I use the solution in my company for regular servers with databases, load balancers, Apache, and so on.
External reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Has made it easier to automate a lot of our tasks
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
The benefits of using the product revolve around the fact that it has made it easier to automate everything on it, which includes automating servers and so on.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is an upcoming, more stable product, like Oracle OS. The tool has everything that IBM Red Hat Redbooks has.
In terms of how I would assess the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for keeping our organization agile and flexible, I would say that since my company is a service provider, we get the containers from the customers, which we don't use for our own selves, but we use Red Hat Universal Base Images (UBI) 9 for some things like to to get our own containers and so on.
What needs improvement?
My company has not tried to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 since we are still using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8. In the future, I am expecting to see Podman 5.0 released for RHEL 9.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a nice and stable solution. Some problems may occur with the product if you don't patch it after a year or two.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There are no problems with the scalability of the product, as it works fine.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, my company used to use a simple version of RHEL and other tools depending on the needs of our company's customers.
How was the initial setup?
Regarding my experience related to the deployment process, I would say that everything is automated now. You just fill out the survey, and then you just deploy the tool. The product's deployment phase is easy.
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.
What about the implementation team?
The team members can deploy the solution in my company.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
If the customer wants to pay for the support and so on, then we can go for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Otherwise, one can go for any other open-source platform. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), you get the latest on everything. If you are running Oracle Linux, it gets hard to find some patches. It is easy to find new things like Podman or Red Hat Subscription-Manager, especially if you want to run something on Oracle OS, then you need to compile the patches yourself.
What other advice do I have?
The product has helped centralize development in our company. In our company, we are mostly automating all the server installations on Red Hat template by filling in IP addresses with Postman.
We don't use the built-in features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance since they are only available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.
To a colleague who is looking at open-source cloud-based operating systems for Linux other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I would say that previously people preferred CentOS until Red Hat stripped it apart. At the moment, it is like, if you want an RHEL-based tool, it is either Rocky Linux or Oracle OS because I think Fedora is too lenient, while CentOS is somewhere in the middle.
I would be spending the same amount of time on some other solution if I was not using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since everything is automated now, and in such a case, it will just be another image you use on some other product.
My company uses Ansible as a part of the deployment model.
The product is easy to use, and you can get support whenever you want. The solution also the latest packages, which include Red Hat Subscription-Manager, Podman, Linux, and other such functionalities.
I rate the tool a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Enabled us to centralize development, all of our developers get their own developer environment
What is our primary use case?
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for just about everything in my company. Our use cases stem from three-tier applications up through cloud deployments, Kubernetes, containers, etc. Prior to this, I worked in an enterprise as a Linux engineer.
How has it helped my organization?
Being able to onboard faster is definitely an advantage to other Linux systems. In the enterprise, we had an onshore and offshore model. Our offshore model was hard to get onboarded into Linux, even if they said they had Linux experience. There is a big difference between managing one or two systems in your basement to managing a fleet of Linux systems, and that does not always translate over. Having a Linux system that has a cockpit with it where you can give someone a GUI, even though the engineers do not really use it, helps onboard new people into the enterprise, into their jobs, and into their roles a lot faster.
We have a lot of really smart people. They are constantly figuring out ways to do things better and faster with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The openness of it and the ability to create whatever we want to create or have to create to make our actual job easier has given our operations people more time to focus on the things they need to focus on, and not the nitty-gritty of the operating system. Tuning becomes super easy. It is scriptable. It is easy to automate. That gives them all the time back in their day to be able to go solve cool problems and not infrastructure problems.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. All of our developers get their own developer environment, and that is all based on containers and some version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It depends on what they are at and what they are doing. So, we build and give it to them. They are up and running, and they just go. We have some legacy guys who are still helping our customers with older versions. Those people exist. I talked to someone earlier who still has a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 deployment out there.
When it comes to security and compliance, I like firewalld to do things at the host level and to complement what we are doing out in the enterprise with next-gen firewalls and things like that. I have had SELinux enabled on my systems and in my enterprises since it was available. It was a little bit of a learning curve, but it has helped to keep our systems as secure as possible. It complements well with what security groups are doing for the rest of the enterprise.
The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is great for keeping our organization agile. It is fantastic. We can run them on-prem. We can run them in the cloud. We can move them wherever we need them at the time. If something has to go to the edge for any reason, such as a bandwidth issue or an on-prem issue in the data center, we can push those workloads out. We could push all those containers to where they need to run and when we need to run them. It is super easy to do.
I have not used Red Hat Insights for long, but when I was a Red Hat Insights user, it was the first place I stopped to see what was going on and be able to quickly address and fix issues that Red Hat Insights found.
Red Hat Insights provided us with vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance. In terms of their effect on our uptime, we were able to plan our maintenance windows around what we were seeing in Red Hat Insights. We had the visibility and the ability to go in and plan things out. We could plan what needs to be done and then make that change and say, "This is what we are doing. Here is the playbook for it. We are going to run this in tonight's maintenance window." That prevented us from having to take machines down during the day because we found something critical at that time.
What is most valuable?
The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that are most valuable to me, both in the enterprise and now as a partner, are the enterprise features. We are able to have a Linux system that is open-source and that allows us to do domain trust IBM and all that fun stuff. We have a good solid enterprise Linux.
What needs improvement?
It is not broken. Linux is Linux. It has been since Torvalds created the kernel back in version one of the kernel. We have added more features. More things have come to Linux and kernel. All the AI stuff is a bunch of buzzwords. In the keynote today at the Red Hat summit, Chris Wright talked about lightspeed coming to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. What do we need that for? What are we doing with AI? Just the stability of it is fine. If anything cool comes out, I will be the first to check it out. It is a stable platform. It is a workhorse, and that is how we use it.
However, there should be training materials for new enterprises that do not cost an arm and a leg. Red Hat training is phenomenal, but it is expensive. There has to be a better way to onboard new engineers into Linux to really and truly compete with Microsoft. Microsoft is just easy. Everyone uses it. You have to use it in school, and you have to use it everywhere. From an onboarding perspective, we can improve and have an affordable training solution for someone who might not want to be an RHCE or an RHCA but still needs to do their job. It is not Linux's fault. It is what it is. It is a workhorse. It does its thing, but we can do better to enable customers to utilize Linux better.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. It has been about 20 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is super stable. When Red Hat comes out with lightspeed or integrates SELinux, there are no huge rollbacks. Once it makes it downstream in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you know that is going to work. Everything has bugs, and we get that, but we know it is going to work. We know that nothing terrible is going to happen to our production environment, so stability is fantastic.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We can roll out more machines if we need more machines. We pull machines back if we do not need them anymore. One of the things that is lacking is that currently, there is no way to have ephemeral Linux instances for compliance month or your audit month. If you have to bring up a hundred machines, you have to pay for that upfront. That might be changing now, but in terms of scalability, that is a detriment to how smaller organizations can operate. Not everyone can absorb that cost. It is very scalable, but the pricing is a little prohibitive for scalability.
How are customer service and support?
Their support is awesome. Their TAMs are awesome. The technical support that you get is awesome. There is the ability to attach yourself to bigger customers. When you are a small enterprise and you have an issue, you sometimes filter to the bottom of that list because there are other way-bigger customers who are way louder than some of the smaller ones. Being able to talk to your team and ask how to get a problem fixed is phenomenal. They are able to look at the backend and go, "Oh, there is a large telco that is having the same problem. I am going to add you to that one." From a customer service standpoint and tech support specifically, engineering has been fantastic.
The ability to talk to the people out in the community who work for Red Hat and maintain all of that, from the open-source side and the closed-source side, is amazing. A lot of people do not realize that they can jump on Slack or other platforms, and they can talk to the guys who are responsible for it and figure out what is going on. Sometimes, they ask to open a case, and other times, they say that they know and they are fixing it. Having that accessibility is amazing. You cannot call Microsoft and ask them to let you talk to the engineer who made X, Y, or Z.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have been using Red Hat for 25 years.
How was the initial setup?
We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux everywhere. We are using it on-prem. We call it the fourth cloud, so we have our own cloud like every enterprise does. They might realize that or not. We are using it everywhere. We have it at the edge, in the cloud, on-prem, and hybrid. It is the whole nine yards.
Our deployment strategy is to make it work and get it out there fast. We use all three cloud providers: GCP, Azure, and AWS.
Its deployment is super easy. Once you know what you need, rolling out Red Hat Enterprise Linux is super simple. You just go and repeat until you need to change something and then you change it.
We are using OpenShift to deploy Linux containers for a virtualization competitor migration. We are using it to migrate workloads from that vendor to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so we have Linux running in containers to do their virtualization. We are running Red Hat Enterprise Linux containers as well for some workloads, but for the bootable container aspects of it, we essentially have a VM. This is how we use it there, and then everything else is pure containerization. It is not Red Hat Enterprise Linux-specific.
What about the implementation team?
We take care of the deployment for customers.
When I was in the enterprise, we did not take external help. We did all of that in-house.
What was our ROI?
We have seen an ROI but not specifically with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the workhorse. Everything else that supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux is where you get your ROI. When you take Ansible, you start automating all of your configurations. You take Insights, and you are getting those playbooks to remediate security issues and all that fun stuff. That is where you get a return on your investment. That is where you see your engineering dollars go down and they can focus on other aspects of the business. That is not specific to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is the whole ecosystem.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I have had sales folks who have been transparent with the pricing, and then I have had other ones who were not as great. Most of those ones that were not as great are not working for Red Hat anymore.
From a pricing perspective, there is supportability. What you get with that support is the ability to open a case before you do something. You can tell them that you are going to be upgrading your Satellite system or all Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems and that you need a case open. They open a case, and then when the day comes, they are there. They are ready, and they know what is going on. The price point for that is phenomenal because you are paying for support. From a pricing perspective, it is on point. It is definitely a value-add, and it is extremely transparent from a customer standpoint.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have evaluated other solutions. Manageability is the main difference. I have successfully ripped out other solutions in enterprises that I went to and replaced them with Red Hat. They had large fleets and no centralized management. When you come to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you have the Red Hat Satellite server. You have Red Hat Insights. You have all of those things that help you manage large fleets and a large number of Linux machines. When you evaluate other solutions, they have some centralized management now, but that was not common previously. It is kind of a hodgepodge. They are stitched together with all these other solutions, but it does not make sense. In one case, they jammed Linux into their management platform used to manage databases, and it did not work. How do you manage a thousand machines on some busted piece of management software?
What other advice do I have?
If a colleague is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, they should go for something based on the use case. They have to look at what they are trying to do and what they want to do. They can get away with Fedora, for instance, but the question for me always comes down to supportability. Do they want to be able to call someone and say, "This is broken. Help. Hurry," or do they have the skills in-house to do that? Most companies do not have those skills. They have one or two very good engineers, but they cannot fix everything at the same time. If they want portability, then they should not look somewhere else. They should go to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because they have the Red Hat name behind it.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. There is always room for improvement in a product. Tens are unicorns. No one gets a ten. Maybe if Jesus made an operating system, he would get a ten.
Top-tier support, 100% stable, and helpful for doing more in less time
What is our primary use case?
We are mostly using it for application servers, infrastructure servers, and database servers.
How has it helped my organization?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux lends itself to a lot of automation. We are able to manage many more servers with less staff and by using other Red Hat products such as Ansible. Those are the things that I like.
We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. Their Podman product has made it easier. It comes with a lot of security. It is a drop-in product or replacement for Docker. I have used Docker before and switching to Podman was very easy. I just saw the demo for the Podman desktop, and I am looking forward to using that. It will hopefully help me streamline container usage and container deployment in Kubernetes or OpenShift.
It inherently has a lot of functions built in for risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance. For example, it has SELinux, certain firewalls, logging, and all those things. It has all the built-in features required to meet the needs. We can plug in other third-party tools to have it gather information, or we can send logs to centralized locations to track activity and do audits and things like that.
I use Red Hat Insights for different things. I do not use it much to look at security risks. I know that it has those features, but I use a different tool like a Satellite server to take care of patching and things like that. Red Hat Insights provides us with vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, but it has not affected our uptime much. It is good to see that information. I can see those vulnerabilities, and I can see action steps or remediation steps that I can take. All my servers are patched on a cycle, so as the cycle goes through, each server gets patched based on its own cycle. It does not really affect the uptime.
What is most valuable?
I like the stability that comes with Red Hat. That has always been the feature that I like. They do not always have the newest features, but they prioritize stability, which is important in the production environment.
What needs improvement?
Red Hat should keep doing what they have always done. They should continue to be a leader in the open-source space. They should keep innovating and keep creating great products. They can allow more access to their training and their products' testing. There are ways to do it now. You might have to get a certain type of account to test their products. It might be easier if you can just download the product and test it out.
For how long have I used the solution?
In a production environment, I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for about five years. I have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux clones such as Fedora and CentOS for about 15 years or maybe longer.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is absolutely stable. It is 100% stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is good. It scales well. With the tools that Red Hat provides, it does not matter if you have 10 servers, 100 servers, or 1,000 servers. They make it simpler with Ansible. Ansible is your friend.
How are customer service and support?
They are top-tier. Support is probably their number one selling point. As long as you give the Red Hat engineers what they need, they are very good at providing new solutions. I would rate them a ten out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used Red Hat clones in other positions. I might as well just say it is Red Hat because it is a clone, so I have been using Red Hat all along if we look at different products.
I have worked with CentOS, Rocky Linux, etc. The main difference is that Red Hat's support is top-tier. There is also stability. With the ecosystem that they have built, there are a lot of tools to help me manage. They have Ansible and other great tools to help manage the product. You cannot say the same about Windows. They might have a different way of doing things.
How was the initial setup?
We have deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-premises. We have a hybrid cloud environment, but we run other types of servers there. They are mostly Windows, and they are run on Azure cloud. We do not run Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a hybrid cloud environment, but there is always an opportunity to do that in the future.
The Red Hat servers that we have are on-prem. We use VMware and the tools that they provide to deploy Red Hat.
Its initial deployment was done a long time ago. It is a straightforward process to install it as long as you are not trying to do anything complicated.
We do not have a deployment strategy. We install it based on the requirements. If it is a web server or database server, there are different things that you need to do, but it is pretty straightforward. It is a good process.
What about the implementation team?
We took help for deploying Red Hat and purchasing the license and maybe the hardware. We probably used CDW and Advizex. They are probably based in Pittsburgh.
What was our ROI?
Time savings is the biggest return on investment. I can do more in less or a shorter amount of time. The time savings depend on what you are working on, but you can potentially have about 75% time savings.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I have very little experience with pricing and getting quotes. The whole VMware thing happened, and everybody is looking at different alternatives. At this point, any competitor is probably a good choice based on the cost.
What other advice do I have?
Everyone should evaluate what their needs are, test out different products, and pick the product that is best for their needs. I know that the Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a very good solid product. One thing I would say is that their support is top-tier, so from that aspect, I would recommend Red Hat.
At this time, I am trying to develop a platform that facilitates developer workflows. We may adopt more of a GitHub mindset and use Red Hat tools, such as OpenShift and Ansible.
We are currently not using containers as much as we would like to. We are working on setting standards. That is going to come down the road. Our workloads right now are mostly virtual machines and monolithic applications built on VMs. We will use them more. We will make more microservices and use pods to contain the applications. We will use more Red Hat tools.
Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. There are many things to take into account. From a production perspective, it is a ten out of ten. From the innovation and latest features perspective, it is probably a seven. That is not necessarily a bad thing because that is their unique point. They prioritize stability, but if you want something with your features, you can use Fedora.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Makes it easy to go back and look at all the Open CVEs
What is our primary use case?
We need to build a lockdown version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to build our application on top.
How has it helped my organization?
It gives us a stable and secure platform on top of which we can build our applications.
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. It allows us to do better application isolation using containers. If I want to take a program that runs on my system and put it in its own network namespace, I can put it in a container. I can put a physical interface in with it and run them together in that container.
It definitely makes it easy to go back and look at all the Open CVEs and things like that.
It works well for us in terms of the portability of applications and containers for keeping our organization agile. We are able to do the kind of things we need to do. We are able to modify the system to do whatever we need to do to get where we want to go.
What is most valuable?
Things like packaging and the stability you get from things being downstream are valuable. A lot of times, upgrades are more security-based and not feature-based, so things do not break API-wise as we go forward a lot of times.
What needs improvement?
I feel like it is going all over the place now. Sometimes it is hard to figure out what is going on. I would like more guidance.
We definitely spend a lot of time developing on top of things, but I am not sure what on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux side can be better.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is very scalable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability.
How are customer service and support?
It has been great when we needed it. We have not needed a lot of it, but we have had no problems when we needed it.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not use a similar solution previously. We have only been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
How was the initial setup?
We use it on-premises. We use the ISO installer. We install it via CD ROM on-site.
I was not involved in its initial deployment.
What was our ROI?
It is the guarantee that we are getting the updates that we could backport into the system and we have a stable system to build on.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since I have been with the company. They might have evaluated other solutions before I joined.
What other advice do I have?
To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would ask, "Why?" We plan to stick with Red Hat as far as we see in the future, and we have no plans to change.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not helped us to centralize development. It is not something we are looking to use it for.
We use Red Hat Insights very little. We work mostly in an offline environment. It is hard to use Red Hat Insights in an offline environment.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Consistent, scalable, and geared toward security
What is our primary use case?
We have extensive contracts with Red Hat. We have it for the operating system. I manage the cloud deployment for GCP, and we have got Red Hat Satellite running in GCP. All of our VMs run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud. On-prem, we are running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on our OpenShift cluster, and we have a supercomputer that has got 753 nodes with 50,000 cores running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We use a lot of the other products too.
How has it helped my organization?
There is consistency across the deployment. Generally, when you are looking to hire people, if you hire people who know Red Hat Enterprise Linux, they have a certain level of understanding that goes along with using the operating system.
It is easy to secure. It has a lot of built-in security features, and it is very stable, which is a big deal.
It makes it easier to have one team that deals with both on-prem and cloud because there is a uniform operating system and tooling. You do not have to have a set of admins where one knows one thing and the other one knows another.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. We are using the same platform everywhere. It is the same tooling, and everyone is working in the same system.
We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. We are building out OpenShift on-prem right now on bare metal. We are running the hub cluster from GCP to spin up the bare metal cluster on-prem. We will hopefully be moving more and more things towards containerized workflows. We are running OpenShift, so it all runs on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
For security, SELinux is built in. It is out of the box. It is built towards building a secure system. We are in the process of working on compliance and getting this 800-171 certified. That is in process. They have regular security updates and lots of tools for rolling out updates. In that sense, there is a continuous upgrade path that is well-worn and fairly easy to maintain.
In terms of portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for keeping our organization agile, when it is in a container, it does not matter if you are running a UBI container or some other sort of container. If you have an environment that will run a container, you can throw a container in it, and it will run, so the portability does not belong to the OS at that point. It belongs to the containerization system.
What is most valuable?
It is consistent. It is geared toward security. I am used to it. I know only Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I do not know Ubuntu or any of the other flavors of Linux.
What needs improvement?
It is good. I do not have anything to improve for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but CentOS could be open-source again.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since 2014. I have been using Red Hat since 1.2. It was probably 1998.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have a cluster with 50,000 cores. It is pretty scalable.
How are customer service and support?
Their customer service is good. We have a TAM. Our TAM is great. Without a TAM, it is hard to get new tickets through.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used many solutions. I have used many that predate Linux. For Linux, I have run Slackware, but that is just for fun. Professionally, it has all been Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
How was the initial setup?
Our deployment experience is good. For the things in the cloud, I use Satellite. I build images and deploy from images to the cloud. It is a mutable deployment chain rather than a standard upgrade path.
What about the implementation team?
We deploy it in-house.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The vendor management takes care of that.
We have an enterprise agreement. From our department's standpoint, everything gets rolled into the enterprise agreement, which is great because we never see it.
What other advice do I have?
To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would say, "Why would you look at something other than that?" I have built things on Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I was out of the industry for a while, and I came back, and I focused on Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it pays better. There are more standardized jobs in the area if you know Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The certification that you get from Red Hat means something quite specific.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
The portability of applications and containers will be good for keeping our organization agile
What is our primary use case?
We first used it for application installation to run applications on Windows. We had it running on Windows. We then upgraded it. It was still on the IBM platform, but it was still x86. We have now updated it, and it is now running on IBM Linux Z.
We use it for Internet banking, core banking applications, and other peripheral applications.
How has it helped my organization?
It has helped with consolidation. When we first started to do clusters, we were using Oracle cluster and Red Hat cluster. The Red Hat cluster was more stable than the Oracle cluster, so we had to uninstall the Oracle cluster and just use the Red Hat feature to have floating IP addresses between two cluster nodes. Having it in a cluster was the single most useful application of Red Hat in the environment.
We use Red Hat Insights, Ansible, and Satellite. Red Hat Insights is helping us big time. A year ago, I was looking at bolstering my team to about five or so administrators. With Red Hat Insights and other tools, I am satisfied with just two administrators. They are there just to manage the system and not necessarily go down into the trenches.
It seems that Red Hat Insights provides vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, but my team would know that better. I manage a team that does that.
What is most valuable?
Its stability is most valuable. Its administrative aspect is also good. It is relatively easy to administer. I am familiar with AIX. AIX is super easy. I did not have to struggle much to adapt to Red Hat.
What needs improvement?
They can make the extended file system dynamic. Currently, we have to bring down the server to add an Hdisk. We cannot extend the database on the fly. We have to have downtime. We want to ensure that we make the blackout periods as minimal as possible. Currently, there is a gap in the file system management. I want to be able to expand the file system in a simpler way and have the application or the database use that expansion without any downtime.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since 2004. It has been 20 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There is no problem with stability. It is stable. We have a couple of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 still running. We also have Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 systems. The hardware is functional, but the application was retired. We cannot get an update for it. It has been running since 2008.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Its scalability is fine. There is no problem with scalability. We can do it in real-time. Now with containers and other things, we can scale on the fly without much downtime. We can build a small system and scale it. We can start at a much lower level than several others.
How are customer service and support?
It has improved tremendously. I remember when it used to be centralized. I have been to North Carolina to get training, but now they can come to us for the training. The whole support architecture has improved. We can reserve hours for calls when the need arises. If we do not use it, it is reallocated the next month to some other project. They are doing well. I am impressed.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were using and still are using AIX, but most of the applications have been imported, so we are between AIX and Red Hat. We are also using Windows, but Red Hat has stood out. It is not yet there with AIX, but it is getting there.
We were using Ubuntu and a few other flavors, but they were not organized. They were still too open. The support and the training for Red Hat Enterprise Linux was spot on. It was exemplary. We could find support easily.
How was the initial setup?
We have them in clusters, and we also have standalone ones. We have DR where we synchronize with DR. We synchronize at the file system level with DR, which eliminates some of the application limitations.
We are using it on-prem, but we have applications to be upgraded in another 18 months, which would be a hybrid cloud.
Its installation the first time was overwhelming. Once you get used to it, the team settles down, and you have knowledgeable people, it is a breeze.
What about the implementation team?
We have an integrator, a reseller, and a consultant. Somebody would come in and help us connect the dots. I guess that is their reseller, and then the integrator helps us properly connect the dots.
Pedro is our accounts manager. He probably comes from Puerto Rico, and then there is Lincoln Walters from Jamaica. Together, they help us identify the resources we need for the things that we want to do.
What was our ROI?
The biggest ROI is in terms of the reduction of human resources required to manage and maintain it. The administrative duties have been vastly reduced. You can even have resources from Red Hat. They have something where you can block certain hours a month and you can just use them as needed. If you do not use them entirely, you can reallocate them. That means you can reallocate unused resources. There are savings on investment.
We are still learning about it, but our TCO has reduced because we do not have to have as much manpower, hardware, and processes to manage and operate.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Licensing is the most attractive part of it. With Red Hat Insights and Ansible, we now know that it was done with the intention of simplifying the licensing so that you get the support for what you have and not necessarily what you want to have.
What other advice do I have?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not helped us to centralize development. We have not capitalized on that as yet. I am here at the Red Hat Summit to learn about Kubernetes and containers. It is all new to me, and at this point, I do not know from where to start. I am getting exposed to so many things, but I still need to understand from where to start. I need to know the foundations. In about 18 months, we will be going to containers. We have people developing Dockers, Kubernetes, and other things, but we need to find a way to integrate them. We will have containers running on OpenShift, but we need to know how to secure, store, and manage those containers.
I have participated in a few presentations, and I see that there are prescribed ways to ensure that you maintain compliance by upgrading. In one of the presentations, one of the presenters said to not expand or scale too quickly because some of the applications get left behind. That is something that I am taking away.
The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be good for keeping our organization agile. It is flexible. They say, "Build once and run anywhere." That is the buzzword for me.
To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would say that Linux is for beginners, whereas Red Hat Enterprise Linux comes with the bells and whistles and the stability for business. It is an enterprise-grade software.
Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. There is innovation and adaptability. Ten years ago, it was unheard of. It has grown, and it has been growing tremendously.
Affordable, feature-rich, and has enabled us to centralize development
What is our primary use case?
We have a database that we maintain for root passwords, and sometimes I need to break the root password to reset it. We work a lot on logical volumes where I need to grow and shrink volumes on the fly. I did not have to shrink the logical volumes much, but I worked a lot on growing logical volumes on the fly to make them available for the database team. I have done network-related things. I configured network multipathing or IP multipathing where we can parallelly route the traffic to multiple ethernets.
I work a lot on user-related issues as well. We are also using Ansible a lot for automation. I am writing some playbooks, so there are a lot of use cases.
How has it helped my organization?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps us a lot. We host a lot of our applications on the Red Hat platform. We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for both on-prem and VM platforms. Most of them are VMs, but we do have some old legacy systems where we have Linux running on some Dell architecture. Our goal is to get rid of them this year and implement everything on virtualization because virtualization is growing a lot.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. We are using it in the production and lower environments. We are using a common platform for our deployments. We have a centralized environment.
In terms of portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for keeping our organization agile, it is flexible. Agile methodologies are very popular nowadays, and they help with coordination between dev and production teams. It is fulfilling the gaps between these teams. It is helpful.
What is most valuable?
I see so many features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux that I do not see in other Linux operating systems, such as Ubuntu. That is why Red Hat is very popular. All my experience is mostly on the Red Hat side. In terms of features, I like breaking root passwords, and I like the XFS file system over ext4.
What needs improvement?
I have not used it on the cloud side. I have not heard much about how Red Hat is doing on the cloud side. In the market, AWS and Azure are very popular, and they have captured most of the market. If Red Hat can improve on the cloud side, they can retain their customer base. Their customers do not need to go out for other cloud resources, and they can use the Red Hat cloud.
We are using it on-prem and in the virtual environment on VMware. We are using a cloud, but it is not a Red Hat cloud. We are using AWS in our organization. We have some EC2 instances deployed with Red Hat Enterprise Linux images, but I cannot say it is a Red Hat cloud. It is an AWS cloud, and we have instances. We are depending on a third-party cloud. If Red Hat provides that kind of service to our company, we can retain Red Hat. We do not need to go for a public cloud.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for almost 12 years. I started with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable platform, but our company still wants to stick to the older version. They do not want to change the application base. They do not want to take risks. Unfortunately, Red Hat is not able to help to provide the patches for older versions. They suggest upgrading, but management is not doing that, so the Red Hat Enterprise Linux side is good, but our management side is bad.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Its scalability is good. We plan to use it more. We are growing. As our infrastructure grows, we are buying more licenses.
How are customer service and support?
Their customer service is excellent. I like it. I am in touch with Ed who is one of the support engineers with Red Hat. He is helping me.
I am also in touch with a few other people at Red Hat. If I run into any issues, I can simply email them, and I get a quick response from them. Based on the support I am receiving, I would rate them a ten out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not use any similar solution previously.
How was the initial setup?
We are using it on-prem and in the virtual environment on VMware. Our cloud provider is AWS.
We are using the CI/CD model for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are using blue/green deployments as well for our containerized applications, and we have some canary deployments.
My initial deployment experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux was not great. It was not as easy as the current version. It was difficult during those days. We had to load the GUI and then change to CLI. It is better now. Red Hat has made some improvements in the newer versions. The current version 9 looks better than any other previous version.
What about the implementation team?
I did not use any integrator or consultant. I downloaded an ISO image from Red Hat. I downloaded and installed it myself, and it worked very well. I did not run into any issues with the installation process.
What was our ROI?
Over the last few years, we have been within budget. We do not have any constraints about Red Hat. We are a big organization. We use a lot of products from different vendors. We are working on cost optimization for some of the vendors but not Red Hat, so Red Hat is still good. We are still happy with it.
The biggest return on investment is the customer base. We are in the telecom industry. We try to get as many customers as we can. Red Hat is not the only product that we are using, but it is a major product that we are using in our company.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We are good as of now. We do not have any concerns about licensing. Its price is still good for us.
What other advice do I have?
We are not using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. We are using Kubernetes and Dockers for that.
When it comes to patching, our goal for 2024 is to make all the systems compliant. Especially at the infrastructure and application levels, I am actively working on the compliance tasks, and our goal is to fix all vulnerabilities. I am working with someone at Red Hat on some issues because I am not able to find the exact patch for certain vulnerabilities.
For now, we are happy with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are happy with what we are getting.
Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. The reason for reducing two points is that I have not explored other operating systems very well.
The portability of applications and containers built is very good for keeping our organization agile
What is our primary use case?
We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for running SQL servers, Oracle databases, Java applications, Apache, and data store types of things.
We use it for all sorts of functions. We have different levels. I am primarily an SE building and configuring the servers. The application-related work is for everyone else.
In terms of our environment, we might have some cloud. We have different engineering teams working on different parts of the technologies. My team and I do not touch that, so we have a basic cloud-based and non-cloud-based setup.
How has it helped my organization?
We are primarily able to standardize on the platform. By keeping everything standard, you know what might break or should not break. That is the true benefit. It seems to help keep a better level of standard across all groups, business standards, and application types.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to centralize development. That goes with platform uniformity. The development team has a common toolset and expectations from the toolset and what they are working with. It just makes things easier for each developer.
The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very good for keeping our organization agile.
What is most valuable?
It is the most lightweight platform to use. It is very flexible. It is not very difficult to manage, configure, and deal with. That is a plus point.
Migrating people from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to 8 has been good so far. Irrespective of whether we are doing an in-place upgrade or a full rebuild, most people are able to convert over. There is no problem.
What needs improvement?
For our use case, it seems to be working well, so I cannot think of what it could do better. I know for our purpose and what we have been using it for, it has been working well. Their support, however, can be better.
For how long have I used the solution?
I came on board when they bought our company. At the time, I was using CentOS. From what I know, they have been only using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I started using it from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. It has been about 13 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It seems stable, but developers might have a different response. When you have a problem with a Windows server, you typically reboot it, but you do not have to reboot a Linux server to get it to work better.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable platform.
How are customer service and support?
It is pretty good. It varies based on the support person that you get. They might understand what you are talking about right away or not.
For one of the cases that I opened, I laid out every single detail possible. The first thing they said was that it was not that. It was something else. They kept going back and forth with different support teams on the same ticket. Finally, it clicked with somebody and they figured out what caused the issue. Somehow an RPM of a different version was installed on one server versus another one, and no one caught that. Some people were going down the wrong path saying it was networking and not some sort of binary that was installed which changed something. They went back and forth with different troubleshooting paths. Eventually, someone saw and understood what I meant.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have always been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux at our workplace.
How was the initial setup?
Deployment for our builds is typically PXE. I do not have insights into that because the build is built and configured by another team. I deploy and provide the server for the development team. I understand how Kickstart and other things work, but I do not install and configure it. It seems relatively easy. From what I have done in the past, it does not seem that difficult.
What about the implementation team?
I am not aware of taking any external help for deployment.
What was our ROI?
The biggest ROI is in terms of consistency. We know how it works which makes going forward a lot easier.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We are coming from CentOS, so technically, our total cost of ownership has gone up, but it is still cheaper than Windows for a database server and things like that.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I was not a part of the evaluation. I came on board and began working with what was there.
What other advice do I have?
In terms of security features, we do not use anything too advanced other than what is out of the box. We do not manage the compliance piece and things like that. There is a different group that manages that piece.
Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
The built-in security features do a really good job of risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution for server operating systems and to automate other systems. We use the tool for Windows automation and Linux automation.
How has it helped my organization?
The support we get from Red Hat is really good. When we have questions, there's always somebody we can approach and get an answer from. In my experience, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is more stable than Windows. The solution's ease of management is better, and it's much more powerful when you know the command line.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of the solution is its stability.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features do a really good job of risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora are the main Linux systems. Ubuntu is the only enterprise-level OS with paid support because a lot of the work we do requires paid support contracts.
What needs improvement?
The solution's front-end GUI is not great and could be improved. It needs to be more intuitive if it's meant to be used as a desktop operating system replacement. I don't know how to describe it better, but OS X and Windows feel a lot more polished than Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in my current organization for two years. However, I have been using the solution in general for ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is an extremely stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a scalable solution.
How are customer service and support?
The solution’s technical support is very good.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The solution's initial setup is seamless and easy. We tried different things, but the easiest way we found to deploy the solution was to use VMware. We had scripts to download and install the tool.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented the solution through an in-house team.
What was our ROI?
Once everything is set up, the solution is generally very stable. While other operating systems require a lot of maintenance, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is pretty hands-off once you properly set up and configure it.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Customizable, stable, and easy to upgrade
What is our primary use case?
We are a brokerage firm. We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for trading purposes. We develop our applications on it.
By implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we wanted a stable server and OS.
How has it helped my organization?
There is an in-built feature for shell scripting, so we can automate things that have to run on time in production. We created a script for the setup and configuration of certain things, such as disabling the firewall, network manager, and other things.
I am able to handle some of the daily issues automatically by using batch scripting and cron scheduler. I have also been able to debug some of the issues with the help of logs.
What is most valuable?
It is open source. We can customize it as per our requirements. We can change or optimize it as per our requirements.
What needs improvement?
Their support needs improvement. It should be faster for priority tickets.
Some of the tools can be improved and made user-friendly. The OpenStack and OpenShift tools can be better.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for almost three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable. I would rate it a 9 out of 10 for stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable. I would rate it a 9 out of 10 for scalability.
We have about 100 servers, and we have about four people working in the IT department.
How are customer service and support?
Their support needs to improve. If we create a priority ticket for Red Hat, they revert within four hours. They should respond within half an hour so that the issue can be resolved as soon as possible in the real or live environment, and the company has less downtime.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows operating systems.
How was the initial setup?
Upgrades and migrations are easy with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are currently working on upgrades from RHEL 7 to RHEL 9.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We use open source. We only have a subscription for support.
What other advice do I have?
For security purposes, we use the SSH key algorithm, MD5, and SHA256. We have set up a firewall in our network, and all servers are password-based. We also block some common ports that are open when we install the OS. We also have monitoring tools to ensure uptime.
Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a 9 out of 10.