We had a lot of IBM AIX servers. We migrated a lot of them to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We have a lot of VMs, and we have a few physical servers. Currently, we are moving all the Red Hat VMs to the cloud. There are 1,600 to 1,700 Red Hat VMs that we are currently running.

The main benefit is that it can be easily recovered and easily restored. It is on the VM. We can easily restore every image that we back up on the VM. If something happens, we can easily fix it. Support and maintenance are easy. The most common issues that happen with Red Hat Enterprise Linux are password restore issues. We can go and restore the passwords through the single-user mode. This feature is well-developed and good.

We are using Ansible for the most automations. We can push everything through Ansible. We are moving towards automation to make sure our system can be easily maintained, and we can recover, restore, and do the things that we want. We have 1,600 to 1,700 servers. We have Ansible Tower, and we have a few satellite servers and a lot of capsules to support Red Hat servers.

If anything is supported by Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the feature is available in Red Hat Satellite, we are able to install it on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are using Red Hat Satellite to install all the patches and all the packages, so if a feature is available, we can easily install it if it is supported.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has built-in security features for simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance. We are working with most of the security environments. Security is our main concern. We have zero tolerance when it comes to security. We are able to apply security rules and regulations within the Red Hat environment.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, and we normally look at how it can easily support the system. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, we have a high-security system. We have a lot of features there. That is the main thing, but currently, we are moving from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Leapp and Red Hat Insights have been useful. RHEL Web Console is also helpful.

We have access to the Red Hat knowledge base. We have frequent meetings with Red Hat. Red Hat partners provided us with all the information and any kind of training.

We are using the features that are available with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ansible. As such, there are no specific features that we are looking for. 

We have frequent meetings with them. We have had some issues on the application side and the OS side for which we opened cases and discussed those concerns and questions in the meetings offered by Red Hat.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for almost 10 years.

Upgrades and migrations are ongoing processes to stay current. We are a big company. We always have migration going on. We always have the build process. Red Hat's presence keeps increasing in our environment. We are going to have about 2,500 Red Hat Enterprise Linux VMs in the next year.

If there are any concerns, we have a meeting with Red Hat, and they provide the required support. When we have any concerns or questions, they answer them. It is easy. I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We have probably seen an ROI. Red Hat is getting better every day. 

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

My use cases are mainly limited to databases. I'm also involved in other ETL tools; I worked on migrations from older vendors, like Windows, and transitioning to RedHat Linux.

The most valuable features are security, performance tuning, storage management, and OS-level automation. If you wanted to automate while adapting with different vendor scripts or your own development because it's Linux, it's not like an operating system itself. It is always going to perform how you expect it to. IAQt's not like other operating systems. It is based on Linux. 

These are the main features. Storage management is another valuable feature that is very critical in an operating system. It works along hardware and software.

The most valuable features are security, performance tuning, storage management, and OS-level automation. If you wanted to automate while adapting with different vendor scripts or your own development because it's Linux, it's not like an operating system itself. It is always going to perform how you expect it to. IAQt's not like other operating systems. It is based on Linux.

Compared to other OS', Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the best from my 20-plus years of experience. It is well-suited for production environments. In 2003 and 2006 I worked with one of the vendors in another country. We were able to run a database instance on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for two years without restarting it. The database was located in a remote location, and the team could not be on-site to provide support. We installed it ourselves and it worked for two years. We restarted the database instance. We didn't need to touch it internally. It works like a charm.

If it works, it works. You don't need to attach anything at all. You just monitor them remotely. Nobody was there on-site. That's the beauty of it. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is great. I love it.

The GUI has room for improvement. It needs to be managed by many administrators. It has basic command lines. They could improve it with better automation. We'd like to be able to create a script, and then have the ability to deploy it where we don't need to write everything manually. That part can be useful for automating. 

We'd like it so that a coder wouldn't need to go through it, read it, go to GUI, and then generate a script. If they want to modify it, they could modify it. If Red Hat Enterprise Linux is going to build something, the REST API can be helpful instead of writing their own, starting from scratch. That would make it easier.

For future releases, there could be more integration. Regarding security, we used a different tool for scanning, but having a tool within Red Hat could enhance it. 

Support is essential for open-source software. If they improve aspects like prevention against hacking, it would be beneficial. 

Before, with a surge in hacking incidents, companies lost data, and once lost, it remains lost forever. You never know when it might be used. Improving security, especially in terms of prevention, is crucial. I would like to see ongoing improvement in this aspect.

I've worked with different companies. In my over 20 years of experience, in the last five or six companies I've worked for, all of them have been using Red Hat. They use it mostly for databases. 

I'm in the database sector, primarily working as a senior technical architect. End-to-end, we always find that Red Hat is best suited for Linux, especially for Oracle and other NoSQL databases. It's reliable, first and foremost, and it offers stability and performance. Performance tuning is crucial, and once it's set up, you can rely on it. 

With the cloud, it's moving into containerization, and most of them support the cloud. 

The customer service and support are really good. 

Positive

I have worked with many different operating systems in the past, including Windows, Linux, and RedHat Linux.

We switched to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it is a reliable and well-supported enterprise operating system. It is easy to manage, use, and upgrade.

We have seen a return on investment. 

As a consultant, I handle sizing, design, and optimization for new infrastructures and I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux to anybody considering it.  

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

My organization has different departments. In my department, we mostly work with containerization. I am using Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a part of OpenShift. I use the basic package and base image of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

For scale-up in our platform, we use CoreOS as the master, and for the workers, we use the Red Hat Enterprise Linux service. From OpenShift version 4.10 onwards, we cannot use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 worker nodes. We were using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 worker nodes, so we upgraded to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. 

For OpenShift, there are some recommendations from Red Hat in terms of what needs to be used for the control plane and what needs to be used for the worker nodes. When you are using CoreOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux worker nodes, there are some difficulties in managing them. For example, when you upgrade OpenShift, you need to upgrade two times. The control plane is upgraded separately because it uses CoreOS. The control plane has a lot of certificate updates that will in turn be updated on the worker nodes, so you have one restart of all worker nodes, and then when you need to upgrade your worker nodes, there will be one more restart. 

Overall, you have two reboots in your production environment, which is an issue, but it is related to your choice of product in your environment. We have this issue because we opted to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 worker machines, whereas Red Hat recommends using CoreOS because it is pretty fast in terms of rebooting and functionality. When you upgrade the control plane, that itself will update the worker nodes, so you are done in one shot. When you need to upgrade your Red Hat Enterprise Linux machines, you need to use the Ansible Playbook. You can then upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, 8, or any other version. Regardless of the versions, you can upgrade the operating system and the OpenShift version. For this purpose and for some ad-hoc activities, we are using Ansible Playbooks.

For us, its security, management, stability, and hardening are most valuable. All of these features are better in Red Hat Enterprise Linux as compared to Microsoft Windows.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very good in terms of risk assessment. It is also good for maintaining compliance. It is better than Microsoft Windows.

From the administration perspective, I do not have any issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For me, it is more convenient than Microsoft Windows.

My organization has been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a long time. They have been using it before I joined the organization.

It is pretty good in terms of stability. It is a stable product. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of stability because sometimes the packages can have bugs.

Its scalability is good. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of scalability.

We never encountered any issues while using OpenShift.

I have mostly been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 

I have been involved in the deployment of OpenShift. It is pretty straightforward. We just need to get the licensing, and we just need to create a pool for our containers session in Red Hat Satellite. We can do the configuration from there. It does not take long because we are adding the nodes to OpenShift. During the scale-up process, we only need to subscribe to the nodes with the Red Hat subscription. It does not take much time. If we have a good spec, the scale-up would not take much time. It would take less than twenty minutes. It is pretty fast.

In terms of maintenance, when we have the bug report, we need to do the security assessments. Over time, there might be some bugs related to some packages. At that time, if it is critical, we will be scheduling a maintenance activity on our platform. 

Red Hat provides high availability from the application perspective. You get high availability when you are using OpenShift, so when you are doing a maintenance activity on the OpenShift side, there would not be any downtime. The high availability is very good. For the end-users, there would not be any application outages if you configure your application with proper replicas. They would not even realize that there is a maintenance activity happening to the underlying workers.

It was implemented in-house.

We did not evaluate other solutions. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the choice of most of the companies.

If you want to integrate with OpenShift or build an OpenShift cluster with the master Red Hat Enterprise Linux and worker Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you can do that, but you need to plan your upgrade or maintenance activities. It would be better if you choose CoreOS for both. CoreOS would be a better choice in terms of maintenance activities or upgrade activities in the future. If you cannot afford that, you can go with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, but you need to do two upgrades. You first need to upgrade the control plane and then you need to separately update your worker nodes. That is the only thing you need to keep in mind.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux mostly for development.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Git apps in our closed environment to develop and run scenarios.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's documentation could be improved. Sometimes when you call up support to have that Red Hat answer, they send you back a Reddit or Google link. I can Google or go to Reddit, but I want an answer from Red Hat.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since it started back in the 1980s.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten for stability.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten for scalability.

I rarely call Red Hat Enterprise Linux's support, but when I do, they send me a Google link.

Neutral

Since I've been deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux for so long, it's not complex for me. Once we configure our kick start, we power up a new system, attach it, and it builds it.

We implemented Red Hat Enterprise Linux directly through Red Hat.

We have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux concerning the ability to develop what we need, what we do, and our scenarios. The solution saves us man-hours, and man-hours equals money.

We cannot use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the cloud because I work as a contractor for the government, and all our development is in a classified area where we can't touch the internet at all.

In the last quarter, Red Hat Enterprise Linux products like Satellite Server and OpenShift stood out because of their ease of administration. I do system administration. When my customers need something, assisting them with these products is easier than giving a long configuration of YAML.

I like Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features. We use their SCAP features when we do our kickstart and build it.

We were using Docker, and the Docker swarm was trying to get all the containment. We're now switching to Podman and getting our developers to learn that more so we can give them the ability to kick off containers.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Scaling can be complicated and has room for improvement.

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

I give the stability an eight out of ten.

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.

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

Positive

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.

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.

The implementation was completed in-house.

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.

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.

Our use cases are pretty broad. We develop the automation that provisions the VMs, and then anyone in the company can request the VM for whatever intended purposes.

Red Hat Support is really good. Support has a fast response time. The product has good security. We deal with very urgent issues. The response time should be optimal if the issue requires Red Hat Support. 

My company is a utility company. Outages are a major issue for us. A faster response time is very important to get the applications back up so we can keep up with our production time. Red Hat's documentation is always really good.

As a software developer, documentation is very important to me. The solution should provide better documentation.

The solution is very stable.

The product is scalable. We're able to provide as many VMs as we like. We never run into an issue with how many VMs we are provisioning.

Support can always be improved. I rate the product’s support an eight or nine out of ten.

Positive

The solution can get pretty pricey depending on how many machines we're licensing but for a good reason.

We purchased the solution from Red Hat. We use Packer by HashiCorp to build our templates. I am a junior developer. I have been employed with my company for about five months. I don't know the initial issues that led to us choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux as our Linux solution. I speak from a developer’s perspective because I deal with Ansible.

The product has really good built-in security. The product provides good support, which helps us manage downtime and get the service back up and running, thus producing more money.

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

We use it to host applications, services, and backend databases. We aren't using it on the cloud. Most of my customers are DoD or some type of government agency. If it's not classified, it's siloed in some way. We don't get to use a lot of the functionality that makes Red Hat cool. It's all disconnected.

In terms of version, currently, mostly everything is on versions 7 and 8. I've started pulling up some of the things from version 9, but that won't go into production for a while.

We use it because it's stable. That's half the reason, and the other half is because the DoD standardizes on it because it has a support contract, so even though we're forced to use it, it's a very good product, and it's on-prem. We probably would use it anyway.

We needed to host applications, services, and backend databases. We have a lot of Java-based applications, and we wanted something that we could deploy in different places around the world and that everybody standardized. Windows didn't really work for us on that. Most of the time, we're not connected to the Internet. We find that Red Hat or Linux in general works a little bit better for us than macOS or Windows.

It's also across the board a little bit cheaper for what we're using it for. That's a benefit we're getting from it.

We get our compliance from DISA, which is the defense information service agency. They put out security technical implementation guides. There are specific ones for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and 8. The reason we're not using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 is that there isn't one for it yet. In terms of how we harden the operating system we're using, it's whatever they tell us to do and then whatever extra we want to do. It's as good as any other Linux other than the fact that it's supported by the DoD. For example, SELinux helps us secure across the board with contacts across different directories and things like that. They tell us how standardized the SD-WAN layout should be. We're able to go a little bit deeper into that. Red Hat uses Podman, which has SELinux, and which by default helps us a lot. 

We run Satellite on a lot of these, so having a central repository that we can use for patch management and remote execution is huge. That's something that is very difficult in a Windows environment. We're very compliance driven, so to have that built into Red Hat is easy. We don't need an agent or anything like that to get a lot of work done, so Satellite and centralized automation are the most valuable features for us. We're dabbling into Ansible but not as much as we should be.

It's obviously a security-focused operating system versus some of the other operating systems that lay you down in the terminal as root. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, you can't even root. It's disabled by default now. Overall, they are definitely more security conscious, and that's also because of their primary customer space.

I've been using it for ten years or so. I've been using the solution since version 6. 

The stability of what we have deployed is good. The only time it crashes is if we do something or we try to configure a control that one of the engineers doesn't fully understand, which then breaks it. A lot of it's just like us breaking it ourselves or a customer asking for something that wasn't initially planned. Just pure deployment is good.

Its scalability is good. It's what they excel at. If we have 10 machines or 100 machines, they have the platforms to scale that up.

Overall, the customer support is good. It's better than Microsoft support. They are above and beyond that. They are better than others in terms of response time, getting somebody who knows what they're talking about, and not spinning their wheel. Usually, within the first response or two, people figure out what we're trying to troubleshoot here. We're not going from one queue to another queue or anything like that.

I'd rate them a ten out of ten. I've never had an issue with it. 

Positive

We had CentOS systems. When they changed upstream, we had to pivot some systems. We pivot some systems to Oracle Enterprise Linux, but then those eventually got transitioned to Red Hat as well.

The main reason for the switch to Red Hat was for the government customer and having a support contract. You can do Oracle Enterprise Linux without a support contract, but if you're going to buy one, you might as well get Red Hat at that point for the added benefits.

We use Kali for a couple of other use cases, and we probably won't replace it with Red Hat.

We've used a lot of flavors of Linux. One thing that sticks out for me, even in just the home lab environment or deploying at work, is that if there's some backward thing that we weren't planning on going into, if I look for a solution, nine out of ten times, I'm going to find an article on Red Hat's website where somebody has either a verified solution or somebody is talking about it and there are comments that are relevant. I hate going on ServerStack, Ubuntu Stack, or something like that, where somebody has the exact problem that you have, but there are no comments and no answers. I find that to be less true with the Red Hat platform.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward but can be tedious at times because of the compliance things that we have to implement. 

I just sat in on the training or the demo for the deployment platform, and we're already planning on setting up the Ansible automation platform where we also want to look into setting up this deployment tool because we do a lot of ISOs. We do a lot of kickstarts. We don't do any of the cloud tenants. We probably will switch to using the on-premise disconnected deployment capability because we can preconfigure everything and then run Ansible after the fact to get it all compliant.

We're the integrators or implementors of the solution.

We're forced to buy the licensing, but it's also good. I and a couple of other staff members are all Red Hat certified engineers, and then we all have our own specialties, so we don't call them a lot, but when we submit tickets, it's definitely worth it.

The ROI is mainly in terms of needing to recover from any system downtime. If we don't have an engineer on a computer doing a certain piece of research, then we're wasting money or just not generating a product, so to have the support that we can call and then reach out to us in enough turnaround time holds value for us.

The pricing is fair. The workstation licensing cost is fair. If you're running enterprise-level deployments, depending on what you're using, the volume licensing is good. I personally am worried that if they get so successful, they can increase the price, and then it won't matter because we'll be stuck on them. Hopefully, their open source mentality keeps that from happening. Where it's right now is good.

In terms of the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I don't know how much that applies to us. In our case, someone develops an application in a Podman container, and we ingest that and run it, but we're not doing much more than that. So, all of the Java-based applications that we run, are run within a couple of different containers, and that's about it.

I personally use Red Hat Insights in my home lab. We can't dial out for that for a lot of customer-based work, but I personally use it. It hasn't helped avoid any emergencies because it's super low risk for what I'm using it for, but I can see the benefit of it. In a more enterprise setup, such as health care where I used to work, things probably would have been interconnected, and we would have been using Insights, but we're not using it currently.

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