We use the solution in our company for normal application support and for databases.

In Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we use Red Hat Satellite as part of all the patching and deployment, even from on-premises and AWS, and that's been really helpful since it is one product that can be used in a hybrid environment. It's just one place to manage everything. It's good since you don't have two different products or places to manage, especially if you have a multi-datacenter and not a multi-cloud but a multi-location environment.

The room for improvement depends on how we use it. It's just a normal operating system. Considering an area where the solution lacks, I think we can look into a lot more automation and integrations with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other products. However, I cannot say specifically where the improvement should be because it mostly depends on how we are using it. It just works the way it's supposed to work.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the cloud for six to seven years. Currently, we are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux Versions 7 and 8.

The product's stability is good, with 99.99 percent uptime.

Scalability is something my company hasn't delved into that much. Right now, scalability is mostly on the backend hypervisor or how we leverage AWS.

I would probably rate the support around an eight out of ten.

Positive

We have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since I've been with the company. Linux is our platform of choice.

I supported those involved in the setup phase peripherally.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Regarding the straightforward setup, building the base image and deploying it with our internal security standards was pretty straightforward.

We used to get our own license model. We purchased a license through Red Hat.

We haven't necessarily evaluated other options, but there are a lot of requests coming from other application developers that want to deploy other operating systems because they are much more common, especially in an open source environment. So we have looked into those options. However, Red Hat Enterprise Linux continues to be the main platform that we support. We are also looking into other solutions just in case a scenario arises where a vendor cannot support Red Hat Enterprise Linux for some reason and we will need a backup.

Regarding the problems we are trying to solve by implementing the solution, I would say that it is our operating system of choice. I think the support is good since we have Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions. We get support for all the operating systems from them. It's great and stable.

Regarding the solution's resiliency, it is good. We've been running, and we have over 99 percent uptime all the time. We also do monthly patching and everything, so it works. Kernel upgrades also work as expected. So it has been pretty good.

Regarding how easy or difficult it is for you to move workloads between the cloud and your data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we don't use relative migrating solutions. It's considered a separate environment, but we use the same base image. 

I consider the solution to be the main OS because going with an open source solution like Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you have better support.

The support is great. We also have integrations with other products, especially with whatever Red Hat releases. We have all those integrations available and we can easily take advantage of it.

I rate the overall solution between seven and eight out of ten.

In our organization, we use the solution as our internet banking platform.

Some of the solution's features include scalability, lower footprints, and the fact that licenses don't really cost us much. Also, the upgradeability is fantastic. With Windows, you can't upgrade to certain versions. I haven't found that issue with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Working at a bank, I can say that lack of scalability is a big no-no for us since we deal with people's money.

It would have been nice if we had the ability to do updates without rebooting. If we can update certain parts internally without having to remove them from the entire server, that would be fantastic since, else, there will be downtime, and we will need to reboot. We have to schedule downtime. If we can do so, we will patch it and continue running. Even though the downtime is minuscule, having as little as possible downtime could be great.

Speaking about the downtime caused due to the lack of the aforementioned feature, we reboot about 40 servers every time there's a patch, and they're not staged all at once. The whole process will take an hour or so.

I have been using the solution since I started using Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 7.

Regarding stability, it's good since we haven't had a major outage.

I rate the support an eight out of ten, considering the callback feature and rapid response compared with Windows, where you need to wait for a couple of hours to get support.

With Red Hat, the community is so robust. Most of the time, while waiting for a Red Hat engineer to call us back, the solution to the issue is already provided. This is because it's an open source platform. 

Positive

Previously, we used AIX. Now, we still use CentOS and Rocky for development.

Though the solution is deployed on a hybrid cloud, I would say that ninety-eight percent is on-premises, and two percent is on the cloud.

Also, I am running my workloads and applications on the cloud.

We transferred our license to the cloud because we were originally a VMware on-prem shop. We're transitioning some of our workloads to cloud licensing. Also, I have opted for a subscription. I don't know where we got it from because when I came to the company, it was already in place.

Comparing Red Hat Enterprise Linux to other operating systems, it is a nice solution, especially considering the support we get from Red Hat. Not a con, but on Windows, the GUI or navigation can be a little bit tricky.

By implementing the solution, my organization is trying to solve the agility issue. Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we are not tied to Windows patches. Windows patches break sometimes, and then the application goes down, which is a big issue. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we have that reliability and robustness.

I am very impressed with the solution's resiliency.

Regarding how easy or difficult it is for us to move workloads between the cloud and our data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I have found it to be very easy.

Regarding portability, it is easy. I was speaking to someone over there who benefits from containers. I mentioned it to my manager, and we are going to have a discussion about it.

In terms of my assessment of the solution's built-in security features when it comes to simplifying your risk reduction and maintaining compliance, I feel it is good. We haven't ever had an issue ever with the solution.

As nothing is perfect, I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for deploying middleware applications and many different applications that we have, like the ones we can use in the marketplace with different users. We use other kinds of solutions in many of the applications we develop. But in general, we use Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Benefit-wise, the product is very stable. The product is also very compatible, and many people want to use it.

There are a lot of features in the solution. Red Hat Insights is one feature that we rely on currently.

The model, specifically the consumption model, is an area that needs improvement in the solution.

We had a really big challenge striking a chart between on-premises and the public cloud. The approach is that you pay as you go in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. In general, you pay for whatever you use instead of preparing for a full year.

At times, language is a barrier when it comes to support. That's one of the aspects I would like to improve about the solution.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for six to eight years. My company has a partnership with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Red Hat's support is good. Sometimes cases take a little bit longer to resolve. If you are clever enough to upgrade the case and put it at a very high level of priority, then it gets resolved faster. In general, the support is good. I rate the support an eight out of ten.

Sometimes, a customer doesn't speak English or we need people who speak Spanish for the case to be easier to understand. In those cases, we lose time. I can't push all my engineers to learn to speak English. My customers and our engineers speak Spanish.

Positive

We've been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux since the beginning.

I was involved in the deployment a long time ago. The setup process is easy. The solution is also easy to use.

Regarding the time taken for deployment, we can do it with a machine at this moment using Ansible. In our orchestration, we passed more or less, creating one machine for Red Hat and the entire environment. It took us eight days and an hour. At this moment, we can deploy it on a machine in an hour with all the security. If a developer comes to us and tells us that they need a new machine or new instance, we can provide that in an hour on-premises. In the cloud, we have to use a lot of tools.

I have purchased the license via hyperscalers and transferred it as well. I purchased the license from the marketplace and also from Red Hat.

Pricing is something that can always be better.

We have not evaluated other options since we trust Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I am running my workloads on-premises and on the cloud. I mainly use AWS.

Resiliency-wise, the solution is very good. It's good because we don't have a problem with our environment at this moment. When we don't have a problem, we don't need to explain what is to be improved in the solution. It is reliable and doesn't break or bring us any problems.

Regarding how easy or difficult it is for me to move workloads between the cloud and my data center using the solution, we don't have problems. In general, it's easy.

We are talking about moving applications from on-premise to the cloud. We need to see if that represents any cost savings. We would need to go through a migration process, and that would be an extra cost.We would need to see if that is beneficial.

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

Internally, we use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for services and for applications that we run, especially Linux based-applications. We also have SAP solutions, which we sell to the customers as a total solution with Red Hat, SAP HANA, and also for our own cloud-based SAP HANA, which is under Red Hat's operating system.

Red Hat Insights is quite an interesting and valuable feature. Lately, we used the malware scan feature. The Cockpit feature and web interface were quite helpful. We have also begun with OpenSCAP, which used is to harden the operating system's security features.

The first area for improvement is documentation, and I consider it since I have been working in IT for more than twenty-five years. For twenty years, I have been working with open source, and I see that the documentation is lacking, so it needs to do more work on its documentation part. Most open source and upstreams from Red Hat products work from the open source solution and have better documentation than in the actual Red Hat products.

New products need better documentation. The websites also have a single sign-on to get you from one side to the other. As a partner, I had a problem finding out how I needed to connect and to which side of the solution. I consider myself an expert user of the internet and websites, but going from one side to the other, was quite problematic.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the cloud for four to five years at least. My company has a partnership with Red Hat, and so we have our own licensing for the product. We have customers whom we manage, and they purchased the licenses on the go from the cloud provider. We just sold them the managed services. But mostly through us, we should be selling the licenses.

It's a very stable product, and that is actually the reason we are forcing or pushing customers to go with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The solution is scalable.

I rate the support a seven out of ten. The support is knowledgeable but slow if we have to get answers.

Neutral

We use Red Hat Satellite for managed services for our customers. And, of course, we use a product of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for servers. We started with OpenShift in the lab at the beginning, but now I'm beginning to produce it for our own services. So, now I can offer these to the customers.

One of the discussions in my company at the beginning of this year was to see if we could test our services on-premises for the virtualization, specifically for the KVM virtualization. But since it was not approved, we'll have to see the next step.

I have worked with other open source distributors. I have worked with SCO-Linux and Unix, which is the base of Linux. I didn't personally make the decision to switch. The company decided to switch since we are partners, and we are focusing on putting in the best efforts in terms of the partnership and customers we have with Red Hat.

The solution is deployed on both on-premises and the cloud. We have customers on the cloud server platform where we run their network, and we manage through Satellite. We also have it on-premises.

I was involved in the deployment of the solution. We created some automation, so the setup phase is straightforward. We use templates for all of those, but to manage the templates, and what it will include, we use external tools to make it easier for the deployment automation.

Regarding deployment time, it can be done in seconds. It also depends on what application we are speaking about since for an OS or more difficult solution, like Red Hat Satellite, you need more time.

I have seen a return on investment, especially considering the time taken to resolve the problem where we bought some support from Red Hat.

Regarding the prices, the new changes are actually not bad as it works for enterprise solutions. But it could have some other options for super solutions for the students in colleges, and they could actually win more customers from that. Of course, we have the test licensing and all that for the partners, where it's very useful for us to be able to test more of the products. But to win more would be much easier for us also if they introduce special pricing for students, universities, governmental institutions and all that. Most probably there is a price for them, but we haven't got that information. Also, Red Hat sometimes goes directly and not through the partner, but I'm not an expert.

I wasn't the one to make a choice, but I think my company evaluated other options, and it was their choice to go with Red Hat.

My company is a private cloud company. Mostly, we have our own private services, providing private cloud services to the customers. But we also provide public clouds like Azure and some Amazon clouds.

Regarding resiliency, it is a good standardized OS with stability. But sometimes, it is a little slow in reaction to problems that might appear. For example, we had this big Java Log4j bug where their reaction was very slow compared to other distributions. Of course, they found the solution when they had it, but it was quite a slow reaction. In general, it's a very stable OS.

Regarding how easy or difficult it is for you to move workloads between the cloud and your data center using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I don't have any solution for that. I have to migrate it manually right now.

Regarding the cost-saving capability of the solution, I would say that it is possible to save on costs because of the automation we use through Red Hat Satellite for maintenance and how we have managed automation, time to spend on the service, maintenance, test, problems, etc. So, you can say that it's been a cost-saving procedure.

I rate the overall product a seven and a half out of ten.

We use the solution majorly for JBoss, Apache, Java workload, and Comcast. We also use it for Apache Sattelite to do all the patching and database management. We use it for almost everything. We were a pure RHEL shop, up until recently. 

The most valuable feature is Satellite. Its consistency in patch upgradation is great. For the ten-year lifecycle, we have been able to rely on it and not worry if the patch will break. We do not need additional patching features since it covers everything.

The Modules feature is awesome but it could be even better.

We have been using the solution for 25 years.

The solution is stable. I have never remotely questioned its stability. The downtime is rare. It is usually a vendor's application issue unrelated to it. 

My company only has one complaint; we have been using it for more than seven years out of its ten-year lifespan and have yet to receive any version update. The drivers have become stale. We are trying to upgrade them manually. It would be nice if they had updated the drivers. If they do not update them, the solution will end soon. They should prevent it from crashing every time we try to update it. We are still rolling Ansible to automate some of the functions but, it is complicated to process with a vast sync of firmware and drivers.

The solution is scalable. I am a Satellite owner and we've had scaling issues with it. Those issues are mostly because my company didn't make it scalable in the right way.

They have their own expectations of how to make something highly available. And Satellite doesn't fit into that. 

I rate the solution's technical support as nine out of ten, as there is always room for improvement. I never had an issue with the support services. It is good and worth the value. 

I don't usually put up a ticket for every minor error. I am an expert and know the technicalities required to resolve the issues. So, whenever I contact them, I expect it to get somewhere. Because most of the time, the executives put more than one problem in the same ticket unrelated to another. It becomes more complex and confusing.

Positive

Red Hat Enterprise Linux generates a return on investment. We have everything on it. We have Windows servers for SharePoint and multiple cloud providers as well. In addition, we have OpenShift and Docker Enterprise, and some other open-source applications.

The solution is a good value for money. They keep adding up essential features to the specific subscription plan. I am also not a big proponent of top-level open-source applications as they do not provide support services. Whereas, with Red Hat, I can call them for queries and get answers immediately. In comparison, open source doesn't have that facility. Even if you hire a support vendor, they just give their opinions and try to help but they don't own the project.

At the end of the day, we have a 999.99% reliability of only 20 minutes a year of downtime with Red Hat. It is impossible to get that with open-source vendors as sometimes the applications might break if it doesn't notify about the changes on time. Conversely, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a ten-year life cycle assurance, so we don't have to worry much. Also, we are in a TAM program. Thus, we can call the support team immediately for any issue.

Our organization constantly evaluates other options, as Red Hat Enterprise Linux's cloud version doesn't offer new features. Other than that, we go back and forth using Centralized and Rocky Linux. We prefer the ones we don't have to pay for the licenses.

It has a strong security posture. I did a SELinux contract for my current company. Compared with open-source alternatives, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides better support services and reliability. Also, we are rolling out a new Ansible platform for insights. It gathers information about how many jobs we have, how long they take to complete, etc.

We need to manage vulnerabilities for a massive base of clients' systems. We don't use open-source apps for it like Red Hat. We have a third-party tool as we straddle different compliances. However, Red Hat is great about security announcements. I can call them anytime for an update as well. But it is challenging to work with the vendor for scanning machines. It does not know how to work with Red Hat packaging version numbers.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

RHEL is a phenomenal operating system for three primary reasons: 

• Support compared to the rest of the Linux ecosystem
• Cohesive ecosystem 
• Application platform

The combination of these three aspects has proven to me from an advising perspective that it is key in decision-making.  

Our clients purchase the use cases via cloud provider and hyper-scale. It's a combination of both. Mostly, new clients prefer going for hyper scalers. Whereas the clients with Red Hat licenses, predominantly those from the banking sector, transfer the licenses to the cloud depending on their hyper scaler plan.

The main benefits my clients have seen are the supportability, maintenance of the operating system, security, and the ecosystem that ties it all together.

The solution has a phenomenal operating system. Its support features are best compared to the rest of the Linux ecosystem. Generally, applications don't rely on operating systems per se. When combined with the container ecosystem, security is the paramount feature that is most asked for.

The problems our clients try to solve by implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux vary. The main ones include containerization, cloud transformation, and visual transformation in terms of how you get to the cloud in a hybrid mode. The key aspect that I give advice about is how for the operating system in terms of the scalability to bridge the cloud to the on-prem world, so where they could have the OpenShift ecosystem that it runs into and helps them manage both systems together. 

The solution's operating systems are phenomenally resilient and stable. The good part is that Red Hat has backing and support. Also, combined with IBM, it gives more confidence to my customers.

The solution's ecosystem is good but it would be better to create cohesive components in all of the development tools. 

A developers' hub feature would help. 

OpenShift already provides excellent visibility, but bridging the gap with Kubernetes would be key because Red Hat Enterprise Linux drives OpenShift.

I'm a big open-source user. I've been using different forms of Linux for quite some time. For my enterprise purpose, I use the RHEL for other purposes and a few other different Linux operating systems. We have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for more than ten years.

I have experience working with Ubuntu, Fedora, Canonical, etc. From that perspective, the solution's stability is good. The security feature plays a key role in terms of the pace at which it receives updates for operating systems to maintain it.

In terms of the architectural perspective, the nature of the solution is scalable.

The solution's technical support is very good. My clients generally manage it, and I have received positive feedback. They have a responsive support organization to communicate with.

I have used Canonical and Ubuntu. In comparison with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu's ecosystem consists of multiple operating systems and container platforms like MicroK8s. The partnership with hyper scalers in terms of deployment is one of its benefits as well. On the flip side, it has some drawbacks regarding licensing and export control, where Red Hat shines well.

The solution's pricing and licensing are good. Although the open-source space is becoming more competitive, Red Hat brings value in terms of support. At the same time, different operators like Canonical Kubernetes are catching up. Thus, the price would become the differentiation factor regarding packages for support, and container ecosystem combined with Ansible. All these key elements would add more value to the pricing.

The solution's key element is its cohesive ecosystem between hybrid and cloud environments. It helps clients such as giant banks create a single space for managing workloads in different hyper scalers. This way, it helps in cost management and visibility. It creates a single platform to manage work. It helps in saving costs, especially with subscription plans. It provides them with a consistent cost structure. Also, being an open-source solution has benefits that fit within the ecosystem.

I rate it an eight out of ten, primarily for the support and licensing terms. It helps some of our enterprise clients navigate open-source licensing and export control complexities.

There are areas of improvement, such as the cycle of updates and the ecosystem as a whole. Also, the elements like Ansible are priced separately. For automation, there is an opportunity to combine everything. Even though they are different products, they shouldn't be charged separately from the ecosystem perspective.

We prefer Red Hat Enterprise Linux as our operating system due to its excellent support. If a business wants something, we deliver it and we prefer a Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based system because of the support. It can be a simple application to a big system. It doesn't have pre-defined roles. It's a go-to operating system. 

Our use cases for it vary from plain operating system management to handling specific tasks such as running Oracle databases or other similar applications. They include quite a broad spectrum of requirements. Also, they are not limited to predefined roles but encompass the entire operating system infrastructure.

The solution's SELinux feature is a gold standard for security. It also has the best ecosystem. 

In addition, its automation platform, ITM, is a good product and works well for us.

Some of the solution's features need to be automated. We encounter the hassle of registering the system and attaching a subscription. Our company has development teams, and we have to develop subscriptions for them. Here, having the solution up and running on the developers' machines is a bit of a hurdle. Although we can run it on platforms like Red Hat Connect but, it needs to be somewhat more accessible so developers can just download it and start with the work.

I have been using the solution for 10-15 years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable when combined with automation features. I rate its scalability a nine.

The solution's customer service is good.

Positive

I have used Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, and macOS. Initially, I worked as a Red Hat Certified Administrator in RHEL 5. Later, I began to work for its partner company. That is how I switched to the solution. It was not a conscious choice. It just evolved that way.

The solution's initial setup process is straightforward. You have to follow the steps, copy the template and multiply it.

The solution's price is reasonable. If you have a license for the support, they provide excellent services. The support team is always available for help in case of errors or system downtime issues.

RHEL’s built-in security features for simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance are good. If you keep SELinux on, it is all good. If you have a system with SELinux off for a long time, it could get you in trouble. The system will make many changes, like restoring files could break your application later. In case you resolve the problems simultaneously, it is fine. 

The troubleshooting feature of Red Hat is excellent. It can solve many issues on the machine right away. In addition, if you have an external scene, then Red Hat Insights is on. I sometimes go to this feature to see its status and what is happening. 

I don't do this on a daily basis and only check it every two weeks, but it's nice to have. I mainly oversee the high-level view of all the systems. This way, I know if the clients' machines need a patch system. 

There are some missing modules for SELinux in Ansible, like the playbook. It becomes a genuine hurdle to manipulate SELinux at the moment. I have to go to the machine, take a file to the repository, and deploy it.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We use the product to host operating systems, applications, or infrastructure for our customers. Our customers use the product as a long-term solution that they don't have to upgrade every other year. They can get people that know the solution from the get-go.

The biggest feature is the longevity of the distribution. Compared to any other product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a stable backported solution for a long time. It is important because we have moved a lot of software containers. We want to update it but don't want to unless we have to. So it's great to have something stable for a long time.

The biggest thing that the solution could introduce is an even slimmer version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are moving to containers, but we also have a lot of void loads that don't go into containers. It would be nice to have an even thinner operating system. Even if you choose minimally, you still get a lot of useless stuff you don't need.

I have been using the solution for 20 years.

I rate the product’s stability a nine out of ten.

I rate the solution’s scalability a seven out of ten.

It's really difficult to get to someone that knows something. When you get to the right people, support is really good. But there are a lot of people that can only answer first-level questions.

Neutral

We're using a lot of different OSs. We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux because we are a partner.

It's pretty simple to install the product. However, some tools required to install it are missing.

The pricing is great for virtual systems. The pricing for physical systems is way too high.

The overall costs depend on the project and the company.

We continuously evaluate other options. The main difference between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other solutions is the complete ecosystem's longevity and possibility. Other products may present something similar, but they don't have the ecosystem around them.

We probably purchased the solution from a cloud provider. We are using versions 5 to 9 currently.

The solution’s built-in security features are pretty good, but it's not something that I would take as a major selling point. The portability is good because we have a stable baseline for applications and containers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s security posture is pretty good. I don’t know if it's the strongest selling point, but it's up there.

In some ways, Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to centralize development. However, that's not mostly what we focus on. The primary output from Red Hat Insights is targeted guidance. Targeted guidance has not affected our uptime much.

It makes sense to go with a stable distribution compared to others. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

We installed the product at a very large hospital as their underlying operating system for Kubernetes, but it is not OpenShift. We use it for one-off servers and lab machines.

Copious documentation is probably the best feature of the solution. If you have a lot of high-quality documentation in one location, it is easier to search and get exactly what you need. It's more efficient when I get stuck on a problem or need help configuring something. It saves us time searching through Google or looking through GitHub Issues to solve the problems. It is a top-notch solution.

If the solution were easier to use and understand, it would not get disabled as often as it does. The solution should be made more secure. The changes made to CentOS make it hard for somebody to spin up and test it without having a preexisting relationship and license. 

If somebody wants to get something going quickly and is trying to settle on Red Hat, they don't have a free version to go to. Ubuntu and SUSE provide such platforms to the users. It is one Achilles heel in Red Hat at the moment. 

Even if Red Hat would enable a full version trial for people to test it, it would be less than what others are doing. Others are giving it away for free until you actually need support, and then you can choose if you need to buy it. With SUSE you can install it with SUSE Leap. It's pretty much the same thing. When you want support, you must enable support, and it becomes SLES.

There's nothing in Red Hat where I can run along on the free version for as long as I need to, and then when I want support, activate support on the same product. I have to reinstall it if I want Red Hat. Even with CentOS, it still wasn't possible to just activate it for Red Hat and make it become Red Hat Enterprise Linux. That's been something that's long been lacking in the product.

I have been using the solution since 1996 or 1997.

I have no complaints at all about the stability of the product.

As time goes on, the solution gets better. It adopts new features. I would say that it does a pretty good job.

The few times that I've encountered support, it was great. I don't really go through support channels. However, when I reach out and ask a question to the people I know in support, I get answers pretty quickly. I find that they have a good deal of product knowledge.

Positive

When I first started using the product in the 90s, it was just Red Hat. So I used Red Hat, and I used IBM Slack. I've used quite a number of different Linux distributions. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been around longer than Ubuntu. I still use other solutions along with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Typically, the initial setup is pretty straightforward. If it's virtualization, it is really easy because we have an image already, or we can create one. We can use Kickstart. I used to run a 5000-node HPC cluster in the early 2000s based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We used a combination of SystemImager and Kickstart for it.

It's the default posture of a lot of the third-party vendors that you should just disable and leave them off. With containerization being prevalent everywhere, portability is across the board. Red Hat Enterprise Linux adopted Podman as opposed to Docker. Podman is a good tool, and I like it. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the standard on which many others have based their platforms.

Using SELinux is largely misunderstood. If used properly, it provides a great platform for us. Red Hat is a big corporation, and we have people we can reach out and talk to. The same goes for SUSE. For Ubuntu, I have always gone straight to NVIDIA for support. I personally don't know of any great differentiators between all the products. I know Red Hat. It's been around longer, and I've had a long history that makes me comfortable. 

I wouldn’t recommend one over the other. It would come down to the use case. If someone wants Kubernetes on-prem, I would probably guide them toward OpenShift. I do have customers that don't run OpenShift on-prem. I often find that the customers already have a preference because they already have a license. So it's never really a decision that falls on me.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses firewalls, so configuring a firewall is easy. I have deployed the solution in multiple places. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.