Our customers use the product primarily for application servers, authentication apps, and tool servers. If a feature is available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, they're most likely using it. The product allows us to use applications that run on open-source software. The product also provides on-site support that helps us if we have any issues.
The solution is stable and reliable. Being able to move back and forth between systems, products, and middleware is a huge boon.
The solution lacks proper documentation. There have been times when I found a document that was supposed to fix an issue, but I realized it was wrong. Then, I would send it to support, and they would fix it.
Our customers have been using the solution for six or seven years.
The product’s stability is good. It has minimal downtime when it comes to generic deployments. Once you start adding complexity, there are other issues.
The product’s scalability is good. Our customers are able to scale out thousands of instances in minimal amounts of time.
The support team is great. I have friends that work on the support side. I can count on one hand the times I've been dissatisfied with support. Usually, when that happens, it's because it's something that either couldn't be fixed or something too old. I rate the support a nine and a half out of ten.
My involvement in deployment depends on which systems are being deployed. My organization constantly rolls out new systems via OpenStack, on-premise, or other cloud providers. I help build their base images.
The product’s deployment is pretty straightforward. Everything we build is automated and kicked out from there. Once the base image is built, there's really not much to do.
My customers have seen an ROI from the product. They have an on-site support team that is able to help them with issues. It is important to them to have a good team of people to reach back to and to be able to work together.
Our customers conduct market research before any purchase. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has consistently been a top contender for us and our customers. We usually support Red Hat Enterprise Linux because our customers choose it.
The biggest push towards Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the ability to have something that's supported and open-sourced. Having transparency is important to my customers. They want to see what they're putting into production, development, and testing. It is important to the customers to see what's going on and what workloads they're handling and to know that what they're putting the workloads on will be solid and secure.
Our customers use the solution on multiple cloud providers, mostly AWS and Azure. Our customers buy a yearly subscription for some equipment, and for short-lived instances, they do on-demand pricing within the cloud provider to buy the ones they offer.
I believe Red Hat Enterprise Linux has helped our organization avoid cloud vendor lock-in. We've been able to pretty reliably and easily lift, shift and redesign our application from on-prem to the cloud. It might not necessarily be a huge benefit for us. However, it is definitely a perk, especially in an environment where we have to go through a certain purchasing cycle and background reviews for everything. It does end up helping us.
As much as I've used Red Hat Image Builder, I really like it. Though, I've only had to build a handful of images out of it. We can't use something like Fedora, where you've got a nightly update. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is tested and reliable. Having something they can work on, develop, and use daily is helpful to our customers.
The sosreports and soscleaner developed in recent years are a huge improvement. My customers tend to be pretty fixed in their ways and what they use, so they continue to work and use things for longer than they should, but that's the beauty of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is supported, and we still have the necessary reach back.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is pretty solid. It's been tested. It has its upstream counterparts that ensure that most of the bugs get worked out, and what makes it down into the final testing is strong and resilient. We've been working on moving workloads between the cloud and data center with the customers. Instead of lift and shifts, we try to redevelop their applications instead of spending $10,000 to give 32 cores in the cloud because they had 32 cores in the system.
We have a fantastic team that works with us and supports us. The team goes out of its way to help find cost savings for both us and our customers.
Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.