We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for servers. We have deployed application servers and database servers on it. We run Oracle Database, WebLogic, Apache, and JBoss on it.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP with HA and Update Services 9.2
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Redhat for managing cluster of servers
The solution provided is quick and accurate. With people providing support globally.
A robust and secure operating system with competitive pricing
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very important for our organization. We are very sensitive to security.
It is not difficult to move workloads between the cloud and the data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Mostly, our teams use file servers centrally, and then they use scripts so that it is done automatically in the background. Initially, they may get problems while connecting due to the security or firewall, but once the connection is established, we do not see any problem with that.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has helped to avoid cloud vendor lock-in. I am not sure how much our organization has saved in costs by avoiding cloud vendor lock-in, but we would have saved a good amount.
What is most valuable?
It is very stable and robust. My team is very comfortable working with it for all end-to-end activities. They can work with it very easily. They prefer working through the console rather than the GUI.
Its resiliency is good. There is no doubt about that.
What needs improvement?
I don't prefer Red Hat Enterprise Linux for desktop over other options.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a good amount of time. It has been eight to ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is very scalable. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of scalability. It is highly available and scalable for servers.
How are customer service and support?
It is good. I do not see any challenges. I would rate their support a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We choose an operating system based on the needs and the use case. We use different operating systems for different purposes, so they are not comparable. For example, for desktops, Linux is not the best. For desktops, Microsoft Windows is the best. Similarly, if you are using any Microsoft products, such as SQL Server, Microsoft Windows is the best option. However, nowadays, we also have Microsoft products installed on Linux.
How was the initial setup?
I am not involved in its deployment and maintenance. We have a separate team with 40 to 50 people around the globe for that.
We most probably have both on-premises and cloud deployments on a private cloud, but I am not sure. Our infrastructure services team takes care of that.
What was our ROI?
We have got a good ROI, but I do not have the metrics. I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Its pricing is good and competitive.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend it based on the use case and the budget. If it meets your needs and budget, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the best option.
Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
Red hat for the needs
Awesome Enterprise Linux OS
Highly stable, good knowledge base, and reasonable price
What is our primary use case?
I provide consultation to clients for their mission-critical applications. Its primary use case is running containers and microservices on Springboard.
My customers use versions 7.2 or 7.3. I have used versions 8.2 and 8.4. I have tried version 9, but I use version 8.4 specifically because it supports HighPoint RAID for storing the data, whereas the client applications run on the much lower version.
How has it helped my organization?
There are benefits in terms of price, security, and stability to reduce the risk of applications going down or something like that. A vast majority of systems are on Red Hat Enterprise Linux than on other distributions, which is another benefit.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps to achieve security standards certification. They use it in the PCI DSS segment, so it enables the applications to be compliant with all these security aspects.
What is most valuable?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very stable. It has been in the market for many years, and it is used by large organizations.
Their documentation and knowledge base are valuable. As an individual developer, whenever I have problems, it is easy to find the information. Their knowledge base is seamlessly integrated with the software. Whenever I have a question, it directly takes me to the knowledge base. It is well documented.
It supports scripting very well. Everything is scripted. A snapshot is taken in the VM, and the script is applied. It lends itself to better security and governance processes.
What needs improvement?
Its installation on a RAID or cluster system is something difficult. There are specific teams working on that. The GRUB configuration is also a little different from the other Linux distributions.
In terms of additional features, as technology keeps evolving, the product will also have to evolve. For example, Microsoft Windows has come a long way. In Windows 11, there are so many features that are fundamentally the same as the oldest version, but there are other aspects or processes that have improved. macOS has also evolved over time. Similarly, in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux that I used in 2003 and the one that I am using now, some things are the same and some things have changed. Red Hat can continue to engage clients, understand the use cases, and update them.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since 2002 or 2003. Red Hat has a vast variety of products. I have only been using Red Hat's operating system. I have not used Red Hat's other products.
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 scalable, but I do not have experience in building hundreds of systems on a VM.
How are customer service and support?
I have not used their technical support at all. I only use their documentation portal for self-support. Our production support team interacts with Red Hat's support team.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
As a developer, I use both SUSE as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. My personal preference is Gentoo, but no one runs Gentoo on a production system. Gentoo is better in terms of customization. You can choose what you want.
How was the initial setup?
I am not directly involved in its deployment, but I am planning to build an application. At that time, I will be deploying it myself. In the organization where I work as a consultant, there is a segregation of roles. There is a production support team, there is a development team, and there is a DevOps team. I am a part of the development team.
Its initial setup is straightforward. It is not complex. It also depends on the architecture, high availability, etc.
In terms of deployment, earlier, it was on-prem, but now, it is on the cloud. My client runs about 150 VMs on the cloud in the production, staging, and QA environments. Most of the things have been consolidated into VMs. The migration is complete. It was not that complex.
What was our ROI?
I have not measured that, but it should pay back for itself easily. The ROI should be reasonable. The cost over a period of time should be minuscule. As compared to other OSs, it is better to go with a big, known, and trusted vendor.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
As a developer, I pay around 10,000 Yen, which is around $100 per annum for support. SUSE and Red Hat are typically the same without standard support. The pricing is not a big deal. Enterprise customers will pay for the support. Enterprises have the money for one or two products like this that are reliable and supported.
As a consultant, I advise customers to go for support. You mitigate risks by having support. For your personal usage, you can manage without support, but when it comes to the enterprise level, you need to delegate things to people, and it should be through the proper channel. You need a proper point of contact.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise following the best practices recommended by Red Hat. It will minimize the downtime of the application or system. Partner with the vendor and get that support. Know the business case and build a strong relationship with the vendor. Trust them and tell them your use case, and they will come up with the best solution possible.
I am not a big authority on Red Hat or other Linux or Unix products. Only recently, I have been exposed to the concept called hardening and penetration testing. I do not know whether Red Hat provides a hardened version of the OS. My basic distribution is Gentoo which provides a hardened version of Linux. On the client side, the organizations we work with have different departments, such as the security department and the compliance department. For security, they work with various options that are available. For penetration testing, we engage a penetration testing consultancy company once a year.
Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.
Has good security, management, stability, and hardening features
What is our primary use case?
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.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
From the administration perspective, I do not have any issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For me, it is more convenient than Microsoft Windows.
For how long have I used the solution?
My organization has been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a long time. They have been using it before I joined the organization.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
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.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Its scalability is good. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of scalability.
How are customer service and support?
We never encountered any issues while using OpenShift.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have mostly been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
It was implemented in-house.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate other solutions. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the choice of most of the companies.
What other advice do I have?
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.
review of Red hat enterprise linux
Mastering Linux: A Definitive Operating System Review
1) Stability and Reliability
2)Security
3)Scalability and Performance
1)Cost: RHEL is a commercial Distribution organization need to purchase subscriptions to access official support and updates.
2) Limited Software repositories.
RHEL Offers long term support throughits life cycle up to 10 years
Best Operating System
A stable solution that can be used to develop and run scenarios
What is our primary use case?
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux mostly for development.
What is most valuable?
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Git apps in our closed environment to develop and run scenarios.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since it started back in the 1980s.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten for stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten for scalability.
How are customer service and support?
I rarely call Red Hat Enterprise Linux's support, but when I do, they send me a Google link.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented Red Hat Enterprise Linux directly through Red Hat.
What was our ROI?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.