CIS Hardened Image Level 2 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

My main use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  is when I was working with another company, where we used the Ansible  Automation Platform provided by Red Hat and OpenShift, primarily for any code automations and server productions.

I have additional insights about my main use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) ; we've used it as a standalone server for different products, more specifically as an Ansible  server and key servers, just provided by virtual machines.

The best features that Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) offers include how comprehensive the enterprise packages are, as you can get stuff included with it and the documentation that follows, which I think is good even though it is a Linux distribution that you have to pay for.

I also appreciate Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL)'s built-in security features, as they require less configuration and include compliance associated with it. More specifically, regarding the documentation, if I had any specific questions about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I could go directly to the website and find the answers there.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has positively impacted my organization by providing a lot of security to run all of the systems we had in a particular environment, especially since I worked with more government operations, where security was the top priority, which Red Hat prioritized. We didn't have to worry about security configurations within the infrastructure, saving us time, and it was easy to navigate if you had a great background in Linux, plus Red Hat support was very helpful with any specific questions on the product.

I wish that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) had more free options available; there are similar Linux distributions, but in terms of training and certification, I think it would be beneficial if there were a better free trial, allowing users to gain better experience with the platform itself.

That's the main improvement needed for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for about two years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is stable and handles growth and changes efficiently, specifically with new AI platforms being integrated.

I have not experienced customer support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Negative

I did not use a different solution before Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL); it was strictly Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

I cannot share any return on investment from using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

I never dealt directly with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since that was managed by someone above me; it was more about day-to-day use cases for me.

My advice for others looking into using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is to be sure to look into the documentation and review the products because it is very customizable, and I would recommend using it for an enterprise.

I choose a rating of seven for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) because it is not a solution I use every single day. I rate it higher because it is applicable across multiple infrastructures Azure  and AWS  Cloud, but it is not universally used in particular environments, especially the one where I currently work, which is not really code-dependent.

I was offered a gift card to do this interview regarding Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but that's the only business relationship my company has with this vendor.

My main use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  at work involves using the EKS Kubernetes  cluster on AWS , which is hosted on managed nodes based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  9.4.

On a daily basis, I manage these nodes, execute commands to check connectivity, investigate network issues, and gather metrics such as CPU and RAM usage. Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) is integral to my daily work, as I regularly log into these nodes to execute commands, check network issues, and monitor capacity.

One of the best features Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) offers is the premium support, which is particularly noteworthy in version 9.4. If we encounter an issue, we can contact the support team anytime, and a technical support representative works with us to find the root cause. The support team helps us find and solve issues quickly and effectively.

While many features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are common to all Linux distributions, RHEL stands out due to its vast community and comprehensive feature set. Red Hat has the largest market share among Linux distributions, and its exceptional support distinguishes it from other distributions. Additionally, it is renowned for its stability, security, ease of use, and community engagement.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has positively impacted our organization by improving our environment, enhancing security, and enabling the implementation of best practices. We chose RHEL 9.4 for its stability, security, and excellent support. When running our Kubernetes  cluster on AWS , RHEL proves to be an excellent choice for deploying our applications in a secure environment.

Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.4, we enhance our security through features such as SELinux, which significantly improves our environment's security and stability. We have used RHEL-based nodes since the inception of our organization and the My Vodafone app project in Greece, contributing to improved security, performance, and stability throughout our operations.

The primary area for improvement in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) relates to accessibility and training resources rather than the operating system itself. Red Hat should provide more training opportunities and make learning materials more accessible to users and customers.

Specifically, the documentation should be more accessible, and Red Hat should consider offering free training or virtual machines beyond just ISO files. A free virtual machine on the cloud would be valuable for people to try and become familiar with RHEL, as installing a virtual machine from an ISO can be complex. A pre-installed RHEL virtual machine would make it easier for people to learn and experience the distribution.

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) eight out of ten because while it's an excellent score, there is room for improvement in accessibility. Unlike other distributions such as Ubuntu  or Arch Linux that are readily available, Red Hat should create more opportunities for users to try their system through easily accessible virtual machines on their website or other public platforms.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for eight years, starting before my career as a DevOps and system admin engineer.

The scalability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for my organization is exceptional, and it handles growth and increased demand effectively. The support system particularly enhances its scalability capabilities.

The customer support of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) deserves a perfect 10 out of 10, as it is one of the most valuable aspects of the system.

I did not use a different solution before Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). We started with RHEL 7, upgraded to 8, and are now using version 9.4.

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing process for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is straightforward, and I have not encountered any challenges in conducting these operations.

My advice for others considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is to strongly consider it as one of the most secure, stable, and efficient options compared to other distributions. I have always chosen RHEL as my first choice without evaluating other options. I rate this solution 8 out of 10.

I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  primarily as a server. Most of our servers are running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) . Through Red Hat, we support all our functions and use it for automations and everything practical.

I have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) in the past for coordination with Red Hat OpenShift , Grafana , Prometheus and some automation tools such as SaltStack  and Python scripts.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) brings a robust operating system that has stable and solid versions. It gives you many tools to automate things. It is a secure system, so you need patching, but not as much as other operating systems. It also has very good user and access management with lists, privileges, and SELinux.

As an automation solution, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) solves a significant percentage of manual work, but I cannot measure it as my job position doesn't base on such measurements. I cannot give exact numbers about how much it has helped us, but it is substantial.

Automation with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has changed many things because manual tasks take time and can lead to mistakes. If you automate a task, the same process will run repeatedly without any mistakes. I cannot count the time we gained from automations because the position isn't responsible for keeping numbers and metrics.

I think the disk management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can become better with more efficient tools. The implementation of AI was a concern, but the newest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10 has implemented an AI feature.

Regarding the disk management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), physical disks, logical disks, and physical volumes could become much easier to manage.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for the last three to four years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is one of the most stable operating systems. You don't have to restart servers often and its kernel is very stable. You don't need to have many issues fixed. It doesn't give many errors that require troubleshooting if you don't interfere with it. It has been very reliable.

With on-premise Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), scalability is not easy because I cannot deploy new machines. In my previous jobs, where Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) was running on virtualization, I could deploy more VMs easily.

If organizations are looking for a strong, stable, and robust solution for their environment, they should consider Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but keep in mind to train their team and provide them with certifications and hands-on experience because it's not an easy operating system. I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight out of ten.

Related to stability, security, and reliability, the absolute bedrock of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  is that it uses rigorously tested, mature software versions. While not always the latest, this ensures zero unexpected changes, which is critical for systems that must run for years without failure. The security hardening includes tools such as SELinux, FirewallD, and SCAP.

I previously used Ubuntu  workloads because they were a good option for another company. When talking about Linux or Unix environments, there are many open source options such as CentOS  or Ubuntu  that differ from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) .

In most cases, the workloads are running in AWS . We are natively performing and invoking the instances by auto-scaling group primarily on EC2  instances, some of Fargate, ECS, or Fargate workloads, and that is where I experiment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL).

I am working mostly in cloud environments, but also on-premise. My work includes various DevOps and operation tasks such as provisioning, automating with Terraform  and Ansible , performing patching tasks, troubleshooting web services, and other infrastructure tasks per day.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) in all our production workload environments, particularly in cloud adoption for AWS . We have very useful features from the marketplace for AWS that help us optimize our current workloads.

Regarding core Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and infrastructure optimizations, we utilize performance profile tuning and IDM profiles for database heavy marketplace back-end. We use throughput performance or latency performance for mixed workloads, deploying specific tune profiles with pre-configured kernel parameters. The system includes kernel parameters tuning, file systems to optimize virtual memory settings, and XFS by default for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Security enhancements include SELinux enforcement with custom policies. For architectural and application optimizations, we use containerization with Podman for Kubernetes  workloads and orchestration with OpenShift with Kubernetes .

The workloads primarily run in AWS. We are natively performing and invoking the instances by auto-scaling group on EC2  instances, some of Fargate, ECS, or Fargate workloads, and that is where I experiment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for about two years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is really stable. I have not experienced any downtime related to workloads or operating system issues so far. Regarding scalability, it has been rational, though I do not have extensive experience with particular use cases. The experience has been smooth overall.

The customer support is excellent. I reached out to them once about a monitoring matter, and the attention was really good. My rating would be nine out of ten.

Positive

The setup was very easy. While I am not in the finance department or performing license management, I believe it is really easy to use. I am not currently in charge of budget strategy, so I cannot provide detailed information about that matter.

I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for production workloads in AWS or any cloud environment. In my case, it is AWS, and I have practical experience with critical workloads in on-premises solutions. The experience has been good, and I would recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to other customers or partners.

My company is a Red Hat partner. I was offered a gift card for providing this interview.

I use other tech products such as Scalr  for FinOps in cloud environments, Splunk for monitoring, and AWS Backup  for native cloud backup solutions.

The overall rating for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 9 out of 10.

I am working on a Cloud Infra project in which many analytics applications are hosted on Cloud Infra, and their applications are hosted on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) .

The applications are customer-facing and mainly focus on analytics regarding an automotive company.

The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  was pretty smooth, as we can subscribe the servers from the RHEL portal.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) on both on-premises and public cloud.

One of the best features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) is that it is lightweight and it is the industry standard.

Whenever I start the servers, they switch on very fast compared to other Linux servers.

We can deploy clusters in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and we can scale up and scale down our infrastructure with the help of the RHEL server.

The subscription model and vendor support are also good. We can subscribe our servers to RHEL so that we can get the packages installed for our project-related dependencies.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has positively impacted my organization. The speed of the applications has improved after deploying them on RHEL.

Whenever we face an issue and need to reboot the server, it comes up very fast compared to other servers, and it has improved the latency of our applications.

Time has been saved since using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and the application performance has improved after using it.

There should be some automation for patching the servers in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Patching in the sense that automatically, whatever servers we need, we can patch them using a utility present inside RHEL.

It is stable, but compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Ubuntu  is more stable for Kubernetes  and Docker-related applications. If improvements can be made in RHEL so Docker  and Kubernetes-based applications can be deployed more easily, that would be great.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for the past six months.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales up very easily, and RHEL vendor support is also good; it has helped us many times.

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) from the start; we can see that RHEL provides good vendor support and bug fixes.

Positive

We did not evaluate any other options before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

I can see more improvements can be added to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). They provide many certifications such as RHCE and RHCSA which are very important for learning Linux, learning about automation, and deploying the servers in the cloud.

The architect-level certifications are very important. The customer support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) rates around an eight.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a great platform to learn Linux. Red Hat provides many certifications such as RHCSA, RHCE, and RHCA, which is architect level.

RHCA is an architect-level certification through which you can learn Ansible  and many automation-related activities in Linux; it can help you grow your Linux knowledge as a professional in the IT industry.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an 8.5 out of 10.