeat. These things are part of our log aggregation applications and services that run on the backend of our Red Hat boxes, and it does a very good job of that. We also add bash logging into our hardened Linux deployments, so we see everything. We want to monitor everything, and Red Hat does a really good job with that.

RHEL has given us the opportunity to accelerate the deployment of our cloud-based workloads, although because my organization is a very small college, and we don't have a lot of funds, we can't afford to have all of our workloads in the cloud. It's actually cheaper for us to run most of our applications and servers on-premises.

The workloads that we have in the cloud are typically mission-critical, like student transcripts and stuff like that. These are the types of things that we need to have backups of, which is something that Azure does with Red Hat very well. We are moving in the direction of using Red Hat in the cloud, with the caveat that we deploy only as we can afford it.

With respect to disaster recovery, Azure and Red Hat are probably one of the best pairings that you can get. It provides a lot of redundancy, it's easy to deploy, and the server support is excellent with Azure. There is also good logging, so if you do have an issue you can troubleshoot rather quickly and resolve the problem.

The integration with other Red Hat products, such as Satellite, is excellent and I haven't had any issues with it at all. Everything works very well together with all of the products that we use. For example, Ansible works very well with Satellite. We also used Salt at one time, and we used Puppet. We've moved away from those and just focused on using Ansible. All of the tools that we've used work very well with Rad Hat. The product is mature enough that there's enough support for it from all of the other vendors that run on the Red Hat platform.

There are lots of good features in this product. Because I am a system admin, I don't tend to use the GUI or end-user features. Everything that I do is executed from the command line, and this includes features like monitoring tools, such as netstat or iostat. These are the tools that are built into RHEL. Their toolboxes are good but I wouldn't consider them a great feature because there are things that they still need to work on.

The feature that I like the most is that we can integrate it easily with our existing infrastructure. We found that it is much easier to deploy RHEL in our environment compared to a competing distribution like Ubuntu. This is because we also use RHEL Satellite, which is the patching and lifecycle management application that binds all of our RHELs and allows us to push out new stuff.

Satellite is an important feature because it helps to speed up deployment. Satellite is Red Hat's solution to Windows, where the Windows equivalent would be Server Center Control Manager (SCCM), which is now Intune. Satellite is the lifecycle management application for deploying, maintaining, and upgrading your Red Hat systems, and it does a very good job of that. Satellite works in tandem with Red Hat, as you use it to deploy your server.

The main point is that Satellite makes it quick and easy to deploy, and it is also easy to automate the process. I'm the only Linux person at my organization, with the rest of the people working with Windows. Using Satellite, a Windows end-user can deploy a Red Hat server without any Linux experience.

The security updates are done very well, so I feel confident that I'm not going to get hit with ransomware or a similar problem. Their security patches are pretty up to date. Also, it's rather easy to harden a Red Hat deployment because they provide tools to help you do that.

Red Hat gives us the ability to run multiple versions of applications on a single operating system, although we only use this functionality for Java. Even then, it's specific to the underlying applications. For example, Oracle uses Java on the backend. Also, we have multiple versions of Java on some of our web servers and it does a good job.

The biggest thing that is crushing RHEL is documentation. Their documentation is haphazard at best. The man pages that you can use locally are pretty good, they've been fleshed out pretty well, but the documentation from Red Hat itself really needs somebody to go through it and review it.

The only real negative that I have with Red Hat is that you can tell that when you look at the documentation, they cut and paste documentation from the previous version. Because they update it that way, what happens is that there's nobody doing Q&A. For example, in Red Hat 7 and Red Hat 8, they changed the way they do deployments. Instead of using YUM, you use DNF but when you read the documentation for Red Hat 8, they intermix the two. This means that if you're a new Linux user, it's very difficult to distinguish between the two commands. The fact of the matter is that one is built on top of the other. DNF is backward compatible on top of YUM, and that can cause confusion with users and system administrators. However, it wouldn't be an issue if there was good documentation.

My job is pretty easy, but the documentation would really help me be able to communicate the things that I do to the rest of my team. They're all Windows people and when I go to the Red Hat documentation and tell them that we're migrating to this and we're using this tool, but the documentation is horrible, I get laughed at.

By comparison, Microsoft has its own problems with documentation, but it's a little bit more organized and it's definitely fleshed out a lot better. I commend Microsoft for its documentation. Red Hat may be the better product for the things that we do in our environment, but Microsoft has better documentation.

I have been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the past four years.

This is a very stable product.

In terms of scalability, you can't beat it. It's easy for me to scale up and down, especially with Satellite. I can push out 10, 100, of the same servers for the same configuration and set up with the push of a button.

On the cloud side, Azure also allows us to scale very nicely. This means that we can scale locally if we need to because we use Hyper-V for our VM management and we can spin up 10, 15, or however many servers we need, relatively easy with the push of a button, and you can do the same thing in Azure. We haven't done that in AWS.

Most of the servers that we spin up are proxies. We use a product called HAProxy, and we can deploy those proxies as needed. There are also busy periods where we need to scale. For example, when it's the time of year for students to register for classes, we'll see an increase. 

Another thing that is nice is that Azure will scale as we see more users come online. It will automatically spin up Red Hat boxes to accommodate, and then it'll bring them back down when that surge is over.

Overall, scalability is very nice, either in the cloud or on-premises. As far as setup and configuration, you can make sure that it's consistent across the board, no matter where it is deployed.

I would rate their frontline support, where I submit a ticket, a seven or eight out of ten.

In terms of support that is available through their documentation, I would rate it a three out of ten.

Before I started working for the organization I work for now, I used a product called the FOG Project. At the time, we used Ubuntu Linux. FOG was the equivalent to Satellite and Ubuntu is the equivalent to standard Red Hat.

Comparing the two are apples and oranges. The FOG Project is not as mature as Satellite; it doesn't have the bells and whistles that Satellite does. In general, their lifecycle management tools cannot be compared. Satellite outperforms the FOG project, it's easier to deploy and easier to use.

When comparing Ubuntu and Red Hat, the big difference is that the releases for Red Hat are more stable. They do lag a little behind Ubuntu, as Ubuntu is more bleeding edge. This means that they're pushing out updates a little bit faster, but they're not clean in the sense that they may push out a patch, but then five days later, they have to push out a patch to patch the patch. This is in contrast to Red Hat, which is a little bit more consistent and a little bit more stable. What it comes down to is that Red Hat is much more stable than Ubuntu in terms of patches, updates, and upgrades.

Those are the key differences for somebody who manages that infrastructure. You want something that's easy to diagnose, troubleshoot, and put out solutions. Ubuntu may push out a patch or an update that's so bleeding edge or so out there that vendors haven't had time to come up with solutions on their own, so if it's a driver issue or something like that, with Ubuntu, you may have to wait around as a user for those kinds of solutions.

With Red Hat, they make sure that when the product goes out, that there is some Q&A, and they've done some testing. They make sure that there's compatibility with other products that depend on that particular feature, functionality, or service.

RHEL is very easy to configure and deploy.

When we're talking about RHEL in the cloud, Azure is probably the better platform for RHEL. AWS has some licensing issues. The business end of using RHEL on AWS is not as mature or fleshed out as it is on Azure.

Incidentally, I'm not a big fan of Azure. Rather, I have most of my experience in AWS, but Azure deploys Red Hat without issue. We don't have to worry about licensing and connecting things. Everything is already bound to Azure AD, and that makes it really nice because on-premises, we have to do that manually.

For the on-premises deployment, part of the deployment package requires that we add our Red Hat servers to our local AD. But in Azure, it just does everything for you all within one PowerShell command. Ultimately, deploying Red Hat in Azure is much easier than deploying it either on-premises or on AWS.

We have seen a return on our investment. Our organization is probably going to stick with Red Hat because the licensing fees are low enough to offset the maintenance and support cost of that OS.

Pricing is always a critical factor for all IT departments. The cost of doing business is part of the nature of the job. If you're going to buy a bunch of Dell servers, for example, you have to take into consideration not just the licensing, but the hardware support and other things. The licensing with Red Hat is on par with other organizations like Microsoft.

We buy our licensing in bulk, meaning we buy perhaps 1,500 licenses at a time. They changed their licensing structure over the last couple of years. It used to be per system, whereas now, it's all or nothing. We don't have a subscription, as they used to offer, because they moved away from that. We have a site license, which gives us a certain number of servers, perhaps 25,000, for the type of license that we have. That works really well for us.

The way our structure is set up is that we just buy it by the tier system that they have, so if you have so many servers then you buy that tier and then you get so many licenses as part of that tier or enterprise package.

There are additional fees for using other Red Hat tools, such as Ansible Tower. We use Satellite, and it uses Ansible on the backend. However, we use the vanilla Ansible out of the box, rather than the official Red Hat Ansible Tower, simply because we can't afford the licensing for it. Satellite bundles everything together nicely in their suite of tools but we have moved away from that because of the additional cost.

This is one of the downsides to any operating system, not just Red Hat. Windows, for example, is the same way. They try to bill every organization for every license that they can by adding on different suites of tools that they charge for. A lot of organizations, especially the smaller ones, simply can't afford it, so they create workarounds instead. In our case, Ansible is freely available and we can use it without having to pay the fees for Red Hat's Ansible.

The nice thing though, is that they give you the choice. Red Hat doesn't force you to buy the entire product. They still have Ansible entwined with their Satellite product. The point is that if you want the additional features and functionality then you have to buy their Ansible Tower product, but you can still use the basic product regardless.

The fact that RHEL is open-source was a factor in us implementing it. This is an interesting time for Red Hat. The great thing about Red Hat for us was that we could use Red Hat and then we could use their free, commercial version, which is CentOS. It stands for Community Enterprise OS. Unfortunately, they are no longer going to push out CentOS and I think that 8.4 is the latest version of their free Red Hat distribution.

When we first went to Red Hat, in all the organizations I've ever worked at, being able to test things was one of the key factors. We could spin up a CentOS, implement a proof of concept and do some testing before we actually went to use RHEL, which is a licensed version. The real plus was that we could do testing and we could do all these things on the free version without having to eat up a license to do a proof of concept before we actually invested money moving in that direction, using that particular product or service.

Now that this ability has gone away, we are going to see how that pans out. I think Rocky Linux, they're hoping that that's going to be the next CentOS or free Red Hat. We'll see if that pans out or not but right now, it's a scary time for people that are dependent on CentOS for their free development environments, where we can just spin that up and play around. Right now, we're looking at how we're going to resolve that.

It may be that we have to eat up a license so that we can spin up a machine that we just want to do a proof of concept. This is something that we don't know yet. I don't have an answer because we simply don't have enough data to make an assessment on that.

Everything considered, having a free commercial version available, in addition to the paid product, is a big lure for us. They worked really well in tandem.

We have approximately 14 servers running Red Hat 6 but we used Red Hat 6 all the way to Red Hat 8.

The AppStream feature is something that we have tried but on a very limited scale. We have had mixed results with it, although it looks promising. At this point, I can't say whether it is a good feature or not.

My advice for anybody considering Red Hat depends on the role of the person that is making the decision. If they're an end-user or their organization is using office productivity software, then they're probably not going to want to use it for the backend. This is because there are not a lot of users that are using Red Hat as their office productivity operating system.

If on the other hand, you're somebody that's looking for servers that just need what they call five nines or high availability, Red Hat is your solution for that. That's what I would say to anybody, any technical person that I've talked to, if you can afford it, definitely get Red Hat for your web development. Your web servers should be either Apache, or NGINX, which is their web server stuff.

Red Hat should also be used to host an Oracle database. We found that that works really well and is very competitive with Microsoft's SQL server. It's about the same cost; the Red Hat product is actually a little cheaper than Microsoft's SQL product.

Considering the cost, ease of deployment, and ease of use, Red Hat is the better product for your main infrastructure. For things that just have to be up and running, Red Hat is the product that you want to use.

I can't be strong enough in my opinion that Red Hat does what it does very well for the mundane tasks of infrastructure. For instance, when it comes to web servers, no other OS does a better job than Red Hat for web servers or databases. Similarly, it does a very good job for proxies. For things that just need to run and have very little human interaction, Red Hat's your solution. If you're looking for something that's for an office, such as for accounting, then Red Hat is not the solution to choose.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

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.

My customers primarily use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for application hosting and small databases. It is used for hosting Java applications and small web servers.

Cloud-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments provide cost savings. If customers are purchasing a physical server, they need to have a proper setup. They need to have a data center, cabling, and a lot of other things. For cost-saving purposes, they are going for a cloud. As an operating system, it offers the same functionality on-prem or on the cloud.

It saves money for company owners. It helps our customers save money and do things quickly. They can build servers quickly. There is a menu where they can fill in the VM name and other details and attach storage. In ten minutes, they have a server ready.

I am Red Hat certified. I train people in corporations and educational institutes. Red Hat's material is very good. Their testing system is awesome. If someone is certified in Red Hat, you know that they know it well. There are millions of videos on YouTube, but they are not always updated. On the Red Hat site, the documentation is very clear. You just need to focus and study for two to three months to get certified.

Nowadays, delays are common with their support, and it often takes time to get assistance from experienced engineers.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for seven to eight years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is an excellent product, and its stability has improved significantly over time. It can operate for extended periods, like six months to one year, without issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux scales well with increasing user demands or infrastructure size. It is easily available and efficiently adapts to varying needs.

Most customers host medium-sized applications on the cloud. Storing a big application can lead to higher costs.

The technical support from Red Hat has declined over the past four or five years. It could be because there are not many skilled people. When we raise a case, it is attended by junior people or new people, which wastes two to three days. We might even have to raise the severity of the ticket. However, when senior people take ownership of the case, the support is awesome. They give proper support. This was not the case earlier, so whenever we raised a ticket, we got an immediate response from Red Hat.

Positive

The initial setup is smooth.

We have Cloud-based deployments. We are using AWS, GCP, Azure, and other cloud platforms. We also have on-premises deployment. Some customers also have a mixed deployment with the cloud and on-prem but in such environments, I have seen problems in terms of performance. For example, if my database is on-prem on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and I am storing my application on the cloud on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, whenever someone hits the website, there will be latency issues. I sorted out such issues for a customer. I suggested they migrate their server from the cloud to on-prem because their database was quite big. With a mixed setup, they were having a lot of issues in terms of performance and storing data. It was very slow. After they moved it on-prem, it was much faster. This is not a Red Hat-related issue. From the operating system side, no improvements are required. However, cloud providers need to improve their facilities.

For patching, I use Red Hat Satellite, and for configuration, I use Red Hat Ansible. Leapp upgrades are also awesome. A month back, I upgraded Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. I created detailed documentation about the procedure. There were about 14 steps. It was straightforward.

With Red Hat Insights, we can see the security threats. Red Hat Insights is integrated with Red Hat Satellite. It will be helpful from the patching point of view. It lets you do subjective analytics of servers.

I did some research on pricing a long time ago, and at that time, it was much cheaper than Windows. I do not have current details about pricing, but it is affordable.

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

We mainly use RPM-based systems to give our developers virtual machines.

The most valuable features of using RHEL for us are the standard way to run Linux and tools like NetworkManager. They make things easier for us.

I prefer a product that offers everything in a yearly subscription, like VMware, and I think RHEL should consider offering it as well.

I have been using RHEL for 15 years.

The scalability of the solution is good.

We use RHEL deployed in different zones, only on-premise, not in the cloud. Deploying RHEL depends on the end user, but migrations aren't usually a problem due to site forwards. The hardest part is dealing with end-user applications on the machines. We use Ansible for scripting, especially with Oracle. Sometimes, meeting the end of life for RHEL versions is tough, and we have had to buy extended support for RHE because some applications reached the end of life within a year. I appreciate the extended support option, though I prefer not to use it.

RHEL's pricing and licensing are quite expensive. For a big company, paying these fees might be manageable, but as a government organization, spending tax money on such expensive solutions is challenging, even though we do have the funds.

I see benefits in using RHEL because it offers stability and long-term support. Although we use both RHEL and Ubuntu, I have noticed that updates in Ubuntu can change things unexpectedly within a main release, which I don't like. That is why I focus on RHEL for its consistent and reliable updates.

RHEL's built-in security features are very good for risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance. We apply security guidelines in Linux using RHEL, which provides all the necessary baselines. We can choose and apply what we need directly to our RHEL systems.

I would say that open-source cloud-based operating systems like Debian are stable and have been around for a long time. There is a whole community supporting it, making it a strong alternative to RHEL with fewer licensing costs.

Overall, I would rate RHEL as a nine out of ten.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to host website content. 

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

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

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

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

Positive

We used Sun Microsystems and Unix on on-prem. 

The product supports our hybrid cloud strategy well. 

We move workloads between different clouds and data sandboxes. 

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

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

I rate it a nine out of ten. 

Our primary use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is to set up and manage servers for various application teams, especially those dealing with hospital ADT applications. These applications handle critical data related to patient admissions and management within healthcare facilities. 

While configuring Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its associated tools can be complex and sometimes frustrating, I have found that leveraging the support and resources provided by Red Hat is invaluable. Through collaboration with Red Hat's support team and a better understanding of the intricacies involved, we have significantly improved the speed and efficiency of managing our extensive infrastructure, making the process smoother and more manageable than before.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has improved our system's security. 

While measuring uptime is important, what matters most to us is improving the value and efficiency of patch and reboot cycles. Red Hat Enterprise Linux's tools, including Satellite and Ansible, provide valuable visibility and transparency regarding vulnerabilities, packages, and infected systems, helping enhance security and patch management.

The most valuable feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the Ansible Automation Platform, closely followed by Satellite. These two tools are integral to our environment. 

Satellite helps with provisioning, managing metadata, and licensing, while Ansible ensures uniform setup across our extensive environment, making the management of our infrastructure much smoother and more efficient.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux could be improved in several ways, especially regarding transparency and communication of new features. Enhancements could include better documentation and quick reference materials for various user groups, including developers, system administrators, etc. 

Additionally, there could be improved visibility for new and improved commands within Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Many users still rely on outdated commands when newer, more efficient alternatives are available. Providing frequent updates and maintenance for resources like the admin blog would help improve communication and transparency regarding Red Hat Enterprise Linux's capabilities and features.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 11 years.

I would rate the support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. There has been a noticeable improvement in their support, particularly after their acquisition by IBM.

Positive

The deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux was initially complex because we were not aware of all the available tools to streamline the process. We had to learn, but now we are more proficient. 

Tasks that once took a month can now be completed in a week. We worked directly with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, without an integrated reseller or consultant.

We have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. By transitioning applications to the Red Hat Linux platform, we have been able to reduce our data center footprint and associated costs, such as electricity. This cost savings in other areas has been a clear benefit of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Our upgrade and migration plans are focused on a balance between stability and staying current with the latest and most secure versions of Red Hat. 

While there is a desire to be on the cutting edge, we must consider what is currently in use by our clinicians and staff who rely on our hospital systems. We aim to strike a balance between these factors and leverage a sandbox environment to test the latest versions before deploying them in our production environment. 

We have been thoroughly impressed with Red Hat Insights and are currently in the process of exploring Leapp, which has shown great results in our evaluations. The web console has been invaluable for us, particularly when collaborating with application custodians who may not be familiar with the command line interface. 

We use Ansible for managing our Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems for provisioning and patching, which has improved visibility and reduced issues compared to third-party solutions. Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a nine out of ten.

For the past couple of years, our contractor team has been engaged with the Department of Veterans Affairs, focusing on developing and deploying software and containers and we use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for that.

One of the most valuable aspects is the ease of installing packages on the server. When we need to run specific software, adding and installing packages on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is quite straightforward.

When we initially began working with containers, we encountered some challenges with compatibility. Red Hat provided an older and somewhat outdated version of Docker, which made the early stages of our container journey more challenging than I would have preferred.

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

The customer support they provide is highly commendable. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

I've mainly used Windows on my computer or laptop. However, it was a different scenario when we were developing in the cloud and were given Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers to work with.

We regularly perform upgrades on our OpenShift clusters, typically on a monthly basis. When it comes to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers, we frequently update the images on our virtual machines to ensure that we stay current with the latest versions. We're actively working on implementing automation using Ansible to streamline and facilitate these tasks.

Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.