Alvin Abaya - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer at State of California
Real User
Secure and feature-rich with a good knowledge base and support
Pros and Cons
  • "The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux is good. It is easy to parse through all of the knowledge base."
  • "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."

How has it helped my organization?

We are a Linux shop, so a lot of our engineers are familiar with Linux. We try to push Red Hat Enterprise Linux instead of Windows. The reason for it in the beginning was licensing. Some of it was because of the way the contract was set up. It was cheaper, but we do use it now just for the ease of it. I do not know if it is because of Ansible, which we use for a lot of our day-to-day operations, that we tend to lean more toward Red Hat.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has affected our system's uptime or security. I know Microsoft publishes zero-day vulnerabilities for Windows as fast as Red Hat, but we noticed that in terms of problems or alerts that we get for attacks or viruses, there is not anything on the Red Hat side. That is why we feel that it is more secure. It might be just the nature of Red Hat where all services and ports are off. It is not like Windows where everything is on, and you have to turn it on. I was having a conversation with one of the gentlemen who is also attending the Red Hat conference, and I got to know that there are built-in NIST features with Red Hat that we could turn on, so we do not have to try to figure out how to harden our system.

What is most valuable?

The testing of the updates or the packages of the kernel is valuable because I used to be a part of the Fedora project. I know it is all vetted out before it gets to production, but a majority of it is the support and the relationships I have with the Red Hat employees assigned to our account.

As they move over to newer versions, certain things change, which is expected as the technology matures or new things come out, but what really surprises me are the features that are there in the cloud, such as Red Hat Insights. They are not there on-prem. There are a lot of things on the cloud portal that I did not notice before, and I was surprised because we were unaware of them. Red Hat is doing a lot of investment in that sense.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux is good. It is easy to parse through all of the knowledge base. I do not know if Windows does it because I have not looked at it, but in Red Hat's knowledge base, there are a lot of things. They fast-track a lot of things in their knowledge base, even when they are not yet official. Especially with the tie-in with Bugzilla, even though it is not a true KB, we can see and follow if other people in the world are hitting a certain problem or something similar to what we are experiencing. I like that.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I started with the company around 2012, and they have been using it even before then. At that time, it was Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and now, we are up to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.

Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

How are customer service and support?

In 10 or 11 years of using Red Hat solutions, I have opened only one or two support tickets. It probably was something during a patch and during Satellite 5 to Satellite 6 migration. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

In Linux, there are so many different flavors, but I am partial to Red Hat because I have been a part of the Fedora project. At our place, we have only two operating systems: Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I know CentOS, but that is usually because the appliance from the vendor was set up using that. That is why we had a few instances of CentOS in the past, but nowadays, I do not see any other flavors of Linux.

How was the initial setup?

For the majority of our use cases for Red Hat, we have on-prem deployments. There are some things that they are trying to spin up on AWS. I do not know if they are cloud-native apps or not, but I know our developers are now moving on to it.

I have been involved in the initial setup, upgrades, and migration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I did not have any problems while going from major OS versions. I always push new upgrades or homogeneous migrations, such as from version 6 to version 7 to version 8. There is probably an option to upgrade in place. Overall, with Red Hat OS, I have not seen many problems. A long time ago, when they went from Python 2 to Python 3, there were certain things we had to change in the script.

I know that Red Hat is moving to Wayland from X11, but I do not see any problems there. From Satellite 5 to 6, it was a bit hard in the beginning, but now, it is pretty self-explanatory. Overall, everything about which we had questions was very well documented.

In terms of our upgrade and/or migration plans to stay current, first, we look at the EOL and the roadmap of Red Hat because of security. We used to offer every single version before the said EOL happened, but now, we just do an n-minus-one. We try to maintain the newest and one level below version. SAP users are the biggest Red Hat Enterprise Linux users in our environment. They have a particular PAM and upgrade path that they have to do with Red Hat. We also wait to be certified to certain versions, but our main strategy is the newest and one major version down. We try to get everybody off the other versions.

Our provisioning is all done using VMware products. We have a vRealize automation, now called the Aria automation, to spin it up. Patching is done through Satellite. I do not do it, but when I watch them doing it, it seems it is just using remote SSH commands against the list of non-prod and prod servers. It is something simple. We do not seem to be doing anything complicated. I am wondering if there is a better way to do versioning control or patching and whatnot, but currently, it is very simple.

I am satisfied with the management experience not only in terms of patching but also the day zero to day one or day two stuff. We are interested in utilizing Ansible to eliminate human error and whatnot. During provisioning, we have Pearl scripts that we have to manually trigger. I know we can use Ansible for that, but it comes down to the cost of entry which is still very high. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

A lot of people are moving into the core count for licensing. We still have a few with one-to-one standard server licensing, but we are utilizing the virtualization host licensing. We license it based on the host, not based on VMs, which is cool. I was very happy that there was certain licensing with SAP to have access to SAP repos. Its cost was the same as the regular one, so I was happy about that.

The only pricing that bugs me right now is the Ansible pricing. We wanted to take a look at Ansible, but the biggest thing a year back with Ansible was that the management did not want to spend half a million on Ansible Tower. They wanted to see first if we would use it and not waste money. I do not know if things have changed now, but Ansible is probably still expensive. That is one of the routes that we want to go to. We will see if we can utilize Ansible Tower, so pricing-wise, that is the only thing that pops up. It is too expensive. The cost of entry seems quite high.

Overall, I do not see any issues with what we have spent on Red Hat. We also have learning subscriptions that we pay to Red Hat for the training, and I do not feel we have wasted any money.

What other advice do I have?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has built-in features, but we do not use them. It is one of the things about which I need to talk to our account manager. There are so many different ways to skin a cat. My department has so much money, so they bought everything, but a lot of the security features, such as SELinux, are disabled for us. We handle the firewall rules, access lists, and other things at another location rather than on the actual VM itself. It does not hurt to do it at multiple places, but operations-wise, it would be a nightmare, so we try not to do it. I know there are a lot of cool new things built in Red Hat, and that is something we should circle back and take a look at.

I have seen Red Hat Insights. I clicked on it one time when our account manager was showing us something. They have so many features in the cloud that we do not know we can use. Maybe it is wrong to assume, but the reason I do not look at Red Hat Insights is that a part of our patching is already included. We are not that strict about what we patch in terms of the versions. It is useful, but Red Hat emails us anyway. They tell about the severity of an issue. We do not look at Red Hat Insights. We see those emails and we see CVEs. If a package is installed and applicable to our VMs, we just use Satellite and patch that particular vulnerability. 

I have also tried the web console once. It looked interesting, but we do not have much use for it because a lot of our customers or application owners are server admins. About 99% of our Red Hat installs are all minimal installs. We do not have a GUI. There is just a terminal screen. Even though they could console in and do whatnot, it is all done via SSH.

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a 10 out of 10.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Steven Crain - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Cloud Security at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Has secure defaults and nice integrations for security and vulnerability scanning
Pros and Cons
  • "There are some nice integrations with scanning for vulnerabilities. That is the feature I have enjoyed the most because I am a security person, and that is my bread and butter."
  • "The only issue we have had with it is around the SELinux configuration because the way Ansible installs, it sticks the platform passwords in a flat file. We want that locked down more strongly than what is there currently with SELinux."

What is our primary use case?

We have Ansible deployed on our Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. We use it to manage the security of our fleet of Ubuntu virtual machines.

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is way ahead of Ubuntu in terms of security and compliance. It is mainly the ecosystem of data science tools that our developers want that pushes us in that direction. As a security engineer, I have a lot more peace at night knowing that my Red Hat servers are doing a good job keeping our Ansible infrastructure safe because that has fingers into everything we do. It is pretty critical.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not affected our system's uptime in any particularly noticeable way.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not enabled us to achieve security standards certification because we do not have any yet. We will have them hopefully in the future.

What is most valuable?

There are some nice integrations with scanning for vulnerabilities. That is the feature I have enjoyed the most because I am a security person, and that is my bread and butter.

Ansible has certainly been a game-changer. It is a lot easier to keep a whole bunch of virtual machines consistent with each other and make a change consistently across all of them. We use them for data science activities. Our data scientists are constantly trying out new packages and downloading new tools. We have to enable them to have root access on their machines but also need to ensure that they are not doing anything stupid at the same time. There are competitors to Ansible, but we are a big Python shop, so it is a very comfortable environment for us.

What needs improvement?

The only issue we have had with it is around the SELinux configuration because the way Ansible installs, it sticks the platform passwords in a flat file. We want that locked down more strongly than what is there currently with SELinux. 

For how long have I used the solution?

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

How are customer service and support?

I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Primarily, we have used Ubuntu. We have had some of our use cases on CentOS, and then, of course, our workstations are all Windows, but I wish they were not.

We chose Ansible, and that chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux for us.

How was the initial setup?

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud. We have Azure because it is the corporate standard. We do not have any concerns about using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud. Obviously, everything in the cloud is more exposed than everything on-prem, but it has got good, sensible, and secure defaults built in, so there are no concerns there.

In terms of Red Hat Enterprise Linux upgrades, when we upgraded Ansible this fall, that pushed us from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. It should be a little easier from now on. Now that we have made the big jump from the older Ansible to AAP, we will probably be upgrading the systems on a quarterly basis.

What was our ROI?

We probably have not yet seen an ROI. We purchased it a couple of years ago, but we have not had the time to put it to as much use as we wanted to put it to. The cost is low, so it would not take very long to reach a return on investment.

We have not made use of the Committed Spend.

What other advice do I have?

For its use case, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Sresthita Mukherjee - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President at Citi
Real User
Top 20
Has strong security features, and excellent compatibility for enterprise environments
Pros and Cons
  • "While using it, we encountered far fewer complexities, and the entire process is much smoother and streamlined."
  • "Continuous improvement is essential to enhance user experiences and address evolving needs."

What is our primary use case?

We are currently in the midst of a POC phase with a standalone cluster. This cluster consists of both coordinator and worker nodes, with a metadata store for storing various metadata. The entire setup is deployed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, and we have established a connection to the OpenShift UI.

What is most valuable?

While using it, we encountered far fewer complexities, and the entire process is much smoother and streamlined. For patching purposes, we simply need to communicate with our system administrator. They take care of the patching process, so we don't have to get involved and we can easily connect to the artifact repository and download the necessary artifacts to install in our system. 

We have a set of JSON files containing YAML configurations where all the required image details are documented and this setup makes it very straightforward for us.As for the Web Console, if you're talking about the user interface for tasks like creating ports, deploying applications, managing secrets, and other functions, I haven't encountered any significant issues. 

The process is generally straightforward and quick, taking just a few minutes. OpenShift offers two types of interfaces: one where you can edit YAML files for more advanced customization, and the other where you can use forms for faster deployment, though with fewer features.

What needs improvement?

Continuous improvement is essential to enhance user experiences and address evolving needs.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with it for approximately six months.

How are customer service and support?

Our experience with its customer support is very good. Whenever we encounter any issues, we receive prompt and comprehensive assistance. There's no need to wait or take any additional steps to get the help we require, which is highly appreciated. I would rate it nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

In the past, our work primarily involved Hadoop, and we also dealt with Solid Cloud for security and other purposes, but we found that this setup was slow and not open source. On the other hand, the DLP solution we're currently using is not only cost-effective but also significantly faster. 

I also used a Linux browser, specifically the KCL browser which required me to go through the process of installing packages and various components, while in the current setup, everything is seamlessly connected. We simply use the OC command with a private key to connect to OpenShift. There are no extra or additional steps required, making the whole process exceptionally fast and efficient. It's quite remarkable and makes the workflow truly hassle-free.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy.

What about the implementation team?

The deployment process is straightforward. I simply had to deploy the images using OC commands, and the process of connecting to OpenShift was remarkably fast and smooth.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Lasse Wackers - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Integration Engineer at SVA System Vertrieb Alexander GmbH
Real User
Top 5
Automatic updates, great support, and the solution's built-in security features help simplify risk reduction
Pros and Cons
  • "The updates are the most valuable feature."
  • "Scaling can be complicated and has room for improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-prem and in the cloud as a fallback.

We are a private cloud provider and we host Linux ourselves because they are tough to manage.

We offer our customers the option to host their Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Azure or on our private cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features help simplify risk reduction. Red Hat offers a subscription service that provides critical security updates within 24 hours. The service also includes an excellent database of known security vulnerabilities. If a CVE identifier is known for a vulnerability, it can be entered into the web interface. The web interface will then indicate whether Red Hat Enterprise Linux is affected by the vulnerability and what steps need to be taken to fix it. The fix will be included in the next security update. This is a valuable security feature that helps organizations to stay up-to-date on security patches and mitigate risk.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is beneficial for keeping our organization agile. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and 9 include Podman, a newer software similar to Docker. Podman was built to address the problems that Docker had with creating and running containers, and it also includes the support of Red Hat. There is a good synergy between Red Hat and Podman.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has helped improve our organization. We provide a service to our clients, which they pay for each month. This service includes our support. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a stable operating system, so we do not have to provide much support. When we do need to provide support, it is usually for an application, not for the operating system.

I can build with confidence and ensure availability across physical and virtual cloud infrastructures using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-premises since 2008 without any problems. It is easy to automate. Virtualization is always present, so I work with virtual machines. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very easy to deploy on a virtual machine. We can create a virtual machine, and if we are working with VMware, we can create a template to use for new systems. There is no need for a classic installation.

What is most valuable?

The updates are the most valuable feature. In the past, we had 800 or 900 Linux systems with Red Hat, and all of the systems were updated every night. In the 14 years, we have only had ten issues with the updates.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a good configuration.

What needs improvement?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is secure but the security always has room for improvement.

Scaling can be complicated and has room for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 14 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

I give the stability an eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a seven out of ten. 

Updating Red Hat Enterprise Linux from version 8 to 9 is a complex and time-consuming process. It is often easier to install a new server with Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine and migrate our data and applications. However, if we only need to resize the CPU or memory of our existing server, we can do so using the hypervisor without having to reboot.

How are customer service and support?

Red Hat support is fast, and they are capable of answering 90 percent of our questions.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used Debian, Ubuntu, and SUSE Linux. In our case, if we wanted a conservative Linux system that did not have the newest version, these were perfect systems. However, if we wanted to install them on our laptops or on our clients, they were the wrong solution. We switched to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the Red Hat support. Debian also offers its own support. Ubuntu does not offer direct support, so we were required to order it through another company. SUSE had other problems that we did not want to deal with. Red Hat Enterprise Linux support has been very helpful to our back-end admins.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is complicated, but with Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine, there is a graphical web interface where we can create a new image every week. We have created a golden template that enables us to update the image every month and upload it to both our private and public clouds for usage. 

The deployment time depends on whether we have a template or not. With a template, deployment can take between five and ten minutes. If we have to install the software, the time it takes depends on our internet bandwidth. Ten gigabits of bandwidth can take around 15 minutes to install.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was completed in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

As a provider, we must follow a different licensing model. We charge €2,000 per system for three years. Each month, we provide Red Hat with a number of new and old systems. Red Hat then invoices us based on the number of systems in use that month. This only applies to our cloud customers.

What other advice do I have?

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the best thing I have.

We always install a minimized Red Hat Enterprise Linux system for our customers. If they require more features, we provide them as requested.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the most perfect OS I have ever worked with. It is nice knowing when we have to use the OS and when we don't.

All Linux solutions are open source, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a commercial product that includes support and frequent updates. Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be downloaded for free, but it is not recommended to use it without a subscription, as it will not receive security updates or bug fixes. Red Hat reinvests a portion of the subscription revenue back into open-source projects, making it possible for other organizations to use these technologies for free.

Maintenance requirements depend on our needs. If we only want to have a server and install updates every night, no additional maintenance is required. Red Hat Enterprise Linux does not require any special support. However, if we want to ensure that the system time is always correct, that all updates are installed within a month, and that the system reboots after updates are installed, we will need to perform some additional maintenance tasks. These tasks can be automated to ensure that our system is always running smoothly. We currently have three people for the maintenance. We currently have 900 systems.

I recommend evaluating multiple Linux solutions and conducting a proof of concept because, although Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a great operating system, it may not be the best choice for every organization. I do not recommend using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a new laptop because the versions included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux are typically two to four years old. This is because Red Hat Enterprise Linux is designed to be a stable OS, and newer versions may not have been fully tested and may have issues. If we have a server or software that is certified for Red Hat, then I would always recommend using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Russell Burgos - PeerSpot reviewer
Compute & Storage Associate Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
We can dynamically expand volumes and easily scale, and the solution offers excellent support
Pros and Cons
  • "Logical volumes allow us to dynamically expand volumes, which is valuable from an operational perspective."
  • "The price has room for improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We are currently using Red Hat Enterprise Linux's versions 6, 7, and 8. We run the OS both on-prem and in the cloud.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for web applications, containers, Kubernetes, and simple scripting servers. The scripting servers are used to run scripts on run drops and so on. However, the biggest use cases are containers and web app workloads.

The cloud providers are AWS and Alibaba.

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat helps our organization avoid cloud vendor lock-in because we can run Kubernetes and a few different workloads directly on Red Hat across different cloud providers. Since Red Hat is an operating system, we can migrate our workloads to any cloud provider that supports Red Hat.

Avoiding vendor lock-in and being able to move workflows between cloud providers has saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is easy to recover, especially from a backup. I believe this is because of its resilience. If I use an instance, I can go to my backups and restore it without much trouble. I was going to compare it to Windows for a moment, where there might be some additional steps required to clean things up after recovery. However, I haven't had many issues where I needed to do any cleanup afterward.

It is easy to move workloads between the cloud and our data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The ease of migration depends on the cloud provider and what they allow us to do. However, for the most part, replication-based migration between cloud providers or on-premises works well. 

What is most valuable?

Linux is good for hardening the operating system. Logical volumes allow us to dynamically expand volumes, which is valuable from an operational perspective. This is especially true in cloud environments, where we pay for every kilobyte of storage. By using logical volumes, we can expand the disk on demand without downtime, which can help us keep costs down.

What needs improvement?

The price has room for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for three years, but I have known about the OS since version four.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is definitely resilient and easy to recover, especially when compared to Windows. I enjoyed working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux more than Microsoft Windows, especially because of its resilience.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's scalability is easy to manage. We can simply spin up more instances as needed, and then turn them off when we no longer need them. This means that Red Hat Enterprise Linux's scalability is not as much of an issue with the cloud provider.

We have around 2,500 instances of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in our environment.

How are customer service and support?

Red Hat support is generally good, but it can sometimes take a little longer than we would like to get a response, especially when the issue is through a web-based chat.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The on-premises deployments are subscription based, and the cloud instances are from the providers which are AWS and Alibaba.

We can always ask for Red Hat Enterprise Linux to be less expensive but when we compare it to other options, there are savings in the long run.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux was our first choice because of its enterprise support. That was the key factor. We do also run other Linux distributions, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is our primary choice because of the enterprise support. 

The big difference between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Linux-based operating systems is the support. There isn't much difference other than the syntax, where the command is "at, get" versus Red Hat using YUM or DNF for installation. So outside of that, the support is the main difference.

What other advice do I have?

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. No solution is perfect, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very close.

Our engineering team probably used the image-building tool. I am on the operations side, so I do not see that part of the process. I take the images that are already built and deploy them.

I think it's just a workflow issue. We need to improve our own workflows to be able to manage them better. Red Hat support is already good when we encounter something we're unfamiliar with. So, we need to get Enterprise CoreOS from Red Hat for those cases. I think as we encounter more of our own workloads, we'll need to improve our workflows even further.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Linux Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Simplifies risk reduction and aids in maintaining compliance with industry standards and regulations
Pros and Cons
  • "The robust networking capabilities offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux were highly valuable. They have numerous partnerships and dedicated efforts in low-latency technologies, which are particularly beneficial for trading firms. They possess extensive expertise in external tuning and similar aspects."
  • "Having an image that includes all the necessary software and provisioning it so that subsequent updates provide the updated image, would significantly enhance the developer experience. It would be great if teams could make modifications and changes to the image, like rebasing. I think it would be an awesome feature."

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux specifically was a hard requirement for certain software that we wanted to utilize. In fact, purchasing Red Hat’s enterprise version was necessary to run AP. That was the primary objective.

Apart from that, the robust networking capabilities offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux were highly valuable. They have numerous partnerships and dedicated efforts in low-latency technologies, which are particularly beneficial for trading firms. They possess extensive expertise in external tuning and similar aspects.

What is most valuable?

Overall, the reliability stands out the most for me. While the package selection might be somewhat restricted, it is highly integrated and cohesive.

What needs improvement?

I'm really excited about some of the developments happening in the workstations and the Fedora Silverblue space. There are advancements like rpm-ostree and the OCI container format, which enable deploying RHEL in new ways.

As we have numerous developer workstations, being able to deploy them in an image-based format is highly desirable. This would allow us to use the "toolbox" concept, where developers can choose any desired operating system within the toolbox. Some of our developers also work with Ubuntu and Oracle Linux. Having a consistent developer platform with full pseudo permissions and zero permissions within that container or toolbox would be beneficial.

Additionally, having an image that includes all the necessary software and provisioning it so that subsequent updates provide the updated image, would significantly enhance the developer experience. It would be great if teams could make modifications and changes to the image, like rebasing. I think it would be an awesome feature.

Let me provide an example of why this would be valuable for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation. We recently switched from one security software application to another similar application on our workstations. We had to manually remove the unwanted software and install the new one. It was manageable for servers or edge devices, but for remote devices that are not always on the network or VPN, it became a cumbersome task to reach out to each device and remove and install the software. If we could update an image with the old software removed and the new software installed, and then allow users to update their image, it would simplify the process for everyone. Currently, it's possible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge, but it would be fantastic if this capability could be extended to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation as well. That's what would be really cool.

For how long have I used the solution?

The company has been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a significant period of time. As for myself, it's been around five years or so. I have also contributed to GNOME. About ten years ago, I was one of 12 individuals who wrote documentation for GNOME 3.

I don't think we are leveraging Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the cloud. Since we are primarily involved in trading, our infrastructure is predominantly on-premises, accounting for about 80%. We have our own data centers. While we do have some cloud workloads and our cloud presence is growing, it isn't a major focus in my role. I serve as the lead engineer for 700 developer workstations that run Linux. For parts that use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the cloud, we are split between different cloud providers, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

For the most part, we are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, which we support alongside Ceph and a bit of AAP. Apart from that, there is still a significant amount of CentOS 7 in use as people are gradually transitioning away from it.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is impressive. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

The customer service and support were pretty good. We encountered an issue, and we involved some people for assistance. In retrospect, we should have engaged higher-level support sooner for that specific issue. Support can be challenging when you're dealing with Linux problems, especially in our environment where we have a lot of skilled engineers; it feels like we're already operating beyond the normal troubleshooting space. So having access to escalated help when we need it is valuable. The support fixed our problem.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was complex because we were using a newer version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the server team's workloads. Normally, we go with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for hardware, but this time we got a better deal from a different vendor whose IPMI Redfish interface wasn't as advanced as Red Hat Enterprise Linux's. This caused some issues specifically related to deploying the newer version. However, once we managed to overcome most of those challenges, the use of Ansible for OS deployment became more straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

For the OS component, we worked directly with Red Hat. However, we utilized a company called Bits, based in Elk Grove, Illinois, to handle the hardware provisioning and setup.

What was our ROI?

We've seen an ROI. For instance, we were able to run a storage workload on one cluster that had an immense capacity. I calculated it to be the equivalent of either 16,000 iPads or 64,000 iPads. It was a significant amount. This capability is beneficial for us as we deal with a lot of trading data. We can perform analytics and machine learning workloads on it, which aids in compliance and enables traders to make more informed trades. It's a win-win situation.

The compliance aspect ensures that we stay out of trouble, and the machine learning capabilities help traders make better trades, which ultimately contributes to our success. I'm glad that they make money. It's wonderful.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Red Hat is making efforts to simplify the SKU system, which is a positive development. It's beneficial to have the flexibility to allocate a certain budget to explore different licenses within the Red Hat ecosystem. We can try out products and decide if they meet our needs. If they don't, we can decommission the corresponding SKU. I have noticed that we have some Red Hat entitlements that we are not currently utilizing, so having granularity in the SKU structure would be an advantage.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

For our specific use cases, certain products like SAP, AAP, and OpenShift require Red Hat Enterprise Linux. That played a significant role in our decision.

What other advice do I have?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s built-in security features, in terms of simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance, are an area where I've observed some of the developments with Satellite and Red Hat Insights. But since we have different operating systems, such as Windows, Mac, Linux, and a mix of server and desktop environments, I'm not sure if Satellite or Insights can integrate seamlessly with all these platforms. Currently, we use a different product to assess our CVE vulnerabilities across hosts, including phones and other devices. I do find the discussions about software supply chain security intriguing. Focusing on that aspect seems really promising.

The portability of applications and containers, specifically for those already built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, seems pretty good. Red Hat offers UBI images that are freely available without the need for licensing. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and container platforms provide a solid setup for portability.

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Senior Engineer at Organon
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Efficiently separates databases from applications and 90% of operations are successfully running on Red Hat
Pros and Cons
  • "It's been great since we have it. It's been reliable and fast."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use it for databases and applications. In the new model, we keep databases separate from applications. Currently, about 90% of our operations are running in Red Hat 8. Some systems are still on Red Hat 7, but those will be migrated off by the beginning of next year.

    How has it helped my organization?

    It's been great since we have it. It's been reliable and fast. We keep all the security agents, and we've been taken care of right away, and that's the improvement in our company. It's with the new RHEL. There's always something new, something good that works for us. 

    Moreover, we might need to move workloads from the cloud in the US to China in the future.

    What is most valuable?

    As we're migrating and doing the Elite upgrade, which is an in-place upgrade, we find it great. We use it for databases, and we're testing it for applications. Some applications don't work, but some are functioning well. So far, it's been a positive experience.

    Since I'm more focused on migrating, Leapp is awesome. We are able to do something that will work the way it's working.  There are no issues or breaks.

    RHEL's knowledge base is great. It's very good. Especially when you try to open a case, it gives you all the options you need, so you don't have to wait for the case to be opened. You can get all the information you need right there.

    Moreover, I am in the process of testing Leapp and Red Hat Insights. And then create our images from there rather than create MIs.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    At the new company, we've been using it for three years. At my previous company,  we used it for over five years. Personally, I have been using it for almost eight to ten years.

    How are customer service and support?

    We often have to go through people who have the same labels as us and who have the same knowledge base articles as us, which takes time. But they do it first; it's searching the knowledge way that I search. That I can do. That takes the time before. They do the payment. They sent me exactly what I had already found. And then we can go to the next level. That is taking a little bit more time that we can be a little bit better. So, the initial step of the support process could be improved. 

    90% of people who open those bases are administrators who already look on the Internet for all these knowledge bases. So by the time we get there, we're gonna get the knowledge base back. And that's not helpful. 

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Positive

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    I used to use HPUX and Solaris. We switched to RHEL because HPUX started looking like it was going away, so we started moving to Red Hat. We thought it was our best option. We tested different flavors of RHEL.

    When it comes to provisioning and patching, we have a satellite server. We use a lot of Ansible. We are getting used to Ansible and Satellite servers. 

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup wasn't complex, but since we wanted to make it easier to use, it became harder to make it work the way we wanted. Not out of the box, so we can just build a server that is ready to be deployed right away without any more interventions.

    We use RHEL with AWS because it's easier for us to maintain since we create our own AMIs and we update that as we need it. So we don't need to follow their schedule until we get it more secure and more reliable for us.

    What other advice do I have?

    Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud

    If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

    Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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    Feature-rich, good integration, stable, easy to deploy, and the security is kept up to date
    Pros and Cons
    • "The feature that I like the most is that we can integrate it easily with our existing infrastructure. We found that it is much easier to deploy RHEL in our environment compared to a competing distribution like Ubuntu."
    • "The biggest thing that is crushing RHEL is documentation. Their documentation is haphazard at best. The man pages that you can use locally are pretty good, they've been fleshed out pretty well, but the documentation from Red Hat itself really needs somebody to go through it and review it."

    What is our primary use case?

    Our primary use case for RHEL is running our front-end web servers. When you visit our site, all of the front-end servers are Red Hat. The databases that are hosted are Oracle and they predominantly sit on Red Hat 7. We're trying to migrate those to version 8.

    We also use it for BI.

    We have a digital footprint in Azure and AWS, as well as on-premises. Things for us are very fluid. We're always changing and adapting to our environment, based on what the needs of our faculty and students are.

    How has it helped my organization?

    The experience depends on the user and what it is that they are doing. If somebody is a Windows user, they're not comfortable with Linux, even if it has a GUI. The graphic user interface can be off-putting to users that are familiar with Mac or Windows. It's not as fast, snappy, and showy as the Windows or Apple graphical user interface. So, those types of users for office production, probably, will not be happy with the Red Hat product line.

    If on the other hand, you're a developer or you're a database administrator (DBA), it is different. My experience with my developers and my DBA is that they love Linux. It's easy for them to use. It's easy for them to deploy things like Oracle databases and web servers. Continuous development integration tools like Maven or Tomcat or any of those frameworks are already put in place.

    For all of the backend tools that do the work to build the infrastructure, Red Hat really does a good job to make it easy to deploy those consistently, securely, and upgrade them in the same way. There are a lot of pluses for the developers, the DBAs, and the like. But, if you're a regular office user, Red Hat is probably not the tool or the OS that you want to use.

    When using RHEL for tracking or monitoring, they do a very good job with respect to the impact on the performance of existing applications. The nice thing about Red Hat is you can get very granular with your logging. We do log aggregation, we use Elasticsearch, and we use Filebeat. These things are part of our log aggregation applications and services that run on the backend of our Red Hat boxes, and it does a very good job of that. We also add bash logging into our hardened Linux deployments, so we see everything. We want to monitor everything, and Red Hat does a really good job with that.

    RHEL has given us the opportunity to accelerate the deployment of our cloud-based workloads, although because my organization is a very small college, and we don't have a lot of funds, we can't afford to have all of our workloads in the cloud. It's actually cheaper for us to run most of our applications and servers on-premises.

    The workloads that we have in the cloud are typically mission-critical, like student transcripts and stuff like that. These are the types of things that we need to have backups of, which is something that Azure does with Red Hat very well. We are moving in the direction of using Red Hat in the cloud, with the caveat that we deploy only as we can afford it.

    With respect to disaster recovery, Azure and Red Hat are probably one of the best pairings that you can get. It provides a lot of redundancy, it's easy to deploy, and the server support is excellent with Azure. There is also good logging, so if you do have an issue you can troubleshoot rather quickly and resolve the problem.

    The integration with other Red Hat products, such as Satellite, is excellent and I haven't had any issues with it at all. Everything works very well together with all of the products that we use. For example, Ansible works very well with Satellite. We also used Salt at one time, and we used Puppet. We've moved away from those and just focused on using Ansible. All of the tools that we've used work very well with Rad Hat. The product is mature enough that there's enough support for it from all of the other vendors that run on the Red Hat platform.

    What is most valuable?

    There are lots of good features in this product. Because I am a system admin, I don't tend to use the GUI or end-user features. Everything that I do is executed from the command line, and this includes features like monitoring tools, such as netstat or iostat. These are the tools that are built into RHEL. Their toolboxes are good but I wouldn't consider them a great feature because there are things that they still need to work on.

    The feature that I like the most is that we can integrate it easily with our existing infrastructure. We found that it is much easier to deploy RHEL in our environment compared to a competing distribution like Ubuntu. This is because we also use RHEL Satellite, which is the patching and lifecycle management application that binds all of our RHELs and allows us to push out new stuff.

    Satellite is an important feature because it helps to speed up deployment. Satellite is Red Hat's solution to Windows, where the Windows equivalent would be Server Center Control Manager (SCCM), which is now Intune. Satellite is the lifecycle management application for deploying, maintaining, and upgrading your Red Hat systems, and it does a very good job of that. Satellite works in tandem with Red Hat, as you use it to deploy your server.

    The main point is that Satellite makes it quick and easy to deploy, and it is also easy to automate the process. I'm the only Linux person at my organization, with the rest of the people working with Windows. Using Satellite, a Windows end-user can deploy a Red Hat server without any Linux experience.

    The security updates are done very well, so I feel confident that I'm not going to get hit with ransomware or a similar problem. Their security patches are pretty up to date. Also, it's rather easy to harden a Red Hat deployment because they provide tools to help you do that.

    Red Hat gives us the ability to run multiple versions of applications on a single operating system, although we only use this functionality for Java. Even then, it's specific to the underlying applications. For example, Oracle uses Java on the backend. Also, we have multiple versions of Java on some of our web servers and it does a good job.

    What needs improvement?

    The biggest thing that is crushing RHEL is documentation. Their documentation is haphazard at best. The man pages that you can use locally are pretty good, they've been fleshed out pretty well, but the documentation from Red Hat itself really needs somebody to go through it and review it.

    The only real negative that I have with Red Hat is that you can tell that when you look at the documentation, they cut and paste documentation from the previous version. Because they update it that way, what happens is that there's nobody doing Q&A. For example, in Red Hat 7 and Red Hat 8, they changed the way they do deployments. Instead of using YUM, you use DNF but when you read the documentation for Red Hat 8, they intermix the two. This means that if you're a new Linux user, it's very difficult to distinguish between the two commands. The fact of the matter is that one is built on top of the other. DNF is backward compatible on top of YUM, and that can cause confusion with users and system administrators. However, it wouldn't be an issue if there was good documentation.

    My job is pretty easy, but the documentation would really help me be able to communicate the things that I do to the rest of my team. They're all Windows people and when I go to the Red Hat documentation and tell them that we're migrating to this and we're using this tool, but the documentation is horrible, I get laughed at.

    By comparison, Microsoft has its own problems with documentation, but it's a little bit more organized and it's definitely fleshed out a lot better. I commend Microsoft for its documentation. Red Hat may be the better product for the things that we do in our environment, but Microsoft has better documentation.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the past four years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    This is a very stable product.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    In terms of scalability, you can't beat it. It's easy for me to scale up and down, especially with Satellite. I can push out 10, 100, of the same servers for the same configuration and set up with the push of a button.

    On the cloud side, Azure also allows us to scale very nicely. This means that we can scale locally if we need to because we use Hyper-V for our VM management and we can spin up 10, 15, or however many servers we need, relatively easy with the push of a button, and you can do the same thing in Azure. We haven't done that in AWS.

    Most of the servers that we spin up are proxies. We use a product called HAProxy, and we can deploy those proxies as needed. There are also busy periods where we need to scale. For example, when it's the time of year for students to register for classes, we'll see an increase. 

    Another thing that is nice is that Azure will scale as we see more users come online. It will automatically spin up Red Hat boxes to accommodate, and then it'll bring them back down when that surge is over.

    Overall, scalability is very nice, either in the cloud or on-premises. As far as setup and configuration, you can make sure that it's consistent across the board, no matter where it is deployed.

    How are customer service and support?

    I would rate their frontline support, where I submit a ticket, a seven or eight out of ten.

    In terms of support that is available through their documentation, I would rate it a three out of ten.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    Before I started working for the organization I work for now, I used a product called the FOG Project. At the time, we used Ubuntu Linux. FOG was the equivalent to Satellite and Ubuntu is the equivalent to standard Red Hat.

    Comparing the two are apples and oranges. The FOG Project is not as mature as Satellite; it doesn't have the bells and whistles that Satellite does. In general, their lifecycle management tools cannot be compared. Satellite outperforms the FOG project, it's easier to deploy and easier to use.

    When comparing Ubuntu and Red Hat, the big difference is that the releases for Red Hat are more stable. They do lag a little behind Ubuntu, as Ubuntu is more bleeding edge. This means that they're pushing out updates a little bit faster, but they're not clean in the sense that they may push out a patch, but then five days later, they have to push out a patch to patch the patch. This is in contrast to Red Hat, which is a little bit more consistent and a little bit more stable. What it comes down to is that Red Hat is much more stable than Ubuntu in terms of patches, updates, and upgrades.

    Those are the key differences for somebody who manages that infrastructure. You want something that's easy to diagnose, troubleshoot, and put out solutions. Ubuntu may push out a patch or an update that's so bleeding edge or so out there that vendors haven't had time to come up with solutions on their own, so if it's a driver issue or something like that, with Ubuntu, you may have to wait around as a user for those kinds of solutions.

    With Red Hat, they make sure that when the product goes out, that there is some Q&A, and they've done some testing. They make sure that there's compatibility with other products that depend on that particular feature, functionality, or service.

    How was the initial setup?

    RHEL is very easy to configure and deploy.

    When we're talking about RHEL in the cloud, Azure is probably the better platform for RHEL. AWS has some licensing issues. The business end of using RHEL on AWS is not as mature or fleshed out as it is on Azure.

    Incidentally, I'm not a big fan of Azure. Rather, I have most of my experience in AWS, but Azure deploys Red Hat without issue. We don't have to worry about licensing and connecting things. Everything is already bound to Azure AD, and that makes it really nice because on-premises, we have to do that manually.

    For the on-premises deployment, part of the deployment package requires that we add our Red Hat servers to our local AD. But in Azure, it just does everything for you all within one PowerShell command. Ultimately, deploying Red Hat in Azure is much easier than deploying it either on-premises or on AWS.

    What was our ROI?

    We have seen a return on our investment. Our organization is probably going to stick with Red Hat because the licensing fees are low enough to offset the maintenance and support cost of that OS.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Pricing is always a critical factor for all IT departments. The cost of doing business is part of the nature of the job. If you're going to buy a bunch of Dell servers, for example, you have to take into consideration not just the licensing, but the hardware support and other things. The licensing with Red Hat is on par with other organizations like Microsoft.

    We buy our licensing in bulk, meaning we buy perhaps 1,500 licenses at a time. They changed their licensing structure over the last couple of years. It used to be per system, whereas now, it's all or nothing. We don't have a subscription, as they used to offer, because they moved away from that. We have a site license, which gives us a certain number of servers, perhaps 25,000, for the type of license that we have. That works really well for us.

    The way our structure is set up is that we just buy it by the tier system that they have, so if you have so many servers then you buy that tier and then you get so many licenses as part of that tier or enterprise package.

    There are additional fees for using other Red Hat tools, such as Ansible Tower. We use Satellite, and it uses Ansible on the backend. However, we use the vanilla Ansible out of the box, rather than the official Red Hat Ansible Tower, simply because we can't afford the licensing for it. Satellite bundles everything together nicely in their suite of tools but we have moved away from that because of the additional cost.

    This is one of the downsides to any operating system, not just Red Hat. Windows, for example, is the same way. They try to bill every organization for every license that they can by adding on different suites of tools that they charge for. A lot of organizations, especially the smaller ones, simply can't afford it, so they create workarounds instead. In our case, Ansible is freely available and we can use it without having to pay the fees for Red Hat's Ansible.

    The nice thing though, is that they give you the choice. Red Hat doesn't force you to buy the entire product. They still have Ansible entwined with their Satellite product. The point is that if you want the additional features and functionality then you have to buy their Ansible Tower product, but you can still use the basic product regardless.

    The fact that RHEL is open-source was a factor in us implementing it. This is an interesting time for Red Hat. The great thing about Red Hat for us was that we could use Red Hat and then we could use their free, commercial version, which is CentOS. It stands for Community Enterprise OS. Unfortunately, they are no longer going to push out CentOS and I think that 8.4 is the latest version of their free Red Hat distribution.

    When we first went to Red Hat, in all the organizations I've ever worked at, being able to test things was one of the key factors. We could spin up a CentOS, implement a proof of concept and do some testing before we actually went to use RHEL, which is a licensed version. The real plus was that we could do testing and we could do all these things on the free version without having to eat up a license to do a proof of concept before we actually invested money moving in that direction, using that particular product or service.

    Now that this ability has gone away, we are going to see how that pans out. I think Rocky Linux, they're hoping that that's going to be the next CentOS or free Red Hat. We'll see if that pans out or not but right now, it's a scary time for people that are dependent on CentOS for their free development environments, where we can just spin that up and play around. Right now, we're looking at how we're going to resolve that.

    It may be that we have to eat up a license so that we can spin up a machine that we just want to do a proof of concept. This is something that we don't know yet. I don't have an answer because we simply don't have enough data to make an assessment on that.

    Everything considered, having a free commercial version available, in addition to the paid product, is a big lure for us. They worked really well in tandem.

    What other advice do I have?

    We have approximately 14 servers running Red Hat 6 but we used Red Hat 6 all the way to Red Hat 8.

    The AppStream feature is something that we have tried but on a very limited scale. We have had mixed results with it, although it looks promising. At this point, I can't say whether it is a good feature or not.

    My advice for anybody considering Red Hat depends on the role of the person that is making the decision. If they're an end-user or their organization is using office productivity software, then they're probably not going to want to use it for the backend. This is because there are not a lot of users that are using Red Hat as their office productivity operating system.

    If on the other hand, you're somebody that's looking for servers that just need what they call five nines or high availability, Red Hat is your solution for that. That's what I would say to anybody, any technical person that I've talked to, if you can afford it, definitely get Red Hat for your web development. Your web servers should be either Apache, or NGINX, which is their web server stuff.

    Red Hat should also be used to host an Oracle database. We found that that works really well and is very competitive with Microsoft's SQL server. It's about the same cost; the Red Hat product is actually a little cheaper than Microsoft's SQL product.

    Considering the cost, ease of deployment, and ease of use, Red Hat is the better product for your main infrastructure. For things that just have to be up and running, Red Hat is the product that you want to use.

    I can't be strong enough in my opinion that Red Hat does what it does very well for the mundane tasks of infrastructure. For instance, when it comes to web servers, no other OS does a better job than Red Hat for web servers or databases. Similarly, it does a very good job for proxies. For things that just need to run and have very little human interaction, Red Hat's your solution. If you're looking for something that's for an office, such as for accounting, then Red Hat is not the solution to choose.

    I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Hybrid Cloud

    If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

    Microsoft Azure
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: March 2024
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.