Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Reviews

We predominantly use Red Hat CoreOS we use it to connect to different types of OpenShift clusters.  Whenever I work with RHEL, it's always been with the CLI.

Previously, when we were using other distributions, we weren't getting a lot of support for the operating system itself. However, Red Hat has mainly focused on the operating system, so we get more support. 

AWS has its own version of Linux for its instances. All these cloud providers provide more support for the infrastructure and services, but they don't focus on the operating system itself. But Red Hat, with its customer portal, provides better support if something goes down. That's what differentiates RHEL from other products.

One great thing about RHEL is that it has a big community of users. There's a huge community that uses CentOS. If you need some help or have a question online, you get more resources for RHEL compared to other products. 

It's a really good operating system by itself. It's more versatile, integrating with tools like Ansible for automation.

There are amazing resources online, and because we are an enterprise, we have enterprise support. We can always create a support case, and we have some resources to help. The knowledge offered by Red Hat is great.

Another feature I tried was RedHat Insights because they offer it for other RedHat products as well. I've used it for OpenShift. It was helpful. It provides a good, in-depth understanding of what's going on in the actual infrastructure. It gave us good insights into the level at which we can run the containers and if you can scale the infrastructure vertically or horizontally and how to manage it better.

There is room for improvement in integration with different cloud platforms. There should be better integration because right now, a lot of cloud platforms have their own versions of Linux, which runs better on them, and they have better integration with the services. RHEL is great, but RHEL is more of a generic form of what Red Hat provides.

I've been using RHEL for about four years now.

There were certain times when I encountered issues. There are certain problems with integrations. 

For example, we had an issue once where the operating system had issues accessing the data server on our VMware infrastructure. So we did have a couple of engineers help us out with that, but that's one area where it can improve. But that's nitpicking. 

It's been great so far, but that's one thing I would like to see that would make RHEL a little better product.

Positive

We prominently use RHEL, but we've also used Ubuntu. We also have used PCF. I use Ubuntu Xenial and have worked with Amazon Linux for a while.

One pro is that at the operating system layer, RHEL has better support from Red Hat, and if something goes down, I found many resources for troubleshooting online.

For example, we predominantly use Amazon Linux if I'm using AWS. There aren't a lot of resources if I run into an issue. RHEL has way more documentation on Linux. It has a bigger community, from an operating system perspective.

One of our deployment models is on-premise, and the other is on the cloud. It's a hybrid. We have a big footprint on the cloud.

We use Azure because a lot of resources are already deployed on it. We can use all the features I build on RHEL, but you can scale up the infrastructure, depending on the demand. That's the reason why we use Azure.

For the upgrade process, we mainly use Ansible automation. Whenever we want an upgrade, we just go into the Ansible Tower, change the version, and make sure we are applying that to the right environments so that there's no outage. 

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

We're using the product to test operating system stability and verify that it runs on the hardware that Trenton Systems produces. If it passes testing, it becomes a validated operating system that we can sell for the server. We plan to offer Red Hat in the coming months to anyone purchasing systems from our company.

The solution’s security feature is the most valuable feature for my company. We offer OS to military or government agencies. For these sectors, security becomes one of the highest priorities, especially the ability to wipe everything out if anything becomes compromised. Red Hat does a great job at that.

The product should be made more accessible to someone who isn't experienced with Linux.

I have been using the solution for four to five months.

The solution is very stable. Compared to many other OSs we test for our company, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not crashed out on me or given me any problems. Anytime something goes wrong, after some research, I find that it's going wrong because I'm doing it wrong, not because the OS is fighting me in any way.

I haven't used support where I'm emailing or speaking to someone directly, but I've used a lot of the online support just by looking at different user guides, health guides, and things like that. Everything is really well documented. 

Sometimes there are posts about similar issues but with different remediation based on different circumstances. You might have the answer open in a tab, but you've got nine tabs open to find the right answer.

Positive

I have used Ubuntu, CentOS, openSUSE, and Mint. Red Hat Enterprise Linux definitely has an edge in security and the ability to control what the user at the end stage is doing. However, it is difficult to learn.

The licensing makes perfect sense for the number of features you get with the operating system.

We test Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, the latest version. We do backtesting for versions 7 and 8 as well. The product is very secure. It took me a while to wrap my head around the whole Subscription Manager system and understand how that worked. Even at a base level, it provides a much higher level of security and the ability to take remediation steps if things go wrong. You can shut the whole system down and bring it back from the ground up.

From the keynote, it looks like steps are already being taken to make the solution more accessible to any regular user. 

The product does a really fantastic job of reducing the overall risk to the user. If a user is doing something they’re not supposed to be doing, it's very easy for the system administrator to walk them out of doing it. As for maintaining compliance, if a user is only meant to have specific packs and is only meant to perform specific tasks, it's very, very easy to lock it into only being able to do that one specific thing.

Most people in IT enjoy a little learning. Everything I've done so far with Red Hat has been installing, setting up the account, getting everything registered, and then worrying about testing to validate. It is difficult to start with, but the more you learn about it, the easier it gets. The more I use it, the more capabilities I find within the system.

Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

Primarily, we use it for a couple of different servers. Some are doing data hosting, and some are doing network management-type functions.

We use it on-premises. We do not use it on the cloud. Because of government work, we're not cloud-based.

By implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we were mainly looking for stability. By having a lot of open source solutions, we ran into problems where there were too many flavors and too many variables. We ran into issues with ISO and other things where this particular site was a one-off from this site, which was a one-off from this site, which was one-off from this site. That became a problem for making sure that we stick to a consistent level and patch to a consistent level across the board.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been good. We do a lot of containerization and a lot of microservices. It has worked really well. It helped in keeping our organization agile. Our partners provided us with a lot of quick utilities and reuse of things. We can shut down a container and spin up a new container to introduce new capability quicker. 

The biggest feature that I have found valuable is stability. 

The way it lent itself to automation has been very invaluable for us. It makes the setups a lot more consistent and repeatable across the board. We're able to deploy the product quickly in a very consistent manner, which meets our timelines. A lot of what we do has very short spending dates, and they need a lot of product work.

It has been pretty good for us. I have no complaints as such. We just learned that we can get access to more support documents by going through the portal. I didn't know that. If it was something that was more known or advertised, that would have helped us to find out some of the information a little better.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for about a couple of years.

It's a 10 out of 10 in terms of stability.

It's a 10 out of 10 in terms of scalability.

The customer service is good. There is a lot of support documentation out there for anything you're looking for.

Positive

We tried quite a few flavors of different things, but nothing provided the consistency that we are getting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We tried everything such as Ubuntu, Mint, etc.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux stood out for its consistency and stability. We had several different problems with drivers on Mint. There were so many different flavors. We had one developer who built everything on one, and then another developer built on another, and none of that was coming together. It was not meshing, so we finally went to a common platform with stability and supportability. It was a lot better. It has allowed the developers to focus more on their code rather than having to worry about fighting the underlying things, such as drivers aren't on this one, and that one is not working.

It was very straightforward. We've pushed in further to make our own ISOs, so we're making sure that everything is getting the same applications and everything is deployed across the board, and we are able to virtualize in some cases. It has been good.

You definitely get what you're paying for. From what we've seen, it has been great. It has also allowed virtualization and making their own ISOs. We're able to package all that up, and it has worked consistently and repeatability. We've written our own Bash scripts so that we can automatically deploy that and stick it as part of the build. We're saving a lot of time and getting to a common platform repeatedly.

Overall, I'd rate it a nine out of 10. There's always room for a little bit of improvement.

I am an administrator for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a hybrid environment running off of on-prem servers and also AWS. 

I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a variety of purposes. For example, we use it in cloud control systems at our factories. We also use it for test systems, data acquisition, databases, and web services.

The biggest problem we were trying to solve by implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux was scalability. I have found that since implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we get a lot more value for our money from our hardware. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has also increased our utilization of Windows as a solution.

I am not the one who moves workflows between the cloud and our data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. However, we have tested it and I believe it is seamless. It just works. This is one of our disaster recovery methods. We will have images, and we use Veeam for this. Veeam actually takes the image we have and moves it to the cloud. We then fired it up and did not have any problems.

The most valuable feature is the reliability of Red Hat's support.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux analytics are cryptic. While it is user-friendly, it is also very picky about who it takes for a user. It is rock solid, but it can be difficult to find things in there. Google is probably the best way to find information, but solving a problem can be difficult if we don't know what flags or permissions we need. We need more transparency or ease of use.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for almost twelve years. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable.

I can always get a hold of someone when I call, and they always resolve my issue. I only have to call them once or twice a year, because things just work.

Positive

I have used Fedora and Oracle Linux. I have some systems that run CentOS. 

Our organization requires us to use different solutions. We have had instances where products were developed on Oracle Linux. These products are medical, and switching to a different platform is not a simple task. I am encouraging the organization to switch everything to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because, although Oracle Linux is a fine platform, it is eight months behind Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The main benefit of CentOS is its cost. Both systems are reliable, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a major advantage: Red Hat support. With Red Hat support, we have access to top-level Linux experts. If we need help with anything related to Linux, we can call Red Hat and they will connect us with an expert who can help us.

The first time I deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I was swapping floppies. It has gotten a lot easier since then. The deployment process is straightforward. I usually map an ISO, and then check a bunch of boxes and let it run. I can have a server up and running in about fifteen minutes. After validating the system and installing the necessary software, I can deliver it to the end user in an hour. I know that if I automate the process, I could probably reduce the time to six minutes.

I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten because there is always room to grow.

Someone looking at an open source, cloud-based Linux OS instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux should consider what is being used in their customer base. If they are putting something up there as a proof of concept, then dabbling in open source is fine. However, if they have customers relying on them and they want minimal downtime, then they need Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The knowledge base can be a bit cryptic at times. We can go in there and read the same information that's in the documentation, but sometimes it's not clear enough. So I'll often go to a half dozen other websites that tend to give us examples and other helpful information. The knowledge base is a good place to start, but it's not the end-all-be-all.

We use Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. We are using version 8.4, but we started with 8.3.

The solution’s stability is its most valuable feature. It has only been two years since I first started using the product. So far, I have seen a subtle comparison of the solution’s stability to other operating systems.

It is challenging to use the knowledge base and the deployment documentation. Some of it is all over the place, and it's challenging to piece them together.

It has been two years since we put in the first footprint of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in our organization.

We have about 30 to 40 servers.

The support team is pretty good. Whenever I send support requests and ask questions, the team is knowledgeable enough to get me the necessary answers. Sometimes there are delays in the response. However, it has been a positive experience for me.

Positive

I was the main engineer during the initial deployment of the product. The initial setup was straightforward. Whatever was in the documentation was exactly what was meant to be done.

We did not struggle with the documentation because I have been an engineer for years. Someone who is just getting started might have a different perspective on the ease of setup.

We purchased the solution from a third-party vendor.

I use Ansible Builder to build my containers. However, I do not use Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s image builder tool.

We do not use Red Hat Insights yet, but we're planning to use it in the near future. As soon as we get more servers in our environment, our firm’s directors might decide to start using Red Hat Insights. Right now, we are just using Automation Analytics. The solution’s resiliency is pretty solid.

We implemented the solution because we wanted automation. We cannot install Ansible Automation Platform in operating systems other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

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

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the operating system for our databases and application servers. We also use Red Hat Enterprise Linux to create some of our applications, such as the Online Challenge system. I work for a telecommunications company, and we have a few other operating systems in use, such as Unix and AIX, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux is our primary operating system.

We deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-premises and in the cloud. For the cloud, we use Azure and Huawei.

We work with virtual servers, so we have the image ready to deploy. It's great because the patch is always updated and we have no problems.

Red Hat Insights has helped us avoid emergencies in unpatched systems by identifying bugs so that we can fix them.

Red Hat Insights provides us with vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, which helps prevent downtime and increases our uptime to 99 percent. 

The most valuable feature is the security insight and the internal firewall, which are common in all the machine tests that we use a lot. The terminal framework and security are all Linux.

I believe this is because we don't have access to package management software. As a developer, I would like to have access to this software so that I can install the tools that I need. Currently, we are restricted to installing software only with permission from the system administrator. This is time-consuming and inefficient, as we have to follow a process to request permission. I believe that having access to package management software would improve our productivity and efficiency.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is extremely stable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's scalability is good because of virtualization. With virtualization, we can request more space or memory processing without having to make any changes to our system. This makes the process of scaling up or down very straightforward.

The technical support is great but nothing is perfect.

Positive

I previously used Ubuntu Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise. I switched to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it has better support. I haven't tried the others, but Red Hat looks like it has better support. However, Ubuntu is more compatible with desktop development, making it more user-friendly.

As a developer, I find the initial setup to be easy. Deployment takes a few hours, but I understand the server, so it is not a problem. I do not actually do the deployment; the infrastructure team handles that. They made the process easier and faster, and on average, deployment now takes around four to six hours.

We purchased our license from ITM, our local provider.

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

I make the applications compatible with the cloud so we can migrate the data.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux is good, but I don't use it much because the infrastructure team manages issues with the OS. I only check the documentation when an application is not working as expected. 

It is used for our production system. We are running multiple web servers and multiple databases on RHEL operating system platform. We are also running some of our OpenShift containers on it. We have a lot of applications that are running on RHEL versions 5, 6, 7, and 8 in our environment, but the maximum number of applications are running on RHEL 7 and 8. 

RHEL provides features that help speed up our deployment. We are using OpenShift to speed up our container implementation and container orchestration.

It is good in terms of consistency of application and user experience. It works consistently regardless of the underlying infrastructure. For the features we are using, we are getting the output according to what they have mentioned in the portfolio. We are not facing any unpredictable issues. It has a predictive analysis feature for troubleshooting. It uses AI and ML algorithms to give us the issues that will eventually come if something prolongs. If we are managing our environment very well and are following the best practices, our end-users also don't face any issues, which improves their user experience.

We use RHEL's tracing and monitoring tools. They have given a lot of metrics, and we do use these tools to trace our application. They provide a lot of benchmarks and metrics if we are planning to do a tech refresh or if we are planning to migrate any solution. So, we use them to calculate, and then we do the documentation.

Its integrations are very reliable. We have a Satellite Server for patching, and we are using Ansible for configuration management. We have a lot of API integrations with the RHEL for third-party integrations. We do a lot of testing before integrating the third-party services into RHEL. We first try them out in the test environment, and then we deploy them on the dev environment, and after that, we move them to the production environment.

It is easy to manage. It is also easy to troubleshoot. The subscription and the support from the RHEL are also good.

It is a well-established operating system. We have tried to implement almost every feature of a version in our environment, and it has been very reliable. We are not facing many production issues on a day-to-day basis. They have well-documented articles on their documentation site and a knowledge base on their website. When we need to implement anything, we are able to find information about the best practices and the solution.

Their support service can be improved. They are able to help us, but in some cases, there is a delay in getting a root cause analysis from their side for Severity One cases.

The vulnerability assessment part should also be improved. We do a lot of patching regularly. They try to fix an issue very quickly, and we also end up facing bugs that are not properly documented. When releasing the general availability for a particular solution, they need to do a lot more work on their side.

We have been using this solution for more than eight years.

Its stability is awesome when compared to other products. We have multiple Unix flavors running in the environment, but we are running production workloads only on RHEL. Previously, we were running the production load on other Unix flavors, but we had a lot of production issues. That's why we migrated the whole production workload to RHEL.

Scalability is according to each product. They have predefined scalability ratios. It works fine according to that ratio. We are able to scale applications and databases. It is easy. Before deploying an application, we check the scalability of each product, and we plan accordingly. So, there are no issues. It is easy.

We have Oracle Databases with 30 to 40 terabytes database size running on RHEL. We also have some HPC systems running on RHEL. We are running a workload of around 250 terabytes on RHEL, and we are planning to extend our environment and increase its usage.

Their support is good, but there are some delays in giving a root cause analysis for critical Severity One or S1 cases. I would rate them an eight out of 10.

It is straightforward. It is not much complex. Previously, we used to do everything manually. Now, we have multiple scripts and multiple tools that make it easy to deploy.

The first deployment took a few months because we were new to RHEL. We had to do a lot of homework from our side as well as on the product side, so it took us a few months to implement it. Now, we are well-familiar with the product. We know how the product works, so we plan accordingly, and we are able to finish according to a deadline.

RHEL has accelerated the deployment of cloud-based workloads. We also work with a local partner of RHEL, and they give us professional services. They do have some customized tools for partner deployment, and their professional services team is able to help us to accelerate all the workloads to the public cloud by using those tools. This acceleration time depends upon the workload size and whether we are going for a normal Infrastructure-as-a-Service or Platform-as-a-Service. It also depends on how we are migrating our monolithic application to the microservices application.

We are a local government organization. We have an account manager from RHEL, and we also have a local system integrator and a local partner. They are providing us local help for our requirements.

For purchases or subscriptions, we don't have any issues. We have multiple subscriptions for multiple products. Our local Red Hat partner takes care of all requirements. We just send the requests to them, and they take care of all subscription-related things for us. The whole process is streamlined.

We have been using it for a lot of years. Our business is happy with its total cost of ownership and its return on investment.

It is more expensive than other vendors in terms of pricing and licensing, but because of its stability, I have to go with it.

In terms of the operating system features, scalability, and stability, RHEL is better than other Unix flavors.

We do a lot of technical evaluation before migrating or implementing a new application or solution. For example, we evaluated Docker, Kubernetes, and OpenShift. We went for OpenShift because RHEL had the support for it. For patch management, we are using Red Hat Satellite Server. We used some other third-party tools such as ManageEngine, and we also did manual patching. As compared to others, Red Hat Satellite Server is much better.

It is very stable, and you can easily run a lot of production workload on RHEL. Red Hat products are well established. They have been around for many years. Red Hat is dealing with multiple products and applications and is constantly doing research to develop new products according to industry trends. With RHEL, you can get an end-to-end solution with their multiple products, which is something not available through other vendors. 

Red Hat's open-source approach was a factor when choosing RHEL. We are utilizing a lot of open-source solutions in our Test and Dev environment before going into production. We are able to get a lot of information in the open-source community, and we also have local community support in our region.

Its newer versions enable us to deploy current applications and emerging workloads across bare-metal, virtualized, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud environments, but the older versions are not supporting these features. They have included more features in the newer versions to integrate and merge with other applications that are on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid cloud setup. In the older versions, we faced some issues in moving some of the applications from on-premises to the cloud, but in the newer versions, it is very easy to move or merge to the cloud. The applications that we have deployed across these environments are very reliable, except for the bare-metal. They are not much reliable if we are using a bare-metal solution on-prem. For virtualization, we are not using the native RHEL virtualization. We have VMware for virtualization, and it is okay in terms of directly deploying some of the applications to the public cloud. It is quite reliable.

It doesn't simplify adoption for non-Linux users. For non-Linux users, it is somewhat difficult to manage this solution or have this solution. However, as compared to other Unix platforms, RHEL is okay.

We are not using RHEL to run multiple versions of the same application or database on a specific operating system. In a specific operating system, we are running an application according to our end-user features requirements. We go through a lot of documentation and do multiple PoCs for deploying an application on the RHEL platform. We have a lot of user acceptance test procedures for each application in terms of how we have to do benchmarking and what are our requirements. So, we are managing with an individual operating system and not using the whole centralized solution.

We use automation tools to move to the cloud. When we are planning to move to the cloud, we do multiple cloud assessments for which we have third-party tools as well as in-built RHEL tools. Each vendor has a different way of migration and automation for moving the on-prem workload to the cloud workload. Each vendor gives you different tools, and we follow the best practices given by them while moving the on-premises workload to the cloud.

I would rate RHEL an eight out of 10.

I use the product mostly for Red Hat OpenShift. We use the solution mainly for stability and to have a fallback within the Red Hat community.

There was a worldwide security breach, and everybody needed to patch their servers. Since we were running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the product patched a lot of it. It took a lot of effort out of our hands.

It is a complete ecosystem. That is its main feature. If you take all the latest products, it just works together.

The tool is very, very close. It makes some things difficult. On the other hand, that is what makes the product so stable. The product lags a bit behind in the market. The things we are running are pretty old. Yet again, that is why it is stable. The solution doesn’t switch with every new thing there is. The solution does not need to change that because that's what makes it good.

The product could run more recent tools and packages in the repositories. However, it might bring instability because they are new and less tested. I looked at CentOS, which was close to Red Hat. It had a system working, but a few months later, it didn't work again because the packages and contracts had changed. We couldn’t communicate anymore. It’s not desirable with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We want stability. The price we pay for it is that we run on some older features.

I have been using the solution on and off for the last 15 years.

I have no complaints regarding the tool’s stability.

The product is scalable. We use the solution all the time. We use it in multiple locations. We have two physical data centers where we run it. We run it on a few 100 machines.

The technical support is very helpful.

Positive

I have used CentOS and Debian.

The deployment is straightforward. However, there’s a learning curve to understand it. The deployment would be difficult for a newcomer, but it’s normal. We use automation tools. The deployment takes us a few minutes because we use scripts.

The solution is deployed on the cloud. However, it’s an on-premise solution from the Dutch government. We do not have control over the physical servers. We just work on virtual machines. The license fees are paid by another government agency. We take machines, and then they bill us for it.

We used some integration for the deployment. That's why it was so fast. We use a base image as the setup, and then, on top of that, we install some extra things. It’s just about cloning an image and starting it.

The solution does require maintenance, but nothing more than the usual. We need a team of four people with Linux knowledge to maintain the solution.

The product is on the expensive side.

Very early in my career, we had evaluated SUSE Linux as an alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. SUSE has its own niche market now.

We are not working in a hybrid environment. I work with the Dutch government, and the regular cloud solutions are not sufficient because of data safety.

Moving workloads between the cloud and our data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not really an issue. The network connectivity is good. The data storage is fast enough. Cloud vendor lock-in is always a debatable discussion. Whatever we do, we always get vendor lock-in. We just choose what works for us at the moment.

The cost savings are mainly in time. We don't have to figure out everything if there's a priority-one issue. We can raise a ticket with the vendor and ask them to help us. It saves us costs. The savings are mostly in time because the product is not cheap. If you compare it to a free Linux OS, the total cost savings will be about the same. Our level of stress and effort is far lower. It's the real saving.

When my Red Hat Knowledgebase account works, it works fine. However, there are some issues at my company. I cannot log in sometimes. It's not Red Hat’s fault.

Look at what your priorities are. Do you want to switch fast, run the latest stuff, and be agile? Then, use open-source tools and contribute to that community. If you work for a big enterprise and mainly want stability, choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I’m very happy with the solution. If someone is a technical person, they must get some training and an in-depth technical course on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It will help them a lot. Although it is Linux, it is very different from other open-source Linux packages.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.