Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

Internally, we use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for services and for applications that we run, especially Linux based-applications. We also have SAP solutions, which we sell to the customers as a total solution with Red Hat, SAP HANA, and also for our own cloud-based SAP HANA, which is under Red Hat's operating system.

Red Hat Insights is quite an interesting and valuable feature. Lately, we used the malware scan feature. The Cockpit feature and web interface were quite helpful. We have also begun with OpenSCAP, which used is to harden the operating system's security features.

The first area for improvement is documentation, and I consider it since I have been working in IT for more than twenty-five years. For twenty years, I have been working with open source, and I see that the documentation is lacking, so it needs to do more work on its documentation part. Most open source and upstreams from Red Hat products work from the open source solution and have better documentation than in the actual Red Hat products.

New products need better documentation. The websites also have a single sign-on to get you from one side to the other. As a partner, I had a problem finding out how I needed to connect and to which side of the solution. I consider myself an expert user of the internet and websites, but going from one side to the other, was quite problematic.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the cloud for four to five years at least. My company has a partnership with Red Hat, and so we have our own licensing for the product. We have customers whom we manage, and they purchased the licenses on the go from the cloud provider. We just sold them the managed services. But mostly through us, we should be selling the licenses.

It's a very stable product, and that is actually the reason we are forcing or pushing customers to go with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The solution is scalable.

I rate the support a seven out of ten. The support is knowledgeable but slow if we have to get answers.

Neutral

We use Red Hat Satellite for managed services for our customers. And, of course, we use a product of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for servers. We started with OpenShift in the lab at the beginning, but now I'm beginning to produce it for our own services. So, now I can offer these to the customers.

One of the discussions in my company at the beginning of this year was to see if we could test our services on-premises for the virtualization, specifically for the KVM virtualization. But since it was not approved, we'll have to see the next step.

I have worked with other open source distributors. I have worked with SCO-Linux and Unix, which is the base of Linux. I didn't personally make the decision to switch. The company decided to switch since we are partners, and we are focusing on putting in the best efforts in terms of the partnership and customers we have with Red Hat.

The solution is deployed on both on-premises and the cloud. We have customers on the cloud server platform where we run their network, and we manage through Satellite. We also have it on-premises.

I was involved in the deployment of the solution. We created some automation, so the setup phase is straightforward. We use templates for all of those, but to manage the templates, and what it will include, we use external tools to make it easier for the deployment automation.

Regarding deployment time, it can be done in seconds. It also depends on what application we are speaking about since for an OS or more difficult solution, like Red Hat Satellite, you need more time.

I have seen a return on investment, especially considering the time taken to resolve the problem where we bought some support from Red Hat.

Regarding the prices, the new changes are actually not bad as it works for enterprise solutions. But it could have some other options for super solutions for the students in colleges, and they could actually win more customers from that. Of course, we have the test licensing and all that for the partners, where it's very useful for us to be able to test more of the products. But to win more would be much easier for us also if they introduce special pricing for students, universities, governmental institutions and all that. Most probably there is a price for them, but we haven't got that information. Also, Red Hat sometimes goes directly and not through the partner, but I'm not an expert.

I wasn't the one to make a choice, but I think my company evaluated other options, and it was their choice to go with Red Hat.

My company is a private cloud company. Mostly, we have our own private services, providing private cloud services to the customers. But we also provide public clouds like Azure and some Amazon clouds.

Regarding resiliency, it is a good standardized OS with stability. But sometimes, it is a little slow in reaction to problems that might appear. For example, we had this big Java Log4j bug where their reaction was very slow compared to other distributions. Of course, they found the solution when they had it, but it was quite a slow reaction. In general, it's a very stable OS.

Regarding how easy or difficult it is for you to move workloads between the cloud and your data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I don't have any solution for that. I have to migrate it manually right now.

Regarding the cost-saving capability of the solution, I would say that it is possible to save on costs because of the automation we use through Red Hat Satellite for maintenance and how we have managed automation, time to spend on the service, maintenance, test, problems, etc. So, you can say that it's been a cost-saving procedure.

I rate the overall product a seven and a half out of ten.

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.

Our primary use case is to develop the servers and production. It's pretty standard usage. We have some Docker running but I haven't been involved in those environments very often. It's a standard server on minimal load and we're not using a full load with our GUI interface.

We have multiple applications running on both Windows and RHEL. The database systems are mostly MySQL. There's some Oracle but most of it is MySQL. Dealing with Red Hat is pretty straightforward. I haven't run into issues with it. 

When we were running multiple versions of Java, if patches came out for both versions, we would apply the patches for both versions and usually, that could be downloaded. It was pretty simple to update those. Those are systems-supported patches. With the specific application patches, it's a little different. Normally the application administrators take care of those themselves.

If Red Hat's system is set up right, it improves the speed and performance reliability of our hardware because it doesn't use as many resources as a Windows system.

I like the fact that most of the system configuration is Namespace so it's easy to get to and easy to configure, and most of it still uses text documents. Not all of it's a menu-driven-type entry. I also like the fact that it's a very standard file system layout so it's easy to navigate.

In some instances, it provides features that help speed development. In other instances, it's standard amongst most Linux groups. You can download the main features. The file system is always a big difference. You go from a Debian-based system to Red Hat, so the file system layout is a little bit different. User-based files are located versus system-based files. RHEL keeps everything in one area and segregates it. It makes it easier to go between different organizations and still have the same policies and structure. I do like the new package manager.

It's all text-based, all command line, whereas the minimal load does not have a GUI on it. If you're used to using Windows core servers, it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but going from a Windows GUI-based system to an RHEL command-line-based system is a learning curve for most Windows administrators. A lot of strictly Windows administrators don't even want to look at a command line from Red Hat because the commands are so different from what they're used to. There is a learning curve between the two major platforms.

The application and user experience are usually pretty consistent, but that really depends on the application developer. If they're developing an application, it'll be consistent costs on infrastructure. That's not an issue between the different platforms. User experience is based on how the application developer built it. They're not all in-house and so they developed across a consistent platform. They keep everything pretty simple from the user perspective.

It enables us to deploy current applications and merging workloads across physical hardware and VMs. Virtualization and physical hardware stay consistent. Going to the cloud depends on the platform we use but it'll mostly be consistent as well. The RHEL distribution has been implemented pretty well amongst most of our cloud providers. It's pretty standard now, whether we go to Rackspace, Amazon, Azure, or even Microsoft supporting RHEL distribution. You can go to a Microsoft Azure cloud and have a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system running there. The user would probably never notice it.

For Red Hat, the bare metal and virtualized environments are pretty reliable. The only thing I don't like about Red Hat is that every time you do an update, there are patches every month and you have to reboot the system. Fortunately, it's a single reboot versus Microsoft, which likes multiple reboots, but still, you have to reboot the system. You have to reboot the server. The newer updates have kernel patches involved in them. To implement that new kernel, you have to reboot the system, and Red Hat's best policy and best practices are to reboot the system after patching.

I used the AppStream feature a couple of times. Not a whole lot because a lot of our environment is specific to what we deploy. Normally I would just deploy the bare system, adding features requested by the application administrator, and they'll download the rest of the things that they need.

We have used the tracing and monitoring tools in certain instances but not consistently. We use them for troubleshooting but not every day. We use other third-party software to monitor the system logs and alert on the issues. They will run tracing analysis of the systems. The reason we don't always use it is because of the number of servers I have to deal with and the low band power.

Automation is however you set it up. As for running a cloud-based solution, a lot of it would be automated. Going from prior experience, dealing with it before coming to this company, we did a lot of cloud deployment and it's pretty consistent and reliable and you could automate it pretty easily. 

RHEL accelerated the deployment of cloud-based workloads in my previous experiences. Compared to no other solution at all, it's obviously a vast improvement. You have to worry about Windows. As soon as you bring the server up, it requires numerous patches and it'll take several reboots unless you have an image that is very patched and deployable there. Even then, every month you get new patches. Red Hat patches a lot faster than Windows and requires a single reboot. The speed of deployment is a hazard. It's almost twice as fast deploying an RHEL solution as it is a Windows solution.

I'd like to see more of NCurses type menu systems in some instances. We're dealing with SUSE Enterprise Linux, they have an NCurses menu system. It's a menu system. Even some of the higher-end Unix systems like AIX have some inner menu system where all the configuration tools are right there so your administrator doesn't have to jump through multiple directories to configure files if needed. I like the simplicity of Red Hat because it's pretty easy but having an NCurses menu when you have to get something done quickly would be nice.

I started using Red Hat back in 1996. I've been using it for at least 20 years, off and on. I was hired as a Linux administrator for RHEL 6, 7, and 8, and then I changed my job positions. I'm not actively using RHEL right now.

Unfortunately, we're moving away from RHEL to Oracle Enterprise Linux in the next couple of months.

RHEL is a very stable product. It's been around for a long time now. It's been stable since they brought it out as an enterprise environment. It's usually not the bleeding edge of Linux. That just means it has more stability in the packaging and the repositories. They keep the bleeding edge updates and things out of it most of the time, which means if you have new features that you want to implement, you have to do some finagling to get those features in place. But it does mean the system's more stable, for the most part.

It's very scalable. I haven't seen any issues with the scalability of Red Hat. I've used it in environments where we have a few hundred people to a couple of thousand people. I've never seen any issues with scalability. It's one of the big sell points of RHEL. It's as scalable as Unix.

There are around 500 developers who use it. Web-facing interfaces, it's in the thousands.

If you're using a small environment with no more than around 100 to 200 servers, one or two people can handle most of the RHEL stuff pretty quickly.

If it's a larger environment, then you're looking at staff upwards from six to 15, depending on the environment the product's being used for.

There is a system administrator to perform the initial deployment of a server to the maintenance of the server. Then there are the application developers who develop the application, write the applications, and just manage applications. In our environment, we currently have sysadmins who manage the systems. My job is to manage the actual operating system itself. Then, you have application developers, who develop applications for user-facing systems. The application managers manage those applications, not only the developed applications.

It's being used pretty extensively. It's 1,100 to 1,200 servers on one site. 

We're using at least 85-90% of the features of RHEL but we don't really use Ansible that extensively. Red Hat Satellite server we're using as a primary repository in one site. Based on RHEL, we use most of these features.

We are switching to another solution mainly because a number of databases in use are based on that system. They want to expand that database and some other products that come with switching from RHEL to LEL. That's the main reason. As I understand it, the licensing isn't that different with a more centralized approach, so convenience is a large factor.

We switched to RHEL from AIX because of the developer and the cost. AIX is usually implemented on specific hardware. IBM owned the hardware. So the cost for running AIX is a lot more expensive than running an RHEL solution, which can be run on virtual systems as well as physical systems. And x86 servers are a lot cheaper than a power system.

Open-source was also a factor in our decision to switch to RHEL. Open-source has allowed a lot of development in areas, more ingenuity, innovation, and products than other constricted OSs. My opinion is that when you're dealing with open-source, you have people who are more likely to innovate and create new things. It's easier to develop an open-source platform than it is to use a closed source platform because then you can't get to the APIs, you can't do anything in the system if you want to change things in the system to make your product more available to people.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. I've even set servers up at home on a pretty regular basis. I have my own lab, so I've deployed it and it's pretty straightforward. With RHEL, the setup is nice because you get a GUI, so any Windows-based user is going to be familiar with the GUI and know what to look at. They can deploy software as needed, right there from the menu. From a TextBase, you can script it to where all you have to do is run a script and it'll deploy the server quickly. It's pretty straightforward.

Personally, I wouldn't be able to speak to the installation. Having a single point is always a benefit because then you don't have to jump around multiple points to download software and to deploy your solution. The only thing about it is with Docker, a lot of times you have to go out to the Docker site to download the newest versions.

If you're running Satellite, it's even easier because all your current patches are downloaded. The iOS is already there and a lot of time is it's a straight script that you can deploy quickly. The single-point install is a good thing.

Depending on what you're running it on and what kind of equipment you're running, it can take anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour. That depends on the equipment.

They had Unix admins on site. They were implemented to bring in the Red Hat environment because of the similarity between Unix and Red Hat.

If you implement Ansible, that's an additional cost. If you implement Satellite, that's an additional cost to your licensing. However, the amount of licensing if you license 100 servers is actually cheaper per server than licensing 50 or 25.

The first one that comes to mind as a real competitor would be SUSE. It's built-in Germany. Ubuntu is a commendable product but I don't find it as reliable or as easy to administer as I do RHEL. A lot of developers like it because it's really easy. It's more geared towards a home-user environment than it is a corporate environment. The support factor for RHEL is good. If you need to call tech support, it's there.

I have used Satellite and Ansible in other environments. Satellite integrates very well. It's built by Red Hat, so it integrates thoroughly and it allows a single point of download for all patches and any software deployments you have. You can automate server builds, if you do it right, and make things a lot easier.

Ansible can tie into Satellite and RHEL fairly easily. It allows you to build multiple types of deployments for multiple solutions, and allows a playbook-type deal. You develop a playbook and send it out and it builds a server for the user. Done.

It would speed up deployment and make it easier to manage. If you had a developer who needed to throw up a box real quick to check something, he could run a playbook, throw up a server and rather quickly do what he needed to do. Then dismiss the server and all resource reviews return back to the YUM. If it was hardware, it would be a little bit different, but if we run a virtualization environment, they return all resources back to the host. So it made matching servers and deployment a lot simpler and less work on the operations environment.

The best advice I could give is if you're going from a Windows environment to an RHEL environment, there's a learning curve that is going to be a factor during implementation management and basic administration. Your company would probably need to hire new people just to support an RHEL environment. Between SUSE and RHEL, the number of people who know SUSE very well in the US is not as high as it is in Europe. RHEL has become more of a global OS than SUSE, though they're both comparable. I would advise looking at what you need it to do and then make sure you have the infrastructure, people, and manpower to support it.

There's a huge number of resources out there. You have sites geared specifically for RHEL administration. I believe IT Central Station has some resources on its site as well. There are Usenet groups and different forums. TechRepublic has a large number of resources as well. There are numerous resources out there to ease the learning curve.

There are a lot of things I've learned over the years using RHEL. Running it as a virtual design environment where you can run multiple servers on a single hardware piece makes it a lot more cost-effective and you don't have the resource depletion as you would have with Windows. Unfortunately, Windows is a resource hog. RHEL can be set up to run very minimally, with virtually no overhead other than the applications you're using to service users. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We are moving toward a microservice architecture and using OCP4 as a platform. We run most of our APIs in OCP ports, so the base image is always Linux. It's a Linux image, and we add our own dependencies. We have a private and public cloud, so it's a hybrid cloud system, and we rely on on-premise data centers as well as the cloud. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports our hybrid cloud strategy because we can have Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the public and private cloud, improving compatibility. 

If the compatibility is high, it's easier to move and migrate. If I have some components on the private cloud on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and components on the public cloud. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux stands out for its stability and support, which are critical for enterprise applications in the finance sector. We don't want any downtime, so we need fast support and quick issue resolution. 

The main security feature is the regular patches and updates. When we do a security scan, there should be patches readily available. Security is essential in finance, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps us build a solid IT infrastructure foundation. 

I've used the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Web Console to configure the products. It's a nice tool with an intuitive interface that gives you a better picture of what you're configuring. It's helpful. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux should be available in a free version that developers could try on their own machines before deciding to implement the enterprise edition. It would be nice to have a community version available with all the features so developers can become more familiar with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 

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

We haven't experienced any major outages or downtime. Most of our issues are quickly resolved. We don't typically upgrade to the latest and greatest because we want to ensure stability, and we have a lot of the components on the old system. We wait for a while to upgrade so we can see the most widely used and most stable version. 

I rate Red Hat support eight out of 10. 

Positive

We had Satellite and Red Hat Enterprise Linux from the beginning, but we also use other flavors like Amazon Linux. 

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10. 

As a whole, our organization is using it on Bare Metal on-prem and the private cloud, and then also in more than one public cloud environment. We probably have all three cloud providers. We definitely have Azure and Google Cloud. The environment that I support has about 40 apps in one cloud or another, but the organization as a whole definitely has hundreds of apps in Google Cloud or Azure. They're predominantly in Azure. The Google Cloud adoption is pretty recent compared to our Azure utilization.

I'm supporting a capital markets environment. A substantial portion of my environment is still Bare Metal at Colos. I'm sure on the application side, there's plenty of JBoss in our environment. There have been recent conversations around OpenShift on-prem that I'm working on, and our enterprise cloud teams are looking at or are using ARO in the cloud. In the next year, our use of the Ansible Platform will go from zero to full throttle as quickly as we can make that happen. We found the event-driven Ansible very interesting.

They've helped us work on employing technologies suitable to our various use cases. We're pretty slow adapters of containers, but that seems to be changing fairly quickly at the moment. That certainly gives us portability for workloads. They helped us with some aspects there, and they've helped us with a lot of automation conversation at the summit this week as well around Ansible.

When it comes to resilience in terms of disaster recovery, the operating system is robust. If it fails, it's probably an app issue. The majority of work in any of our DR scenarios is dependent on whether we have got cold standby or hot standby. If it's hot, the data replication is already there, and things are already spinning. Maybe it's on or you turn it on. Other times, you may have to start up something. Nearly all of those things are application architecture decisions as opposed to dependencies or things from an OS perspective, but in terms of the ecosystem for managing our Linux environment, using Satellite and so on has been very good.

I prefer it to Windows because of the level of configuration, level of control, and the ability to see the performance of processes on a given system. I prefer the control over logging and the ability that logging gives you to investigate a problem.

Its community is also valuable. It's open source, and Red Hat-supported streams are also valuable.

The level of communication we've got with them is fantastic. 

The integration with the apps and support could be better.

A colleague was talking about having some recommendations for the Ansible Cloud on the console and having some way of identifying your dev or prod path and whether you've got read or execute access to a playbook. There were different things like that, and they made a lot of sense, especially if you're in a dev or prod environment because mistakenly running something in prod would be a huge issue. There could be something that Red Hat configures, or there could be a text field where organizations can add labels to a part of the console to distinguish that for themselves. Those would be things that would be useful. I can't imagine it's hard to implement but being able to know which environment you're in matters a ton.

As a part of my professional career, I've been using it since 2004. I joined my current organization in 2018. It has been almost five years since I've been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the security environment of our organization.

It's stable. We rarely have our systems crashing.

It's pretty easy and getting easier. It's not an OS issue. In terms of scalability, even while running our trading apps, we don't run into limitations related to the OS. Our limitations are more hardware-defined, and even then, we're running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on servers with eighty cores and almost a terabyte of RAM, and the OS doesn't have any issues.

Their knowledge base is great. There are lots of times when we don't even have to open a support case because we find what we're looking for.

I've spent a lot of time with the Red Hat account team over the past nine months. They've helped me understand products. They've helped develop the skills of my team. They've helped us with technology conversations with other parts of my organization. They've been hugely supportive of the technology conversation we're having with other parts of the bank.

They've been over and above the expectations in most cases. I'd rate them a ten out of ten. I don't know if it could be better. It has been extremely good. They've been extremely helpful in reaching out and figuring out what they can contribute. The account manager that they have working with us is a former colleague, so it's a really smart decision because we have a very good relationship with the guy. He knows our environment. It has been extremely positive.

It's a growing relationship with Red Hat. We have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a very long time, and I don't know if we can even compare it to the other OS vendors, but having the account team working with us with that level of experience with our environment helps them work with us. It helps us accomplish what we're trying to do. It has been a very good partnership.

Positive

We get our licenses directly through Red Hat.

We haven't used the image builder tool or insights, but it's something that we might explore in the coming months. 

I'd rate it a ten out of ten. It's very customizable and very supportive. It never seems to crash. There could be better integration with apps, but from an OS perspective, it's excellent.

We run various application servers. We have application servers for Java and Python. We also run Postgres and different applications. We have Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm, etc. We have a wide variety. 

We weren't trying to solve a particular problem by implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We've used Red Hat Enterprise Linux for so long. We used to modify the Kernel in the early versions of Red Hat, but that's not needed anymore. We are currently using versions 7, 8, and 9. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development in our hybrid cloud environment because the containers can be migrated from Red Hat Enterprise Linux to AWS. It's not an issue. There is also a Red Hat-supported programming tool called Skupper, which is a layer seven service. It's an open source product. It's supported by Red Hat, so we could use that to migrate our containers back and forth on the cloud and on-prem, which is very much needed.

Red Hat is pretty good at containing risks. We have a firewall, but we also use iptables and SELinux. SELinux has proved to be very valuable. We have certain tools where when somebody tries to break SELinux, we immediately get alerts.

We don't have a problem with compliance. We also use Red Hat Satellite. Our Red Hat Satellite server is helpful in terms of meeting compliance requirements.

We're able to modify and migrate containers and redeploy containers very easily. We do that on the Red Hat platform. We do it with other tools such as VMware. Red Hat API works very well with other vendors, so that's definitely a plus. In terms of changes, for instance, if we want to connect to ServiceNow to create a ticket in Ansible, we're able to do that without any problems whatsoever. We can create a ticket in ServiceNow. We can remediate it, and we can close the ticket on ServiceNow from Ansible. Ansible is a big part of Red Hat.

It's a rock-solid operating system. We don't need anything fancy from the operating system itself. What we need is something that doesn't crash, stays up to date, and provides the security features that we need to keep external players out.

The CVEs that come out for the vulnerabilities are very fast. We try to do patching in different tiers. Our regular patching happens once every ninety days, and then we have special iterations that need to be done, and those are on demand, or if there's a high-security risk and it's absolutely immediate.

The other thing that we like about Red Hat is the support for open source. That for us is a slam dunk.

They should work more on container documentation. The only issue that we have is that Red Hat specifically promotes OpenStack, and we don't use OpenStack. It's good if you're using OpenStack, but if you're not using OpenStack, and you're using Docker or something else, it isn't that good. Having more support for non-OpenStack would be very helpful, but, of course, as part of their business, we don't expect it.

I've been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for many years.

It's very stable.

It scales very well. We have about a thousand servers, but we could scale to five thousand servers without a problem.

Their support is good overall. It's better than some of the other vendors. The staff is very friendly. The people I've met hear and discuss issues. We're very much interested in open source, so we use a lot of open source. The engineers have been extremely helpful. 

I'd rate them an eight out of ten. I'm not giving them a ten. Some of it has to do with the time cycle, and some of it has to do with different levels of quality with the support. You could get a junior support person, and obviously, that's going to be a very different experience.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat is very good.

Positive

Our environment is hybrid. Most of our Red Hat Enterprise Linux is on-prem. For the cloud, AWS is the cloud provider, but we are using a different distro for AWS. We use AWS Linux for that. For on-prem servers, we're strictly using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For desktops, we use Fedora.

The reason for using AWS Linux is that we only have AWS. If we use multi-cloud, for instance, if we use Azure and AWS clouds together, we would definitely need something other than AWS Linux. AWS Linux is very solid too, and our team likes it. We can download the AWS Linux version for on-premises too. I've done that. I tested it, but we're sticking with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

In the server space, nothing comes close to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I know that Ubuntu is making a big push, and some people have gone ahead and migrated to Ubuntu, but I think those are going to migrate back. There's just no comparability. They're different. They're like cousins. They're very similar in some ways, but they're very different things. You can install SELinux on Ubuntu, but why bother and why go through the whole configuration? Red Hat Enterprise Linux is more suitable for servers.

We use certain tools from HashiCorp, such as Packer, so deploying it is very simple. We have a script that runs every night, and it creates via the CI, goes up to GitLab, gets whatever it needs, such as parameters, and sends it to Packer. Packer grabs the ISO, and it creates a very specific, customized deployment. It's done with a couple of right clicks. That's it.

We've absolutely seen an ROI. It's in terms of reliability, stability, security, and usability. You name it. The use cases are out there.

The licensing structure is very convoluted. It's very confusing. We have a Satellite server, and we license it through the Satellite server, but if we didn't, we'd have to buy individual Red Hat licenses. That would be a nightmare to maintain in terms of renewing it every year and things like that. 

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

We have a private banking client who initially started to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for approximately 30 nodes. They found that Red Hat Enterprise Linux was the perfect operating system for implementing Ansible automation and managing their infrastructure efficiently. They also deployed Red Hat Ansible Tower for centralized management. Due to the stringent security and compliance requirements in the banking industry, they chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux as their preferred operating system to ensure security and governance across their infrastructure.

In terms of clustering, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides robustness and scalability compared to non-Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems. Clustering is not as straightforward with non-Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. Red Hat Enterprise Linux's scalability is particularly important for us. We utilize Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the operating system to achieve scalability in our operations.

Moreover, Red Hat Enterprise Linux's strong security posture and its ability to scale applications on emerging technologies across the hybrid cloud is next-generation. I believe that's what people are seeking in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is built with a strong focus on security, ensuring effective governance and managing security aspects well. We have high hopes that Red Hat will continue to invest more efforts in enhancing security. When it comes to container-based applications and microservices, Red Hat Enterprise Linux plays a crucial role in the hybrid cloud environment.

One challenge we've faced is with databases. Configuring and implementing DBs is much easier in non-Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, especially in Microsoft. However, as a partner, we faced some challenges with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, particularly when it comes to enterprise applications, especially on the IBM side since it's an IBM core company. There are still several IBM products that need to mature on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Additionally, we require more comprehensive documentation. We face difficulties with the limited availability of documentation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's a different community compared to the Microsoft market, so we need the right documentation to encourage end users to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

We've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the past seven years. As a business partner, we use the application deployed for our clients, providing consulting services. The clients run their workloads on both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and non-Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. They have two options for cloud providers, hybrid deployments on IBM Cloud and AWS.

The benefit of using a hybrid approach is often discussed when it comes to migrating workloads to the cloud. Due to the OpenShift community, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has become the preferred operating system as it provides stability and frequent patches and fixes. Maintaining the total cost of ownership is also more manageable on the cloud.

It's excellent; in fact, it's the most stable. The presence of kernels is the key factor contributing to this stability. When it comes to security, scalability, and robustness, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) excels in all aspects. That's why we rely on this operating system. Personally, during my time as a technical assistant from 2015 to 2016, I installed a couple of IBM applications. I found that everything ran smoothly on Red Hat Enterprise Linux without any failures.

So the stability in Red Hat Enterprise Linux is remarkably good.

The scalability is nice. Red Hat Enterprise Linux doesn't encounter any issues as a supporting core. It can scale effortlessly.

I have personally used Solaris. However, we eventually switched from those operating systems, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been there since version 4.2, a long time ago. I have worked with versions 7 and 9, and I believe the latest one is version 11, although I'm not certain. I have been immersed in technology for the past couple of years.

One of the most important factors is the community. The Red Hat community is different from others, and it is more active and responsive. If you have Red Hat Enterprise Linux and you want to move your production environment from development or testing, it is easy to switch by simply managing the licensing and purchasing the system. You don't need to make extensive changes at the underlying system level. Your system is ready, and you can deploy it in the production environment. It's up and running. If you want to mitigate risks and ensure security in your production environment, you can simply subscribe to RHEL and use it. On the other hand, migrating from other operating systems can be quite cumbersome and challenging. As a client and partner, I always recommend starting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the development and testing environments before moving to production. It makes the journey to production much easier.

Regarding centralization, we have a combination of on-premises and cloud environments where development activities take place. Currently, I don't see a specific use case for centralized development and operations, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is being widely used both in on-premises and cloud setups. As for hybrid deployments, I haven't personally come across many instances of it. There may be a few customers who are utilizing it but not with us thus far.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features in terms of ensuring application and container portability are not an easy task. Although it's not my personal experience, I've observed that in the industry, there is a lot of discussion about moving toward container-based applications. However, only a small number of clients, especially those in highly regulated industries like banking, government, and oil and gas, have actually embraced containerization. They are facing significant challenges when it comes to adopting container-based applications. Many of them still rely on legacy systems running on-premises, such as mainframes.

I have seen an ROI. The most important determinant is the security aspect. Because you rely on the security of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, that's something you are paying for.

When it comes to Red Hat Enterprise Linux pricing, I have a case to share. We recently sold Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS to one of our clients. Before that, I had another client who had concerns about the OS licensing and Red Hat Enterprise Linux's pricing model. The licensing model needs to be more flexible and dynamic because the cost of a single operating system license is relatively high. I'm not suggesting a reduction in cost but rather the introduction of a different model that allows clients to choose scalable options. For example, if a client has licenses for a few operating systems and wants to expand to 50, 100, or even 200, there should be a proposal that offers them flexibility. 

Currently, most clients tend to opt for a limited number of licenses and rely on the community for additional usage, which results in revenue leakage. Red Hat should consider adopting a more aggressive open license policy that encourages higher volume licensing with clients.

When you use Red Hat Enterprise Linux in production, it's worthwhile considering the cost. But even for non-production environments, the client will definitely calculate the expenses since it's a massive implementation for large clients with an operating system. You will open your laptop, and you just need an OS. So my suggestion is for Red Hat to create a business model that also targets the user level and desktop level, where Microsoft is widely used. Considering this eventuality and how many people are switching or still using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we, as a partner, mandate that all our Red Hat team members use Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We don't allow them to use any Microsoft operating system or other operating systems. When engineers join the company and work in the Red Hat pillar, they have to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features, in terms of simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance both maintaining compliance and security, are essential aspects. Compliance requirements vary across different industries, such as banking, with each industry having its specific rules. However, security is a common concern that applies universally. Therefore, we need to address both areas.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides various logs and event triggers that assist in monitoring the operating system's security. Since the operating system sits as the layer between the hardware and the application, it plays a crucial role in safeguarding against security breaches and penetration attacks. A secure application relies on robust application security, followed by a well-protected OS. By ensuring the OS's security, we can establish a strong foundation for the entire ecosystem. If the OS is secure, we can confidently state that the application is at least 80% secure.

Overall, I would rate the product an eight out of ten. 

I worked with different organizations. So, the use case varies from organization to organization. Right now, some of the teams are using it for applications like BI, and then there are a few others that are using it for Websphere, middleware, etc.

In terms of the version, most of them are on 7.9, but there are a few on 8.2 and 8.4 as well.

It enables us to achieve security compliance. Our security team is quite happy, especially in terms of patching up our servers, etc. It's compliant with our security requirements. With Windows updates, sometimes, there could be errors and the blue screen issue, and it could become hectic for the applications as well. Our security teams struggled a bit to update Windows, but when it comes to Linux, they are quite comfortable because they know that things will go smoothly.

I'm quite new to this organization, but I know that there has been improvement in terms of performance. We're using Red Hat Linux on Power Systems, which is quite different from the Intel platform. So, admins are much happier, and they are using it quite well now. Previously, we were using Windows for our applications, but now, we have made Linux mandatory for being open source and not bound to Windows. Things can be complicated on Windows. Especially when we're installing it, there are a lot of things, such as registries, but Linux is easier for admins. There is DVS as well.

When I worked in the banking sector, the most important part was user administration where you need to keep things under control for a specific user. The auditor usually looks for an agent or something like that, and it has been quite easy to manage things from that perspective. Things are more manageable now than in the past.

Windows operating system is used everywhere. You will find it everywhere, and every user is able to use Windows. If a user is using an operating system from the start, it becomes easier for them to use it when they come to a professional environment. That's an area in which I believe they need to put in extra effort, especially for the students. Currently, for their final projects, most students use Windows, and this is an area where Red Hat needs to put in an effort. They need to give some training to the students so that when they come to the professional environment, they're already used to it. It would then become easier for them to use it in a professional environment.

I'm also using IBM AIX, which supports a tool called Smitty. You just put Smitty, and you can do anything. At the backend, the command will run automatically. It is not exactly like a GUI, but you just give the input and it will give you the output. That is something that Red Hat should work on. That would be an added advantage with Red Hat.

It has been 12 or 13 years.

It is very stable.

We are mostly using VMware and Power Systems. Scalability-wise, they are always the best. We can upgrade to get all the resources on the fly. We never faced any issues. However, if you didn't add the required parameters on your profile on VMware or the Power System, then there is an issue, but that's not related to the OS. That's related to virtualization.

Application-wise, there are multiple teams that are using these systems. We have the database team, the middleware team, the MQ team, etc. There are also system admins. The system admins are the ones who are deploying it, but the owners of the system are different.

We have plans to increase its usage. Two years ago, we had only 60 or 70 servers of Red Hat, but now, we have 400 to 500 servers. Its usage is always increasing. After a year or two, we might end up with about 1000 servers.

We have contacted them a few times. We did ask the support team to get in when the cluster got stuck and let us know what's the issue and what's the solution. Whenever I have asked for support, they have provided the best support. I always count them as the best. We have never faced an issue with them. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

We had Windows. The stability was the reason for switching to Red Hat. The stability of Windows varies, but Linux is quite stable now. That was the main part they were looking for.

We are very comfortable with using Linux. We have been using it for 10 to 15 years, and we can't switch to Windows. We can't use Windows even on our laptops. We are not used to using a mouse and GUI. The command prompt is much better for us.

We also use AIX because we have AIX infrastructure, but a few of the applications don't work on AIX, whereas they work with Red Hat Linux. That gives Linux an advantage. So, we use Linux on Power Systems, rather than AIX.

We have been working with different operating systems, and we also know most of the technical requirements, so it is easy for us. Usually, the OS installation takes a maximum of 25 minutes. If you are making extra file systems, such as for Oracle, it takes 10 to 15 minutes extra. A desktop or a single file system doesn't require much time. We already have scripts. We just run the scripts and everything is done by the scripts. Previously, it used to take two or three hours, but now, things have changed, and we're making life easier.

We deploy it ourselves. We don't ask other vendors to deploy it for us. In terms of maintenance, we have already been updating our maintenance contracts, especially the support contract. There are some old systems running in our environment, and we are in the process of upgrading those from version 6.9. We already have the required support.

There are four people on the team, but for Linux especially, there are only two people. We're easily managing 500 to 600 servers for Red Hat.

When you are running your infrastructure on this, you can always find some discounts with local support, etc. There are always some discounts to match your budget. It is definitely affordable. 

When it comes to virtualization, there are different factors. There is not only Red Hat. There is also IBM, VMware, etc. The third-party vendors always manage to come up with a good offer. Our company can't say no to that, and it works out fine.

We also have IBM AIX, and when you compare these two, there's a huge difference because IBM AIX's support is quite higher than Red Hat's.

To anyone interested in using Red Hat for the first time, I would definitely advise starting with the GUI because now, the GUI option is quite good, and you can do all the things. After that, you can slowly start moving to CMD. For learning, there are a lot of resources available online, such as YouTube and LinkedIn Learning, whereas Red Hat Academy is quite expensive.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using this solution is that when you're using the command line, you need to be extra careful. That's because when using the command line, a single slash can make a huge difference. That's what I learned at the start of my career.

I started with Red Hat Version 5. Now they have version 9, which I haven't used, but if I just consider the evolution from version 5 to 8, 8.2, or 8.4, there has been a huge difference because, at that time, people were scared of using Linux, but now, things are different. There has been a revolution in terms of OS. A lot of things are being changed, but in terms of the things that we do, for us, it is the same because we are doing system administration. As a system admin, there is nothing different for us. We are doing the same things again and again because the applications require the addition of storage.

There is also a change in terms of security features. If I compare the old versions with the new versions, in old versions, adding any exception in the host firewall was a real task, but now, things have either become smooth, or we have gotten used to it. Overall, for me, things have become easier. They are getting more and more secure, but with the vulnerabilities and the assessments that have been done, we need to keep updating. Now, everything has caught up with the latest security required in the market.

In our environment, we're using virtual servers. There are no physical ones. We are shifting to containers in my current organization. Most of the applications we are using are containerized, and it has been easy for us to manage those applications. However, we also require some in-built applications, and for that, a change in people's mindset is required. It's not about the OS; it's about the people who do the development. It is becoming a bit hard for them because they were using a different platform previously, and now, they need to move to the Linux platform. It is a little bit different for them.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. When comparing it with AIX, AIX is a bit easier in terms of use and it also has the Smitty tool.