Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

My primary use case for it is to run Jenkins servers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is critical for our operations. We use it for all of our Linux servers. 

It works. It's consistent. It's well-documented. These are valuable aspects to me. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 updates the Cipher Suites and the security proceeds it. I wasn't pleasantly surprised because a bunch of our server communication didn't work. Having the Cipher Suites updated is a good thing but was not convenient.

I feel positive about the built-in security features when it comes to simplifying the risk and reduction and maintaining compliance. I'm also a Windows Server administrator so, compared to my Windows Server experience, I have very positive feelings about Red Hat Enterprise Linux security based on how easy it is to keep things patched, up-to-date, and compliant.

Some of the repositories and some of the DNS versions are very old. I just deployed something using Ruby and the DNS stable repository was sufficiently old that the Ruby project I was using didn't work. 

I would like more transparency and better options other than using something like Ruby Version Manager. I'd rather be able to get modern, up-to-date versions from the base repositories.

We have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ten years. We're on a bunch of different versions. We're anywhere between version six and nine. My personal project is on nine.

We still have Windows servers.  

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very resource-intensive, and it's hard to secure because Windows, the base use case, is all things to all people. 

I generally like Linux server products. I like the way they specialize, and I like the default security posture.

We have a hybrid environment. We do have some things in the cloud. We're using both Azure and AWS as our cloud providers.

I was involved in the process of migrating our Jenkins servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. It was not straightforward or complex because we changed a lot of things about our deployment. We tried to improve and streamline, and in the process, we broke some of our pipelines. 

It was not smooth, but that was not necessarily because of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, except for some of the security upgrades. We could not use the old RSA keys that we were using with RHEL 6 with RHEL 9. This meant that we either had to loosen our security by allowing legacy keys or tighten things down. We chose to tighten things down.

Another challenge is that we have some old Red Hat Enterprise Linux applications that are running on very old versions. We are trying to get everything off of RHEL 6 and 7 and onto RHEL 9, but there are a few applications that are stuck on RHEL 6 for various reasons.

We are getting rid of all of our Linux servers, so the biggest challenge right now is migrating our applications to RHEL 9.

When it comes to provisioning and patching, it is pretty manual. The company uses VMware, and the process is pretty manual and involves a certain number of shell scripts. I know we're trying to adopt Ansible, but we're not very far along.

I've had a very positive experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. My only point of comparison is Ubuntu, which I use for personal projects. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a solid enterprise product with a greater emphasis on security. However, Ubuntu Server is easier to use in many ways compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This may just be a matter of familiarity, but I find it easier to get current versions of Ruby with Ubuntu than with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 

This is based on my somewhat limited use, but it's my impression nonetheless. That's what keeps it from being a ten out of ten.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for off-the-shelf applications and Oracle databases. 

The tool is simple and easy to use. It has good support and doesn't have many outages due to the OS. 

The cockpit server doesn't work and is useless. I don't like the images shown in GCP. I prefer the ones in AWS. It seems like the solution is in tune with what we deploy on the private cloud. 

I have been using the solution for ten years. 

We open a case whenever we need support. Whenever I need support, I contact the technical guy assigned to us and provide him with the documentation. 

Positive

I have used different OS like Motorola, Unix Flavors, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, DG/UX, and Sonos OS. Unix is dying, and everything is moving to Linux. Linux is open-source and easier to use. 

We build our own deployment method. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is expensive. We have changed the cloud provider's subscription to a pay-as-you-go model. 

We use the on-premise, cloud, and hybrid versions. We have deployed it on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Most of our infrastructure is in the Azure cloud. I work in the server infrastructure team, and other data collectors work on AWS and GCP. We haven't used the tool's features like the image builder. 

The product supports our hybrid cloud strategy. We have been migrating using tools from Microsoft Azure. Its knowledge base is good. Sometimes, finding an article is difficult. However, once I reach them, it contains good information. 

We used Azure's tools for migration to the cloud. It is straightforward. We have no problems deploying the servers. Our main strategy focused on data centers.

We use the Leapp tool to manage the upgrades. It works smoothly on our Oracle databases. Leapp is straightforward to use. 

We use Red Hat Insights quite a bit. I have not explored all the features yet. We use it to look for events our monitoring hasn't picked up. It also helps us with tips and hints for fine-tuning applications like SAP and Oracle. We go by these recommendations and follow them to put the applications in place. I have downloaded the Playbooks for remediation. 

I use system rules for SAP tuning in Oracle. I do not use the image builder since we already have a process to do the server builds. I use the web console once in a while. 

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

We primarily use it for OS purposes. 

It's very good for support compared to other operating systems. For decades, it's been providing good support and service. Even during implementation, there's a dedicated team to answer any queries. We are a very big company running critical applications and having that support is very important.

The patching tool is good. We're also introducing the possibility of automation.

The built-in security features are okay when it comes to simplifying risk reduction. It makes life easier, especially in regards to the lifecycle and what we need to install, et cetera. The features and tools help us to maintain security overall. 

It is easy to maintain compliance.

The portability of applications and containers is good. Now we are just starting with the containers and anything related to Kubernetes. 

Red Hat is always providing security on time. Any vulnerabilities are immediately dealt with to fill the gap and deal with the issue.

It's a good tool. I'm very confident with this product.

The system role features for automation security configurations, et cetera, for Ansible, we started using it. We are new in terms of automation. We'll start to use it heavily in the near future. Ansible is another great tool from Red Hat.

It enables us to maintain consistency across systems over time. My role is to maintain stability, even during upgrades and patches. So far, it's been a positive experience. We use the entire ecosystem around Red Hat.

We use Red Hat Insights. From a security perspective, we may stop using it. With Insight, if you have Red Hat Satellite, it gives you an in-depth view of everything. The only thing missing is the insights related to performance. We may not continue with it. We'll see if we'll push it and have everything on the cloud. 

In the area we are using it, we are satisfied.

Maybe in OpenShift, which is our next step, there can be more improvements with integration with Kubernetes. We're not experts there yet. 

Maybe it could have a better user experience and less coding. Reducing the effort for the end user or administrator would be ideal to make daily operation and maintenance easier. 

If they can make the integration with Ansible easier, that would be ideal.

They should offer more in terms of learning materials to make learning easier. 

They need to make things more affordable or accessible. 

The solution is stable. We barely have any issues with a server setup. So far, it's manageable. The biggest challenge is the criticality of releasing patches. When we have any critical alerts we action them. We tend to try to wait for the release of a stable version. 

How many people use the solution depends on the application. We likely have thousands of users. We do have some products that maybe only have a few or a few hundred. 

We've had no challenges with scaling. It can support any type of load within the data center. 

Support is excellent. 

Positive

We did use a different OS. I have used Unix in the past. I started with Unix 30 years ago. I've also used SUSE. Red Hat offered more service and support. 

I was involved in the deployment. Our team managed the process. It's pretty straightforward. We handle implementation, tuning, and patching. 

How long it takes to implement the product depends. We're trying to mitigate the time by automating with Ansible. We want to handle one VM or server in five or fewer minutes, however, it can take days. At this point, we can provision servers in a few minutes. It's becoming faster. 

We have a team of ten to run the infrastructure on the OS level. 

I'm not an expert on ROI. We are paying to use the solution, however, the utilization we get and the support both offer good value. 

The pricing model isn't something I deal with directly. The pricing is fair, especially compared to virtualization like VMware. We do use VMware and are thinking about moving sandboxes and testing over to Red Hat. This may end up being a big cost savings with our CAPEX and OPEX. 

From the price level, the cost is almost the same for us, if we look at Red Hat versus SUSE, however, we get a higher level of support with Red Hat. 

Red Hat was always our first choice. 

We're a Red Hat customer. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

I work in the energy sector, so we use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a variety of purposes. These include high-performance computing, running applications like SAP, geospatial applications, and Oracle. We rely on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a wide range of applications, including those that require running Oracle databases.

It is important to our organization to have a solution that avoids cloud vendor lock-in. We just don't want to be locked into just one side or the other. We want to have the flexibility and availability to explore other options.

One of the main reasons we chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux was its reliability and stability. Compared to the Microsoft Windows environment, the Linux environment provided much greater stability. Therefore, we decided to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for all our critical applications at that time, as they required a Linux-only environment.

We use Red Hat Image Builder as well. The golden images created by Image Builder are okay. In our organization, we prefer to create our own images because we need to incorporate our own security measures and harden the images accordingly.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux could do better in live patching. In this day and age, vulnerabilities are constantly emerging, I feel that Red Hat Enterprise Linux has fallen backward in terms of live patching, particularly live kernel patching. There are other products available that can perform this function, and they often follow their direction. 

Currently, my company has a live patch solution where we can patch the kernel without rebooting. This is essential because certain applications cannot tolerate downtime for reboots. However, there is a security concern when the patching process is delayed, as it exposes the system to high vulnerabilities and risks. So, when critical applications go down due to rebooting, it has a significant impact on both the financial and operational aspects. It requires a lot of money and manpower to schedule and execute the reboots, and during that time, the application downtime results in losing money. I believe this is an area that Red Hat Enterprise Linux should focus on to address this challenge.

I have been using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system for around 20 years. We transferred our existing subscriptions to the cloud version. We are actually exploring hybrid solutions and availability options. As we transition to Azure, we are bringing our own subscription.

The scalability is good. We are able to scale efficiently. In our high-performance computing department, they handle a lot of scaling, and it's going well. Red Hat Enterprise Linux scales well.

I'm not particularly fond of the support. For example, when we have a server that's down, we raise a ticket indicating the severity of the issue. Then we receive another email suggesting things we can try to resolve the problem. I miss the days when we could directly speak to someone because sometimes, depending on the maintenance contracts and SLAs, it can take a lot of time without actually making any progress. Whereas speaking with a support representative could significantly reduce the downtime. So, I'm not really crazy about it.

The knowledge base is good. I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

Neutral

One of Red Hat Enterprise Linux's pros is that it has been around the longest. When working in a large corporate environment, reliability is crucial. In case something breaks, you want to have the assurance that there is a reliable support system to address the issues. Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides that level of support. 

However, it's important to note that even with a solid distribution like in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the effectiveness may vary depending on the specific customer or scenario. It's about assessing how well the distribution handles issues when the next customer raises a complaint. So, we need to carefully consider the pros and cons based on our requirements. For certain workloads and development tasks, we might consider freestyle options that don't require paid subscriptions. In my company, we have a development program that greatly supports our decision to go with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Personally, I find the deployment process straightforward, but I've been doing it for quite some time. I can't speak for someone who is new to it. However, from my experience, it's relatively straightforward. I've been in this role for a while, so I'm familiar with the process.

Currently, we use Azure AVS, which allows us to migrate existing physical machines to the cloud until we can fully modernize them. It's much easier than it was a couple of years ago, but there is still some work to be done. Overall, it's manageable for us to move workloads between the cloud and on-premises or data center environment using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

We have streamlined our deployment process within our guidelines. I can build a server in just three minutes. The time required depends on the type of server we need. If it's a more specialized server, it may take longer. However, it's nothing like the old days when it used to take several days. Especially in the cloud environment, it's quite fast. On-premises is a different story because we need to consider hardware availability, which can take longer. But once we have the hardware, the deployment itself typically takes less than an hour, especially when we leverage tools like Satellite for automation.

We have indeed realized a return on our investment. If we hadn't, we wouldn't still be using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. However, we are always striving to improve our return on investment. That's why we continually conduct due diligence and explore other operating systems to ensure that we're not blindly sticking with a particular company. We want to find the best solution that can potentially save us more money while delivering an equal or better return on investment.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is starting to realize some other companies are gaining some footing in the industry. Red Hat's pricing still needs to get a little bit better. When you look at what you pay for a subscription compared to what you can pay with some of these other companies that do offer a lot of technical backing behind them, it starts turning heads.

Red Hat should focus on making enhancements and providing better support in that arena.

Before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we did evaluate other Linux-based solutions. When we initially chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we had options like Solaris and SGI. However, even recently, we have continued to evaluate other distributions because the Linux landscape is constantly evolving. There are new solutions emerging, so we have to perform our due diligence and assess what they can offer.

For customers looking for alternatives to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, my advice would be to choose something that aligns with your requirements and that you are happy with. Don't just pick something because it's cheap. You gotta look at the long term. Also, know what is needed for your project. For example, if you have issues, can you get those issues resolved in a timely manner? If you run into an issue, you're stuck, and they can't help you out, this means your project will be delayed. You will need to weigh that out.

Our company uses the solution to provide DBA services and manage Linux databases for clients. 

The solution works well both on-premises and in the cloud. We deploy based on client preferences that include on-premises, hybrid cloud, and fully public or private cloud. 

Depending on use cases, we use different cloud providers such as AWS, Oracle, or Azure and they all have their own limitations. The solution is flexible and has great scripting so it can accommodate any conditions. 

For one client, we have version 7 installed and managed on a variety of physical servers for different environments including production. For another client, we have VMs. For other use cases, we have a setup of active sites in on-premises with standbys in the Azure cloud. 

The solution has enabled us to centralize development because it provides true automation. It ensures that systems are stable. There is no room for doubt with our clients because the protection is sound. 

Productivity and efficiency are key advantages because the solution automates regular tasks and processes. All of this benefits our company. 

The solution integrates with all types of software and is much easier to manage than a Windows system. 

Management is portable and easily automated so deploying or installing packages and running updates is seamless. You can automate as much as possible from the deployment and maintenance points of view, both on-premises and in the cloud. 

The operating system is very stable and robust with a very good kernel. You don't run into issues related to the core of the operating system.

Updates are constant and delivered pretty regularly. The solution covers most vulnerabilities so we feel pretty confident using it on different machines. We can tell within 30 days that patches or updates are good. 

The solution could provide more APIs and GUI interfaces. The current options are kind of low-level and not as visual as Windows. 

I have been using the solution for 15 years. 

The solution is very stable so I rate stability a nine out of ten. 

The solution is scalable so I rate scalability an eight out of ten. 

I used technical support once and they responded very quickly with useful information. 

I rate support an eight out of ten. 

Positive

I previously used AX, HP-UX, and Solaris at a prior job. My current employer has always used the solution. 

The setup is straightforward. 

For one client's cloud setup, we created virtual machines and provisioned the operating system on the solution. The cloud solution provides images for the operating system so is pretty easy to install. Just click, click, click and that is it. 

For other cases, we had to install from scratch at boot but had well-documented instructions so we didn't have any issues. 

These use cases were not too complex so the focus was more on installing patches and packages that ensure compatibility with the solution. We find prerequisites for implementation in order for it to work. We focus on a strategy that makes sure we have the correct kernel parameters, the right center for settings, and the utilities needed for managing the operating system in conjunction with the database. For example, a lot of C++ compilers need to be installed. Everything that is part of the pre-install packages can be done by a DPA as well. 

We deploy the solution in-house for customers and it takes a few hours.

Ongoing maintenance includes applying versions on occasion to make sure processes aren't hanging, over consuming, or missing resources. 

Each client has a set of servers and databases, so maintenance might require two to six system administrators. It all depends on use cases including the number of systems, how critical systems are, and whether you need downtime. 

It is important to make sure your patches are up to date. Any part of regular maintenance should not be skipped. 

I recommend the solution because it is stable and easy to manage. I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

I am primarily doing developer enablement for users of Red Hat-based software stacks. Most of my experience for the last five years will be in the context of AWS and Azure. As my customers are primarily cloud-based, they are primarily using the Red Hat repositories hosted with Amazon and Azure.

My customers are primarily DoD, so they are using EL7. We are trying to get them to move in the direction of EL8, but it is a slog.

As an industry recognized platform, and the fact that Red Hat goes to great lengths to get their stuff security accredited, it makes it a lot easier for me to get applications put into production since I can point my customer security people at the work that Red Hat has done upstream. Then, all I have to do is account for the deltas associated with the specific deployment in their environment. It greatly reduces the workload when you can get it down to just deltas.

Automation is the most valuable feature. I don't like having to solve a problem more than once. If I can just whip up some code to take care of deploying something, responding to something, etc., then that is what I prefer. It is a lot easier out-of-the-box to do than it is with Windows. With Windows, there is always the process of bootstrapping into being able to have the automation framework available, then making the automation framework work.

In the AWS space, the cloud network is packaged. Tools, such as Ansible, Puppet, and SaltStack, are all easily found and installed. That is quite helpful.

The integrated solution approach makes it a lot easier to deliver things on an infrastructure as code basis. So, if customers need something deployed, I can just do a set of automation for them. This gives them an easy button to take care of the rest of their solution, whether that be deployment or lifecycle maintenance of a deployment.

I use their tracing and monitoring tools on an as needed basis.

It is great for the stuff that Red Hat either owns outright or is the lead on the upstream product. When it comes to third-party tools, it can be a little iffy. Some of the database solutions and data governance solutions that I have had to implement on Red Hat have not been fun.

I would mostly like to see improvement around corporate messaging. When Red Hat 8 came out, and Red Hat decided to change, it inverted the relationship between Red Hat and CentOS. This caused my customers who had a CentOS to RHEL development to production workflow quite a bit of heartburn that several of them are still working out. A lot of that probably could have been avoided through better messaging. 

I have been using it for a couple of decades.

This is a double-edged sword. From a stability standpoint, it is great. From a facilitating development, at least up through Red Hat 7, it was problematic. If you wanted the latest and greatest version of Python, Java, or any given development language that your developer community wanted to use, then your choices were package it yourself or use SCL. Packaging it yourself was flexible, but then it caused auditability problems for your information assurance folks. Going the SCL route was good, but activating it in a way that developers were comfortable with was problematic. It looks like the AppStream capability in EL8 will ease some of that. However, I haven't had enough customers using EL8 yet to verify whether what seems more usable to me will be more usable for them.

So far, I haven't found anything that inhibits scalability. The only thing that I run into is probably more a side effect of how my customers use things than Red Hat itself, in so much as my customers tend to prefer to implement things in a way where it is a bit of a heavier weight than they absolutely need. This slows down the speed at which one can deploy. However, this is more of a customer issue than a Red Hat issue.

RHEL is the basis of all my customers' cloud and container solutions. 

I have worked with Red Hat technical support minimally. Most of my customers operate in the DoD and the intelligence community. Much of their stuff isn't really able to be supported because you can't export logs or anything like that. At best, things are indirect. The things that I tend to seek assistance for are fairly edge case problems. Then, it is a case of needing to work through the process to get to the backline engineers. Every time I do that, it is not a quick process.

When I get to the part of the support system that I actually need to be at, then I would probably rate support as 10 out of 10. Getting to that point in the support resources is about five out of 10. Overall, I would rate it as six or seven out of 10.

Neutral

I automate everything. I write the automation that creates the VM templates. Once my automation is done, there is really nothing to set up.

Operating in the cloud space, we typically point our customers to pay-as-you-go licensing, which comes through the various cloud providers repository services.

I have experience with probably two dozen different Unix-type operating systems. However, 2010 would have been the last time I touched something other than Linux and 90% of that would be Red Hat.

For anyone who is doing physical or on-premises virtual, I would probably point them at Satellite, and if they can afford it, as an enterprise license. This is just so that they don't have to deal with picky unit licensing concerns. However, for people who are fully cloudy, I would tend to push them more towards using the RHEL solution.

Some of my customers use OpenShift, many of my customers use Ansible, and a lot of them use a local Docker and Podman. The ones that actually run within Red Hat integrate just fine. The ones that Red Hat runs on top of, those are a little more difficult to speak to. Running Docker inside of RHEL is easy. It is much better on EL8 than it is on EL7.

I like it enough that I use it as my own operating system for my personal web and mail server. So, I would rate it as eight or nine out of 10. The primary hits against it are that if you want to do anything bleeding edge, the pursuit of stability works counter to that.

We are primarily using it for services, such as cloud infrastructure services, for our business. We are working with a Town Council in Bolivia. We provide the environment for deployed applications, and we are using it for the private cloud, Linux server, and applications developed within the company.

Mostly, we use version 7.0. We also have three servers with version 8.5. We are working with everything on-premise. We have a cloud, but most of the cloud is accessible from inside the company. It is not accessible from outside of the company.

Red Hat at present is the core, and we are also using Ansible, Horizon, OpenShift, and Kubernetes in our environment. They are a part of our environment. It is the best in terms of integration, and it is totally integrated with other solutions. With these integrations, all other solutions become a part of one big solution, which saves time. You can achieve the same results by building things from scratch with open source, but it would be very time-consuming. Deployments become easy and fast because everything is integrated. It is very good to have everything integrated, and we now have just two people working with the whole infrastructure. 

It has accelerated deployment. We are using OpenShift, and it is very easy to deploy new machines on our infrastructure. Like Ansible, we can deploy many machines with the same configuration or automatic configuration. It is really fast. 

With Ansible, we can easily create environments. Comparing the infrastructure that we had while using Windows 2012 with the tools that we now have with Red Hat, we have saved 80% of the time. Everything is automated with Ansible. We only check playbooks. It has accelerated the deployment of applications. Automation saves time and allows us to allocate people to other work. Previously, it was very time-consuming to create environments. We had to train people. We had to create maybe three or four virtual machines for load balancing according to the needs of the client, whereas now, OpenShift is creating them automatically and destroying them when they are no longer needed. It saves a lot of our time. People are doing more technical work. In the past, we had five people to work with the infrastructure, and now, we have only two people. Three people have been moved to another department.

We can run multiple versions of applications for deployment. OpenShift has Kubernetes inside. So, you can run one version, and immediately, you can deploy the next version and do a test of two versions. We test new solutions or patches in an application, and we run both versions at the same time just to have a benchmark and prove that some issues have been fixed. With Kubernetes, it is easy for us.

Its scalability and ease of setup and configuration are most valuable. When we have a hardware failure, we just save the configuration files, and in about half an hour, we have another server running with the same configuration. It is really easy to replace servers. This is the best feature.

It has very good integrations. The IPA feature is really awesome. We used this feature to integrate with Active Directory. Red Hat has many tools for integrations.

I would like training to be added to the subscription. It would be useful for when you have to train yourself or get a certification. There are many things that we are not using because we don't know how to use them. Having training included in the subscription would help us in learning more things and utilizing the full power of the solution.

I have been using this solution since 2000. I have been using Red Hat before it became Enterprise, but in our company, we adopted Red Hat about two years ago. We still have a few servers on Windows Server 2019, but most of our servers are on Red Hat.

It is very reliable. We didn't have any issues with services.

Its scalability is good. We can work with the same server and make it a load balancer. It is really easy. In one hour or one and a half hours, we can have another server working, and we can put it in the cluster. It is really easy.

We contacted them only twice, and we received good support from them. I would rate them a nine out of 10. The only thing that is missing is the training. If they can include training in the subscription, it would be awesome.

We mostly had Microsoft solutions, and we were using Windows 2012, and we had some issues with it. Working with Windows was really painful for us as administrators. For users, there was no issue. The servers were always working. We switched to Red Hat because it had the biggest offering. It is an enterprise solution, and it gives you all the things. With others, you have to do things on your own. It is a complete solution.

When we migrated from Windows 2012 to Red Hat, it was a game-changer. In the beginning, we were working with IIS for deploying applications. Most of the applications were developed in the company, and some of them were not PHP-native.

We also have four servers using Debian Linux, and we have another software that is open-source and built from scratch. It is like Red Hat, but you need to do most of the things from scratch. We're using Docker instead of Kubernetes for everything related to quality assurance for our developers.

It was complex at the beginning because we only knew the basics. We didn't know the purpose of many of the tools and how to implement them. We started training ourselves. It took us two years to implement or to make this change.

We first installed it on a few of our servers, but then we started working with OpenShift. We have a private cloud in our infrastructure, and it is me and one colleague doing this job.

We haven't measured it, but we would have got an ROI. It is doing many things for us, and it must be providing a big return on investment.

If you don't buy the Red Hat subscription, you don't get technical support, and you don't have all the updates. 

To have everything working like a charm, the cost that you pay for it is worth it. In Bolivia, we don't have the best internet connection. Therefore, we have a local service with all the packages, repositories, etc. We manage them locally, and because we have a subscription, we can update them. So, we have local repositories with all the packages and other things to make it easy for us to update all the servers. Without the Red Hat subscription, we cannot update anything.

We were thinking of SUSE because it also has enterprise solutions. We decided on Red Hat because of OpenShift. This was the key thing for us. 

Red Hats' open-source approach was also a factor while choosing the solution because there is a law in Bolivia that is forcing all public institutions to migrate to open source. By 2023, all public institutions must run on open-source solutions.

You cannot compare it with anything that is in the market because there is nothing that does the same. Amazon is doing something similar, but it is still a different service. Everything that they give us surprises us and changes the way we are doing things.

It hasn't simplified adoption for non-Linux users because we have mostly deployed servers, and they are not visible to the users. Users are just using the applications, and they don't know what is going on in the background. They don't know if they are using Linux or something else. They are using Windows on the client, but on servers, they don't know what is running.

We aren't using bare metal for servers. Everything is virtualized and working just fine. We have VMware, OpenShift, etc. Everything is deployed on our own cloud, and everything is on our server.

We use the dashboard of OpenShift to monitor the whole infrastructure, but we also have two solutions that are not by Red Hat. One is Zabbix, and the other one is Pandora. Both of them are open source. The dashboard of OpenShift doesn't significantly affect the performance of existing applications, but it is helpful because it can send triggers. It has triggers to send alerts and things like that. It is not really resource-consuming. It is really good.

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

I utilize Ansible to harden Red Hat devices across a multitude of disconnected environments.

One benefit of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux is that a lot of backend applications run natively on Red Hat Enterprise Linux as opposed to a Windows-based option. We are a partner with Red Hat. It essentially allows us to do a lot of our infrastructure stand-up and development.

It has enabled our team to centralize development. We have been able to centralize our automation, playbooks, and different collections we use within Ansible to create a centralized code base. We can use that to configure different types of systems with different requirements from different customers. Having a common platform across the entire enterprise has been very helpful.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux very limitedly for containerization projects. It makes things very seamless. If we get a new developer, we can set up a brand new instance of a container for a dev environment or a test environment. It allows different developers to always have the same starting points with containers.

In terms of security features for risk reduction, there are SELinux and FIPS. Also, when you build a Red Hat Enterprise Linux machine, you can stick it right out of the box. It is very helpful. It is very good, especially for programmers and users who do not know anything about cybersecurity. It takes you 85% to 90% of the way. It has been very helpful and good.

The right commonality across the business or enterprise is always very hard to do, especially when different networks and different customers have different requirements. Being able to at least have continuity between those different environments has been helpful. If you have a system admin at a location and you put him or her at a different location, they at least can expect the same type of infrastructure.

When it comes to compliance, it takes you 85% to 90% of the way there. Different networks require different things. Some cannot implement specific standards for whatever reasons, but being able to utilize and leverage Red Hat Ansible to configure that and make sure those changes are made across the entire network has been very helpful.

Portability depends on the circumstances. Some things are more portable than others, such as containers. We utilize Ansible Core very extensively, but other things, such as AAP, are not necessarily as portable because some of our smaller environments do not have the bandwidth or the actual resources to support a big product like that.

In Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I am a big fan of the command line. I like the data manipulation and different commands that we can use. I use Ansible extensively to configure systems.

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

It is very stable.

It is easily scalable with the solutions and the options they have.

Their support is very good. They are very helpful. Some of them are more experienced in handling the niche problems that we have.

I would rate their customer support a nine out of ten because there is always room for improvement, but it has always been very good.

Positive

We have used Ubuntu and other Linux operating systems in the past. However, since I have been with the company, we have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux almost exclusively.

The deployment model depends on the environment. Some are using VMs. Some use containers, and some use bare-metal installations. It depends on what a particular program needs. I support small environments that are on-prem.

It is fairly straightforward to deploy different Red Hat boxes. I was just helping out a sysadmin the other day who had not done it before. It was super straightforward and super easy to deploy.

We deploy it on our own. 

The return on investment for us and our team is specifically automation. We are able to invest time on the frontend to create different automation playbooks, and we are able to push that out to not only a singular network but also to multiple networks and multiple different configurations. It takes a little bit in the beginning, but there are huge time savings in the end.

If a security colleague is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would be interested to understand what that colleague's objectives are and why they would consider something other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux. If it is something that fits their particular use case more, they can obviously go with that. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a standard solution for Linux. If any colleague wants to go for another solution, I have to understand why. I would have to understand what Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not able to provide. However, this has not happened to me.

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