CIS Hardened Image Level 2 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  are that it has been part of our core delivery solutions for many industries, mostly for telecom.

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  that I find most valuable include all of the features since system V. 

In my organization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) provides an agnostic interface for many storage vendors that we deal with, which helps us to have a wider spectrum of offerings in our consultancy offerings.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) can be improved by adopting a feature similar to YaST from a big European competitor, which would significantly enhance Red Hat technologies.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since 2005 when it was in release four, which makes it 20 years.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as favorable, noting that during the last five years, we've experienced fewer crashes and downtimes compared to other commercial Unix and Linux distributions in the market.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales excellently with the growing needs of my organization, and I would rate it ten out of ten.

I evaluate customer service and tech support as excellent; with either the partner portal or customer portal, we receive very good RCAs and analyses for any case we submit to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). On a scale of one to ten, I would rate customer service and technical support as ten out of ten.

Positive

Prior to adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I was using Commercial Unix, Oracle Solaris . The factor that led me to change was that during the last decades, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has absorbed many features straight from Solaris, enabling us to perform effective migrations from Commercial Unix to RHEL.

At the very beginning, at the earliest versions of Red Hat since version six, there was a kernel that was not compatible with many cluster vendors, and that's why we were adopting another vendor of Linux. However, we've seen that during these past years, Red Hat has been experiencing a lot of enhancements overcoming these kinds of barriers. And now Red Hat has become more versatile in accepting more hardware that allows us to standardize our Red Hat offerings in our consultancy services.

I have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). For data points, in one of the key industries I handle, which is telecom, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been one of the key strategic providers offering a good price to implement automation and containerization across all of the network elements we manage with several vendors, and in the latest five years, we have observed a good investment return in terms of ROI.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that I strongly believe Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers a good relationship between value and price, and despite it being quite pricey, it's definitely worth it.

Before selecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I considered SLES, which is a competitor of Red Hat.

My advice to other organizations considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is to have a good plan and to establish the relationship as a key strategic reference for any upcoming migration. The partnership and customer support provided is a high-value option. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped mitigate downtime and lower risk through high availability solutions and key features that enable network redundancy, allowing us to achieve this. 

I would assess the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as excellent because it has become one of the key standards in the industry for following guidelines according to any topic in the RHEL environment. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution an eight.

Our main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  include having servers all around for storage and processing, specifically for compute processing.

The best feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  that I appreciate is that it provides consistent configuration setups with step-by-step configuration, which is easier. When configuring a server, what previously took at least a 24-hour turnaround time now takes only 30 minutes to one hour.

I am satisfied with the management experience and normally choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) when there is an option between it and other solutions. I have been involved in RHEL upgrades or migrations from many years ago, approximately 14 to 18 years back. Currently, everything is easier as upgrades and patches come as a package.

Regarding built-in security features, maintaining compliance is handled at the architect's level during configuration setups. While the service provider handles access level security, configuration compliances need to be managed by the architect.

The upgrade and migration process in AWS is straightforward - I can easily increase the number of processors through hot migration, which can be done while the system is running without requiring shutdown. RHEL has helped mitigate downtime and lower risk with negligible system interruptions.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) could be improved with more shared storage capabilities. For example, I have multiple RHEL instances, and enhanced storage sharing would be helpful for transferring data between servers.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) for almost 12 years.

I assess the stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as very stable, with negligible downtime, crashes, or performance issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales efficiently with the growing needs of my organization as it is one of the managed shared services. When we check the scalability option while configuring, it manages everything automatically without requiring separate actions. I have expanded usage, and the process has been smooth with zero downtime.

I haven't had the opportunity to evaluate customer service and technical support because we address any issues through AWS  since it's a managed service.

Positive

Prior to adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I was not using another solution to address similar needs.

I manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems for provisioning and patching through AWS , which handles the patching at the service provider level. Provisioning is easy because I can modify configurations, such as the number of processors and other parameters.

The deployment model for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is cloud. Security requirements were a consideration in choosing RHEL in the cloud, as AWS provides most of the security features.

I have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as the prices have been reduced since we implemented a shared environment.

I cannot speak to licensing because we are using managed services from AWS. Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, all costs come from AWS on a pay-as-you-go basis. We get charged when the service is up; otherwise, there is no cost.

Before selecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I considered something similar to VMware. These were the two options I chose between.

My advice to other organizations considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that it's easy to use and a reliable service. It has been consistently at the top in this industry for ages and has its own strengths. I would recommend it as a first choice.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as eight or nine out of ten.

We mainly use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  to host containers. 

RHEL  makes things easier for hosting containers and has really good integration with automation tools such as Ansible , which makes configuration management easier. Those were the two areas where RHEL helped us significantly. 

We haven't used Lightspeed yet; however, we are focused on containers. It's pretty seamless, and RHEL made it much easier for us to get things running when we moved. We were initially on PCF , Pivotal Cloud Foundry , and now we are on OpenShift. 

RHEL made development much easier, and we use it as a testbed to run our containers before moving them to OpenShift.

RHEL simplifies container hosting and offers excellent integration with automation tools like Ansible , making configuration management more straightforward. They have really good support, helping me adapt more easily because I already had a good understanding from working on open source technologies.

I find Lightspeed to be the most valuable feature about RHEL. It makes troubleshooting much easier. It's an LLM similar to ChatGPT, allowing me to query what my exact command is, and it provides me with that.

RHEL supports many different container runtimes and packages, making our job pretty easy to build images for developers to use on our container platform. Using RHEL as a base image simplifies our work compared to other options, as it comes pre-packaged with many necessary features. 

The fact that we also use a Red Hat-based container product platform, OpenShift, means it has everything needed to run on OpenShift.

RHEL is a pretty polished product, however, if it becomes more mainstream compared to other Linux distributions and if more people adapt it, it would be used as a much more universal product. This would make it easier for people to adapt to RHEL.

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

I would assess the stability and reliability of RHEL as good. I faced some issues due to the underlying platform on which they were hosted, but I didn't encounter problems with RHEL itself. Whenever we have issues, we have good Red Hat support, so it's very reliable.

I assess RHEL's scalability as pretty robust. Most of our footprint is on the cloud, and any new VMs we spin up happen quickly because of how easy it is to set up RHEL. Combining that with the capabilities of Ansible makes scaling up pretty easy on demand.

I evaluate customer service and technical support as excellent. 

They have a tiered structure for outage severity and type of environment, which is great. My experience has been positive, and we also had vendor engagements with Red Hat when implementing new solutions, with an engineer and architect helping us set things up. That was a really good learning experience for me as well, so my overall experience has been positive.

Positive

Prior to adopting RHEL, I used other distributions of Linux. I worked on Ubuntu  and SUSE, and I even worked on some personal projects with Kali Linux . Every  distribution has its pros and cons, but for an enterprise-level solution, I feel RHEL is a much better option because of the support it provides.

Security requirements were 100% a consideration in choosing RHEL in the cloud. Our company has its own setup with images we use, with our own vulnerability checks before pushing it. RHEL qualifies as one of the software solutions that has been vetted, and we use it as one of our primary operating systems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) has provided a return on investment of 100%.

I haven't worked on the RHEL side regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, however, I have worked on the OpenShift side. The pricing is competitive, especially when compared to our last vendor, PCF, which became quite expensive after being acquired by Broadcom. That's another reason why we started moving to RHEL.

In my current company, RHEL had a mature environment before I joined, but in one of my previous jobs, we chose between SUSE and RHEL. We felt RHEL was a much more polished option because of its larger user base and extensive knowledge catalog.

For other organizations considering RHEL, my advice is that if your organization is operating at scale and requires good support, RHEL is a great product. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight out of ten.

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  include workflow development. We are running the workflow in that.

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  that I appreciate the most include OpenShift. These features have benefited my organization through working on on-premise cloud migration. 

Some of the high sensitive data cannot go to the public cloud, so we are trying to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) for the internal migration. We got rid of the VM maintenance and related tasks.

Security requirements were a key consideration in choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in the cloud. We are from the financial industry, so customer data is one of our big responsibilities. When it comes to managing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems for provisioning and patching, we currently work with our middleware team for upgrades, however, the plan is to work with AWS  or the Red Hat team for future upgrades.

My assessment of the built-in security features is limited as I'm from the development side. Our upgrade and migration plans to stay current involve recommendations from our vendors.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped to mitigate downtime and lower risk. Our restart used to take considerable time initially, but through optimization, it now takes significantly less time. I would assess the knowledge base as good. We received dedicated training this summer from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), with trainers coming to our office for two days, which was very beneficial.

The pain points that Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) helps me solve include the transition from a Microsoft background, where I had a habit of everything with a GUI. I see very few GUI elements in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and many command lines. I'm not proficient in that, which makes me struggle sometimes. Overall, we have the tools, however, there should be drag-and-drop, window-type functionality.

I've used the solution for 11 years. 

I would assess the stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as very good. As a developer, I have never seen any downtime, so it is working perfectly fine from the middleware side.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales efficiently with the growing needs of my organization. They consistently release new versions. The scalability has been going well. 

We have expanded usage, and the process was smooth. In the beginning, we had very few applications, and now I can see many applications running on that side. It is definitely expanding.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support as very proactive.

Positive

Prior to adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I was using Microsoft Windows Server . Now our focus is more on this area. The factors that made us want to change include transitioning from Microsoft technology, moving to Pega and Java side. This technology is much more supported on this platform.

The initial deployment was very good. 

I have been involved in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) upgrades or migrations, and due to our many internal dependencies, it takes time, however, we successfully completed it.

I have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) because we have many critical applications running without any issues. There is significant ROI on that.

The other solutions I considered before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include using three or four vendors as a business continuity plan. We have Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), AWS , Windows and others. We cannot rely on one vendor; we have to work with multiple vendors to maintain business continuity.

The advice I would give to other organizations considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that it's a really good tool to use if they have applications in Java, Pega, or IBM workflow or Lombardi. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a nine out of ten.

We provide a hosting platform on which internal business applications will want to host their applications. Depending on what our internal app teams want to use to host their applications, some may want to host on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) . These are the main use cases that we deal with - app teams hosting their applications in our hosting platform for internal use.

From a consumer preference perspective, we have folks who prefer options for teams to host their environments in the cloud. It feels there is more security with the product and more configuration customization that app teams appreciate. Certain vendors require that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  specifically be used, which helps in those cases.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) provides a certain base set of security features and capabilities that we have found other flavors of Linux do not provide or are required by governmental agencies to meet CMMC controls. The security controls that go above and beyond other types of Linux, along with the manageability from an enterprise perspective, make it valuable.

One of the pain points we have found is that for Windows systems, it is pretty easy to domain join those in a federated model. It seems we have to either have a third-party product or it is not quite as straightforward to domain join Linux OSs. This would be something that could potentially be smoother in the future.

The knowledge base would be more helpful if it was more easily searchable. There might be opportunities to leverage AI for being able to search the knowledge base and articles more effectively.

We have been using the solution for about 12 years now.

Compared to other OSs, stability has been solid.

It has scaled very well. We have not experienced any scaling issues from our perspective.

I have not had to directly engage customer support. Mmy team has not provided any issues or complaints when they have had to reach out to support.

Positive

We tried using CentOS  type Linux or Amazon Linux . However, Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) checked the compliance and security features much better than those product offerings.

We have been actively moving systems from on-premises into the cloud since 2017, including moving Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) versions to newer versions in the cloud.

It is pretty easy to deploy. The main challenge is domain joining it at the end, however, we have not had many issues with getting things STIG hardened, which is welcome when it comes to the OS itself.

We are deploying everything via automation using the Ansible  product. Everything is deployed leveraging Ansible , and we have a desired state config post-deployment that provides post-permission hardening.

Based on our latest agreement, we are seeing cost savings and optimizations.

I wasn't too involved in those discussions. For the most part, our sourcing team carried the heavy burden of negotiating the licensing agreements and similar matters.

Depending on your use case and compliance requirements, take a good look at all the different flavors of Linux and you will probably recognize that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is going to check the boxes much smoother and easier than some of the other versions or implementations. It will save time. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution a nine.