Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

The users utilize Red Hat Enterprise Linux for building, installing, and automating platforms. Additionally, we employ it as an installer for OpenShift clusters. Furthermore, there is a product called Red Hat High Availability Clustering and also JBoss. Occasionally, we also use it to build an Oracle RAC database.  

Red Hat Enterprise Linux simplifies risk reduction and compliance maintenance by utilizing bash scripts or Ansible to automate and streamline our tasks. Red Hat also offers a tool called Convert2RHEL, which simplifies the process of maintaining our products from Oracle, CentOS, and other vendors to Red Hat. This feature is truly remarkable.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is perfect for keeping our organization agile, especially when considering rootless containers or utilizing BotMan containers for enhanced security and performance. 

The Red Hat ecosystem enables the seamless integration of our products such as Ansible, Red Hat Virtualization, Red Hat Satellite, and OpenShift platform to fulfill tasks, thereby enhancing the efficiency of our organization.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps us reduce the time we spend on tedious tasks, and the large Red Hat community provides an easy way for us to maintain or fix errors and bugs. We were able to realize the benefits quickly.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to achieve security standard certification. I am a certified Red Hat System Administrator and Red Hat Engineer. The content of the certificate includes topics such as C Linux. This helps to make our organization more secure and stable and has an impact on our personnel sourcing.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux assists us in building with confidence and ensures availability across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. While there is a higher level of risk associated with using a public cloud for any product, private or virtualized environments offer greater security.

Red Hat Insights helps us prevent emergencies caused by security issues, noncompliant settings, and unpatched systems by enabling us to be more proactive in detecting and avoiding errors before they occur.

Red Hat Insights provides us with vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, especially when we register our host directly with Red Hat. It works perfectly because it utilizes machine learning, allowing us to monitor our logs and prevent unnecessary downtime.

Errata is the most valuable feature, which is supported by Red Hat. Errata is a list of corrected errors appended to a document in Red Hat, used for provisioning or batching our hosts. Moreover, its stability and security are noteworthy.

Ever since Red Hat acquired CentOS, the connection between the new CentOS Upstream and Red Hat Enterprise Linux has become unstable and requires improvement.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's ability to run containerized applications is not optimized and has room for improvement.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is extremely stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux can scale horizontally because it is in a virtualized environment. Vertical scaling depends on the deployment of the solution.

We have plans to increase our utilization of the solution.

The Red Hat technical support is excellent; critical issues are resolved promptly.

Positive

We also utilize other Linux operating systems depending on the use case. SUSE Linux Enterprise is more optimized for SAP products. When working with an Oracle database, it is preferable to use Oracle Linux.

The initial deployment was straightforward. The deployment time depends on two factors: the first factor is the infrastructure specs, and the second factor is what we are deploying with the operating system. For a minimal server, deployment takes five minutes. For a server with a graphical user interface, it can take up to 20 minutes.

The implementations are all completed in-house.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is deployed in multiple environments, including pre-production, user acceptance testing, and system integration testing. Our Red Hat team, the development team, and another team utilize Red Hat Enterprise Linux within our organization.

Each processor architecture has a distinct version of the software.

The Red Hat exams are not solely based on security but also on performance. It is a challenging skill to grasp, but once learned, Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be flawless.

I highly recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux, particularly for production environments, due to its stability and enhanced security features.

The most valuable lesson I have learned using Red Hat Enterprise Linux is that the entire Red Hat ecosystem is perfect. All the open-source projects can work together, especially for DevOps or when implementing valid automation or containerized applications. If we need to deploy a centralized application, we will use OpenShift. And if we want to perform tasks on OpenShift, we will use Ansible as an automation platform. If we want to upgrade or manage our environment hosts in batches, we will use Red Hat Satellite. If we have applications and want to create an environment for them, we will use Red Hat JBoss. If we want to run high-availability clusters or high-performance computing clusters, we will turn to Red Hat High Availability Clustering. Working within the Red Hat ecosystem is perfect.

We're the largest financial institution in Africa, and we use various operating systems and technologies to achieve typical financial service goals. In the past, we were an ION-centric shop. However, in the past decade, we've been increasingly leveraging Linux's agility compared to traditional Unix operating systems. 

Generally, we deploy by cloud, but we use RHEL on-premise in our data centers and prefer SaaS for infrastructure as a service. Our primary cloud providers are AWS and Azure, and we also use smaller third parties for niche environments.

RHEL is spread across virtually all elements of the institution, including headquarters and various locations on multiple continents. In my environment, it is part of a global trading settlement system. 

The rollout for this particular solution was probably about 250 users of the application running on the initial RHEL. We're a global bank, so the user base is much larger worldwide. Users include business and feature analysts, engineers, and project managers. Our infrastructure engineers were the ones pushing for a switch to RHEL, followed immediately by application engineers.

RHEL enabled us to move away from reliance on ION. We're free to choose the best-of-breed solution at any given time while keeping the cloud-agnostic infrastructure at the center of our deployments.

Our operational expenditures decreased, and RHEL made our teams much more flexible. With RHEL, we can have multiple copies of an OS without making annual plans to license and acquire.

The benefits were instant from my team's perspective. For example, we were immediately more flexible and able to scale rapidly. However, if you're looking at it from an executive point of view, the time to value depends mainly on the product and the scale of the endeavor. It might take a few years to reap a return. Ultimately, you will see the financial benefit, but that's somewhat difficult to quantify in the short term. 

I don't think that it's enabled us to centralize development, but it has perhaps increased the breadth of development possible on our applications. In that sense, more development can be centralized on the operating system, but that's more of a byproduct.

We outsource cyber security to other teams, so I can't comment in-depth on RHEL's security features, but I can say it enabled us to understand our security posture more efficiently. This wasn't always possible using an AIX or Solaris in a more centralized fashion. The feature set is maybe not as important as having a single pane of glass and a single configuration to apply across our systems and infrastructure.

RHEL made life a lot easier in terms of compliance because you can more accurately gauge yourself against industry benchmarks with the tools provided and identify your shortcomings. You can interrogate what you've done through research from multiple parties rather than just a single source of truth, which may not be true.

You can compile and run applications on any operating system, but RHEL's advantage is flexibility. It is more supported and supportable in the enterprise sense than Ubuntu or perhaps a smaller distro, but it's also flexible enough to easily transport from platform to platform: ISA to ISA,  production to development, and vice versa. That led me to embrace the switch to RHEL from other operating system variants.

RHEL offers more portability than any other OS flavor apart from perhaps Ubuntu Linux. As a large bank, we run on IBM's architecture. We run Power, Spark, and Oracle x86 across multiple environments. It lets us choose the right environment for the application, which is essential from an operational efficiency perspective. These days, we're all trying to cut heavy infrastructure and move to lightweight agile infrastructure. There isn't a better option in the production world than Red Hat.

There needs to be a broader understanding of the RHEL suite's nuances like how the versioning works and implementing it on various kinds of infrastructure in use across the development landscape. There needs to be more training and education. It's difficult when you have a roadmap to deal with, but it is possible. 

Large application vendors may not have certified RHEL, or they have certified an older version. Most of the large application vendors are unfamiliar with the versioning that RHEL introduced, which I strongly support. They will support a given sub-version up to a point, not realizing that the sub-versions are essentially additive. 

This can be a real frustration when you try to deploy modern infrastructure. It allows tremendous flexibility because we can try things out across the cloud, virtual, and physical, but that's not always where the issue is. It's a matter of educating the engineers and developers on our side or enterprise vendors on the other. 

The licensing could also be simplified. While it makes sense from a theoretical perspective, it's a challenge to explain to the procurement team. Those with some technical expertise can understand how our licensing model works. However, it's still tricky because Red Hat is so different from traditional operating systems. It's another barrier when I'm trying to deploy it in an enterprise environment.

In terms of feature requests, I would point out that our company tends not to operate on the bleeding edge for obvious reasons. We look at what has already been released to define our roadmaps. There's nothing in particular that I would say needs to be included. However, I would like to see Arm playing a more prominent role in the cloud infrastructure and enterprise physical data center spaces. Red Hat supports this, but I haven't seen a clear roadmap for how that support should evolve within the Red Hat operating system environment. 

I have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux for more than 10 years.

RHEL's stability is good. 

RHEL is highly scalable and we plan to increase usage. 

I wouldn't rate Red Hat support as less than eight out of ten because I can't think of anything negative to say. I can't think of a time when I haven't been able to get it. Also, because RHEL is global and Linux is open-source, you can typically get the support that you need through research forums and the knowledge base. It's seldom necessary to involve third-tier support within RHEL.

Positive

We still use other operating systems. We've used just about every solution you could name in conjunction with RHEL. We also deploy Ubuntu. In some cases, our application vendor requires us to stick with a given solution. Sometimes it's AIX or Solaris, but mostly we can override that and move to RHEL. Red Hat is now standard for most future enterprise deployments, and we run RHEL on mainframes too, but in a very limited fashion.

The setup was complicated only because the applications we were trying to run were not certified to run on RHEL. It was version 6.8, so we worked with major global vendors to add the certification for the versions we were trying to run. That was the complexity. The application always worked beautifully, and the performance was excellent. It wasn't a question of getting the development to work; obtaining an issue of getting certification for the platform, which is required for any financial institution.

From a development perspective, we proved the concept and ran a mirror of production and development to demonstrate the improvements in OpEx and performance. Getting it up and running in parallel was the key to getting it all to work correctly, and it was instrumental in convincing any dissenting voices of the value. 

The deployment took less than three months, but the certification took nine.
The team supporting the first application numbered around 50, and the small group involved in the initial switch had about eight people.

The entire application is run exclusively on RHEL, so the whole operation team is probably around 40 or 50 people. It's worth adding that our overall group runs about 20,000 servers, so it's challenging to say overall what the RHEL footprint is.

After deployment, RHEL requires maintenance to keep the solution up to date. Security requirements tend to be more prohibitive or less encouraging of change. It's a question of changing mindsets and explaining that something doesn't have to be legacy-tested to update. The security benefits of updating are more critical than testing to ensure the update hasn't introduced more flaws.

I don't have the data, but we have significantly reduced operational expenditures since switching to RHEL. It was a reduction of more than 10 percent. 

The licensing is tricky to understand. Enterprises want to be beyond reproach when it comes to licensing. We would rather over-license than under-license. However, that can be complicated with a high-performance development team who may need multiple operating system instances or want to experiment with spinning up many machines to see if something works or sticks. 

We don't necessarily need support for those. Our procurement team is confused if we need a license for an instance that was only up for 15 minutes on Thursday. We need to make sure that we always have sufficient licenses. That misunderstanding of how cloud development works can sometimes slow down development. It inhibits the growth and success of Red Hat Enterprise Linux globally. So more education around that would be beneficial or at least will provide more clarity.

RHEL's total cost of ownership is difficult to quantify, but it's almost irrelevant. In cases where you don't care, you can always use an open-source OS. In other cases, you need the support and certification that comes with something like RHEL. I do not believe RHEL has any competitors in our use case.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten. My advice to prospective users is to try RHEL out and see if your application works. In the long run, the benefits will outweigh the time and effort spent migrating. The important thing is to ensure you run programs in parallel so you can accurately evaluate the benefits and make a case for switching.

We use it for databases and applications. In the new model, we keep databases separate from applications. Currently, about 90% of our operations are running in Red Hat 8. Some systems are still on Red Hat 7, but those will be migrated off by the beginning of next year.

It's been great since we have it. It's been reliable and fast. We keep all the security agents, and we've been taken care of right away, and that's the improvement in our company. It's with the new RHEL. There's always something new, something good that works for us. 

Moreover, we might need to move workloads from the cloud in the US to China in the future.

As we're migrating and doing the Elite upgrade, which is an in-place upgrade, we find it great. We use it for databases, and we're testing it for applications. Some applications don't work, but some are functioning well. So far, it's been a positive experience.

Since I'm more focused on migrating, Leapp is awesome. We are able to do something that will work the way it's working.  There are no issues or breaks.

RHEL's knowledge base is great. It's very good. Especially when you try to open a case, it gives you all the options you need, so you don't have to wait for the case to be opened. You can get all the information you need right there.

Moreover, I am in the process of testing Leapp and Red Hat Insights. And then create our images from there rather than create MIs.

At the new company, we've been using it for three years. At my previous company,  we used it for over five years. Personally, I have been using it for almost eight to ten years.

We often have to go through people who have the same labels as us and who have the same knowledge base articles as us, which takes time. But they do it first; it's searching the knowledge way that I search. That I can do. That takes the time before. They do the payment. They sent me exactly what I had already found. And then we can go to the next level. That is taking a little bit more time that we can be a little bit better. So, the initial step of the support process could be improved. 

90% of people who open those bases are administrators who already look on the Internet for all these knowledge bases. So by the time we get there, we're gonna get the knowledge base back. And that's not helpful. 

Positive

I used to use HPUX and Solaris. We switched to RHEL because HPUX started looking like it was going away, so we started moving to Red Hat. We thought it was our best option. We tested different flavors of RHEL.

When it comes to provisioning and patching, we have a satellite server. We use a lot of Ansible. We are getting used to Ansible and Satellite servers. 

The initial setup wasn't complex, but since we wanted to make it easier to use, it became harder to make it work the way we wanted. Not out of the box, so we can just build a server that is ready to be deployed right away without any more interventions.

We use RHEL with AWS because it's easier for us to maintain since we create our own AMIs and we update that as we need it. So we don't need to follow their schedule until we get it more secure and more reliable for us.

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is connected to our internal private cloud that is air-gapped.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the operating system on our network management and data management servers. It is our server operating system of choice for any type of hardware that needs to be reliable and stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux solved our need for automation and running containers. It is the most stable open source operating system available. When compared to other OSes, it is reliable and works well. This is important for my line of work, where I need to be able to reliably transfer files across thousands of miles. I need to do this quickly, and I have found that other OS solutions, such as Windows Server and Ubuntu Linux Server, are not as reliable or as quick. I have found myself constantly having to troubleshoot problems with these other OSes, and there is often not a lot of documentation available to help me.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux knowledge base is awesome. Everything is documented, so I could easily find the information I needed to troubleshoot my misconfiguration issue. The knowledge base even provides suggestions for likely causes, which was helpful because most of the time, when something isn't working right on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system, it's a configuration issue.

Security is one of the benefits of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is secure from the start, and it does not take long to configure it to meet government security standards. It also performs well during the staging process, and it does not break or cause services to be lost. In contrast, other operating systems often lock accounts, break, and cause services to be lost.

Simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance is straightforward and uncomplicated. There is plenty of documentation to help us, so if we get lost, we can refer to it to find our way.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux makes it easier for our company to stay agile. We have found that our applications and programs run just fine on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which provides a lot of supportability.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's most valuable feature is that it comes with all the tools we need to set up and maintain an enterprise-grade system. Even if we install the minimal version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we will still have everything we need to get up and running quickly and easily. And if we ever need to restore our system from a backup, Red Hat Enterprise Linux makes it easy to do so, whether we are restoring from a scratch build or a backup that is a few weeks old.

A feature that I would like to see in the image builder is the ability to open the image in live mode and access a command line interface. This would allow me to immediately apply the necessary security settings required by the STIG. By doing so, I can deploy the image with the confidence that vulnerabilities present in the live network cloud service are closed before deployment, rather than applying the settings afterward as suggested in the example by Red Hat.

Ideally, I would prefer to deploy an operating system that already has all the necessary configurations in place. This would involve accessing a command line interface, adjusting configuration files as needed, setting up banners, and establishing user accounts. After making these changes, I would create an image and deploy it. I've noticed that the current image builder is primarily designed for commercial use, but as a DoD user, I have different requirements. Therefore, having an emulator or virtual terminal that allows me to interact with the kernel and make live changes, which can then be saved to create a customized ISO, would be an excellent feature to have. It would be great if Red Hat Enterprise Linux had a similar capability. Interestingly, Ubuntu Linux does offer this functionality with its "Custom Ubuntu Basic ISO Creator" (CUBIC).

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a scalable operating system. Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers a wide range of options and features, and we are only just beginning to explore its full potential.

The initial setup is straightforward. I installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux using the stick method. I had to create nine different partitions, all of which were encrypted. This is where things got a little complicated. We need to decide whether to create a LUKS partition or partition and build our image on top of a LUKS partition. Initially, I was individually encrypting each partition using the "encrypt" option. However, this is not ideal because we cannot grow or shrink an LVM partition that is on an encrypted partition. Once the partition is created, it is set in stone. So, I needed to figure out how to encrypt just the partition and then create an LVM partition on top of the encrypted partition, such as SDA3. This was a bit of a challenge, and there is not a lot of documentation on how to do this. The documentation that is available is a bit confusing, and I got lost a few times. Once I figured it out, it was not too bad. The entire deployment process takes about 20 minutes.

We have seen a return on investment in all areas with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, including productivity. We use it in our daily operations in almost all of our systems. In one form or another, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is running on our systems. If we are not running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, our systems are unstable.

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.

For those who are looking at other open source cloud-based operating systems for Linux, I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is well-documented and has a large pool of information available. We can also use CentOS content with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The pool of information for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is far greater than some other open-source solutions.

The environment in which we deployed the solution is enterprise-level.

We use it for core infrastructure services, like package mirrors, configuration management hosts, and proxy requests going to the Internet or as reverse proxies in front of our applications. Our campus management software is delivered via RHEL and applications like Wikis learning platforms.

Almost all machines are running on virtualization. Only a few bare-metal systems exist today. Currently, we are not engaged in any kind of public or hybrid cloud environment.

One of the most important features is the package manager. It provides the ability to very easily roll back transactions when something has gone wrong. It is an easy-to-use tool that helps me in situations where something unexpected has happened. I found that this was one of the solution's major advantages over other distributions.

Another point that I really like is the ecosystem around RHEL. Red Hat provides security and bug-fix Erratas for every single update out there. Thus, I have a lot of pretty sophisticated information so I can inform myself about what an update is for, what could happen when I install it, or what would happen if I don't install it. The value added by the information Red Hat provides for its distribution is pretty good.

RHEL provides features that help speed deployment. We use Ansible in our environment, which is the free version that is usable with a RHEL subscription. It is pretty easy to set up a baseline configuration for each system as well as deploying our applications and configuring them.

Ansible and RHEL integrate pretty well. You see pretty quickly that Red Hat has a huge engagement in RHEL as well as in Ansible. They work very well together. This integrated approach decreases the time that we need to set up configuration jobs. It helps us to have faster deployments as well as make configuration changes faster and more secure. It is a tool for everyday use.

We use the solutions AppStream repository at some points. Compared to earlier versions of RHEL, we like that it is now easier to use the newer versions of run times, e.g., Python. 

We use RHEL to run multiple versions of the same application or database on a specific operating system. For example, we run several versions of the MediaWiki platform on the same system. We usually have one version of a database management system per host. If we need another version, we deploy it on another host.

RHEL's feature for managing multiple versions of packages is getting better. In earlier versions, when I think about the Red Hat software collections, it was sometimes pretty hard to set them up and use them on a daily basis. With AppStreams, it got easier. What could still be improved is the lifecycle information about AppStream versions. Usually, when doing a major release, I have 10 years of support divided in different support phases, but a lot of applications from the AppStream repository have a completely different lifecycle so you need to check it separately. For example, a certain node.js version will be at the end of support in 10 months. I must make a note to update to a new version before it reaches the end of support. It would be awesome if the end of support date of the application streams would follow a stricter lifecycle with aligning end dates.

The Authselect tool needs improvement. This tool is used to connect your system to an identity provider or directory service, e.g., openLDAP. There is documentation and descriptions. While there are a few use cases and examples described, it is sometimes hard to use these tools to set up the configuration that we need for our specific environment. I would like it if there was more general information about the tool, not just describing a use case. For example, here is how to do it and how to connect to some kind of openLDAP service as well as more information about when you need to configure certificate services and mutual authentication. There is room for improvement, but it is more room for improvement in the documentation area than the RHEL system itself.

We have been using RHEL since 2016. 

The stability is awesome because we have had only a few issues in operations. Once it is set up, tested, and ready for production, it just runs. For the usual maintenance tasks, like updating the system and making configuration changes, there are almost no disruptions or issues in our environment.

The availability is great. We usually don't have big issues in our day-to-day operations.

When it comes to increasing memory, CPU count, or deploying more RHEL instances, the scalability is good. We don't have any issues. However, I would guess it would be the same with another distribution.

I would rate Red Hat's technical support for RHEL very differently. It depends on the area that you are looking for support. For example, when I have an issue with a RHEL core platform, there are a lot of good support engineers available to help with my issue. There have been phases where one could get the idea that they are short on staff with Ansible experience, but it is now getting better again. However, the average experience and response times are good. Their responses are also good. When you have a difficult case, they are able to escalate it quickly. Therefore, you get an engineer with the appropriate background to help solve your issue. I would rate the technical support as a solid eight out of 10.

Positive

I was part of a working group who decided which major enterprise distributions we would introduce into our organization. Before 2016, we only used a very small number of Linux installations and different distributions. As an outcome of this working group, we decided to use RHEL and have used it since as the only distribution in our data center. We migrated from other distributions, such as SUSE Linux Enterprise or openSUSE, to RHEL.

While all distributions share a Linux kernel, there are differences in how to manage the distribution itself. A very important part is the package management. When you have to deal with tasks like updating packages, downgrading packages, and repairing damaged package databases, you want to have one package management tool that you know very well, not three different package managers where you only know the basics. To ease the management of multiple hosts, we decided to migrate to only one distribution. We hoped that we would have an advantage in consolidation. 

The complexity of the initial setup will depend on the requirements of your organization. Generally, I find it pretty straightforward. There is good documentation for it. The installer works great. I haven't had any issues.

There are special academic offerings for academic institutes, which is pretty good. We need these offerings. In my personal opinion, the prices are okay. However, for educational purposes, they could be lower. For example, in Germany, the budget in the education sector for IT is lower compared to the huge universities in the US.

When you are only using the RHEL subscription system, it is okay. It can get complicated very quickly when you need multiple different subscriptions with a lot of SKUs. 

When someone is going to look into RHEL, I suggest starting with an individual developer subscription, which everyone can get for free. With developer subscriptions, you won't be able to contact support, but you have almost all of the important applications and features of RHEL for free. You are not allowed to build your whole production on it, but you are able to develop applications, test configurations, test the platform, and try out almost everything.

In our IT environment, we were running Solaris and Microsoft Windows. It was decided that we wanted to move away from Solaris to some Linux distributions. In the process, we looked at distributions, like RHEL, Oracle Linux, Debian, SLES, and Ubuntu. We looked at all of these points: 

• What are the management tools? 
• How does it look in the ecosystem? 
• How many packages are available and the distribution repositories? 

We created huge metrics to score all these different points. There were over 200 points to score for the different distributions. In the end, RHEL was our winner.

Red Hat’s open-source approach was an important factor when choosing this solution. For example, let's say I won't use OpenStack from Red Hat anymore. There are other OpenStack distributors out there who know the application and can help us in the migration process. It is the same with the platform. At the core, the Linux distributions are pretty similar. We believe it would be easier to move to other solutions from other vendors compared to operating systems or software from proprietary vendors.

We have plans to increase usage. Every new application that supports running on Solaris or Linux is going to be deployed on RHEL these days. I hope it will be our major operating system in the data center. So, in the foreseeable future, there would only be two operating systems: RHEL and Microsoft Windows.

I would rate this solution as nine out of 10.

We primarily use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to host applications with our virtual machines.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers an excellent and comprehensive knowledge base for Linux. It is among the most thorough available.

Our Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment utilizes a patch management system for updates. However, provisioning remains a manual process, with virtual machines being installed individually. We currently don't use automated provisioning solutions like Ansible, Vagrant, or Terraform.

Red Hat Insights is helpful for deep dives into OS-level issues and remediation, as it links directly to the Red Hat knowledge base.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables compliance with regulatory requirements by providing customized images that meet various security standards. This streamlines our process as every virtual machine image is deployed with hardening by default, reducing the need for manual application per virtual machine.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux knowledge base is a valuable resource.

In terms of improvement, Red Hat could consider offering cheaper licensing. The licensing model is good, but we would all appreciate a lower price.

To ensure compliance and security on our Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, we had to install additional software, such as endpoint detection and response or antivirus solutions. The built-in security features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux were insufficient for our needs, necessitating the implementation of supplementary security measures.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not affected our systems negatively regarding stability, experiencing no issues so far.

Customer service by Red Hat is very good. I haven't noticed any shortcomings in response time or overall competence.

Positive

The upgrade from version seven to eight was done with Red Hat's assistance, as we manage hundreds of virtual machines.

The licensing model of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is good, but lower prices are always preferable.

We evaluated several alternatives, including CentOS and Rocky Linux, but the support question kept coming up with community distributions. We chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux for its enterprise support, which is crucial for maintaining production systems.

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

I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux to others, especially in the enterprise space. However, for startups or companies that do things themselves, alternatives like Ubuntu or CentOS Stream might be more suitable.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as our server operating system to install and configure various applications. Its uses include system troubleshooting, DNS configuration, and many other tasks, especially in a mixed environment with Ubuntu.

Patching Red Hat Enterprise Linux in our environment is a straightforward process that utilizes Red Hat Satellite. We identify necessary patches for production servers in the content view and notify customers two days in advance via email. Before patching, we verify the Nagios servers for identification purposes. We then execute a pre-configured Ansible playbook to efficiently patch our 300 servers. This playbook was already established, and our only interaction with it is to run it.

The web console is handy, especially for tasks like command line operations. Its secure environment allows for the safe execution of queries.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is most valued for its reliability, as evidenced by my daily use.

The documentation needs improvement. Providing more detailed explanations would make it easier to work on projects.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for my entire career, which spans over eight years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable. There has been no significant issue regarding lagging or downtime.

Red Hat is highly scalable and essential in the industry. I would rate scalability nine out of ten.

The customer support from Red Hat is good. They are always there to help when needed.

Positive

I have used Ubuntu, and Kali Linux alongside Red Hat.

I have been involved with migrations to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which are not complex. For example, migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or 8 is easy, requiring only the installation of necessary dependencies and the creation of a file to sync files to the new system.

I typically work as part of a team rather than implementing integrations on my own.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is quite expensive, particularly its technical support, which can cost $500 per hour.

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

Realizing the benefits of Red Hat Enterprise Linux took time, as post-deployment troubleshooting was often necessary. This included tasks like opening ports and verifying functionality, which were sometimes prerequisites for the system to operate. These requirements varied depending on the specific application used and its security needs.

We perform maintenance on Red Hat Enterprise Linux every weekend, including backups. Incremental backups are done daily, while full backups are completed every weekend.

We are using the solution for automation. Mainly, we're doing a lot of automation with it. One of the projects, for example, is for ensuring payments processes on forms. We streamline and optimize the insurance claims process using OpenShift. This has enabled us to do faster claims processes and make resource utilization more efficient than it was. Everything can be done online. There are no papers involved. 

It is mainly just cutting out redundant tasks. The focus was mainly driven by driving costs down and efficient resource utilization. We wanted a solution that could make deployment easy and ensure scalability.

The biggest benefit has been the automation. It affected our delivery schedule. Instead of doing something in two weeks, we do it faster. We've cut down our production time. And people are able to focus on other tasks since they're automating a lot of things. Even with our clients, when they have issues, we have created a system where they can send out a ticket. And from that ticket, we can diagnose, and it's easier to solve the issue at hand. 

In terms of cost per head, we've seen a drastic drawdown from that. It is mainly optimizing a lot of our systems and resources.

The high availability is great. It's available most of the time - even when we're doing upgrades, provisioning, configuration, and patching. It made things easier for us. 

The automation is great. I'm a big fan of offering convenience to people and making systems easier for people to understand and use. 

There are good features, such as proactive monitoring as well. It offers predictive analytics, which helps you identify issues before they impact operations. We can foresee several problems. On top of that, this is how we can combat those problems. These types of features are really valuable when considering a company's strategy and when it comes to the impact of operations. 

We are able to move workloads between different clouds or our data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The knowledge base on offer is quite extensive. We started learning from a third-party provider since we've had a lot of use cases. Maybe you are installing something, or maybe during virtualization, you have to do something, and you need more information. The Red Hat OpenShift community is quite huge. Even a resource such as YouTube has people releasing videos on common problems. Even outside of Red Hat itself, the Red Hat community is very good. The information is extensive. The knowledge base is there. There's a lot of information sharing. People do not try to gatekeep information. 

When it comes to provisioning and patching, so far, we have not had a lot of issues. We currently are using a subscription model. In terms of getting security patches and updates, they support us quite well. There's a 24-hour support base and they're quite good. 

I've tried the Leapp and Red Hat Insights features. It helps with proactive monitoring. It did analyze the system configurations and compares those against databases of known problems and fixes. Basically, there's a pool of data that has common issues and it analyzes how you've configured your system and then compares them. It can come back to you and say, "Hey, this is your problem. Why don't you try the solution?" It's like a good AI tool. It gives us a lot of help. It's quick. Thanks to this feature, we sometimes find that we don't really need to open a ticket for support.

We realized the benefits of using RHEL in months. We were told when we were doing the onboarding, we'd see benefits in six months. For us, it took a little over eight months. That was due to some of our internal processes that we had to do, some sign-offs, et cetera. Still, it took us less than a year. Over time, we are down 20% to 30%.

In the beginning, we didn't start on the cloud. Only now are we fully transitioning to going off-site. There are still some clients who are a little resistant to going to the cloud. It's nice to be hybrid, to accommodate both. We've done a lot of virtualization and server consolidation. So far, everything is running smoothly. 

When moving workloads between different clouds or data centers, it's not that simple. There are a lot of things that you need to consider, including prerequisites and things like hardware, network, operating systems, et cetera. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes easier. However, in the beginning, it was very, very challenging. Coming from a development background, I found it easier to use command lines.

I've hit some snags doing updates or changing things for clients. 

It would be nice if they improved vulnerability management. They could add more security tools and tools for provisioning. 

I've used the solution for two years. 

The stability is good. We don't really have any downtime. I'd rate stability nine out of ten. 

We've had no issues with scalability. It's quite user-friendly. 

During the implementation, we did have to open a support ticket. They assisted us effectively.

Positive

I've never tried other solutions. I know of other solutions, such as Ubuntu. However, my interactions with that solution have been minimal. 

The initial setup was a little bit complex. The instructions, however, were very clear, and our deployment strategy was clear. Still, for the technicians doing it, it was complex.

The setup took about a week and a half.  

I've been involved with two upgrades so far. They were challenging. There were a lot of teams involved. There needed to be a lot of migration planning. We had to use the Link Utility and we did a lot of testing first. We spent a long time verifying the applications and checking dependencies. It was quite a learning curve.

There is some maintenance needed in the form of system updates. 

We did get a lot of help from RHEL. We had senior engineers guide us through the setup.

We've seen an ROI of around 30%.

When we went through IBM, it was quite expensive. Now, we are going through AWS, which is less pricey. 

We started off as a partner to IBM, and IBM opened up the opportunity for us to build certifications for Red Hat through the certification program. Then we became support specialists, taking on RHEL projects. We are in the process of becoming a reseller. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. We're doing a lot of big data infrastructure and they are giving us good stability and performance.