Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for running solutions, such as database solutions, and enterprise, web, and network applications.

One of the fundamental reasons Red Hat 7 has benefited our organization is that it is fully certified. It has certifications on the DISA STG and other cybersecurity frameworks like Zero Trust. This is what the Department of Defense mandates to be used and it is feasible to receive these specifications and automate the implementation for continuous improvement. By implementing the technical guides, we can receive immediate results and protect environments according to our expectations. There are a group of technical procedures that are shared and that you can implement, if you follow the industry best practices.

The most valuable features are the specification and technical guides, they are most important for cyber security assurance

The accessibility to the resources could be more widespread. The registration of the license information is complicated and this product registration process should be easier for customers to access.

In an upcoming release, they could improve by having more focused security.

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

The solution is highly stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is perfectly scalable. You have some resource limits depending on how you're using the technologies. According to those usage patterns, the system is going to be able to give more or less. However, this depends more on the user side than on the system side.

We have approximately 10,000 enterprise users using the systems. They sporadically log into the applications and make use of the database systems and extract information. 

There is a division between the paid support and the support that is included by the website of Red Hat. I have only used the website support and there is a lot of documentation available.

Positive

I have used other Linux products, such as AWS Linux, Debian Linux, and Ubuntu.

The initial setup is straightforward for our use case. As long as you understand what you're doing, the technologies that are involved, the proper way to style, secure, and prepare them, everything will be fine.

After you have the guide, the printed procedure, the deployment is straightforward. The operating system can be deployed in less than an hour.

Okay, and how long did the deployment take?

The solution requires maintenance, and it is a shared responsibility. They take different maintenance actions or tasks, and sometimes it's the operating system, database system, or application front band that needs maintenance.

The number one advice would be to keep the division between testing and production.

There's one system that you need to set up for testing purposes only, and this testing system can be obtained free of license. There's an evaluation license that can be easily applied. When developing the application on the Red Hat 7 system, stay using the evaluation version until the requirements are fully met, only then should you migrate them to a paid supported version.

The biggest lesson that you learn by using this solution is, you easily reach a point where a single person or a single team can no longer respond to the complexities and challenges of the security or the different versions of the applications. At that moment you need to rely on a serious fused team, that team that is backing the effort.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux mostly for development.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Git apps in our closed environment to develop and run scenarios.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's documentation could be improved. Sometimes when you call up support to have that Red Hat answer, they send you back a Reddit or Google link. I can Google or go to Reddit, but I want an answer from Red Hat.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since it started back in the 1980s.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten for stability.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten for scalability.

I rarely call Red Hat Enterprise Linux's support, but when I do, they send me a Google link.

Neutral

Since I've been deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux for so long, it's not complex for me. Once we configure our kick start, we power up a new system, attach it, and it builds it.

We implemented Red Hat Enterprise Linux directly through Red Hat.

We have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux concerning the ability to develop what we need, what we do, and our scenarios. The solution saves us man-hours, and man-hours equals money.

We cannot use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the cloud because I work as a contractor for the government, and all our development is in a classified area where we can't touch the internet at all.

In the last quarter, Red Hat Enterprise Linux products like Satellite Server and OpenShift stood out because of their ease of administration. I do system administration. When my customers need something, assisting them with these products is easier than giving a long configuration of YAML.

I like Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features. We use their SCAP features when we do our kickstart and build it.

We were using Docker, and the Docker swarm was trying to get all the containment. We're now switching to Podman and getting our developers to learn that more so we can give them the ability to kick off containers.

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

One of our use cases is for our in-house applications that the development team builds. We also use it for typical tasks like running Jenkins, GitLab, and other development tools to make them accessible for the developers who write code and do software development.

One of Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s valuable features is its enterprise-level security. We are guaranteed that it's secure, and that's important for us because we need to comply with security regulations. Security always remains a top priority.

We just run Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s built-in security features day in and day out. We know it's secure, and then we just move on to other tasks. It's like a routine where we don't have to think too much because we know it's already integrated into the whole enterprise. It's the next step, and it gives us more time to focus on other tasks.

We are trying to figure out how to enable encryption or just encryption. The last thing we want is to use locks, which are a hassle for encryption. We don't have the personnel to unlock the system every time it gets rebooted. I know there's a way, like on Windows, where they have TPM. I'm not sure how Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s TPM works. That's one of the issues we face—how to utilize TPM effectively.

I think in the future, if the company requires us to encrypt everything, it would be a time-consuming process. I'm not sure how long that would take or if it will happen. I just want to understand how Red Hat Enterprise Linux and TPM work or if there's an existing solution that works similarly where I don't necessarily have to be present every time my system reboots and enter a password. At least for Windows, we know that it works, but I'm not familiar with the equivalent functionality in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

In future releases, I would prefer a Red Hat Enterprise Linux image that fits on a DVD. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux image keeps getting larger and larger. One of the biggest requirements for my company is that it has to fit on a DVD. Now, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 approaching close to ten gigabytes, it won't fit on a DVD anymore. The last thing we want to resort to is using Blu-ray. I prefer not to use Blu-ray. So we need to keep the image size on a DVD smaller. That's one of the main issues. And we can't use USB sticks either, even though they're a new option. Everything needs to be burned on a DVD. So having a Red Hat Enterprise Linux image that fits on a DVD would be beneficial for any future versions or releases.

I have been using this solution for eight years now. Right now, we're migrating. I'm trying to upgrade from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. And that process is painstaking. It's taking a lot of time. I know we want to get that done before October because I think that's when the security support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 expires. We need to move everything to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

We have a lot of legacy systems, and it's very time-consuming trying to figure out what will work and which version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux will support all our applications. So it's just a lengthy process to go through.

In terms of stability, there have been some issues, particularly on the workstation side. The workstation tends to freeze up occasionally, requiring a system restart. The server side, on the other hand, works well as intended. Although Red Hat Enterprise Linux is primarily designed for servers, our developers use it as a workstation, and that can sometimes cause issues after a couple of days of continuous use.

They may need to restart their systems when something freezes or stops working. So it's one of those things we encounter.

I don't really use it extensively. I have some knowledge and experience with it, but I don't heavily rely on Red Hat support. Whenever I encounter a problem, I usually turn to Google for solutions.

The knowledge base provided by Red Hat exists, but I find it difficult to navigate. The information seems scattered and hard to find. I tend to prefer searching on Google since I can get immediate answers there compared to the knowledge base, which can be challenging to navigate. It seems like the knowledge base could use some improvement.

One of the main advantages is the level of support. Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides nearly ten years of support, including two years of extended support, whereas other operating systems typically have one or two major versions released within five years. It can be challenging to allocate the budget for frequent updates over such a short period. So I think that's the main appeal of Red Hat Enterprise Linux—its ten-year support with an additional two years.

Since I've been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a long time, it feels easy for me. However, for someone completely new to it, especially coming from a Windows background, it might seem more complicated. But for me, it's second nature and not that difficult. So the initial setup depends on the level of familiarity with the system.

For a brand-new system, it might take around ten minutes.

I have worked with CentOS, Fedora, and Ubuntu. So I have experience with different flavors of Linux, from the Ubuntu side to Fedora. From a developer's point of view, the main difference, if I compare it to Ubuntu, is that they always get the latest packages, which helps them a lot. 

On the other hand, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I understand that it's set up to prioritize security. But sometimes, from a development perspective, it's challenging for them to obtain the latest packages. As an assessment, I have to go out there, fetch the package or compile the new package for the new version, and then bring it into Red Hat Enterprise Linux so that developers can use it. I think that's the issue. It's a balancing act between trying to get the latest package versions and ensuring stability and security. It's a problem that I think everyone struggles with.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten because there is always room for improvement when it comes to technology.

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

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

The product should provide a portal to manage licenses.

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

The solution’s stability is fine.

The product’s scalability is fine.

The support is good.

Neutral

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

We evaluated SLES and Windows.

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

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

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

Our company uses the solution for survey configurations across different types of databases, applications, and web servers. 

The solution has allowed us to stabilize our organization's environment. 

The solution is very stable, reliable, easy to use, and has good technical support. 

Some applications work better overall in comparison to how they work with other tools. 

Logs are detailed, stable, and consistent so it is easy to troubleshoot issues. 

Sometimes the solution deletes our archives or other features that were useful to us. We would like users to be surveyed before items are removed or be provided with a better explanation as to why removals occur. 

For example, some file system patches were recently removed but replacement patches do not cover all features. 

I have been using the solution for five years. 

The solution's efficiency and reliability are fantastic. 

We do not use security features or profiles much but have never had issues with them.

Technical support is great and I rate it a ten out of ten. 

Positive

We previously used Windows and Oracle but migrated some of those systems to the solution. 

The setup is straightforward from the operating system side. 

Installing applications and other software can be a bit complex because you need to first determine which packages are required. Once that step is completed, installation is fine. 

It is sometimes a mystery whether vendors support or license their products for a specific version of the solution. Generally, vendors are a few versions behind. For example, some do not support RHEL 8 and none support version RHEL 9. It is not easy, but the solution should work with big vendors and convince them to license new versions right away. 

Our company implemented the solution in-house. Deployment time depends on the application and use case. 

Two administrators handle ongoing maintenance which includes installing patch files. 

The solution's pricing is reasonable and it is less expensive than other products such as Windows or Oracle. Pricing was definitely an advantage for our company. 

We compared the solution to others we used and determined that price, ease of use, and its lightweight nature were benefits. 

Our company also uses Ansible because it works well with the solution. 

I rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

I've used it primarily in federal government computing centers. However, I've also used it in private companies.

I run everything on it. I've run databases, I've run web servers, and I've run application farms - so pretty much everything. I have it for MongoDB, data crunching, and more, so it covers the gamut.

The product saved us a lot of money compared to other products, like Solaris. Also, having one OS as opposed to many OSs is nice. For the most part, the benefit for the organization is saving money compared to other operating systems and having good stability.

I'm just a tech guy, so I don't know how well it affects the organization's efficiency. However, I do find that we keep things running.

The consistency, stability, and centralized batching are great.

It is easy to troubleshoot using RHEL. Their support site has excellent references, and it's widespread, so you can find pretty much anything you want on Google.

RHEL's built-in security features and security profiles for helping to reduce risk and maintain compliance are good. I like them. We don't run the firewalls on the servers. However, we run STIG and more against them, and we do pretty well.

They don't have any huge innovations. However, they're supporting many excellent projects and integrating many excellent tools into their stack. We hope they keep doing what they're doing and keep supporting open source.

The licensing model is kind of a mess. It works, however, it could be streamlined. For example, just how they apply the licenses to servers and the solution seems like a mess, at least from my end of it.

I've been using the solution for 15 to 20 years. 

I like their stability. I like that they are gatekeeping a lot of the changes. They are not too far behind the curve. However, they are maintaining stability, which is important, especially for running businesses.

Technical support is excellent. 

I've never had any issues with their tech support.

Positive

We also use Red Hat Ansible and Satellite.

I have used Solaris, and I've used different distributions of Linux, however, not always in a professional setting.

The deployment is straightforward. 

Building out a server or building out infrastructure is simple, comparatively. Setting it up so that you can deploy multiple servers is simple. Being able to do post-install and install via Ansible is great. It's smooth.

We've been rolling out new OSs across the entire infrastructure at the scale of maybe a year or two. That said, we're getting it ready to deploy everything in a month or two, at a maximum.

There is some maintenance. For example, we have to patch all the time, however, that's true of any product. I am constantly tweaking and upgrading and making changes. That said, in terms of knocking out the foundation, I don't have to do that often, so that's good.

While it's my understanding that the solution has saved the organization money, I can't say exactly how much. I don't know the exact numbers.

At this time, we do not use Red Hat Smart Management.

The benefit of using multiple Red Hat products is that they integrate well, so I don't have to worry about fitting different Lego pieces together. They just work. I prefer Red Hat over most other solutions since I'm most familiar with it at this point and it offers consistency.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I work for an IBM business partner and we install Red Hat for our customers. They use Red Hat for databases, application servers, and some IBM applications that we also install. There are different uses.

RHEL gives our customers the abilities and security of an enterprise application. It's an enterprise operating system with enterprise support. The benefits are the stability of the product and the support for problem-solving.

It has also enabled our clients to centralize development and it is integrated with a lot of Red Hat tools. We have a customer with OpenShift and other products from Red Hat and it helps to centralize and coordinate the development in their environment. It makes things easier and their productivity is higher.

We also use Red Hat Insights. It's a good tool and it helps us keep the installation up to date and have a global view of what we have. In addition, Insights provides vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, and those features have helped increase uptime.

The security it provides is one of the most important features, as are the support and the documentation. The latter helps me to do everything. 

The features included in the Red Hat environment enhance the security that Linux has by default. They're good enough to secure the system. It's very complex but it's flexible and it gives you the opportunity to deploy good security. These features reduce risk.

We use it in a hybrid environment. We have it on-prem and also in the cloud. It offers good security in such an environment. The security is well-defined and I would evaluate it positively in this type of setup.

Also, the containers and the application are totally exportable to other Linux distributions. It's very open. I haven't found any compatibility issues with other Linux distributions.

The Cockpit interface needs improvement with more features. The information for implementing Red Hat Cluster could be also improved. And there could also be better performance monitoring.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for eight or nine years.

It is very stable and that is one of the features we most appreciate about it.

It's scalable.

We are quite satisfied with the technical support of Red Hat. Perhaps they could improve on their response times, but it's quite good.

Positive

We use Ubuntu and SUSE. We switched to Red Hat mainly for the enterprise support that we receive, the documentation, and the container integration.

Deployment is easy. It's very intuitive and it is well explained in the documentation.

The time it takes depends on the application, but the operating system takes a few hours to deploy and do the initial configuration. In two hours you can have a system up and running.

Generally, we start with the requirements. We have a pre-production environment and we test the strategy there. We prefer container applications, so one of the strategies that we follow is that, if it is possible to install the application container, we do that.

It can be deployed by one person like me. I am an architect but I could be a system engineer certified by Red Hat. The solution requires maintenance such as periodic upgrades to stay up to date. We have two or three people involved in that process, including patching application, compiling the product, and updating the application and the operating system, when needed to stay current and to be compatible with the next new features.

We have deployed it in various locations and we have also deployed it in IBM Power Systems as well as in some databases. We have an application server installed there and some IBM applications.

We use resources from Red Hat support. That's usually enough for us.

The pricing of RHEL is very similar to other offers. We like the model that Red Hat makes available for subscription and support. There are some free parts, subscriptions that facilitate solution development and implementation, and then, when the solution is well-defined, we move into the paid support license. That kind of subscription is a good approach.

The overall cost of RHEL versus its competitors is comparable. It's more or less the same as SUSE. But the support from Red Hat is better than you get from the others.

Compare the documentation and the answers that are published by Red Hat. Review these aspects and that should help you decide.

I strongly recommend RHEL as it fits well in on-premises or cloud development, whether for a small or a large company, and it's a professional product. It's very integrated with container technology, including with Podman and Docker, although we recommend Podman for containers. RHEL fits well in a lot of situations and container environments. It's a good product.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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