Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We use RHEL for database servers, a few of them run Oracle servers, and we are also using it for some of the network and infrastructure services.

The best operating system I've ever used is Red Hat, in terms of its ability and consistency of the operating system. Other than that, the vast majority of applications that I had, I could deploy those on Red Hat without much effort as it supported a vast majority of applications. I never faced any major issues with the OS, the support is also very good.

The most valuable features are:

• The stability and reliability of the OS itself
• Being open-source and leading the open-source market trends/ technologies
  
• The wide variety of applications we can deploy on Red Hat
• Their support 

I am a big fan of the OS and the user experience. They're very good. The OS is very stable and very good in performance as well.

RHEL enables us to deploy current applications and emerging workloads across all virtualized hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments. It is one of the most stable OS that are available. 

We use RHEL to run multiple versions of the same applications and databases on a specific operating system. We have several deployments of database and a few of them are running on a bit older versions of Red Hat and some of them are running on newer versions. We are running different versions on different platforms. The management aspect is also very good, especially when we need updates on the different packages from the RH support network, management is easy.

We also use the tracing and monitoring tools to monitor OS as well as applications running on RHEL platform. The OpenShift is also a big plus through which you can manage and deploy enterprise-ready containerized workloads.

Being an advocate of open source technologies I always wished that Red Hat subscription/ support should be offered free of cost. Having said that, I understand the economics involved in running large enterprise like Red Hat; support cost is one area that can be improved. They should offer it at reduced prices.

I have been using RHEL since the start of my technical career, which was around the mid of 2003. So it's been almost 18+ years. I started using RH when it was version 7.

Stability has always been a plus for RHEL. 

Scalability is excellent. With the introduction of hybrid and multi-cloud support, one can scale up as well as scale out his workloads pretty easily. We usually scale up our traditional workloads when we need more resources i.e., during peak seasons. 

Four people in my team are responsible for deployment and support of Linux based workloads. 

We have around 300 virtual machines (VMs) and roughly 20% of them are running on Linux environment.

Whenever I open a case, I believe the support team will be able to solve my problem. They are very good at it. The documentation RHEL provides is also very good. Almost all the time, I get a solution to my problem. :)

We are using other flavors of Linux OSes, that include Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) and CentOS, both of which are binary compatible with RHEL. We are also using a couple of other Linux flavors like Ubuntu and OpenSUSE.

RHEL provides features that help speed our deployment. Installing on a physical server takes more time than installing it onto a virtual machine (VM).

Because of absence of local support in our part of the region, we did find some difficulties in the initial deployments with hardware vendors/ partners when we started in 2003. The local partners didn't have much knowledge of Linux environments at that time, and the support for hardware was also a bit tricky. The deployment took a couple of days until we got support from the hardware manufacturer.

Nowadays, it's very good. I managed to get good support from the hardware vendors after that incident.

We have our own deployment plans for the operating systems that include some baseline configurations and security checklists.

We usually deploy in-house as we have a trained team. Occasionally, little help is sought from the vendor teams, some of them have skilled professionals.

RHEL offers an efficient, cost-effective and reliable OS environment for enterprise-level environments. Similarly cost of running operations and the scalability factors make RHEL a good choice for providing a better ROI. The feature set it offers, support for a variety of applications, ease of deployment, and an excellent level of support all result in a good ROI. 

I believe for an enterprise-level operating system and the feature set RHEL offers, it's like any other enterprise platform cost. The introduction of OpenShift is also a big plus in terms of deployment and management of container based workloads. Red Hat as mentioned earlier can improve a bit on support/ subscription costs.

We had been using a couple of Red Hat variants for some scientific experiments that included Scientific Linux CERN (SLC) and Scientific Linux (SL), which were a confidence booster for choosing and deploying RHEL for production workloads.

Since I started with version RH 7, I believe the GUI is quite close to any other GUI operating system. There have always been a variety of tools and features that attract a non-Linux user.  As already mentioned, RHEL has been a pioneer in open-source technologies; it continued to evolve with changing market needs, that has been a big success for them.

I would definitely advise choosing RHEL if you need stability, scalability, and reliability of the OS platform. I would be a big advocate for the use of Red Hat to any new person who wants to deploy his production workloads, on-prem or on cloud on a Linux environment.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. It's near perfect. 

We are using it for application services.

We find the Red Hat Satellite deployments very useful. It integrates well with other solutions.

It could be a bit more user-friendly. It could also be cheaper.

It is very stable. It is more stable than Windows Server.

It is scalable. The number of users would be in thousands. They include IT teams and end-users who obviously don't even know that they're using it.

I don't call them directly, but their technical support is good. 

It was straightforward. Our deployments are automated. To deploy a build internally, it only takes half an hour, but that's usually in automation. It would probably take a couple of months to put the infrastructure in place to be able to deploy it.

We have a site license on a yearly basis. Generally, we're okay with its price, but everything could be cheaper.

I would recommend this solution to others. I would advise others to do their research before deploying it and make sure that they are up to speed with the OS and what it can do. It is fairly easy to use as long as you know what you're doing.

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

We deploy front-end and back-end software applications on RHEL, and it's our app server. Most of our app servers and our production servers are on RHEL. They're running on RHEL, and that's why they are profiting from it. I2C is the issuer in the processing payment industry. Basically, we do the issuer processing for credit cards, and all the bank magic that happens when you swipe a credit card is handled by us. We're also using RHEL servers for processing debit card payments.

Customer support is valuable. Because most of the Linux distros are open source, most of them don't have customer support. RHEL isn't open source, and that's why I prefer it more than other distros.

Their pricing and documentation can be improved. They need to have developer variance that's more developer-friendly and less costly. They have a free developer version, but that's very limited in terms of features from RHEL. They also need to build their own open source community.

I've been using RHEL for about four months.

RHEL is very stable. Unlike Kali-Linux or Solaris, RHEL solutions are very stable. We have licensed projects, and they must be stable to provide all customers with instructions. They're stable, compared to other Linux options too.

It's very scalable. When you're using the right machine and the right settings or right parameters, it's highly scalable

Technical support from their customer service team is very good. They give responses unlike other Linux distros, and I think RHEL has better customer support.

My current company was using Solaris before. I was using Core Linux for three to four years. From Ubuntu, I shifted to RHEL and Solaris because I changed companies and jobs. We are using RHEL and Solaris in my current job, and I had to shift to these operating systems.

I have used the Ubuntu Linux base, I have used Kali-Linux and Debian. Of all those Linux systems, I think RHEL is much better, but I find Ubuntu much easier to use than RHEL.

Ubuntu is Debian-based, and Red Hat is, I think VM based. Another difference is open source systems have less support. Still, the community of Ubuntu is very strong and answers your query very promptly. But Red Hat is a certified, licensed product, and customer support from them is very good.

RHEL is expensive. The servers or cloud images are quite expensive. But I guess the client groups they target can afford that kind of a license. If you're a small business owner or a student and want to shift to RHEL, you must spend a lot of dollars. The developer version of RHEL has minimal functionality, but it's given away for free.

I would tell potential customers that they should go for the latest releases. If they want to buy it, they should get a developer account from RHEL first and use that dev account before buying it. They might have some hands-on experience before spending too much money on Red Hat.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight.

I use it for running RAID servers, Database clusters, and a lot of other open-source tools. I have also used it as a firewall.

We have on-premises dedicated servers located in some data centers. We also have cloud servers on the public cloud. I am currently using the latest version, and I have also worked on previous versions as well as Template.

Its security is the most valuable. It is very stable and has many features. It also has good performance.

Some of our clients were using Windows servers and products. I suggested Red Hat Linux to them and described the features. They switched to it, and they really loved it. There were around 50 servers in my last company, and they switched all those servers from Windows to Red Hat. I used to manage those servers.

It is mostly better than other solutions. However, it is sometimes difficult for disaster recovery, so we have to plan accordingly.

I have been working on Linux for the past ten years.

Based on my experience, it has been stable. I did not experience any issues.

It is scalable. I scaled it in a way that I put a load balancer and a few servers running behind that. When working with clients, we scale or expand usage based on the need.

I used to work on and manage a website, which was just like YouTube. Around 1,000 users used to use the site, which was definitely putting a load on this server. There were around 30 servers managing the traffic. I could manage 1,000 simultaneous users.

I have never used their support. I just do some research to resolve an issue.

I have also used Ubuntu and CentOS in different companies and for different clients. The utilization of packages, commands, and configuration files are different in Ubuntu. For example, if you want to restart a service, the commands are different in these solutions. They also have different firewalls. Red Hat uses firewalld and Ubuntu uses ufw.

The deployment is actually okay. It is not too easy and not too complex. It is easy for experienced people, but if you don't have the experience, it can be a little hard. 

The deployment duration depends on the type of deployment that we are doing. It could take from a day to a week or two weeks. We can also use Jenkins for auto-deployment.

I worked with a Cloud hosting and deployment company that provided different Cloud services to their clients. They had servers based on Red Hat. It does require regular maintenance. We had a team of ten people.

Red Hat Linux is inexpensive. Linux solutions are generally inexpensive.

I would definitely recommend this solution. It is my most preferred solution. I like using terminals, and with Red Hat, I get to work on terminals and shell commands. It has good security. 

I would rate Red Hat Linux (RHEL) an eight out of ten. I find it excellent, but no system can be 100% perfect.

We use it for 

• some of our websites
• one of our main applications for the City of Gothenburg
• automation 
• the underlying operating system for our GitLab server.

We have many different databases running on RHEL. Among them we have MySQL and POSTGRES and they all run great on RHEL 7 and on RHEL 8.

Using this solution, we can offer our customers an easier way to get a WordPress site, and they can have POSTGRES and Tomcat installations, and these run smoother on Linux than they do on Windows.

We also use both Ansible and Satellite from Red Hat. They are integrated with RHEL and they work like a charm. The integration works great. We use Satellite for patching our RHEL servers and we use Ansible to automate the patching and deployment of config files. That means we don't have to worry that much about the patching. If we want to deploy the same config file to 100 systems, we just run the playbook with Ansible and it's done. We don't have to run it on 100 servers.

The most valuable thing for us is the support that we get from Red Hat for the product. One of our most important applications here in the City of Gothenburg runs on RHEL, so if something happens, we have a partner to get support from.

The solution has features that simplify adoption for non-Linux users. There is an interface that you can activate on RHEL systems, and on other Linux systems as well, so that you will get a graphical user interface instead of just a shell. It's easier for an administrator who is used to only working on Windows.

In terms of the deployment and management interfaces for non-Linux users and Linux beginners, for me it was quite easy to get on with Linux and RHEL. And if you're not using the Cockpit, or graphical interface, then it's a bit harder because then you have to type in everything and you don't get any visual guides. On the RHEL systems that we have, we haven't been using the desktop environment; we only just use the shell environment. But using Cockpit is much easier because then you get a visual, graphical interface.

Sometimes they don't have new versions for applications like Apache or PHP. I understand it's because they have to have support for them, so they can't have the latest version all the time, but that's the main thing I see that could be improved.

So when you use RHEL and you want to install, let's say, Apache or PHP, you do a "dnf install php" and you get a specific version that Red Hat releases. But that isn't the latest version that PHP has released, because Red Hat has to make sure that they can support it. The compatibility with the latest version of Apache or PHP lags because RHEL does not release updates of the latest versions.

It's the same with the kernel. Sometimes they are a bit behind in the kernel version. That's the same issue. They have to test it and support it for so many years so that's why they are a bit behind on the kernel as well.

We've been using Red Hat Linux (RHEL) for more than 10 years. We are using versions 6, 7, and 8.

It's a really stable operating system. It has a lifetime of about ten years per version. It's not like other Linux systems where the lifetime is about five years. It's stable and it runs for a long time so you don't have to change the operating system that often.

It's easy to scale up and scale out.

Of the people using our RHEL systems, some are system administrators and some of them are just consuming power or memory or CPU from the server. They only have websites and they don't come into contact with the underlying operating system.

RHEL accounts for about 10 to 15 percent of our servers. Our usage increases all the time.

The solution also enables you to deploy current applications and emerging workloads across bare-metal, virtualized, hybrid cloud, and multi cloud environments. We only use on-premise in our infrastructure, but you can have it on bare-metal or on cloud or multi cloud. For us, it's been running great. It's reliable.

Red Hat's technical support has been quite good. Sometimes the lead times are a bit long because most of the support is in India, it seems, so there is a time difference. But if we need to get a higher level of support, we can just bump up the priority. So that's really good. We will get help faster.

I don't think our company had a similar solution before RHEL, although that was back before I started with the company. The company started with RHEL because they wanted to have support.

Red Hat, as a company, is a big contributor to the open-source community. That's another one of the reasons that we want to use RHEL the product.

The setup was quite straightforward. It was a bit harder with the latest version, but that was because of our VMware version.

For us, deployment takes about 15 to 20 minutes. Most of the time we get someone who orders it. They want to have a website and they need a server and we will spin up a RHEL server for them in our VMware infrastructure.

For deployment and maintenance there are two of us in the company. I'm one of them, in my role as a systems analyst, and my colleague is an IT strategist, although he mainly works as a system admin as well.

In terms of the solution’s single subscription and install repository for all types of systems, we can have as many RHEL installations as we want because we have a specific subscription that entitles us to have as many RHEL services as we want. We pay for a subscription and with that we get RHEL and Satellite as well.

The best thing to do is to go to developers.redhat.com and get free subscriptions for RHEL products, so you can try them out and see how they work before you go ahead and purchase or subscribe.

As far as I know, there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

We have Ubuntu, CentOS, and other types of Linux versions. The main difference between these products and RHEL is the support that we get from Red Hat. RHEL is also more capable and more stable and it is more of a well-tested operating system before it gets released.

Try the product out. If you decide to purchase a subscription, don't be afraid to submit a ticket or a support case to Red Hat, because that's why you pay for a subscription. It took us a  long time before we started to open support cases, because we thought, "Ah, we can fix this ourselves." But now we use the support system quite often and it works quite well.

One of the things I've learned from using RHEL is that there are applications that work so much better on Linux than they do on Windows.

We need to build a lockdown version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to build our application on top.

It gives us a stable and secure platform on top of which we can build our applications.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. It allows us to do better application isolation using containers. If I want to take a program that runs on my system and put it in its own network namespace, I can put it in a container. I can put a physical interface in with it and run them together in that container.

It definitely makes it easy to go back and look at all the Open CVEs and things like that.

It works well for us in terms of the portability of applications and containers for keeping our organization agile. We are able to do the kind of things we need to do. We are able to modify the system to do whatever we need to do to get where we want to go.

Things like packaging and the stability you get from things being downstream are valuable. A lot of times, upgrades are more security-based and not feature-based, so things do not break API-wise as we go forward a lot of times.

I feel like it is going all over the place now. Sometimes it is hard to figure out what is going on. I would like more guidance.

We definitely spend a lot of time developing on top of things, but I am not sure what on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux side can be better.

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

It is very stable.

It is very scalable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability.

It has been great when we needed it. We have not needed a lot of it, but we have had no problems when we needed it. 

Positive

We did not use a similar solution previously. We have only been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

We use it on-premises. We use the ISO installer. We install it via CD ROM on-site.

I was not involved in its initial deployment.

It is the guarantee that we are getting the updates that we could backport into the system and we have a stable system to build on.

We have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since I have been with the company. They might have evaluated other solutions before I joined.

To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would ask, "Why?" We plan to stick with Red Hat as far as we see in the future, and we have no plans to change.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not helped us to centralize development. It is not something we are looking to use it for.

We use Red Hat Insights very little. We work mostly in an offline environment. It is hard to use Red Hat Insights in an offline environment.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the underlying licensing system that our third-party tool uses. It offers convenience. We can open a case when we want to escalate anything. 

The tool's insights included with licensing is good. Security patching is also a good feature for us.

I don't like the UI changes that come with different versions. 

The tool's support is good. Sometimes, support comes from India. I try to wait and ensure remote support is from the US so that it fits the timeline. 

Positive

The product's deployment is straightforward. 

We are a big data shop that has around 700-800 nodes.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Leapp was very helpful. It is very easy to use. 

Our servers run for 500 days, and we reboot them every 600 days. 

I search through Red Hat Enterprise Linux's knowledge base daily. 

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6 since the third-party tool is compatible with it. 

We use satellites for the operating system and Ansible to do the configuration. 

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linunx's most valuable feature is patching. 

I am not happy with Red Hat's support. It is difficult to find knowledgeable people. It's hard to troubleshoot. 

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linunx since 2009. 

We used Solaris before Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Solaris' environment is closed, while Red Hat Enterprise Linunx is open-source. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linunx's knowledge base is good, and you can find answers there. 

I rate the product a nine out of ten.