Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

Typically, we use this solution as a base to create and secure container images. Sometimes we use SELinux through RHEL and sometimes we only use RHEL. It is easier to apply STIG baselines to a RHEL system than other systems. We mainly use it for building and securing containers.

RHEL is different than any other Linux distribution folder. Folder locations are different and using this solution makes us more secure.

We are assured of added security because of the STIGs, automation and all the repositories that exist for securing Red Hat and SELinux. We have scripts that can automate the STIGing out of an RHEL machine, RHEL container or an RHEL BM.

It is also easy to troubleshoot using RHEL and follow the same process as other solutions such as Ubuntu, Debian, or Arch.

RHEL's effect on our organization's management and efficiency is noticeable because we check all the compliance boxes when we run STIG machines. It helps us because Red Hat is trusted in the governmental space. It also helps management save people's time by just having use of templated containers.

There's a lot more automation for STIGing out a Red Hat machine than there is in a Ubuntu or a Debian machine and this is one of the most valuable features. 

Since it's based off Fedora, I don't like the DNF package manager. 

I have been using this solution for six months. 

It's very stable. I've never had any breaking issues when upgrading packages or versions. 

We run this solution on a really small scale. We are a development group so we're not working on large-scale systems. We generate proof of concepts and then show that to the company for them to use so I can't really speak to how it scales.

Red Hat's tech support and customer service are really good. The Red Hat team are my favorite people to work with. They are easy to work with and genuinely care. I would rate them a nine out of ten. 

Positive

The initial setup is mostly straightforward depending on the specific setup. We build our own containers and that is more complex but there are simplex supported setups. In both scenarios, maintenance only involves a few commands and is simple. It is maintained by two security engineers. 

From an ROI perspective, this solution helps us win contracts. Contract values are negligible to what the RHEL licensing cost is. It has a really large effect on our contract deals because it gives our work and service credibility.

I would advise others to read up on the solution first. Try Fedora first before you get into Red Hat. There are some similarities and a lot of what you know about Linux transfers over. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

Absolutely rock solid performance, security, stability and reliability, essential features for a business that needs to mission critical applications in a 24 x 7 environment.

Plethora of useful tools and services that just make getting the job done a lot less time consuming.

RedHat Enterprise Linux has been running mission critical systems in my organization now for nearly 8 years, in a 24 x 7 environment.

During this time we have never, ever had any of our servers fail to function as needed.

Red Hat Linux has given us five nines (99.999%) uptime for years.

I have been using Linux in various forms for 10+ years

Mainly just the usual issues one will encounter whilst learning the platform, working out the best way to deploy and configure the servers, other than that though, the actual deployments were very straight-forward.

None, our RHEL servers have been rock solid.

No, we have RHEL servers of varying capacities and workloads, so far it's taken everything we can throw at it.

The technical support subscription is absolutely worth while if you need to use RHEL in production, knowing you can get support if you need it is comforting.

I've lodged a few support tickets over the years and always had prompt, informative responses, I would rate their support as being excellent.

We were using an earlier version of HP UX running on PA-RISC architecture, however we became concerned about the cost of remaining on the PA-RISC HP UX platform and possible future issues at virtualization.

When setting up any Linux environment, make sure you understand how the LVM works. Other than that it was all fairly straight-forward.

It was implemented in-house.

The uptime and reliability are the main ROI's, the product is also very competitively priced RE: Licensing, so many thousands of dollars in licensing costs alone.

The ROI on 10 years of rock solid reliability is almost impossible to calculate.

In Australia, you need to go through a channel partner, shop around and find a good partner that understands the licensing model well.

We evaluated HP UX 11.23, which we had been using before hand. However HP (at the time) had not delivered an x86 port of HP UX at the time when we were going to virtualization, so we needed an alternative to HP UX as we could not move into onto VMWare.

RHEL ticked all the boxes and was support by our technology provider.

Well worth a look if you want supported enterprise Linux.

We are internet service providers in Bangladesh and resellers of this product to our customers to manage their network infrastructure. 

I think this solution is more secure than others because it's not open source. Red Hat will ensure the details when you purchase the package. Having a certification will offer value. 

We've found that there is a huge demand for it. 

Although the security features are good, I'd like to see more added in the security sphere.

I've been using this solution for just three months and still not completely familiar with it. 

The solution is stable. 

The documentation is sufficient for my needs. 

The initial setup is easy, it takes around 10-15 minutes. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

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 use this solution for different projects. It's great as a realistic training platform and we've also used it for humanoid robots. We are platinum partners of Red Hat and I'm a digital solutions architect. 

We chose to go with this solution because it's easier to use than other operating systems. It provides illustration ability and better permissions. It has good compatibility which is an issue I have with other operating systems. I find it to be a more flexible product.

Most of the complaints people have about this solution revolve around security. It's not easy to increase that. 

I've used this solution for almost a year. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

We use the online community for our support and it's great. I can find the answers to all my questions there. 

I previously used CentOS, which is related to Red Hat. It was our client who decided to switch to Red Hat. I've also used Ubuntu which is an open-source solution with low security and therefore not suitable for enterprise-size organizations.  

The initial setup was straightforward because I'd already had some experience with Linux. Even without experience implementation is relatively easy. Deployment time depends on the project and usually takes longer with android applications because the deployment is not one process. We usually deploy on cloud, sometimes private and sometimes public. 

I think the licensing costs are reasonable. 

I recommend RHEL because although there's not much difference between it and CentOS, it does provide full support. If you have any issues you know where to turn and they can be solved. 

I rate RHEL nine out of 10. 

We use Red Hate Enterprise Linux in our infrastructure, which consists of VM and Linux. We use it to create clusters. 

I would like to see the GNOME system monitor feature, which shows CPU usage and other aspects. It will help to save time. 

I have been working with Red Hate Enterprise Linux for eight years. 

We have a separate team that handles any issues. We inform them whenever we encounter issues. 

I would like to see user training sessions that last about one to two hours on new features and releases. 

We have a separate team that creates dashboards for us. I rate the product a seven 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.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for running SQL servers, Oracle databases, Java applications, Apache, and data store types of things.

We use it for all sorts of functions. We have different levels. I am primarily an SE building and configuring the servers. The application-related work is for everyone else.

In terms of our environment, we might have some cloud. We have different engineering teams working on different parts of the technologies. My team and I do not touch that, so we have a basic cloud-based and non-cloud-based setup.

We are primarily able to standardize on the platform. By keeping everything standard, you know what might break or should not break. That is the true benefit. It seems to help keep a better level of standard across all groups, business standards, and application types.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to centralize development. That goes with platform uniformity. The development team has a common toolset and expectations from the toolset and what they are working with. It just makes things easier for each developer.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very good for keeping our organization agile.

It is the most lightweight platform to use. It is very flexible. It is not very difficult to manage, configure, and deal with. That is a plus point.

Migrating people from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to 8 has been good so far. Irrespective of whether we are doing an in-place upgrade or a full rebuild, most people are able to convert over. There is no problem.

For our use case, it seems to be working well, so I cannot think of what it could do better. I know for our purpose and what we have been using it for, it has been working well. Their support, however, can be better.

I came on board when they bought our company. At the time, I was using CentOS. From what I know, they have been only using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I started using it from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. It has been about 13 years.

It seems stable, but developers might have a different response. When you have a problem with a Windows server, you typically reboot it, but you do not have to reboot a Linux server to get it to work better.

It is a scalable platform.

It is pretty good. It varies based on the support person that you get. They might understand what you are talking about right away or not.

For one of the cases that I opened, I laid out every single detail possible. The first thing they said was that it was not that. It was something else. They kept going back and forth with different support teams on the same ticket. Finally, it clicked with somebody and they figured out what caused the issue. Somehow an RPM of a different version was installed on one server versus another one, and no one caught that. Some people were going down the wrong path saying it was networking and not some sort of binary that was installed which changed something. They went back and forth with different troubleshooting paths. Eventually, someone saw and understood what I meant.

Positive

We have always been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux at our workplace.

Deployment for our builds is typically PXE. I do not have insights into that because the build is built and configured by another team. I deploy and provide the server for the development team. I understand how Kickstart and other things work, but I do not install and configure it. It seems relatively easy. From what I have done in the past, it does not seem that difficult.

I am not aware of taking any external help for deployment.

The biggest ROI is in terms of consistency. We know how it works which makes going forward a lot easier.

We are coming from CentOS, so technically, our total cost of ownership has gone up, but it is still cheaper than Windows for a database server and things like that.

I was not a part of the evaluation. I came on board and began working with what was there.

In terms of security features, we do not use anything too advanced other than what is out of the box. We do not manage the compliance piece and things like that. There is a different group that manages that piece.

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