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    reviewer2399241

A stable, secure, and well-supported OS for our golden image

  • May 29, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

The main use case is generating golden images. All the deployments of operating systems and virtual machines on the servers are based on the golden image. The developers and providers can run all the applications on top of those.

How has it helped my organization?

Whenever we need to remediate any vulnerabilities, patches are available. These patches are not only for current exploits but also for back-porting for bug fixes and security fixes. These patches are available from the most recent versions to the specific version that we are using.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. We have a golden image of the operating system. That golden image sets the standard for all the security policies that we are applying to it. For example, the partition scheme and the best practices that we apply to the golden image are the starting point for all the developers to start working with all the applications and also executing appliances or applications from providers.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Podman for containerization projects. Red Hat offers what is called UBI or Universal Base Image. That image is already configured to be secure and have good performance. To start working with containers, we just have to pull UBI as a base for our images and start working on those. It has impacted our containerization project because instead of using Docker, we can use Podman. There is a common container image that is used by the majority of the customers, but I forgot the name of that one. Instead of using that, which is like a very minimal image, we are using UBI because it is already secure. It has the majority of the benefits of our Red Hat Enterprise Linux image but in a container image.

There is portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for keeping our organization agile. That is a very good option to have because you do not have to worry about the underlying system. You just have to worry about your application and have the application running on top of your image based on UBI. It is going to be so easy to have the application running either on a machine with Podman or have the same application running just on top of OpenShift. It is so easy to move a container-based application that can be executed on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Podman or on top of OpenShift. 

What is most valuable?

Security, packages, and updates are valuable. There is also the possibility to do unattended installations. This way you can define how you want the installation to behave and be configured whenever you do the deployment.

One of the best features is having a tool called OSCAP, which is a tool that is going to allow us to apply security profiles to the golden image. This way, all the security features or policies can be applied in real time. This way, we can follow all the policies that are defined by our security teams.

What needs improvement?

There are not a lot of areas to improve because the majority of the time, Red Hat is constantly improving it. The only area would be in regards to being capable of running on other architectures like ARM. They are about to release a new version that is available to be executed on ARM architecture.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for about a year.

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. We have plans to increase its usage.

How are customer service and support?

It used to be better. It is still good as long as you can get in touch with a level 3 support engineer. If you have a trained engineer who helps you with what you need and who understands how to ask for specific details of what you need, you should be good. But, unfortunately, if you start with a simple detail of what you are experiencing and what kind of help you need, you will receive the same response. For example, you are pointed to a knowledge base article, and that is it. The support engineer is supposed to help you with your issue or request, but unfortunately, that is not happening anymore. It used to, but I understand.

We are looking for a support engineer to go all the way. The only way for you to contact support is via the support case system or page. After that, you interact through the ticket or email. You do not have a chance to have a call. If we have escalated a case, it is usually better if you have a person for a proper understanding and proper advice on what you have to do and how to resolve the issue. It could be that you need a new product, subscription, or service, but you do not know that.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

When I got into the company, they were already using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but back in the day, I used to have HP-UX. That was a very ancient system. It was Unix-based. It was a proprietary solution. HP-UX was a platform licensed based on the old Unix code that was tightly integrated into hardware built only by Hewlett-Packard. You could not run HP-UX in any other place. You could only run it on hardware created by Hewlett-Packard. The intention with that was to run only on the Itanium architecture, whereas Red Hat Enterprise Linux can run on x86 architecture. It is also open-source.

How was the initial setup?

We have it on-premises. It is in different locations. We are following a strategy to publish the images of the operating system. This way, multiple teams can grab the images and have their own procedures to deploy within each separate environment. We have multiple teams working on developments and they need a base image to start working on all the development stuff. Because they are all independent teams, they have access to a single source of image. This way, they can start working on further customizations and whatever they need.

What about the implementation team?

We implement it in-house.

What was our ROI?

The ROI is in terms of the time that I have to invest in doing customizations, applying security policies, and fixing the supply to the system, wherever I need those.

The reason for going for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is to improve the time to market. It is so easy to just generate a new image. We can configure it with all the security features and all the libraries and packages we need. We can also configure it with the ones requested by developers. We can do all of that. It is so much easier than what we can do with Windows, for example.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is very straightforward. We do not have to think much about having to get all the subscriptions related to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux fleet that we have because all the subscriptions came in pairs of CPUs or even for an entire bare-metal server. That way you can partition your bare-metal server into multiple virtual machines, and then you are covered. As long as your bare-metal server is covered, you can roll out any number of virtual machines on top of it. It is very easy to get subscriptions for your bare-metal server, and you can utilize whatever you want.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated operating systems or Linux distributions created by the community or run by the community only. We evaluated them mainly because of costs.

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 that they would not have the same team supporting all the operations and all the critical features and patches that they receive with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They can go with one of the clones, but unfortunately, at the end of the day, the clones are going to deviate from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you can also create support cases to receive back-ported bug fixes and security fixes, and you get very cool features such as Insights, Satellite, or system roles provided along with Ansible. 

We are currently not using Red Hat Insights but that is an awesome tool.

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. It is an enterprise Linux distribution. It was one of the first distributions to focus on the enterprise. There are others, but Red Hat is the main contributor to the Linux ecosystem. Because of that, it is so stable. It has proper support. It also provides the Linux ecosystem with new features and enhancements.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises


    Olugbenga O.

Consistency and Durability

  • May 19, 2024
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
I likes RHEL for its reliability and consistency. It can be use for mission critical application because of it reliability, ability to roll back to the previous know good configuration is superb. it provides reliable performance and security over long time, and also provides long-term support along with frequent upgrades and fixes. I love the promptness of the support team, when every I create a case for assistance from support team or I need I clarity I always get prompt response.
What do you dislike about the product?
Redhat is too costly for individual and small businesses users.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers extensive rewards including automation management, security, scalability and performance enhancement, and reliability and stability in enterprise IT systems.


    Dulana R.

RHEL IS THE BEST

  • May 13, 2024
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
Redhat AKA RHEL is a best Linux OS environment that anybody can use on there enterprise environments. Mostly because of the support and the security they provides, its freqently provides all the patches to all the indentified bugs and can be used to deploy test and modify any kind of linux based packages easily. You can deploy this OS using very low hardware resources and if you are CLI lover this is the product that you need to choose.
What do you dislike about the product?
RHEL is mostly reliable for the CLI users just like other linux base OS. For the GUI users, its not that simple to use as Windows its not that user friendly interface.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
As explained, this OS does not required high hardware resources as other GUI based OS. If you prefer GUI-less OS you can either install that as well, it`s simple and very fast to handle. the main thing, you can customized what you need and what you do not need, you can remove all the unwanted packages and keep whats only required.


    reviewer2399706

We have a reliable OS for production, and I can't speak highly enough of their support and community

  • May 09, 2024
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

The use case in my very early years was for dedicated servers for doing web applications.

How has it helped my organization?

We almost exclusively use Red Hat. The benefits boil down to the support. There is no problem getting support. Whenever we have an issue that we cannot solve, which does not happen often, we have somebody who is there either virtually or physically.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-prem and on the cloud in a hybrid environment. We probably also have edge devices. I am not completely sure about that one. Having it in a hybrid cloud deployment has been no different than having it on-prem. Running it on-prem is just as good as running it on the cloud for us. It simply works.

I appreciate the dashboards that are available online. There has been a lot of feedback on the CVEs. The most recent one that came was probably related to Zutil. Red Hat made an announcement very quickly saying that if you are using only Red Hat features, you do not have to worry about it. It does not run on their operating system. Unless you are custom compiling, it does not work on their system. I greatly appreciate little things like that because they save us a lot of time. If Red Hat is simply saying that it is not a part of their repo, I do not have to look for it.

We use Red Hat Insights but not company-wide. It is one of those things that simply saves you time. I do not want to have myself or anyone on my team go out and check various things. That is the whole purpose of using Red Hat Satellite. The whole purpose of all different dashboards and these websites is to use what you have. Let it report out what you have and not continue to write scripts just to check things.

What is most valuable?

Their support is valuable. Whenever I had a problem, I could get on a phone call with somebody. I did not have to go to some random forum or send an email and wait forever. I could call somebody.

What needs improvement?

It does have a workstation option, but you rarely hear anything about it. I would love to see the workstation replace Windows. That is a stretch goal, but it is possible.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since version 4. It has been a while.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable as long as you do not do something stupid.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat specifically works hard to make it difficult to not be able to scale it into anything. The only thing that I do not see it being capable of, officially at least, are the IoT devices. Technically, it is possible to get it on those devices, but that is not something Red Hat is focusing on right now. From a scalability standpoint, it comes down to what makes a reasonable profit and what is a good return on investment while choosing how to scale and where to scale. Red Hat is doing it right so far.

How are customer service and support?

Prior to a few months ago, the support that we got from a TAM point of view was next to none. Now that I understand the scenario a little bit more, it was not because Red Hat was not doing its job or did not want to do more support. It was because of how the contracts aligned, and more importantly, who in our organization was handling those contracts. We had a recent change in our organization in terms of who is running what and who is handling what. When that change happened, the doors really burst open. Now that we have a different person he is working with, we are getting incredible support from our TAM. He is in communication with us on a very regular basis. While I have been here at Red Hat Summit, we have gone out to have meetings twice. I cannot speak highly enough. I would rate their support 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?

My current organization has pretty much always used Red Hat, specifically Red Hat Enterprise Linux. There are all sorts of flavors of Unix in our environment. Almost all of them are there because they are managed network devices.

We wanted to stay close to Red Hat Enterprise Linux simply because of the mentality of the business. We have got some people who have been around for 20 years. Things such as switching from YUM update to APT update are easy. People can usually change from one to another pretty quickly, but some of the other commands that you are used to running in Red Hat Enterprise Linux are slightly different for different versions of Unix. It did not make sense.

I have used a lot of different variants through the years. I could be running Raspberry Pi, or I could be using Ubuntu to do a job but not for the production environment. I do not waste my time anymore. I know what works and where support is.

How was the initial setup?

Our setup is a bit of a hybrid. We are streamlining a lot of things and trying to redesign how we are doing things. In terms of the cloud, we are 100% TerraForm. We are building out infrastructure as a code and TerraForm pipelines. On-prem, we have a Jenkins job that runs some TerraForm, which then runs some Ansible and then some Puppet. There is some cleaning up needed there.

Currently, we use all three major cloud providers: Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS. Each has its purpose.

The initial experience of deploying it at the current company was terrible, but it was not a Red Hat issue. It was an internalized issue that took a little bit of time to work out. After that, it was not a problem.

What about the implementation team?

We implement it on our own.

What was our ROI?

I have not run into a single person who knows about Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is not being helpful. You can get talking with somebody at Red Hat Summit about what you are doing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and they will be like, "I did that a couple of days ago. Did you run into this problem too?" There is a community. I am sure there are communities for other variants, but my return on investment is simply community and support. I cannot speak highly enough of these two.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would say, "Good Luck!" We looked at a lot of different options to potentially leave Red Hat simply because of the cost. We tried out CentOS. We tried out Rocky. There were even talks about trying out Ubuntu, but there was the hassle of changing all of our mentality and code to work with different systems. It just did not make sense. CentOS worked almost side by side with Red Hat, but certain things that we have specialized with Red Hat were not working on CentOS for some reason.

We chose not to use CentOS because we had a misunderstanding of what AppStream was in terms of end-of-life for CentOS. Rocky was ruled out pretty quickly simply because of a lack of understanding in terms of:

  • Where does Rocky come from?
  • How reliable is it?
  • Where is the support?

Red Hat's support model trumps a lot of those other ideas. I tell people that even if they are working in a home lab environment, get a developer license and get a developer account with Red Hat. Use Red Hat because more and more businesses I work with simply use Red Hat. It is great to have Fedora on your laptop as a workstation. It is great to have CentOS as a workstation. That is because those are still a part of Red Hat. You can transition and use Red Hat for a company. I have not been a fan of Ubuntu and some of the other variants because of how easy it is for people to make changes to operating systems that are not fully backed or tested. In my opinion, you do not want to put production on it.

What other advice do I have?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not enabled us to centralize development. We are moving towards centralized development, but there are still so many different teams, so centralized development is not yet there.

We are partially using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. Within the next year, I hope to bring OpenShift in and replace AKS. I do not have a use case for the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Based on what I have seen here at Red Hat Summit, I have a lot of ideas spinning around in my head to make it happen, but I do not yet have anything around containerization.

Red Hat Insights provides vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance, but we are currently not using that side of it. It helps in my limited sandbox environment, but of course, my sandbox is built up and torn down like crazy. It is valuable, but we do not have a great use case yet.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. I have been working with Unix systems for a while now. The first Unix system I touched was in 1992. There were so many variants that were striving to become well-known. You would hear all of these weird names. There were all of these weird animals and all of these different logos through the years. Even before 1992, there were a lot. As things progressed, you quickly saw different ones die out. I do not remember when I truly got onboarded with Red Hat. I know I started with version 4. It is one of those companies when you are looking for a name that sticks around and about which you do not have to question if they are going to be around for a while. You do not have to question that with Red Hat. You do not have to question that with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, whereas a lot of other variants do not even exist anymore, or they exist, but they have not been maintained longer than some people have been alive.


    Jeffrey Donovan

Bulletproof systems and fantastic support from Red Hat and Community

  • May 09, 2024
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

We run web apps. We run databases. We run a high-compute platform on Red Hat Enterprise Linux variants.

All of our customers run Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We run Red Hat Enterprise Linux for mesh nodes. For anything Linux, if we can use Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it is supported, we put it on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Probably 60% to 80% of our infrastructure is Red Hat.

How has it helped my organization?

Having a stable Linux platform means I am not spending my time rebuilding Linux systems, constantly patching, and doing things like that. It helps to have an approved and supported platform. I know they have tested everything and when I patch my system, it is not going to blow up. It just does not happen. The other thing is that we have had catastrophic failures, and they have helped us out of these catastrophic failures. The support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux has always been good, and the community around Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been fantastic.

We were also CentOS users, so we have committed to AppStream as well. Being a part of the community has been a huge benefit for us. Community adoption means it is easy for people to find information. It helps new people get on boarded into Linux.

We mostly have an on-prem environment. VMware is a significant chunk. We do have some Red Hat clusters. We do have clustered applications, both physical and virtual, running on the cluster. We do have some cloud. We have our own internal cloud with VMware running behind the scenes. Having a consistent image means things always look the same. It is boring, but it is cookie-cutter. That is what we like. We like everything to come out the same. We have consistency and the ability to patch across our entire environment. We are also a Satellite user, so we are able to patch everything and maintain everything in a single pane of glass. It means I can have fewer admins administering many more machines. If you have a reduction in failure and an improvement in automation, things just work.

We have created what we call creator nodes. We have built a platform on Red Hat with Podman so that they can connect with Visual Studio code and do development or Ansible development. We now have our mainframe people developing automation with Linux with all of the plugins right there. It is a consistent environment for them, and that has been awesome. That has been fantastic. We have a few hiccups with Podman. They are working on the permissions to be able to have multiple people run Podman. They are working on the UID and GID problem that we had earlier. Right now, we are running Docker, but I am planning on moving to Podman once they fix that. We have also automated the build process for those nodes. If we need to scale up, we build a couple more VMs, and we are done.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. We are containerizing applications. We are pulling the Windows container that we have and converting it to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux container. At the Red Hat Summit, the keynote about image RHEL with systemd blew my mind. It is a change from what we have been doing, but it should make a lot of things more reachable for us. It is cool because now my container image looks like my VM image. You cannot make it simpler for people to develop in a container. It looks the same. There is no difference. That is going to drive heavy adoption with us because if there is no difference, people are not going to have that fear of something new. It has 100% impacted our projects in a positive way. We have started to migrate all of our workloads to OpenShift now that we have got it in the door. It makes a lot of sense. I can redeploy. I can patch. I can do all this with code. I do not have to maintain a VM and a container. It makes life simple.

We have seen a drop in TCO because we ended up buying more than building. When you build something, there is the hidden cost of support, training, and the precarious position you get in if you deploy something you do not fully understand. We were there. We had five instances and a bunch of complexity. We reduced that down to one. We were able to simplify our complex nature. That is what Red Hat has allowed us to do. We have been able to roll out and we have been consistent. I have got machines out there that have been running for two or three years with no problems. They just patch them in the background. It just works.

What is most valuable?

I love systemd. They have made some significant improvements with the firewalld console. I do not use it that much, but I know it makes Linux reachable for people who are not normally Linux admins.

I just love the command line configuration. It makes that easy for me. Another thing is that when you combine that with Ansible, your life is simple. You can do a lot of your jobs without having to touch the system. That is my ideal.

I appreciate everything they have done. The systems are just bulletproof. We do not have problems with it. Support for file system differences and migrations has been solid.

What needs improvement?

There have been a few things that I have run into. They have significantly improved DNF and YUM, but there can be better communication around what is going on. A lot of it is related to communication. They are building solid products, and quite often, people do not find out about them until two or three years have passed. We still have not discovered everything in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. A lot of it is because we have not had the time, but it would be helpful to have a little bit more communication around it. Maybe that is on us to make sure that we stay updated with the community.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.5. It has been around 20 years. I love Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability. It is stable. It is fairly bulletproof. There are a lot more things that they are adding to make it better.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have had no problems scaling up or scaling horizontally. I have had some very large Red Hat Enterprise Linux nodes with 254 gigs of memory and a big chunky Oracle database system. We have had no problems with them. We have not had any problems with running with multiple memory cluster nodes. We have had 100 gigs network, and we had no problems. We had a high-end SAN and a high-end network, and we had no issues.

They have good integrations, and they have not had too many problems with external SAN providers. They have been fairly consistent with keeping up with everybody else and keeping their drivers good.

How are customer service and support?

They are probably one of the better ones in the industry. I can get a real answer, and I do not feel like people are breathing down my neck and saying, "I am going to close your ticket. I have not heard from you in 15 minutes." It has been a very positive experience. They have always helped us out when we have completely gone sideways.

They are very patient with the level of experience that a lot of people have. We have a significant number of junior admins who put in tickets that probably should not have been put in. They have been very patient. Overall, it has been a good and positive experience.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I was strictly using Solaris and AIX. I never used Ubuntu. It was just straight, big-frame Unix before I went to Linux. I did not change too many platforms.

How was the initial setup?

We use Ansible to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux machines on VMware. That is 80% to 90% of our workload. For everything else, I have done PXE boot and kickstarts.

We are using a hybrid cloud. Our cloud providers are Azure and AWS. We work with both. The deployment on Azure and AWS was simple. We built Elasticsearch inside of Azure. It was a click-button deployment. We use TerraForm to deploy most of it, and then we have Ansible to do the rest.

I wanted to try to do more infrastructure as code, but it is hard to get traditional admins into that mindset, so it is always a mix. I deploy these servers for them with TerraForm, and then I pretend I never did, and they can do whatever with them. It then goes back into traditional life cycle management. Sometimes they delete them, and sometimes they forget about them. Satellite has helped us keep track of where everything is. It has helped us track our life cycles. It has been helpful for us.

What about the implementation team?

We have used Red Hat consultants multiple times. They helped us set a few things up and clean up our pipelines. We have been very happy with our Red Hat consultants and our last deployment of OpenShift AAP. We loved their consultants. They were fantastic.

What was our ROI?

The biggest ROI that we have seen by using Red Hat Enterprise Linux is accessibility to information for frontline support people, midline support people, and developers. There is a ton of information, and there is a ton of community support.

For us, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a consistent platform because if we are on a customer's Rocky machine, we already know Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We can deal with that. It is a skill set that is very broad across multiple platforms. That means we can apply what we have learned and what we have been trained in. While working with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux team, we have learned best practices, and we can apply those across the board. That partnership has helped us better our internal practices whether it is Red Hat Enterprise Linux or not. That is a positive. Satellite has also been a real positive for us because we can now manage all of our systems from a single pane of glass. That is what my frontline people have been asking for. They wanted one place to patch the systems, and now they can.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Our experience was incredibly positive because we started working with OpenShift before we were fully licensed. They knew we were going in that direction. The same thing happened with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They knew we would buy tons of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so they were a little bit more relaxed. We wanted a thousand licenses, and we could pick those up. We true up. Our license experience has been positive with the exception of having to deal with all of the broken-up accounts, which is as much our fault as anybody's.

My biggest complaint is that we have eight or ten different contracts. It is hard to keep track of what is on what and where we are getting the most value-add out of our benefits.

They are helping us solve that problem. We have reached out to our account executives. They will help us solve that problem. That is a huge step because that has been a problem for 15 years. It will help us consolidate and understand what we are spending across the board instead of seeing what we are spending in chunks.

OpenShift has come close to paying for itself in the first year and a half. That is an easy business case to make if you have the direct ability to show cost savings. We are getting cost savings, and we have the ability to show those cost savings. These are the two major benefits we have seen with AAP and Red Hat Enterprise Linux bits. That has been a positive for us. Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI and some of the other things they are starting to do are probably going to enable a lot of our developers to start taking advantage of them. Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI changes the belief that AI is out of reach for a normal developer.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We considered the idea of building this entire platform on Rocky as a free solution. It just was not cost-effective. There are hidden costs of patching and maintaining. They require care and feeding. We wanted cattle, not pets. We had a bunch of pets. Red Hat Enterprise Linux enabled us to get into that cattle methodology and mindset. Our mesh nodes are built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. If my mesh node goes sideways, I do not care. I just delete the VM, redeploy it, and run my playbook. In 15 minutes, I am back up and running again. Why would I troubleshoot it? It takes time. I do not care about troubleshooting. It enables us to rinse and repeat a lot of our processes.

What other advice do I have?

People turn off too many of the tools way too often. We have a lot of room for improvement as an organization to embrace SELinux. We are still working on that. That has a significant amount of value. We want to embrace the GPG sign code in AAP. I do not want anything but approved containers and code running on our platform and our customer's platform. They have enabled us to be incredibly secure, and we are yet to fully take advantage of those offerings. It is a goal, and we are going to get there.

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 Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based variants are the best in my opinion. If I have a choice, I will always go for CentOS, Fedora, Rocky, or something else that is Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based. If they were not going to go with Red Hat, I would probably tell them to go with CentOS but stay behind a little bit because they do not want to be at the bleeding edge of CentOS. That relationship kind of changed when they took it to AppStream instead of a more supportive platform.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. They keep doing well, and they keep getting better. As long as they stay on the same path, I do not see us not using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the future. It has been consistent. Why would we change?


    Jason Dew

A rock-solid, scalable OS that allows you to do things that you want

  • May 09, 2024
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for running various things. We have a lot of virtual machines. The applications that are running on it are a bunch of shell scripts for processing orders, marketing campaigns, generating reports, or running some Java applications.

How has it helped my organization?

We have the customization capability. We can easily customize it, and we can also automate and deploy it. I have a command line interface. I am a command line junkie, and I am able to use that, config files, and Ansible to be able to easily figure out what I need to do to automate things. It feels like I know what it is doing and how to make it do what I want. I do not have to weave some magical arcane hack the way I have to do in Windows.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development in a lot of ways. We have it hooked in through our GitHub. We are trying to combine where we are storing things and then have a standard way of how we are deploying things and have some standard configurations. With every single server, we do not have to worry about how to set this up because we are doing the same thing the same way. We can just do it across the board, and then we only have to worry about the interesting parts.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features are great for risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance. There are published CVEs, and there is SELinux, which I do not use and I always turn it off. Firewalls and tooling around that make it easy to use. The automation on top of that makes it easy to configure. With a push of a button, it is done.

We do not have to worry too much about portability. We are coming from Oracle Linux. We were primarily an Oracle Linux shop, and because that is based on it, it just works. We have not had any issues.

What is most valuable?

The fact that it is Linux is valuable. Why I like it in general is that I know what it is doing. I can figure out what it is doing, and I can make it do what I want. I am not delving into arcane registry things.

What needs improvement?

I am still trying to figure out the features it has. There is so much that it can do. What it does really well is that it allows you to do things.

For how long have I used the solution?

It was probably 2008 when I first started using it. The company was using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and I was with the internal help desk supporting the Linux side.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Its stability is great. It is stable and rock-solid.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Its scalability is also great. It does not matter if the host is beefy or not. It is just going to run on it, and it is going to handle the work. Whether you have a couple of cores or 64 cores, it is just going to do it.

How are customer service and support?

Their support is good. There is good responsiveness. They quickly get me to the person who knows the answer, but I have not used them much.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using Oracle Linux. We are switching because of some of the things. Oracle licensing has been a point of frustration. Their support is comparably difficult to work with, and the support documentation is a mess.

Red Hat is so much easier to navigate. It has been overall a much more pleasant experience to work with Red Hat.

How was the initial setup?

We are using it on-prem, and then our cloud is a Kubernetes cluster on AWS, so it is basically on-prem.

Our deployment model is a manual kickstart with Ansible for configuration. My experience with deployment is good. I kickstart it and then hit it with Ansible, and it is done. It is very easy.

What about the implementation team?

I did the deployment on my own.

What was our ROI?

We have not yet seen an ROI. It has not been in for long enough. There are no savings in terms of manhours because the actual day-to-day usage remains the same with Oracle Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. However, getting some of the metrics with Red Hat Insights is going to be helpful as we get into a better patching cycle. I am anticipating an easier life.

We are expecting an overall decline in the costs because of the differences between the Red Hat licensing and Oracle licensing. We are expecting a net decrease in overall cost. For using it, other than the license, there is no cost.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The setup cost is non-existent. With licensing, there was a little snafu because I misread something. There was a slight learning curve because we use virtual data center licensing. We had to understand how it all maps. We had to understand how that mapping works when the hypervisors are Red Hat or VMware. There is a slight learning curve, but it worked out. It ends up being easy.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I did not evaluate other options mainly because I have had experience with it before. From my prior experience, I already knew what I wanted.

What other advice do I have?

We are trying to use Red Hat Insights. I need to finish updating the playbooks to hook our host. We are in the midst of transitioning from Oracle Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I have not fully hooked everything in, but we will be using Red Hat Insights.

We just started using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. We have not yet seen any impact of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on containerization projects.

If a colleague is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a lot of it would depend on their use case, what they are going to need for it, and whether they have an enterprise environment. There is a cost associated with it which can be a downside. I am an open-source lover. I do not like paying for stuff, but I get it. They need to look at the cost, and if the cost is prohibitive, they need to look at something that is compatible and as similar as possible.

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. I generally do not give out a ten. There needs to be something spectacular for a ten, so that is my personal bias against the top of the scale.


    reviewer2399652

Reliable, stable upgrades, and good support

  • May 09, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We have Red Hat Enterprise Linux for our staging and development environments. We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for our production servers. It is the only Linux operating system that we are using in our company. I do not think we will change it. We will stay with it.

How has it helped my organization?

We started with CentOS, so it is quite similar. We have various features, and it is stable. The updates and upgrades are stable. This is the most important thing for my company. We are a gambling company. Reliability and performance are the most important for us. We like to press the update button and have an updated operating system after one, two, three, or five minutes. The most important thing about Red Hat Enterprise Linux is that it is a stable operating system.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Docker daemons have been running for years without any problems. It is very stable. We are happy with it.

Every time we did an update or upgrade for the operating system or some dependencies, it worked well. It was very fast and stable. We are not afraid to press the button. We are happy with it.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux keeps our organization agile. We are running some Docker applications. They are not our production applications. We are running some containers. It is very quite easy.

We use Red Hat Insights, and we are happy with Red Hat Insights in urgent situations due to security issues, noncompliant settings, or unpatched systems.

Red Hat Insights provides us with vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance. We have not had any problems.

What is most valuable?

It is a very stable operating system. We are not afraid to upgrade it.

If I want GUI, its GUI is better than other open-source operating systems. I prefer it for package management for sure. I am happy with it.

What needs improvement?

At the moment, I am happy with it. I cannot think of any areas for improvement. We have everything. The biggest challenge that we had was the migration from CentOS to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but after some tests, it was easy.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for almost two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. We plan to increase its usage.

How are customer service and support?

We are partners of Red Hat. We have support, so we are good. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using CentOS. The architect in my company chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux because we were already partners with Red Hat.

How was the initial setup?

We are mostly on-prem. We are trying to migrate our applications to the cloud. We are using Azure Cloud.

The main data center that we have is in Ireland, but we are serving a lot of countries. We have small data centers for some countries. We have 2,000 VMs in Ireland, and we also have VMs in other countries. We have almost five data centers. We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux in all of them.

Migration from CentOS to Red Hat Enterprise Linux was a big challenge, but Red Hat had software to migrate and convert all CentOS VMs to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It was an adventure in the beginning, but after some tests, it was easy. We migrated and converted almost 2,000 VMs in two to three months, and we had only ten cases where the migration failed, but it was our fault. We were happy.

For migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we created a template and made the changes that we wanted. We ran some Ansible Playbooks, and we created the VMs.

What about the implementation team?

We used a consultant from Red Hat the first time.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate other solutions.

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 advise going for Red Hat Enterprise Linux because of support. There would be someone who already knows about your issue and can help you in a couple of hours. There is no need to spend time fixing the issue by yourself. Imagine running Ubuntu and having a production issue. You need someone to guide you.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has not enabled us to centralize development. Our company is based on the .NET language. Our developers do not care about our infrastructure. They develop their applications, and we deploy them in OpenShift. We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for other services, such as MongoDB, Postgres, and our logging infrastructure. We use it for Elasticsearch, Graylog, and Docker services. Our applications do not run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. They are running on CoreOS for OpenShift.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. It is stable. We are not afraid to upgrade it. We are happy to use it. This operating system is for us. 


    Tim J.

RHEL makes things easy to get your tasks done effeciently

  • May 09, 2024
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
The abilty to rollout images and upgrades, scripting and OS admin is very easy to learn and improve on.
What do you dislike about the product?
None that I can think off. Thank you. Its been a pleasure
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I dont have to run windows systems


    Higher Education

Using RHEL 9

  • May 09, 2024
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
The most helpful thing about RHEL so far is the stability. I haven't had any system crashes or app lockups since I've been using it. The install process was pretty easy.
What do you dislike about the product?
It's really locked down security wise compared to Windows. It's hard to accomplish simple things like renaming files using the GUI. As an IT administrator I often have to work on system files and it would be nice to just be able to sign in as an administrator and not have to type my password in every time I need to make a change to a sytem file.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are using it as a web server for our knowledge base product. It has been working smoothly.


    Cor Kujit

Offers stability and long-term support

  • May 09, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We mainly use RPM-based systems to give our developers virtual machines.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of using RHEL for us are the standard way to run Linux and tools like NetworkManager. They make things easier for us.

What needs improvement?

I prefer a product that offers everything in a yearly subscription, like VMware, and I think RHEL should consider offering it as well.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using RHEL for 15 years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of the solution is good.

How was the initial setup?

We use RHEL deployed in different zones, only on-premise, not in the cloud. Deploying RHEL depends on the end user, but migrations aren't usually a problem due to site forwards. The hardest part is dealing with end-user applications on the machines. We use Ansible for scripting, especially with Oracle. Sometimes, meeting the end of life for RHEL versions is tough, and we have had to buy extended support for RHE because some applications reached the end of life within a year. I appreciate the extended support option, though I prefer not to use it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

RHEL's pricing and licensing are quite expensive. For a big company, paying these fees might be manageable, but as a government organization, spending tax money on such expensive solutions is challenging, even though we do have the funds.

What other advice do I have?

I see benefits in using RHEL because it offers stability and long-term support. Although we use both RHEL and Ubuntu, I have noticed that updates in Ubuntu can change things unexpectedly within a main release, which I don't like. That is why I focus on RHEL for its consistent and reliable updates.

RHEL's built-in security features are very good for risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance. We apply security guidelines in Linux using RHEL, which provides all the necessary baselines. We can choose and apply what we need directly to our RHEL systems.

I would say that open-source cloud-based operating systems like Debian are stable and have been around for a long time. There is a whole community supporting it, making it a strong alternative to RHEL with fewer licensing costs.

Overall, I would rate RHEL as a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises