We performed a comparison between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows Server based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Users of Windows Server 2016 feel that it is a very user-friendly solution. Furthermore, they note that its active directory feature is highly valuable. They also note that it is highly scalable. However, many users feel that its security capabilities could be greatly improved. They also feel that the graphical interface could be better.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Red Hat Enterprise Linux seems to be a slightly superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Windows Server 2016 rather expensive to purchase and not as secure as it should be.
"Customer support is valuable."
"The security features are better than many other solutions offer."
"With regard to security, most companies are moving towards the black box approach and Red Hat. It's much more secure compared to the other vendors."
"The most valuable features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux are the mobile applications and getting real-time notifications."
"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."
"I prefer AIX, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is cheaper."
"One pro is that at the operating system layer, like, RHEL has better support from Red Hat, and if something goes down, I found many resources for troubleshooting and stuff online."
"The Red Hat support is most valuable. My team and I are really good at Linux, and we can do almost everything in any kind of Linux solution, but sometimes, we have a really nasty problem, and the Red Hat engineering support at the third level has been fantastic. They know how to fix almost everything. The reason why I pay so much money to them is to have this kind of service and assurance."
"It's easy to set up and deploy."
"Windows Server is a stable and scalable solution."
"Nothing is required for the maintenance of the solution, Microsoft does everything. It is very good and robust."
"Its performance is very good, and it is stable. All applications are working perfectly, and there is no issue."
"User friendly and compatible with the scalar product applications."
"The most useful is the interface and the ergonomic. Windows is very simple."
"A valuable feature of Windows Server has been the performance. We have done all the redundancy and fault tolerance things to protect our servers and, so far, so good."
"What I like about Windows Server is that it is an effective and useful solution for my needs."
"The only change that stumped me was the networking in version 9. I preferred the ifconfig way of doing things, but the system changes of it have grown on me."
"If they can make the integration with Ansible easier, that would be ideal."
"I use Linux on Satellite with Ansible infrastructure. It would be great if there were a universal interface to control RHEL's policy from Satellite. It could be a dashboard showing which policies were enabled on what system and allow you to apply them from the dashboard."
"It would be great to have an overview of how various Red Hat products work together. They can show how to tie all those pieces together and how to have the products that we work together for our day-to-day processes."
"From a cloud perspective, I'm looking for more integrations with native cloud services. For example, the ability to use native Azure Key Vault instead of Ansible Key Vault or Red Hat Key Vault."
"Continuous improvement is essential to enhance user experiences and address evolving needs."
"The upgrade procedures are a little bit cumbersome. It would be nice if they are not because every three or four years we have to update, and I find that to be a bit on the cumbersome side. We have been able to automate most of it, but we still run into things where the job does not finish. There are things that require additional steps. There are things that need to be removed and that always require manual intervention."
"Red Hat can improve its operating system by making it better from the quality assurance perspective. Users do find bugs, which they, of course, shouldn't encounter. A better QA would probably make the job a lot better. It would make the product a lot more stable than it's today."
"Windows Server needs to introduce more dashboards."
"The solution could improve by having more integration and some of the new features that are being released in Windows 11."
"The solution could have better security features."
"It could be more secure. We can't compare it to other products because they have their own security and all those things. When it comes to email security, there are issues. Microsoft products used to get hacked all the time, but we're still comfortable with that."
"It could be more secure. We don't like it because if you compare it to Linux, Linux is better."
"There are lots of improvements that can be brought by Microsoft, although for us Windows Server works mostly as expected. For how we're using Windows Server, security is a top priority, so when talking security, it can always be improved upon, no matter what."
"The initial setup could be simplified."
"It would be better if they improved the user interface."
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is ranked 1st in Operating Systems (OS) for Business with 167 reviews while Windows Server is ranked 4th in Operating Systems (OS) for Business with 180 reviews. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is rated 8.8, while Windows Server is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) writes "Highly stable, good knowledge base, and reasonable price". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Windows Server writes "Easy to setup, stable and caters to my wide range of use cases but lacks user-friendly interface". Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is most compared with Ubuntu Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Windows 10, CentOS and Oracle Linux, whereas Windows Server is most compared with Ubuntu Linux, Windows 10, Oracle Linux, CentOS and Windows 11. See our Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. Windows Server report.
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