Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are that it has been part of our core delivery solutions for many industries, mostly for telecom.

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I find most valuable include all of the features since system V. 

In my organization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) provides an agnostic interface for many storage vendors that we deal with, which helps us to have a wider spectrum of offerings in our consultancy offerings.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved by adopting a feature similar to YaST from a big European competitor, which would significantly enhance Red Hat technologies.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since 2005 when it was in release four, which makes it 20 years.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as favorable, noting that during the last five years, we've experienced fewer crashes and downtimes compared to other commercial Unix and Linux distributions in the market.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales excellently with the growing needs of my organization, and I would rate it ten out of ten.

I evaluate customer service and tech support as excellent; with either the partner portal or customer portal, we receive very good RCAs and analyses for any case we submit to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). On a scale of one to ten, I would rate customer service and technical support as ten out of ten.

Positive

Prior to adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I was using Commercial Unix, Oracle Solaris. The factor that led me to change was that during the last decades, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has absorbed many features straight from Solaris, enabling us to perform effective migrations from Commercial Unix to RHEL.

At the very beginning, at the earliest versions of Red Hat since version six, there was a kernel that was not compatible with many cluster vendors, and that's why we were adopting another vendor of Linux. However, we've seen that during these past years, Red Hat has been experiencing a lot of enhancements overcoming these kinds of barriers. And now Red Hat has become more versatile in accepting more hardware that allows us to standardize our Red Hat offerings in our consultancy services.

I have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). For data points, in one of the key industries I handle, which is telecom, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been one of the key strategic providers offering a good price to implement automation and containerization across all of the network elements we manage with several vendors, and in the latest five years, we have observed a good investment return in terms of ROI.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that I strongly believe Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers a good relationship between value and price, and despite it being quite pricey, it's definitely worth it.

Before selecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I considered SLES, which is a competitor of Red Hat.

My advice to other organizations considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is to have a good plan and to establish the relationship as a key strategic reference for any upcoming migration. The partnership and customer support provided is a high-value option. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped mitigate downtime and lower risk through high availability solutions and key features that enable network redundancy, allowing us to achieve this. 

I would assess the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as excellent because it has become one of the key standards in the industry for following guidelines according to any topic in the RHEL environment. 

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

Our main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are for our centralized O&M platform, while on the edge we use CoreOS.

My company benefits from RHEL features by avoiding drifts in our solution. If it gets out of engineering, we don't exactly know if the solution is going to drift if someone implemented manual configuration.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points such as security, upgrades, patching, and all that is related to long-term support. 

The feature I appreciate the most in the newest version is the image mode and the upgrade in an immutable way. 

Security requirements are a consideration when choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It's the platform that really allows for longer-term support in terms of security patches, which is also one of the requirements from our customers; this is why we are on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for those services. 

When it comes to managing my Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems for provisioning and patching, I start from zero. We provide a golden image scenario, and we install based on that golden image while customizing the product through our software itself, providing new bundles and everything around there. Patching is very similar; we provide additional packages and everything around the upgrades, and I'm looking forward to the image mode so that we can provide steps and immutable AB upgrades.

They should try to converge all the different product lines, in both Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and CoreOS and OCP based on CoreOS, to get to a single point where it would be easier to move from one to the other. 

Sometimes we build products for one specific application or product, and it would be beneficial to move to CoreOS due to further requirements, however, it's not always straightforward. All the different teams working on the different Red Hat products are pretty much self-contained, which is understandable, but if there were more of a common baseline, it would be much easier to consider moving from one license to another, from one product to another.

In the company, I've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) directly for three years. Before then, we have been partners and have also been using CentOS and Fedora for a longer time, approximately ten years.

The stability and reliability of the platform are top class.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales pretty transparently with the growing needs of my company. It scales effectively when we need to add additional resources or knowledge, and it's straightforward for people to gain those and for our structure to implement even more servers around these others. Both technically and knowledge-wise, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales effectively.

The customer service and technical support are excellent, especially through the partner program. It's easier to get support over specific issues, and I have noticed when we had bigger issues that could have prevented market problems, there was a good escalation path towards the right people to get answers.

Neutral

I have considered other solutions rather than Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

When we were considering getting out of CentOS, we were evaluating everything, including other open solutions such as Rocky, as cutting-edge solutions such as Fedora. 

I personally pushed for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since it was the best solution for us at that specific moment. I understand there are other solutions such as SUSE and Ubuntu that are all in the same market, however, with different approaches. I prefer the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) approach.

The deployment is generally very easy.

The biggest return on investment while using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) from my technical point of view is the continuous patching and security fixes that are constantly being added and the support around it. If we are having an issue, we can directly reach the right people for support.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as a product today at a solid eight out of ten, considering improvements already in place for the roadmap. With the features coming in RHEL 10, I could provide it an overall nine out of ten.

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are mostly development at first, and then after that, it's actually running full production loads on it.

One of the nice pain points that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) addresses compared to other distributions is the polished applications within it. 

Their repository tends to be more foolproof. The SELinux feature in RHEL is pretty strong. 

SELinux is not something that I was ever using before in the open source community, and it was very confusing at first; however, after a while, it made sense why that layer exists. The SELinux feature and other features of RHEL benefit my company by allowing us to lock in the server more traditionally than we would be able to with special permissions. 

It's about getting very granular versus just putting an umbrella on some things, and security-wise, it's very effective.

The security features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), including SELinux and its features, make it easier to be aware of compromises.

The Insights tool is very good at providing CVEs to alert us about vulnerabilities quickly. I can't quantify the impact in percentage terms since I haven't faced specific situations. However, the outlook compared to other distributions looks good.

To improve Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), it would be helpful to have a step-by-step process to make setup easier. Cockpit needs more features to manage complex tasks such as RAID configurations, as most of that is reserved for the command line.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for about a year and a half.

I find Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to be super stable and super reliable.

I have not scaled Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) outside of using templates and cloning features. I haven't scaled it out with OpenShift yet; it's something I want to explore, as I now understand what tools OpenShift can offer to scale out RHEL machines effectively.

My experience with customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is mixed. On a professional level, they are very responsive, which is part of the contract, but on a personal level, responses can take forever, and I often get pointed to community posts.

Positive

We did not consider any other OS solutions while using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), although there have been discussions about using Ubuntu. I don't think it will go that way because we are very satisfied with what RHEL offers overall.

The biggest return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that every time I put an application or tool in there, it's going to work. I don't have to second-guess it or go back; I know it will be a polished application.

Regarding the experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I would say it's beyond my pay grade. That said, it's not cheap at all. While it could always be cheaper, they provide substantial value for the money, and they consistently introduce new features that add value.

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

It's a great OS that has grown on me over time, and the more I use it, the more I understand its value and why it costs what it does.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the operating system to host various applications developed by our application group. It has our test tools, web servers, and Java applications. We install it based on the requirements of the applications.

It is a good product. All Linux solutions are pretty solid. It carries a different business model than a lot of them, which fits more into our business model. That is where it excels. We do not prefer unsupported ones or buying third-party support.

The most valuable feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is its support. I primarily use the product because it offers a phone number for support when needed. 

It integrates well with our existing systems like SaltStack for patching and provisioning. However, its primary value is in having support when issues arise.

There is room for improvement in terms of pricing and its knowledge base. 

I consider the cost high. The knowledge base is extensive and deep but can be confusing due to outdated or non-applicable information that you have to sift through to find relevant answers.

I have had experience with the basic and extensive use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for about 15 years.

Customer service varies. I would rate their support a five out of ten, as it depends on the person at the other end. Sometimes the support is good, and sometimes it is not so good. It is like any other support organization.

Neutral

I did not switch from any previous solution. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been in use since before my tenure.

I work in the casino gaming industry. Most of our servers are in Windows. We have about 30 Linux instances. We install it based on the implementation requirements of an application. There is a justification for putting an application into our environment. It goes through a process at our company, and then where we install it or what we install it on is usually up to the requirements of the application.

We have on-premises and cloud-based environments. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is running in one of those environments. It has adequate features for security in cloud environments. 

We use SaltStack, and we built the patching mechanism ourselves. We are pretty satisfied with it. If we were not satisfied, we would change it.

The upgrades with Leapp used to be painful. It used to not work at all for us. When we went to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, it did work, but it was a fairly painful process. The advantage is we do not have to reinstall the apps on top of the new image of Red Hat. It is an in-place upgrade. The problem is that you can install Red Hat Enterprise Linux in 50 different ways, and in the past, Leapp assumed you did it the default way. They have added some flexibility so that we can work around some of the stuff, but it makes you install it a certain way, which is not necessarily the way we would do it, mainly because of our security standards and performance needs.

We have not experienced a noticeable return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux itself, as the operating system serves its intended function without bringing additional advantages.

Pricing depends on the model used, costing about $3,000 per virtual host in the virtual environment. It varies depending on whether you get high availability. There are modules that are upsold such as kernel patching, which we do not use due to cost considerations.

In the cloud, we use their licensing. For on-premise, we use the subscription, so we have two different licensing models.

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

I work with both the cloud version and the on-premises version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I have worked with Red Hat Cloud and Red Hat Enterprise on-premises.

For the cloud-based products, the main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include deploying websites and complex software for customers, such as SaaS software on the cloud, specifically Red Hat Cloud.

When choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in the cloud, security requirements were not a consideration for me because Red Hat provides us with the SLA regarding security compliance. I am more than satisfied to use Red Hat Cloud for security purposes, while I manage some other forms of security, such as my own keys and access in Red Hat Linux systems.

I really appreciate the zero trust networking that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has, and it also provides the WAF, along with certified images from Red Hat. For my current work on containers, Red Hat provides certified images that minimize vulnerabilities of CVEs, improving security significantly.

Although I do not have much knowledge about virtualization technology, I can say that for the hybrid cloud on OpenShift with the operators provided by Red Hat, the ready-to-use operators take care of underlying security, patching, and updates, so I do not have to handle monitoring or security myself.

Security is highlighted as an advantage across various aspects, such as the zero trust networking feature and the availability of certified images, which are instrumental in minimizing vulnerabilities and enhancing security.

While there are good aspects, I would appreciate improvements in the command-line interface (CLI). Red Hat could do more on the CLI side instead of focusing so much on UI development.

I have been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for around five years.

Regarding stability, I have not experienced performance issues, crashes, or downtimes with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL); any problems usually arise from my applications, not from the Linux system.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is definitely scalable.

Whether I have expanded the usage of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) depends on the business requirements, as RHEL comes with a cost that my company can afford because IBM owns Red Hat, so everything scales on RHEL.

Regarding my experience with Red Hat's technical support team, I find that they come very quickly with answers. However, sometimes the first person who responds might be a technical support agent without in-depth knowledge, so for more complex issues, a specialized engineer comes to the rescue, depending on the criticality of the subject, especially if it is production or a staging environment. They answer according to the SLA and support terms.

Positive

Determining whether Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is cost-effective depends entirely on the business. If your business faces compromises leading to significant losses, then investing in Red Hat Enterprise is truly necessary. However, if your business is small or medium-sized, you can manage with the free versions.

Regarding the deployment aspect, my experience has been straightforward because it is all automated with Ansible; all I need to do is provide an IP address, and it takes care of all the variables and boots up automatically.

Regarding the pricing, setup costs, and licensing costs of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I have heard that the licensing cost is significant compared to free alternatives such as CentOS or AlmaLinux, which are managed by Red Hat. I previously used CentOS, which is free, but I had to manage everything, including security, patching, reboots, and storage.

The key differences between Red Hat and other Linux technologies I have used include the advantages of excellent technical support, good documentation, and a large community for problem-solving. A disadvantage is that it is not open source, meaning limited flexibility, and the high cost associated with Red Hat compared to others.

I would advise other organizations considering Red Hat to start using it as their applications grow larger, rather than waiting for their business to become huge, as delays can lead to complications.

Currently, I am working on bare-metal services where I install Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Using AWS for Red Hat is indeed a good option, as you can get the image directly from AWS with a subscription cost per hour for Red Hat licensing.

Red Hat helps keep applications operational because it provides built-in monitoring tools that offer a good overview of all running services, including built-in agents that come with the Red Hat subscription to identify potential breakouts. Regarding reducing risks, Red Hat also provides secure images that indicate the latest security patches available worldwide.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is excellent; the documentation is fantastic and is supported by a large community that answers questions effectively.

When comparing the business value of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to other Linux distributions, I find that RHEL is more stringent with its security, requiring users to be careful not to trespass, whereas other Linux systems do not enforce such strict security measures, and users must manage security themselves.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) overall as a product and solution at eight, possibly eight and a half.

I don't directly use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I advise our clients to select this kind of technology for their hybrid cloud requirements.

When looking at hybrid cloud, the entire ecosystem is very complex; public cloud, private cloud, everything comes together and becomes very difficult to manage. The best use case I can see when Linux systems are involved is to use one common platform to manage all the infrastructure and the platforms on top of that. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) would be the best choice for that particular use case.

The ability to manage complex environments, especially when it comes to hybrid cloud, helps us significantly, along with the Linux environments which are natively in-built into Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The reduction in complexity, ease of use, and managing the entire hybrid cloud landscape was easier with this software. Service mesh and Kubernetes support contribute significantly, allowing better handling of complex cloud-native applications efficiently.

We use third-party platforms to manage the risks and put the security guardrails in place, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has its own native security guardrails as well, so we use both.

Indirectly, we help other enterprises implement this solution, and I can tell how other enterprises are benefiting. They reduce complexity and achieve faster time to market as they improve efficiency and use these tools to improve their development process. This helps them move faster and release their software as soon as possible.

We are trying to move most of our workloads to public cloud environments; however, not everything will go to the public cloud. We are trying to find a balance between on-premise, private cloud, and public cloud. Currently, the split is 50% on public cloud, 40% on private, and 10% on on-premise.

Since we started recommending and our clients started using it, I can see the cost-to-performance ratio go up by over 50%.

I would suggest focusing more on the cloud-native aspect. Kubernetes and microservices are built in natively; however, it would help to bring the service mesh and service mesh handling. That would be one of the improvement areas.

Most importantly, since we deal with mostly Fortune 500 clients who are global in nature, as the data is siloed from multiple sources and has to be pulled in, it's very important that the data is secure and all the security guardrails are in place.

Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10 was recently launched, there were some bugs that needed to be fixed and performance issues. If those are cleared, then it would be a good fit for everyone.

There has not been much downtime with the system.

The scalability is above average. It has scaled up and created its portfolio in line with market demands.

The customer service was good. 

Positive

We did not use any previous solutions.

Deployment is fairly easy. The support that is required is appropriate for both full-fledged full stack developers and starting developers. The support overall is good.

We implement mostly through service integrators who help to do the groundwork.

Since IBM's acquisition, we thought there might be some changes, yet surprisingly, it was kept aside. IBM was kind enough to let them operate on their own, which is a plus sign. The stability has been good, and we have no complaints.

The pricing was good and did not affect much of the decision-making. It was appropriate, though I would suggest the team improve upon offering higher discounts on bulk purchases.

There are not many options available besides Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

I am a principal catalyst who works with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, the hyperscalers, public cloud, and private cloud, both on the client side and on-premise.

The ability to manage complex environments, especially regarding hybrid cloud, helps us significantly, along with the Linux environments which are natively in-built into Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

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

My main use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is as the operating system for all of our applications. I'm our Ansible SME, so we install on top of that and then use that application to manage the RHEL for the enterprise.

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I most appreciate include the easy package management and the straightforward upgrades. The stability and support are also impressive.

The benefit that my company sees from these features is significant. In my particular applications, it's not allowed to be down for more than five minutes consecutively, so it's helping me meet my requirement.

When considering how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved, I would say for the enterprise, having easier hooks for these air-gapped lab environments would be beneficial. The reason why these lab environments are air-gapped is we want to test new things, and we can't have it interact with the rest of our network until it's fully vetted. That's why we have these labs to fully vet those types of things. It's normally a hassle to get RHEL up in those environments until we work out the right treatment.

The improvement would be if there's an easy way to, through that air-gapped environment, entitle the RHEL images.

In terms of assessing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)'s built-in security features, I find that out of the box, we are able to manage golden images and that keeps us in compliance.

It is very easy to manage.

I haven't had experience with customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) items, but I have on the Ansible side.

The portal is excellent. They integrated OpenShift AI, so sometimes when I'm filling out the ticket, it already has the solution there and I end up not opening the ticket. When I do have to open the ticket, I get a good response. That's on the Ansible side, but I'm sure it's the same on RHEL if I ran into something.

We have considered different solutions, not so much Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) itself. Our company started with mainframe way back and has been long time RHEL customers.

We have looked at different container solutions and things in the Red Hat ecosystem, and Red Hat came ahead in those.

From my point of view, the return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is definitely significant.

If we were not able to meet our regulatory impact, we would not be able to do business. It is table stakes.

The advice I would give to other companies that are considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) right now is to do a comparison and get feedback from their engineers.

They will see that this is a much more stable platform with a lot of support. I would rate RHEL a 10 out of 10 because it's how we do business.

In my particular case, we have some development and testing environments that we run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and we currently produce specific software for financial entities that is developed and certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), with clients running it in production and us delivering support to those clients.

Stability and performance are what I appreciate the most about it. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) makes it easier to manage hybrid environments because it is widely compatible with all kinds of platforms and protocols, allowing integration with various systems. It is very convenient for me since I have both on-premises installations and cloud installations. A few years ago, we transitioned several machines from baremetal systems to the cloud, and the process was very smooth. One of the advantages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that it operates consistently across different platforms, meaning you don’t have to change your processes or tools when working with various environments. This reliability is particularly beneficial for my operations.

One improvement could be more radical removal or disabling of obsolete, non-secure features, specifically regarding hardening the system. While I'm not sure if this is different on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10, my team has installed the first one today.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for 10 years now, and I have been working with Red Hat as an older brand for about 25 years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very stable, and I don't recall the last time we had an issue that was not caused by a user.

The scalability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very good because it allows changes to be introduced on the fly without having to reboot machines, and it is very stable. We have reached a maturity level in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that is very efficient, giving us a lot of confidence in the product.

I haven't contacted technical support or customer support regarding Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in the last few years.

Neutral

While not exactly comparable, we also work with AIX from IBM as another platform, which is currently provided by the same group because IBM owns Red Hat. I have worked in previous years with other Linux distributions, such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Slackware, although I haven't worked with them for a while.

I have a very strong empathy for open-source systems, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) runs on an open-source kernel, which I appreciate because it allows for innovation and development of the system itself based on collaboration from different inputs. AIX is more closed with its own benefits, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) runs on more platforms, while AIX is IBM-based.

Deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is easy. It isn't a complex process right now, and there is a lot of documentation and information available to support them during that process.

The patching process is currently stable and very efficient, with frequent and scheduled releases that allow us to plan how we roll them out on our side. We have a scheduled patching process every month, even if there isn't anything to do. There are usually updates available, and we also have monitoring features that ensure the system is healthy and working properly, so we don't require live monitoring by a user, just some occasional cleanup in terms of logs and environment since it's mainly a development and test setup.

When you have your own systems on-premises, defining a lifecycle means needing to replace hardware, storage, and acquire equipment beforehand, whereas in the cloud, you don't have to do that because you pay as you use. This makes it easier to acquire new VMs on the cloud and install new images, moving from old machines to new ones without needing to get rid of old physical machines, thus making the cloud more flexible in the lifecycle perspective.

The business value of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) compared to other Linux distributions lies in the full set of systems and services it offers. While I haven't used the service support in recent years due to having a mature team that can solve problems, the support from Red Hat gives us great confidence in the software's quality, patching, and continuous development.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a 9 out of 10.